People are slowly noticing the use of the WHO CFR as an actual FR is science fiction[1] at least. Well, they're not really noticing that, especially here on HN,

People are slowly noticing the use of the WHO CFR as an actual FR is science fiction[1] at least. Well, they're not really noticing that, especially here on HN, because people are statistical imbeciles, but at least they're noticing that the denominator in the FR is a lot larger than they previously thought. That was abundantly obvious at the beginning; if you aren't widely administering a costly and rare test[2], you're enormously left censored in your estimator. You're also radically screwing up your R0 estimate. I suppose there are arguments to be made that more hot and humid climates prevent the spread of respiratory viruses in general, which is why you don't see problems in the more humid and hot regions of China and Vietnam.[3] The real question is why some countries look like Germany, and some look like Italy. The paranoid answer is Germany will soon look like Italy (and this might be true), except the claimed origin of the disease is .... Germany[4]. If it does turn out to be overblown in some sense, it's probably a valuable exercise in autarky. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statistics-undetected.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statis... [2] And FWIIW none of the tests are well calibrated; in fact there are numerous tests in use with radically different biases. [3] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-scientists/coronavirus-may-have-reached-italy-from-germany-scientists-say-idUSKBN20Y35B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-... (I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's a common assertion)