COVID Odyssey: Spring Spruce up 30 ~ Post#913: World COVID-19~ People infected ten times number of cases?

Excerpts from a recent social media post:

It is important to understand the difference between Case Fatality Rate (CFR) and Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). IFR is the figure we need to focus on. A comprehensive Stanford University study showed that, across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 IFR was 0.2%. This shows very clearly that the IFR for Covid-19 in NZ is about the same as the flu (0.1%). See the published paper at: Ioannidis JPA. Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data. Bull World Health Organ. 2021;99(1):19-33F. doi:10.2471/BLT.20.265892
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/99/1/20-265892.pdf

We have always thought up to yesterday that the number of people infected with COVID-19 in New Zealand and worldwide was usually only slightly higher than the number of cases (except maybe at the start of an outbreak).

It is well known that people may be infectious and spread COVID-19 a few days before they are symptomatic.

We assumed that these people would become cases within a few days (before/after) of becoming symptomatic. Contact tracing/testing could find cases before they were symptomatic.

Currently the world CFR = 2% (5m out of 250m is 1 in 50). A few days ago:

COVID Odyssey: Spring Spruce up 29 ~ Post#912: NZ COVID-19~ PANDA: Is NZ Death% twice world IFR? Nope!

In New Zealand up to 12 November, we have been very lucky with only 33 deaths and less than 8,000 (7945) confirmed cases of COVID-19.

This is an CFR (see below) of just over 0.415% (33/7945 ~ 0.004153).

PANDA says

According to the World Health Organisation, the mean infection fatality rate (“IFR”) for COVID-19 is less than 0.2%.

See:
https://www.pandata.org/elephants-in-the-room/

Below are the latest stats from WHO:

Globally, as of 4:32pm CET, 12 November 2021, there have been 251,788,329 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5,077,907 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 10 November 2021.

See:
https://covid19.who.int/

This gives an CFR of

5,077,907/251,788,329 = 0.020167 or just over 2%.

Update see:

COVID Odyssey: Spring Spruce up 30 ~ Post#913: World COVID-19~ People infected ten times number of cases?

See:
https://www.pandata.org/elephants-in-the-room/

The recent paper referred to by PANDA is only a preprint. This means that it has not yet been published.

It has also not been peer reviewed. This means that no recognised experts have considered the paper.

The data was from studies done in 2020.

Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in community-dwelling populations with emphasis on the elderly: An overview

Cathrine Axfors,  View ORCID ProfileJohn P.A. Ioannidis

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210

This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

Data Synthesis Twenty-three seroprevalence surveys representing 14 countries were included. Across all countries, the median IFR in community-dwelling elderly and elderly overall was 2.4%.

Data Sources Seroprevalence studies done in 2020 and identified by any of four existing systematic reviews.

For latest cases and deaths in the world a few days ago you may also like to look at:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Also see:

Semenzato et al (2021)

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