What Are the True Coronavirus Numbers?

Numbers have a certain mystique: They seem precise, exact, sometimes even beyond doubt. But outside the field of pure mathematics, this reputation rarely is deserved. And when it comes to the Coronavirus epidemic, buying into that can be downright dangerous.

Naturally, everyone wants to know how deadly Coronavirus is and how many cases there actually are. The technical term we are looking for is the fatality rate — which is, put simply, the number of people who have died from the disease divided by the total number of people who were infected with it.

But those figures may not mean what you think.

The number of deaths seems like it should be easy enough to determine: After all, dead is dead. And yet ascribing a cause of death can be tricky. The Coronavirus has already been blamed for the deaths of vulnerable people, especially seniors, already suffering from other illnesses, such as diabetes and other chronic conditions. In other words, people with certain morbidities who died from other causes, but had the virus, were classified as Coronavirus deaths.

Even more problematic is figuring out the total number of infected people. Patients who have tested positive and are hospitalized are included in that tally, of course. But what about those who are being treated without formally having been tested? Or what about those who might be infected and yet display no symptoms? What about those who test positive more than once? What about those who test positive for the antibodies, had the virus previously but recovered with no symptoms?

To add to the confusion is the addition to the uncertainty inherent in the basic numbers. There are the distortions unintentionally created by the way those numbers are reported by medical officials and there are concerns that some individuals are being counted more than once as additional cases. This is then exacerbated by how it is interpreted and presented by the media.

The basic problem is that there is no consistency around the globe as to how these cases are counted. This has been discussed a great deal as it relates to China, but they are not unique to this problem. That discrepancy also exists within the United States. The good news is that as we progress in this pandemic, the way we track cases is beginning to improve, but we still have an uphill battle to get to where we need to be.

We were told several months ago that the United States would be increasing the number of tests given, and therefore we should expect more positive cases. Despite the repeated warnings, much of the media, and the public for that matter, completely forgot, or just chose to ignore that little tidbit.

Originally, due to the limited number of tests, people were only tested if they showed specific symptoms. Today, there are far more tests being given and we are learning that there are many people who either have, or had, the virus, but are, or were, asymptomatic.

Based on what we know so far, COVID-19 seems to be much less fatal than other coronavirus infections and diseases that turned into major epidemics in recent decades. Remember, too, that only a small percentage of the people infected with COVID-19 die.

During week 26 of the Covid crisis (6/21-6/27), the percentage of deaths attributed to Covid, flu, or pneumonia dropped from 9.0% to 5.9% — marking the tenth consecutive week of decline in this statistic. We are now sitting right at the threshold to even be able to officially call it an epidemic. On July 5th, the number of Covid deaths in the US dropped to 212, the lowest number since March 24.

However much we would like to know all the relevant facts about the coronavirus, we don’t know them right now, and we should accept the discomfort of that uncertainty. This is all the more reason to abide by one of the things we do know at this point: You should wash your hands regularly.

KPGZ News - Jim Dickerson contributed to this report - Data and information obtained from CDC, John Allen Paulos of Temple University, World Meters and World Data