You keep on using the top of the estimate as if it was the only estimate. They said 1%-4%. I agree that is high, but I also don't think the real rate is 0.2% either as that requires the total COVID death number to be inflated. I don't think there is evidence for that. I think the real rate is probably somewhere in the in the 0.4%-0.8% range. That means the 1%-4% estimate is pretty close at the low end. And if we are going to err on one side or the other, the side that makes people more cautious during a global pandemic rather than less cautious is probably the way to go.
You could also read what Stross wrote slightly differently:
> SARS1 has 20% mortality among patients, MERS (aka SARS2) is up around 35-40% fatal, SARS-NCoV19, aka SARS3, is down around the 1-4% fatality level.
"Among patients" would make me assume that Stross is talking about case fatality rates, not infection fatality rates.
1-4% is a reasonable range for CFR, even if it's too high for IFR.
(Some quick Googling after the fact also shows that while MERS had a CFR in the 30-40% range, its IFR was estimated at more like 0.3-0.7% -- roughly the same range as COVID. Large numbers of undetected mild cases were cited as the reason for the large difference.)
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