February 28, 2020- by Steven E. Greer, MD
Just published online in the NEJM is a report with the death rates in China from coronavirus, which are only 1.4%. However, that rate is greatly inflated due to the lack of accounting for those who are asymptomatic and never tested.
In the accompanying editorial, Anthony Fauci, MD, the head of the infectious disease division at the NIH, wrote, “On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%. In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity.
If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”
This coronavirus threat is being greatly hyped for two reasons: A) It drives TV ratings, just like the hyping of weather storms does, and B) The far-left is trying to politicize it and tag Trump as the cause of a pandemic. In reality, the coronavirus threat is not worse than a normal influenza pandemic. It is not like SARS, Zika, Ebola, measles, small pox, etc.. (see also my Newsmax TV discussion above).
Interestingly, the president is considering using the War Powers Act to force companies to make face masks or any other product we need. I suggested that yesterday when I discussed medications that can or will be able to treat coronavirus.
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Update March 3, 2020