Coronavirus Fatalities/Deaths Rate Calculation

6 April 2020 0 By Mark Reeves

Being natually sceptical about the figures we are being given I thought I would work the figures myself. In fact looking at the predicted number of deaths in the UK and US they seemed artificially low to try to calm the population.

Figures to work from:

  • Population of the UK = 66m
  • Percentage of the population that becomes infected = 60%
  • Fatality rate 0.5%

66,000,000 x 0.5% x 60% =198,000 deaths

How I came to the above figures

There are a few figures for fatility rate going around which vary from 1%-10%. I feel that the higher ones here are way out as they are underestimating the number of cases of the virus. Since Wuhan was where it started I will look at their stats which show 1.4% of symptomatic cases resulted in death. On the Diamond Princess the fatality rate of the symptomatic cases was around 1.9% but this was on an aged population and we know that this virus affects older people much harder than younger ones.

Once you take account of the fact that 50% of people on the Diamond Princess were asymptomatic you can then half the fatality rates so you end up with 0.95% on the [vulnerable population on] Diamond Princess and 0.7% in Wuhan.

As time progresses treatment has improved of people infected with the virus so I am going to reduce the 0.7% figure down to 0.5%. A lot of people would argue this is too optimistic but my feeling is that this virus spreads quicker and wider than the models and authorities have estimated which is why the seem constantly surprised. The good side of this is that this lowers the fatality rate and brings us closer to the end of the pandemic.

Vaccine

I am also ignoring the vaccine in these calculations to keep them simple, I might do a further analysis later with how a vaccine becoming available in 6/9/12 months would affect the outcome.

Conclusion

This figure is very high and it would be even higher if I used more mainstream figures for the fatality rate that the government models are going from.

If we are averaging 15,000 deaths per month it would take 13 months to get to the end of this. No one wants to face this reality an like a rabbit caught in the headlights the shutdown was invented.

If the shutdowns work and take 2 months to reduce deaths then the amount of time would be more than doubled with us shutting the economy down multiple times. There is no way the economy could survive this.

At some point we will have to learn that we will have to live with Coronaviru