> Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%): the rate was 0.09% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rates less than the global average (< 118 deaths/million), 0.20% in locations with 118–500 COVID-19 deaths/million people and 0.57% in locations with > 500 COVID-19 deaths/million people. In people < 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%.
But this is a meaningless debate. Your own preferred source makes it clear that the "average IFR" is heavily dependent on population demographics (i.e. in the very next sentence after the one you quoted:
> our results indicate that about 90% of the variation in population IFR across geographical locations reflects differences in the age composition of the population and the extent to which relatively vulnerable age groups were exposed to the virus
You're also completely misinterpreting Figure 6 from that paper. It is showing that their model of age-specific IFR correlates well with observed differences in reported IFRs. It is not claiming that those reported values are meaningful in the absolute -- in fact, all of the "reported" values seem to be higher than the model by a factor of ~2-4, and they're substantially higher than the numbers cited by the WHO bulletin.
(and yes, I know you don't like Ioannidis, but this is a metareview, not original research. Also, not liking someone doesn't make them wrong.)
https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf
> Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%): the rate was 0.09% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rates less than the global average (< 118 deaths/million), 0.20% in locations with 118–500 COVID-19 deaths/million people and 0.57% in locations with > 500 COVID-19 deaths/million people. In people < 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%.
But this is a meaningless debate. Your own preferred source makes it clear that the "average IFR" is heavily dependent on population demographics (i.e. in the very next sentence after the one you quoted:
> our results indicate that about 90% of the variation in population IFR across geographical locations reflects differences in the age composition of the population and the extent to which relatively vulnerable age groups were exposed to the virus
You're also completely misinterpreting Figure 6 from that paper. It is showing that their model of age-specific IFR correlates well with observed differences in reported IFRs. It is not claiming that those reported values are meaningful in the absolute -- in fact, all of the "reported" values seem to be higher than the model by a factor of ~2-4, and they're substantially higher than the numbers cited by the WHO bulletin.
(and yes, I know you don't like Ioannidis, but this is a metareview, not original research. Also, not liking someone doesn't make them wrong.)