Many Scientists Warn CDC's New Death Rate Estimates Far Too Low

Slashdot reader DevNull127 quotes Buzzfeed News: Public health experts are accusing the CDC of bending under political pressure to say the coronavirus is less deadly. New CDC estimates of coronavirus death rates look suspiciously low and present almost no data to back them up, say public health experts who are concerned that the agency is buckling under political pressure to restart the economy...

While no one yet knows the coronavirus's actual death rate, the agency's range of possible rates seemed alarmingly low to many epidemiologists, compared to existing data in places both inside and outside the US. For instance, estimates of New York City's total death rate, 0.86% to 0.93%, are even higher than the CDC's worst-case scenario. Estimates from countries like Spain and Italy are also higher, ranging from 1.1% to 1.3%. Researchers also lambasted the CDC's lack of transparency about its data sources. The eight-page document disclosed almost nothing about its numbers, citing only internal data and a preprint — a study that has not been peer-reviewed — led by scientists in Iran. "This is terrible. This is way too optimistic," Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of population health at the University of California at Irvine, told BuzzFeed News, adding, "With this document, the CDC is determined to smash its credibility with the public health community of which it is supposedly a leader."
The CDC did not return multiple requests for comment...

A preliminary analysis of more than two dozen studies from Europe, China, the US, and elsewhere, conducted by Meyerowitz-Katz and colleague Lea Merone, suggests that the overall infection fatality rate is between 0.5% and 0.78%. Even the lower end of that range is higher than what the CDC says is its "best estimate" for the rate, which is about 0.26%. The CDC's proposed fatality rates "are more in line with a relatively mild seasonal flu season than with COVID-19," said Gerardo Chowell, a public health expert at Georgia State University. Those estimates are at least an order of magnitude lower than ones elsewhere in the world, he added, including South Korea, which has a case fatality rate around 0.7% and one of the highest testing rates for the coronavirus in the world....
The CDC document provided almost no sources for its projections, making it impossible for scientists to understand how it came up with them.

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