Coronavirus War Room Time — Mortality rate 1-3%. Hello?

In a word: bum.

WHO announced their estimates of 3.4% global mortality today. All the caveats apply — it includes rubbery-figure-China and comes from the Useless UN and a group headed by a star apologist-for-Xi. But here’s the thing, look at the numbers outside China (see the big table below), and its a similar ballpark. Sorry to rant on about this virus.

The World Health Organization had said last week that the mortality rate of COVID-19 can differ, ranging from 0.7% to up to 4%, depending on the quality of the health-care system where it’s treated.

Don’t look now: Big Numbers Coming. Assuming 60% of people catch it before some treatment appears, a death rate of 0.7% – 4% means bad news for some furry number from 100,000 to 600,000 Australians. Double that for the UK. And 1.4m – 8m in the United States. There is a wide range of mortality rates, which may reflect that there are two kinds of mortality rates here — one where people get great ICU care, and one where hospitals are overrun and they don’t. We’ll probably pin that to the low end if we keep cases limited, we eat well, don’t smoke, […]