CFR can't be used to determine population mortality rate. It in no way reflects r0, and only tangentially at best hints at percentage of asymptomatic infections

CFR can't be used to determine population mortality rate. It in no way reflects r0, and only tangentially at best hints at percentage of asymptomatic infections (and that's recent as there was never drive-by testing for any previous epidemic). Those two dimensions add unfathomable complexity to the equation. In many ways it's better to leave those dimensions out to improve the utility of CFR. A doctor doing triage or health department coming up with orders wants a simple, basic number, not a panoply of options that require data they won't have at hand. We by all means should collect more data, just don't shoehorn it into such a very primitive yet very essential statistic. Give them new names and new, more appropriate semantics. I suspect that after this is over they're going to tighten the criteria around CFR, and in particular exclude by definition asymptomatic cases and possibly non-hospitalized cases. They never had to do that before as "cases" usually implied someone sick enough to be given a diagnosis, which in turn implied someone at least moderately sick--e.g. actual or suspected case of pneumonia.