Early in March 2020, I decided to write about the risks posed by COVID-19. I have no background in epidemiology or even health journalism, but I can multiply, divide and make charts and was frustrated with the lack of quantification in most reporting and public-health messaging on what was soon to be declared a pandemic.
In the resulting column I took what seemed to be the most authoritative estimate of COVID-19’s per-infection fatality rate, 1%, and noted that this was about 10 times the 0.1% fatality rate of seasonal influenza, then conservatively multiplied a CDC estimate of 61,099 influenza-associated deaths in the U.S. in the pretty bad flu season of 2017-18 by five and 10 to get a range of "300,000 to 600,000 deaths.”
Over the 12 months that followed, about 550,000 Americans died of COVID-19 according to according to the CDC’s provisional estimates and 490,000 according to its tallies of the "underlying cause of death” listed on death certificates. Both are almost certainly undercounts, because in the early days the lack of testing meant many COVID-19-caused deaths were attributed to other maladies. My guesstimate was also more lucky than good in that actual seasonal flu fatality rates may be closer to 0.04%, and the 2017-18 influenza toll has since been revised downward to 52,000. Still, it was in the ballpark.