Crankyhawk
Brownlow Medallist
I think the justaflu side distrust the USA death figures (they cite a belief that USA hospitals are financially incentivised to report a death as covid on “clinical grounds” without a test - might be the only way they get payment for an uninsured patient)128 thousand deaths in usa divided by 2.6 million infections gives you a mortality rate of 4.9 percent. You can make a case infections are multiple fold higher while deaths are only a small amount higher. But that doesnt change how deadly the disease is. Well actually it makes it a tad more deadly. And thats if we ignore the fact that if we measured covid deaths in the same way as flu deaths then covid deaths would be multiple times higher.
It is probably accurate to use the Australian case fatality rate - we have had a strong testing regimen and don’t have perverse financial incentives