MEDICATED STATISTICS

Sucharit Bhakdi, formerly of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, currently chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz and co-author of Corona False Alarm? shows how Germany’s federal government and research agency for disease control, the RKI—the country’s counterpart of the CDC in the U.S.—had juggled the numbers. The RKI, he writes, “calculated that 170,000 infections with 7000 coronavirus deaths equals a 4% case fatality rate.” The problem is that “the number of infections was at least ten times higher because mild and asymptomatic cases had not been sought and detected. This would bring us to a much more realistic fatality rate of 0.4%.”

Additionally, deaths from other causes were folded into the mortality count. A true statistical correction “would yield an estimate of between 0.24% and 0.26%.” Sucharit wryly provides a hypothetical example. “If I drive to the hospital to be tested and later have a fatal car accident…I become a coronavirus death. If I am diagnosed positive for coronavirus and jump off the balcony in shock, I also become a coronavirus death.” Statistically speaking, it’s a good gig if you can get it.