Published: July 2022
How high were SARS and MERS “death rates” really?
A quite important yet mostly overlooked aspect of covid fearmongering was the comparison of SARS-CoV-2 to SARS and MERS. Specifically, the media and many scientists repeatedly stated that SARS had a “death rate” of 10% and MERS had a “death rate” of 35%, which made it seemingly reasonable to assume that SARS-CoV-2, a SARS-like coronavirus, might also have a “death rate” of at least several percent and might kill hundreds of millions of people, or even a third of mankind.
Yet a quick review of these “death rates” shows that these are not, of course, infection fatality rates, but case fatality rates, and the “cases” were not just any cases, but mostly patients hospitalized with a severe case of SARS or MERS. This is because during both the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003 and the MERS outbreak in 2012-2015, there was not yet any PCR mass testing available, and only severe cases were tested at all.
Thus, it is quite likely that the original SARS and MERS outbreaks were in fact larger than recorded, and the SARS and MERS infection fatality rates in the general population were much lower, perhaps only a fraction of one percent, similar to the infection fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2.
Ironically, if the recent pandemic had been caused by an aggressive influenza virus instead of a coronavirus, the actual death rate, especially in young people, could have been much higher.