The "IFR of COVID-19" in Austria Tweet

Emblematic of the typical junk science of the present age.

Most folks can agree the pandemic brought with it catastrophic human and social costs. The best way to learn from the experiences is, clearly, to – well, I’m not sure what this is:

Without mocking the typo that substituted “Australia” for “Austria” – if this tweet fits with the general gist of posted content, as well as the biases of some of the authors on this publication, the goal is to minimize the apparent risk of death from COVID-19.

Regardless of what number folks choose to tweet out, the key table in the cited paper is this:

The whole paper is a big chunk of messy data filled with inferences and statistical extrapolations for numbers of infections versus reported cases. But, proving effectively the opposite of the authors overall intent, columns Wuhan-Hu-1 and Alpha – the pandemic proper, the infections occurring prior to widespread vaccination – are very obviously high enough to justify the sharp responses to SARS-CoV-2 around the world.

Lumping in the “modern day” variants occurring in primarily a vaccinated or acquired-immunity cohort, of which the most vulnerable have already died – yes, this will obviously drag down the overall IFR. But, in the initial stages, it is indeed in the ballpark that at least 1 in 200 infections were fatal, roughly ten times that number required hospitalization, and even more had severe symptoms preventing them from work (and some still do!).

Even though the dead are no longer here to speak for themselves and the impact the pandemic had on them, efforts to minimize such ought be met with disdain.