this seems fairly recent, if... uhh.. vague
www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---3-march-2020
"Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected."
It's unclear from the wording, but it's not 1.5%, and while it could be 0.1%, it seems less likely they would choose to express that as 'far fewer than 1%'?
also backs up the point about 3.4% being a measure of reported cases, not all cases.
(, Sun 8 Mar 2020, 9:01, Reply)
Thanks all for the comments - pretty much as I thought.
TBH my main concern is whether the spread can be slowed sufficiently to avoid hospitals being swamped - I've not seen anything to suggest how much the survival rate is affected by not having access to hospital care, but based on what I've seen from pneumonia I suspect it wouldn't be good.
(
tarka_dall Like normal dall, only a bit more spicy, Sun 8 Mar 2020, 16:58,
Reply)
Thing is
Those are two different things - the number of COVID cases reported are simply the number of people who are diagnosed - through whatever means.
However, the number of people infected with flu is far higher than the number who report their infection with flu.
So the denominator will be smaller in the case of COVID because they haven't done any random testing yet to discover how many people have had COVID but did not recognise/report it.
(, Mon 9 Mar 2020, 18:48, Reply)