Some take-home lessons so far, on the CDC and IFR:
1) They persistently under-estimate IFR. 2) Their IFR estimate increased, undermining COVID-19 contrarians who cited the CDC. 3) COVID-19 is dangerous, even on the CDC's under-estimated IFR.
Thread on a myth Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) continues to peddle to undermine confidence in public health agencies and to suit his policy agenda.
The myth may undermine responses to future public health emergencies.
Reporting systems are not perfect, so they sometimes miss infected people. That makes reported cases less than total infections, and thus CFR is higher than IFR.
The WHO was open about this since the early stages of the pandemic: