The right insists on analogizing the US to South Korea—a smaller nation that's done far more tests/capita and contact tracing—as they love quoting its Case Fatality Rate (CFR) despite wrongly lumping active cases into it. Even if you do, it's risen from 1.24% to 1.64% in 2 weeks.
1/ I mention this because some wonder at the disparity between the numbers we're seeing now and what Dr. Fauci is discussing—100,000+ deaths. There are several explanations. Fauci presuming hospitals get overwhelmed is one, but less commonly said is that Trump has lied about CFR.
2/ Even if you *falsely* add active cases to the denominator in determining CFR—which you must never do, as it (preposterously) presumes all active patients will recover—the fact remains that nations and the world are seeing CFR *rise* as more cases close and more tests are done.
3/ Globally, 185,000 cases have now closed—yet the right tells us we don't have enough data from closed cases. What they're more likely responding to is that closed-case CFR—which was 4% a month ago—is now at *18%*. That doesn't mean it'll stay there—but it does mean *something*.
4/ As we get further into the crisis, and as more tests are done—including of mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic people—the estimated CFR (which includes an estimate of all people who were infected, whether tested or not) should be declining. But it's not—it's rising, and *fast*.
5/ That's no reason to be fearful, as the estimated CFR is *not* going to end up at 18%. It'll be much lower than that. But WHO's estimate of 3.4%—not for "confirmed" CFR, but "estimated" CFR, which is always far lower than "confirmed" CFR—is starting to look extremely plausible.
6/ At this point I don't think there's *anything* that *anyone* could do or say to get Fauci and Birx to admit that coronavirus isn't just as contagious as we thought but *deadlier* than President Trump had been telling us (he says estimated CFR will be "significantly" under 1%).
7/ But the fact remains that "hospital overrun" is *insufficient* to explain the disparity between the death tolls we're seeing and what Fauci, the CDC, and other experts are saying. Part of it must be a CFR slightly higher—which can make a big difference—than we were first told.
8/ So the reason that I watch South Korea is because, even using the bullsh*t CFR-calculation method the right is using—adding "active" cases to the denominator for CFR, which, again, you *must never do*—the confirmed CFR in South Korea has *increased 33%* in just a couple weeks.
9/ A way to anticipate these changes as they aggregate is to look at South Korea's "new cases" and "new deaths" tallies daily. Each day, the latter divided by the former gives a figure around 8%-10%, which tells you the {deaths/all cases} calculation—now at 1.64%—is still rising.
10/ Hospital overrun with a "significantly less than 1%" CFR—Trump's fake number—is a *totally different thing* than hospital overrun with a 3.4% estimated CFR. And as hospitalization rates are *also* far higher than Trump has said—20%, not 2%—the chance of overrun is far higher.
CONCLUSION/ The reason that Trump began adopting Dr. Fauci's grim death-toll prediction today—100,000 to 200,000 US dead—is because he is *abandoning* the CFR and hospitalization numbers he'd been falsely seeding in right-wing media. His cultists just haven't gotten the memo yet.
