WHO's new corona study astonishes even experts: the virus is really that deadly

Stanford professor John Ioannidis has again examined the mortality rate from Covid-19 in a meta study - with an astonishing result.

Is the disease caused by the coronavirus less deadly than previously thought?

• People all over the world are dying from the novel lung disease Covid-19 *.

• The Stanford professor John Ioannidis has again examined mortality in a meta study.

• The result is amazing.

  There are big differences in death rates.

Stanford - It sounded like good news, and that is probably also the result of a

: The disease appears

than previously assumed.

But the author's message was also clear: his findings can be helpful for policy decisions, but they must be viewed in a differentiated manner.

Coronavirus study: Stanford professor evaluates 61 studies worldwide

The author of the study is

, one of the currently most cited authors in the scientific world.

The professor of medicine and epidemiology at

has

, which calculated the actual infection rate in the respective population from antibody test samples.

So you examined the number of unreported corona cases.

Ioannidis subjected the results to statistical corrections and put them in relation to the official Covid-19 deaths in the study areas.

"Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data"

John PA Ioannidis

Published today in the Bulletin of the WHOhttps: //t.co/4dRoJF4MiK pic.twitter.com/nPnwi1YFc0

- METRICStanford (@METRICStanford) October 14, 2020

Meta-study on Covid-19 mortality - also evaluated Streek study

One of the investigations is the Heinsberg study by the Bonn virologist Hendrik Streeck.

From a large antibody sample *, it calculated that by mid-April, 15.5 percent of the more than 12,000 inhabitants of the Gangelt community - almost 2,000 people - had been infected.

Officially, the number of people infected in the village was still below 500 in mid-August. Seven people had died in Gangelt, one of the first German corona hotspots *, by mid-April.

From this, Ioannidis, together with the number of unreported cases from the Streeck study, calculated a

, i.e. 2.5 deaths per 1,000 infected people.

Corona virus: One in 500 people infected with corona dies worldwide 

The

is thus

slightly above the median of the

.

The median - it is 0.23 - is the value that divides the samples used into equally large halves.

50 percent have lower mortality rates *, 50 percent higher.

The median value therefore suggests that slightly more than

worldwide

.

The highest calculated mortality of 1.63 percent came from a sample in two locations in the US state of Louisiana.

The highest infection rate was found in a slum in Mumbai, where the mortality rate was below average, at 58 percent.

Ioannidis' conclusion: Mortality from Covid-19 seems lower than previously assumed.

He compares his figures with the mortality rates of 3.4 percent calculated in China from the early days of the pandemic.

At the time, it was believed that there were hardly any undiscovered cases with weak symptoms, and consequently that there was not a high number of unreported cases.

Mortality rates of one percent worldwide, calculated a little later, would also not be achieved.

But Ioannidis does not name its own global value.

Covid-19: Mortality depends on various factors - and varies considerably

The

:

from country to country, city to city and sometimes even from

- depending on the

in the population, the

, the

and

such as full means of

.

A US meta-study recently found a value of 0.8 percent for the USA.

The virologist Christian Drosten considers a value of one percent plausible for Germany due to the somewhat older population.

Coronavirus mortality study - Ioannidis sees the benefit in this

Ioannidis sees

the main

in identifying

.

Knowing them is important when it comes to determining measures that may increase mortality in other areas.

Ioannidis warned of

early on

, such as the rise in suicide rates with rising unemployment.

List of rubric lists: © Roberto Pfeil / dpa