Jay Bhattacharya was right on Infection Fatality Rates | (A bit nerdy)...

Click above for the video

Recently Sam Harris — a guy many, including me, used to admire, but have found scales dropped from their eyes after his raging TDS and then panicked Covid hysteria — had a go at Jay Bhattacharya, siding with Anthony Fauci in calling Jay, a Stanford professor of epidemiology, a “fringe epidemiologist”, when they had a go at him over the Great Barrington Declaration. Clear? In short, Sam calls Jay a “fringe epidemiologist”.

Sam’s recent attack on Jay was to claim that he, Jay, had got the Covid Infection Fatality Rate wrong, on the too-low side. Thus, Sam said, Fauci was right to call Jay a “fringe epidemiologist” (as he had done in secret, now public, emails, immediately after the publication of the Barrington Declaration in order to smear it and stop any public discussion of Fauci’s severe lockdown policy — a policy he himself had recommended but later denied, when it was clear that it had done great damage. Fauci really is an out and out liar!).

Jay has said, from around early 2020, that he estimated the IFR at around 0.2%. This at a time when people thought it was an order of magnitude greater, or more, at around 3-4%.

In the video above, talking to the very sweet Winston Marshall (ex of Mumford & Sons) Jay says he thinks “it’s complicated, but the IFR is probably around 0.2%” in the United States.

I did a bit of crunching, and I reckon Jay is pretty much spot on. And, by the way, the latest Covid IFR at around 0.04% is running below the flu. For context….

This is the screenshot of my spreadsheet and here it is online.

IFR Calculations highlighted in yellow

I would say that looking at the various ways of coming to a number for the Infection Fatality Rate of between 0.09% and 0.19%. That’s why I say Jay’s estimated IFR of “around 0.2%b” is pretty much spot on. If anything a slight overestimate.

The CFR is based on Cases. That is the number that are tested positive and/or in hospital with Covid. The IFR is based on Infections, taking account of the fact that many more people will be infected with the virus, but not reporting it, because it’s not serious or it’s asymptomatic. This number is obviously harder to pin down, but various estimates have put it at “around ten times” the number of Cases. And recently the US CDC has estimated that the total number of people in the US who have or have had Covid is at least 200 million and likely as many as 300 million. That is, pretty much the whole population. In any case, I’ve only used this number as “Another way” of looking at the possible IFR, for which I get 0.13% to 0.19%. Close enough. 

On this one I call a TKO by Jay over Sam.