Experts demolish studies suggesting COVID-19 is no worse than flu

Enlarge / A COVID-19 blood test is administered outside of Delmont Medical Care on April 22, 2020 in Franklin Square, New York. The test identifies antibodies to the coronavirus. (credit: Getty | Al Bello)

Frustrated statisticians and epidemiologists took to social media this week to call out substantial flaws in two widely publicized studies trying to estimate the true spread of COVID-19 in two California counties, Santa Clara and Los Angeles.

The studies suggested that far more people in each of the counties have been infected with the new coronavirus than thought-that is, they estimated that true case counts in the two counties are up to 85 times and 55 times the number of the currently confirmed cases in the counties, respectively. Accordingly, this suggests that COVID-19 is far less deadly than thought. The large case counts in relation to unchanged number of deaths put COVID-19's fatality rate in the same range as seasonal flu.

How dangerous is this?

We dig into the details of the studies below, but it's important to note that neither of them have been published in a scientific journal, nor have they gone through standard peer-review for scientific vetting. Instead, they have been posted online in draft form (a commonplace occurrence amid a rapidly evolving pandemic that inclines researchers to have fast access to data, however uncertain).

Read 44 remaining paragraphs | Comments