[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by mtrot

We actually don't know what the mortality rate will be in the US, or really in many other countries either. That is because we have no idea how many have contracted the virus and have had either no symptoms or only mild illness. The denominator may be much larger than presently known. And also because of the vastly better health care available in the US, relative to other countries.

Its not possible to predict what an epedemiological outcome will be before its happened, but the death rate in the U.S. is tracking to be same as the ROW (rest of world). Currently, 22 of 500 of people in the U.S. confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 have died, which is a death rate of 4.4%, 1% higher than the ROW rate.

I agree the denominator of people that are infected with COViD-19 may be underestimated and/or under-reported.
Here is a set of key facts as to why:

1) CDC declined to utilize tests that were already available from the WHO; choosing instead to develop its own test.
2) Then, the first batch of tests developed by CDC proved to be defective.
3) CDC subsequently had to go back and re-develop an accurate and precise COVID-19 test, which is a reverse-transcriptase PCR test. BTW, I used to develop similar PCR tests (I'm one of the inventors of PCR) for other diagnostic applications during my professional career, so I know well the complexity of what is involved here; its not trivial. This is why it has taken CDC more time than other countries, e.g. South Korea, to get the required number of tests up to "scale" for testing people in the U.S.
4) the initial protocol released by the CDC for the people who could be tested resulted in under-reporting of infected individuals (e.g. the woman in Vacaville who finally was allowed to be tested and determined to be positive).
5) The FDA did not immediately trigger a regulatory workaround enabling qualified medical centers, e.g. Quest and LabCorp, to roll out tests that they had designed themselves.

Presently, the CDC is not reporting the actual number of people who have been tested and the Surgeon General, who I am watching on TV literally right now, refused to give an exact number, but it is estimated to be only 1,000-1,500. South Korea has tested over 150,000 citizens to date.

As for quality of the care in USA being the better relative to other countries, I'm also watching Dr. Irwin Redelener on TV right now state unequivocally that we don't have enough hospital beds or ventilators to care for the predicted number of patients requiring such care.