Why is the Covid-19 fatality rate calculated based on no of total cases, not resolved cases?

[Roland99]

According to this site:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

There are about 8500 deaths and about 15,000 recovered

That means of the 311k total cases, only 23,500 have come to a conclusion. And of those, well over 1/3 has resulted in death vs recovery

That. Seems. VERY. Scary.

[Blues Heron]

1. slice it how you want

the death rate is what proportion of people that get the virus die. Resolved cases is probably the least accurate metric because it doesn't include a lot of cases that were mild etc.

[genxlib]

2. I would guess

That the counting for resolved cases is lagging a lot. It probably only includes those that successfully were discharged from the hospital. It probably doesn't include all those people that were told to isolate and just got better. There probably isn't a means to successfully capture those numbers.

[FBaggins]

3. That would give an entirely false (and unnecessarily frightening) impression of the virus

As you illustrate, thinking that's the fatality rate would be "very scary" - but it also isn't true.

[beachbumbob]

4. the ONLY valid metric is the number of deaths per million in population as there IS NO WAY

to know how many people are actually infected at any given moment

[obamanut2012]

5. THis is the correct answer

And why Dr. F and many other professionals have stressed that the case mortality rate does not reflect the actual mortality rate (which is lower).

[former9thward]

6. That is how the death rare for any disease is calculated.

It is not going to change for Covid.

[beachbumbob]

7. the death rate of any disease is based on known cases vs known deaths. Perhaps in 1 to 2 years we

will have that data. Today we do not

[former9thward]

8. Well you can say that about any disease.

Cancer uses a 5 year survival rate (Although many people announce they are "cancer free" -- and people accept that, see Justice Ginsburg -- well before 5 years).

[beachbumbob]

9. this applies to ALL diseases. YOu have a data set of knowns in a time period. With this virus we

have no such data set outside of current death totals as we have ZERO idea on how many are actually infected

[former9thward]

10. You are right, but our data points on other diseases are flawed also.

We only know about cancer cases when the symptoms get back enough that someone goes to a doctor to check them out. If we tested all people we might find millions with some form of cancer at some early stage. With ordinary flu we only know those cases when people go to the doctor. How many millions, or tens of millions of cases, are out there that never get reported? We don't and can't know.

[Azathoth]

11. Because resolved numbers lag far behind

The only cases that get marked resolved in a timely fashion are those where the patient dies or gets discharged from a hospital (presumably after testing negative). The vast majority of non-hospitalized cases don't get timely followup.

[thesquanderer]

12. I've also posted about this...

... at https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213214523 and in the thread at https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213225036

Yes, it is scary. It's not as bad as those numbers imply because of how many cases are not counted AT ALL (whether because of inadequate testing, or people who get it and exhibit few if any symptoms and don't get treated), and that's going to skew the numbers up, but you're right, if you don't factor out all the cases that are yet to resolve one way or the other, you can have an artificially low percentage, especially when SO MANY of the diagnosed cases have been diagnosed so recently that it is way too soon to count them among "non fatal" cases, just because they haven't died yet.