Estimates of the predicted coronavirus death toll have little meaning

With all the unknowns about covid-19, any numbers you hear about death tolls or how long restrictions will last should be taken not just with a pinch of salt but with a sack of it

Jim Vondruska/NurPhoto via Getty Images

YOU will probably have read that there are going to be X thousand deaths from coronavirus in the country you live in. You may also have read that there are going to be an order of magnitude more or fewer deaths. You would be right to be unsure which is correct. It could be any of them, or none.

President Donald Trump has been talking about a possible 100,000 to 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the US if his administration “does well” at tackling the virus. In the UK, there has been talk of 20,000 deaths if measures work and 250,000 without restrictions. There has been no shortage of other estimates put forward by people with little experience of epidemiology, some of which come in very low indeed.

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These calculations, approximations and guesstimates from expert modelling studies and back-of-the-envelope blogging build a confusing picture, not least because they suggest that it is possible to assign a numerical value to covid-19’s future death toll at this point.

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We are living through a situation with few certainties. If someone calculates that 1 per cent of the global population is set to die in this pandemic, say, this could be wrong for at least six reasons.

“We can’t know yet whether we can slow the pandemic long enough to develop drugs and vaccines for it”

First, we can’t yet be sure of the covid-19 fatality rate, or to what extent this will be affected by local shortages of ventilators. Second, we don’t know what proportion of the world population is likely to catch the infection, with some estimates varying between about 60 and 80 per cent. Third, we don’t know to what extent national restrictions, which vary wildly across the globe, will prevent or delay infections and deaths.

Added to this, we can’t know yet whether we can slow the pandemic long enough to develop drugs and vaccines that can dramatically cut the number of covid-19 deaths. And finally, we don’t even know what kind of immunity – if any – is conferred by this virus, and whether it is possible to develop severe symptoms from a repeat infection.

With all of these unknowns, the numbers you are hearing about death tolls, or how long restrictions will be in place, or how many people will need intensive care, should be taken not just with a pinch of salt but with a sack of it.