In February 2020 the predictions of the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR), or “death rate” from COVID were estimated by the World Health organization (WHO) to be 3.4% ^[1]. We were told that COVID was much more deadly than the seasonal flu and we must “flatten the curve” to avoid overwhelming the hospitals ^[2]. Seven months later, the WHO acknowledges in its own report that “infection fatality rates tended to be much lower than estimates made earlier in the pandemic”^[3]. The WHO’s report found the “median COVID infection fatality rate was 0.27%”^[4]. Other studies support this finding with IFRs of between .32% – .01%. By comparison, the flu has an IFR of .1% – .2%.^[5] The former Director of Israel’s Health Ministry said, “You’re not more at risk of dying of coronavirus than the flu.”^[6]

With all the reports of COVID deaths, it is important to understand how that term is defined. At the start of the COVID outbreak, the WHO created a very broad definition of what is considered to be a “COVID death”, and this definition was adopted worldwide. According to their definition^[7] a COVID death is one where a person had a confirmed or suspected case of COVID at any time, prior to death. This means that what is reported as a COVID death may have another cause, like cancer, heart condition, or accident. Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported that only about 6% of COVID deaths had no comorbidity.^[8] This means that 94% of COVID deaths had additional contributing causes of death listed on the death certificate.^[9] So even the deaths that are reported as COVID death, are mostly deaths that occurred with COVID and not because of COVID.

The original predictions for infections, hospitalizations and deaths resulting from COVID that led numerous governments to lockdown and implement panic-driven policies, were made in a report^[10] from Imperial College led by Neil Ferguson. The report, presented in mid-March 2020, predicted that absent any controls there would be 510,000 deaths in Great Britain and 2.2 million in the U.S. with in the next three months.^[11] In na appendix, issued days later, the report listed it’s predictions for other countries including Sweden.^[12][13]

Sweden is significant because it was the only western country not to lockdown in those initial 7 months, it was predicted that they would suffer a minimum of 66,000 deaths by June, when in fact they experienced only 5,900 by September. Here, in the only control group to test the validity of the model, we see it overestimated the number of deaths by a factor of 11. In June, Neil Feguson of the Imperial College admitted that Sweden achieved similar results to the UK without imposing a lockdown.^[14]