Mid-Epidemic Case Fatality Rate - The Case of COVID-19: Reducing the Impact of Wrong Risk Perception

Abstract

In the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the mortality risk being presented by both the media and some public health information providers is often misleading and so increasing the risk of suboptimal policy decisions and lower than desired voluntary compliance rates. We make the following contributions. First and foremost, we explain why the obsessive focus on the post-epidemic retrospective Case Fatality Rate is misplaced and explain why the focus must necessarily be on a time-varying mid-epidemic measure. Second, we introduce a Mid-Epidemic Case Fatality Rate (ME-CFR) framework and explain, using this framework, why the mortality risk as often presented during the COVID 19 pandemic is inappropriate and downward biased. Third, we explain how the ME-CFR is related to the numbers being released for Cases, Deaths, and Recovered. Fourth, we propose one such easy to use ME-CFR methodology for estimating the risk of death at a point in time when infected in the midst of an epidemic. Finally, we present an illustrative example of such ME-CFR curves along with some commentary for 3 very different countries (India, South Korea, USA) for the current COVID 19 pandemic. We believe that if the professional publications and media switch to this measure of mid-epidemic outcomes, policymakers and the general public will make better decisions, leading to better outcomes for COVID 19 and for future epidemics and pandemics.