5% mortality rate and being re-infectious mean 30% total mortality rate by Autumn in 2021
The mortality rate of Covid-19 and the possibility of being re-infectious are often discussed separately. However, if you put both of them in the same box, we see the virus can erode our population like how waves encroach upon the land.
In France, the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) neared almost 20% in the end of May. Still it’s above 15% and Italy, Belgium and other European countries are following it. In Belgium, the medical authorities reportedly registered deaths as Covid-19 deaths if the person had a contact with another confirmed case. Germany, United States and other countries are keeping CFR under 5%, but there is no international benchmark about how to count deaths. The Financial Times and The New York Times compiled the brilliant statistics about excess deaths among major countries, which show how many more deaths were counted this year compared to the past years. It provided us with quite realistic picture about CFR, however it hasn’t been updated since June about many countries including United States. Let’s say CFR of Covid-19 is near 5%.
One of my Japanese readers has been stuck in India for months due to the lockdown. He was practically imprisoned in a hotel, but he was infected last month. The hotel called ambulance and he was sent to several isolation facilities. He’s a young professional athlete. He regained the sense of taste and smell, got rid of fever last week, however these symptoms came back a few days ago. Other patients suddenly fell in critical condition in front of him, he accidentally ate bad food because he can’t taste nor smell anything. These things are making him weaker. There are a lot of narratives that one can get re-infected by Covid-19. Actually antibody is observed to fade away 3 months after the recovery. 70% of the regions where suffered the first wave are hit by the second wave now. Let’s say the wave comes back every 3 months.
If we don’t develop a vaccine, a new wave comes back every 3 months with 5% CFR. Then the actual mortality rate won’t stay 5% anymore. The first survivors of 95% are hit by the next wave with 3 months interval. 5% of the 95% die. 3 months later, the new 95% survivors are hit by the next wave and 5% of them die. This is a very simple simulation but I believe it should be discussed in public. If you plot it in the graph, it looks like this.
If this is the case, the historical mortality rate rises to 18.55% by January 2021. By October 2021, it goes up to 30.17%. After all, the mortality rate asymptotically moves toward 100% (but never 100%). Σ(n=1~∞)5%*100%+5%*95%^n.
Flu doesn’t come back as often as Covid-19. Besides, the mortality rate is said to be 0.1~1%. Humans haven’t developed an effective vaccines against any coronavirus strain. Russia and China approved so-called vaccines by skipping Phase 3 trial but it shows how they see Covid-19 vaccine to be crucial to sustain the human activities.
