ORDINARILY, the international public should be able to trust that the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations health agency, can provide the most reliable and credible information about the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) epidemic and what is happening.

Such is the complexity and toughness of the emergency, however, that WHO ironically sometimes becomes the source of confusion about the outbreak.

Take the perplexing and muddled talk today about the mortality rate of the coronavirus.





Reuters reported on March 3 that WHO officials had declared that the mortality rate for Covid-19 is 3.4 percent globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2 percent.

“Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported Covid-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing.

By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected, he said.

Last week, WHO said the mortality rate of Covid-19 could differ, ranging from 0.7 percent to up to 4 percent, depending on the quality of the healthcare system where it was treated. Early in the outbreak, scientists had concluded the death rate was around 2.3 percent.

This is all very confusing to us because the figures conflict, and there is little clarity in what WHO means to communicate.

Our confusion turned into skepticism when we came across an article in the medical examiner column of slate.com titled, “Covid-19 isn’t as deadly as we think.” It was written by Jeremy Samuel Faust (who has apparently some connection with the Harvard Medical School) and was published on March 4, 2020.

Mr. Faust wrote: “There are many compelling reasons to conclude that SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the virus that causes Covid-19, is not nearly as deadly as is currently feared. But Covid-19 panic has set in nonetheless…. The public is behaving as if this epidemic is the next Spanish flu, which is frankly understandable given that initial reports have staked Covid-19 mortality at about 2-3 percent, quite similar to the 1918 pandemic that killed tens of millions of people.

“Allow me to be the bearer of good news. These frightening numbers are unlikely to hold. The true case fatality rate, known as CFR, of this virus is likely to be far lower than current reports suggest…

“We shouldn’t be surprised that the numbers are inflated. In past epidemics, initial CFRs were floridly exaggerated….

“We are already seeing this. In the early days of the crisis in Wuhan, China, the CFR was more than 4 percent. As the virus spread to other parts of Hubei, the number fell to 2 percent. As it spread through China, the reported CFR dropped further, to 0.2 to 0.4 percent…New reports from the World Health Organization that estimate the global death rate of Covid-19 to be 3.4 percent, higher than previously believed, is not cause for further panic. This number is subject to the same usual forces that we would normally expect to inaccurately embellish death rate statistics early in an epidemic.”

But the most straightforward and compelling evidence that the true CFR of SARS-CoV-2 is well under 1 percent comes not from statistical trends and methodological massage, but from data from the outbreak in the Diamond Princess cruise ship that is quarantined off the coast of Japan.

A quarantined boat is an ideal — if unfortunate — natural laboratory to study a virus. Many variables normally impossible to control are controlled. It is known that all but one patient boarded the boat without the virus, and that the other passengers were healthy enough to travel.

The Diamond Princess data provides important insight. Of the 3,711 people on board, at least 705 have tested positive for the virus (which, considering the confines, conditions, and how contagious this virus appears to be, is surprisingly low).

Six deaths have occurred among the passengers, constituting a case fatality rate of 0.85 percent. The most important insight is that all six fatalities occurred in patients who are more than 70 years old. Not a single Diamond Princess patient under age 70 has died.

“This all suggests that Covid-19 is a relatively benign disease for most young people, and a potentially devastating one for the old and chronically ill, albeit not nearly as risky as reported,” concludes Faust.

The Faust article is more enlightening than WHO on the mortality rate of Covid-19.