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Stanford Study Suggests COVID-19 Mortality Rate Similar to Flu

researcher looking at computer screen

A new study by researchers associated with Stanford University Medical School has concluded, based on a sample of Santa Clara County, California residents, that the number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2, is 50-to 80-fold more than the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.1

The researchers tested a sample of 3,330 residents of the county on Apr. 3-4, 2020 using blood tests to detect antibodies to determine whether or not they had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus believed to cause COVID-19. As of Apr. 17, 2020 the percentage of people in the U.S. with confirmed diagnoses of COVID-19 who die is 5.2 percent.2

However, epidemiologists have known that a significant proportion of people who are infected are going undetected by the medical system because either they don’t feel sick enough to seek help or are asymptomatic. For instance, recent research in Iceland suggests that about 50 percent of people infected with the virus have no symptoms.3

Based on their data, the researchers calculated that the likely prevalence of COVID-19 infection ranged from 2.49 to 4.16 percent. Given the number of confirmed cases and deaths in Santa Clara County, the researchers calculated the infection mortality rate, which is the percent of people infected with the disease who die, to be 0.12 to 0.2 percent. The infection mortality rate of influenza is 0.1 percent in the United States.4

The Stanford researchers concluded that the population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases. These population prevalence estimates can now be used to calibrate epidemic and mortality projections.


References:

1 Bendavid E, Mulaney B, et.al. COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California, Medrxiv.org Apr. 11, 2020.
2 Bailey R. COVID-19 Lethality Not Much Different Than Flu, Says New Study. Reason Apr. 17, 2020.
3 John T. Iceland lab’s testing suggests 50% of coronavirus cases have no symptoms. CNN Apr. 3, 2020.
4 Mettler K. How the coronavirus compares with the flu. The Washington Post Mar. 10, 2020.

20 Responses

  1. Not true.You are comparing apples to oranges.
    1. In the grand princess boat there were 700 infections and 13 deaths (so far). Close to 2%. After one takes into acount the age of the people on the boat, this calculates to an equivalent of .6% for the general population. Much higher than flu. Flu (on its worst years) kills 60,000 people in the usa. That is .02% ot the population. [In addition, ther are still 7 people in severe condition from the boat months later.]
    2. Lets talk about facts on the ground. In New York covid-19 has already killed .1 percent of the population. That is 5 times the flu. The other states and other countries have lower rates mainly because they have succeeded in mitigating the infection. If no mitigation efforts were done (like the flu), we would be dealing with something far far worse than the flu.
    mitigation efforts obviously cannot be kept up forever, so the need for a vaccine is pressing.

    1. Jeffrey, this website isn’t comparing anything. The scientists run the numbers for Los Angeles County covid the same way they calculate the flu. Deaths / Antibody-positive population

      Look it up.

      Flattening the curve does not prevent illness or death. It spreads them out over time.

      Look that up too.

      The only way it’s apples to oranges is that untold numbers of covid deaths have been reported when an underlying condition (or two or three) should have been reported. Debra Birx admitted this is happening.

      The percentages will be higher in harder hit areas, and areas where the most deaths have been reported improperly. They are working on a nationwide sample for this test, and hope to have it out in the next few weeks. You can see videos with Dr Jay Bhatta…something. I can’t remember how his name is spelled, but he was part of the Stanford study and has explained how run the data.

    1. Rochelle,
      Just click the word “References.” The list of references appears.
      Then, click on the reference you want.
      Good luck.

  2. Our government has lied to us and bungled the handling of this pandemic. We should all be extremely concerned about the lingering effects of the unconstitutional state shutdown and sheltering in place orders implemented during this manufactured “crisis.”

    1. No Trump and his cohorts have lied to us and continue to put us all at risk by THEIR bungling of the response and mixed messages. Thank goodness for the competent and excellent leadership from most of the state’s Governors and the many organizations putting all their resources and energy into educating and helping others. If you’re looking for a real travesty of justice, try putting some energy toward getting the Defense Protection Act out of pause and working so the people fighting this are protected.

  3. I found that study reassuring too, but there are several points that are left out of this. For one thing, we already knew that for whatever reason, people in California have fared better than people in most other locations in the U.S. and around the world. Some are wondering if the warm, sunny weather plays a part and others are pointing out that Californians naturally practice much more social distancing — they drive instead of taking mass transportation, they are not as packed together, and California was the very first state to issue stay-at-home orders, meaning people who were exposed there had much lower viral loads than others. We know that the viral load seems to be very important for people who get this — the more of the virus they get, the harder it is to fight it.

    We have also a lot of evidence that most people who seem asymptomatic have actually just not developed symptoms yet. The virus seems to have a very long incubation period in some people. When other studies found as many as 50% of the people sampled had the virus but didn’t have symptoms, follow-ups revealed that most of them did go on to develop symptoms and the end result was that only about 18% of people remained asymptomatic.

  4. That’s just one study of many. How about every death being classified as Covid-19 or ignoring pre existing conditions etc… Something is just not right about this whole picture and what they are doing.

  5. The fact checker is covering things up she works at facebook as the facebook checker. Its alive person. Very biased. So your never gonna get try numbers.

  6. Please note that reference #3 (“John T. Iceland lab’s testing suggests 50% of coronavirus cases have no symptoms. CNN Apr. 3, 2020” is misleadingly and, frankly, alarmingly titled. The deCODE study, at the date of publication, included 9,000 individuals, less than 1 percent of whom were positive for CoVid-19. Fifty percent of this figure (under 90) were asymptomatic, which represents fewer than 45 people out of 9,000.

  7. Comparable to flu? I don’t recall the flu overflowing morgues last year. My wife works in a covid ICU and in that hospital they have to rotate bodies through every two hours to keep them from decomposing. I suppose one could say that flu mortality would be much higher if not for vaccines but everyone on this site knows how ineffective those can be. I am hoping Vaccine Reaction will raise their standards for journal articles because this sort of material just weakens the movement for vaccine manufacturing and policy reform, and the right for conscientious objection. Is there really nothing else to write or report on? We need some hard hitting critical analysis, some scholarly coherent and referenced articles. Especially in these times when we are approaching a potential national push for mandatory experimental vaccination. I often feel like I have to dig through a lot of biased fluff to extract legitimate references for my own research. Sorry, I don’t mean to offend, just challenging you to do better. Peace.

  8. In 2018, New York State had 8.399 million residents reported on the census.
    According to the CDC , 4,749 per 100,000 died of pneumonia/ flu .

    From the CDC website:
    “Coronavirus 19 and Covid19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is ASSUMED to have caused death.”

    Large numbers of people have never been tested and most will have moderate cases.

  9. Study shows mortality similar to flu and we are still locked down.
    CDC still lie to us. On their own website they have two pages with different numbers. Why numbers are different? Why there is * with comments “probable” or “assumed” death?
    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/
    Check here instructions for death certificates:
    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/covid-19.htm
    Why they don’t use ICD code U07.2.

  10. Linda. California actually didn’t lock down right away. Some of the highest numbers were only a couple of states away. It’s most likely that California had Covid much earlier than the rest of the country bc of the mass travel back and forth from China. We are positive we had it in January in New Mexico. Many here have products manufactured in China and a lot of students at the university (mainly a research university) are from China and went back and forth at Christmas! San Francisco isn’t a society that is as socially distant as the rest of CA – why wouldn’t they have more deaths? Lack of vitamin D is likely something which does affect the body’s ability to fight the virus.

  11. COVID FLU hyper scare… Political / Fake News making it worse than the Spanish flu, when there was no anti-biotics… NO ONE is siteing the 1968 AVIAN FLU killed 100,000 in USA…
    Those of us old enough to remember KNOW, they didn’t go crazy, they didn’t close schools, they didn’t ruin the economy, DID YOU GET THAT, THEY DIDN’T RUIN THE ECONOMY, no one get out of here alive you know….

    But the ones left will have much much less, YES communism does not work, but it can sure make a heck of a mess and bring a lot of misery.

  12. Ponder this:The Diamond Princess cruise ship in Tokyo on Feb.4th had one person who had disembarked and later found to have Covid 19.There were 3000 people on the boat who were immediately quarantined in their rooms and all possible precautions were taken. After 2 weeks of quarantine 700 passengers were positive and 9 died. When people compare the common flu with Covid I ask them..If that one person would have had the common flu would 700 people have caught it and 9 died ?This is why our country had to be in lock down.

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