Name: PolitiFact: Tucker Carlson says the coronavirus isn’t as deadly as we thought. Experts disagree
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PolitiFact: Tucker Carlson says the coronavirus isn’t as deadly as we thought. Experts disagree

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/COVID-19 still appears more lethal than the seasonal flu, experts said. Fox News host Tucker Carlson railed against continued statewide shutdowns meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus, claiming in a that they did little to flatten the curve and that “the virus just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought it was.”Citing recent studies from hotspots such as , Carlson said the virus is "a full order of magnitude less deadly" than public health officials warned. "The virus just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought it was, all of us, including on this show," he said. "Everybody thought it was, but it turned out not to be."More than 65,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to the . That’s in spite of widespread mitigation efforts to reduce the spread. So how deadly is it?Estimating the lethality of COVID-19 has been a key question for epidemiologists. In the middle of a pandemic, moving targets make the death rate difficult to pin down.But experts told us Carlson’s statement is off-track. Many early mortality estimates were based on official counts of confirmed cases, but epidemiologists were consistent in saying those raw numbers didn’t reflect the virus’ deadliness with complete precision.Ideally, epidemiologists could divide the number of deaths by the number of infections to calculate what’s known as the "infection fatality rate." But there’s no way to get a complete count of the number of infected individuals, largely because so many mild cases go unreported. Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, said there could be as many as 12.5 COVID-19 infections for every confirmed case in the United States. Still, scientists work with the data they have, even if it’s evolving and varies with patient demographics and location. Some of the first widely reported death rates were what are called "case fatality rates," which are calculated by dividing the number of known deaths by the number of reported cases. On March 3, for example, the World Health Organization that 3.4 percent of confirmed coronavirus patients around the world had died — a case fatality rate.Experts that the 3.4 percent was only a snapshot, and one that likely undercounted people with mild symptoms. A WHO spokesperson said it would “change over time.”The global case fatality rate has actually risen since then. As of May 3, the WHO had 3,349,786 confirmed cases worldwide and 238,628 deaths, for a case fatality rate of about 7 percent.Now, for antibodies in the blood of people exposed to the coronavirus are offering the first glimpses at what the infection fatality rate could be in states such as New York and California.The tests haven’t all been as accurate as many experts , and the studies of them haven’t all been peer-reviewed. "It remains very clear that we do not know the precise mortality of COVID-19 infection," said the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Myron Cohen.Subscribe to our free DayStarter newsletterWe’ll deliver the latest news and information you need to know every weekday morning.Loading...Want more of our free, weekly newsletters&nbsp;in&nbsp;your&nbsp;inbox? Let’s&nbsp;get&nbsp;started.But their preliminary results suggested the infection fatality rate may be below 1 percent, handing fodder to some who say the COVID-19 threat is overblown.Carlson said the new information shows COVID-19 is less deadly than expected.On his show, he cited widely disputed findings from . A Fox News spokesperson also pointed to a , a , and recent antibody studies in and to support it.But Shaman, the epidemiologist, said Carlson was "cherry-picking evidence."Many early figures were case fatality rates, while the estimates reported as a result of recent antibody studies are infection fatality rates. They shouldn’t be conflated, Shaman said.Seemingly small infection fatality rates can also cause mounting deaths. The New York study the state’s infection fatality rate to be around 0.5 percent, Gov. Andrew Cuomo . That matches estimates from a Shaman constructed, which he said put the U.S. infection fatality rate at 0.56 percent. But in a worst-case scenario where 70 percent of Americans are infected, a 0.5 percent rate could amount to 1.2 million U.S. deaths, Shaman said. And as , the death toll than we know. The infection fatality rate for the flu, which kills thousands of Americans annually, hovers under 0.1 percent and is calculated annually using a that estimates the disease burden.There are other problems with Carlson’s sources, including the clip he played of one of who gained national attention for calling to end the shutdowns.The doctors, who own an urgent care clinic, used the infection rate among patients tested at their clinic to extrapolate to the entire state and put the death rate at a tiny 0.03 percent. The University of Washington’s Carl Bergstrom on that this amounts to "sampling bias" because patients at an urgent care clinic likely think they’re sick. The doctors’ calculations are like "estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court," he said.The problem with this approach is that during a pandemic, the people who come into an urgent care clinic are not a random sample of the population. A large fraction of them are coming in precisely because they suspect that they have the disease.This generates sampling bias.— Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom)The video was " by the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine; it was also from YouTube.Another report cited by the Fox News spokesperson, from the , followed a from Stanford University. A of used known to yield false positive results. (A USC spokesperson said results were adjusted to account for that.) Carlson’s claim that COVID-19 was projected to be deadlier for infected patients also discounts what many experts said months ago."No one knowledgeable thought it was as deadly as known deaths divided by known cases," said Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Every responsible epidemiologist has been saying that the number of cases is certainly more than those we know about, especially in the U.S., where testing has been inadequate." , including , the nation’s top infectious disease expert, preliminary case fatality rates could be inflated. The WHO , including in , that the infection fatality rate would be lower than the initial case fatality rates. The , which projected in March that the United States could see 2.2 million deaths if it had no response, estimated that 0.9 percent of infected COVID-19 patients would die."It is surprisingly mild only to those who were not listening to competent epidemiologists, and it is in fact considerably worse than seasonal flu," Lipsitch said.Carlson said the coronavirus "just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought it was."Scientists warned early in the outbreak that the raw number of confirmed cases didn’t give a fully accurate picture of mortality. It’s misleading for Carlson to compare early case fatality rates — which divide the number of known deaths by the number of confirmed cases — with newer estimates of the infection fatality rate. The infection fatality rate should be lower, as experts have said for months.It’s premature to say as a matter of fact that a far rosier picture has emerged.We rate this statement Mostly False.• • •HAVE YOU LOST SOMEONE YOU LOVE TO COVID-19?: UNEMPLOYMENT Q&amp;A: CONTRIBUTE TO THE SCRAPBOOK: BRIGHT SPOTS IN DARK TIMES: LISTEN TO THE CORONAVIRUS PODCAST: HAVE A TIP?: GET THE DAYSTARTER MORNING UPDATE: WATCH VIDEO: We’re working hard to bring you the latest news on the coronavirus in Florida. This effort takes a lot of resources to gather and update. If you haven’t already subscribed,This site no longer supports your current browser. Please use a modern and up-to-date browser version for the best experience. — — —

/COVID-19 still appears more lethal than the seasonal flu, experts said. Fox News host Tucker Carlson railed against continued statewide shutdowns meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus, claiming in a that they did little to flatten the curve and that “the virus just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought it was.”Citing recent studies from hotspots such as , Carlson said the virus is "a full order of magnitude less deadly" than public health officials warned. "The virus just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought it was, all of us, including on this show," he said. "Everybody thought it...

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PolitiFact: Tucker Carlson says the coronavirus isn’t as deadly as we thought. Experts disagree

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