[patall]

But that could be said about any disease. As is, it is mortality given that you have symptoms which is a pretty good measure to have. For everything else, you need some many more parameters, better tests etc. Even a test for antibodies in blood which would be the gold standard can fail. Also, we do not know how many people are naturally immune to the disease. May be 10 world wide, maybe 10%, who knows?

[learc83]

>But that could be said about any disease.

With diseases that have been better studied, we have large population studies to determine how many people have been infected for every 1 person reported.

>As is, it is mortality given that you have symptoms which is a pretty good measure to have

We don't know that because we have no idea how many people have mild to moderate symptoms and haven't been tested.

At best it's mortality given that you are severe enough to seek treatment.

[marcosdumay]

> mortality given that you have symptoms which is a pretty good measure to have

It's a very bad metric to estimate the impact of an epidemics. It's way worse than useless for that, it can only lead to baseless panic.

It's a pretty good metric for many uses, just not for this one.