Originally Posted by
jfsully
Am I sure? Of course not, since nobody is sure what the numbers really will be.
But, given what we see in the hospital when people get sick with covid, it’s more severe than with seasonal flu. Because we also see people with seasonal flu (a lot) and know what that looks like. This is not quantitative, but is consistent with higher CFR for COVID. And none of the populations tested, to my knowledge so far, have come up with a CFR for COVID anywhere near as low as the flu’s 0.1%. And the sensitivity of the tests is better than we thought it was (based on symptomatic people testing negative, then retesting positive).
Im not sure what the first sentence fragment you posted above was referring to, maybe asymptomatic carriers? Since we don’t really know what the IFR of influenza is, I’ll go ahead and take back my claim that the IFR for COVID is higher. It seems likely, but maybe can’t be determined. If you want to say it’s equal to or lower than influenza, you’ll have to find a solid IFR for seasonal influenza, which I haven’t seen.