First, survival rates are not used in the context of pandemics. That’s the first clue that those making these claims have no knowledge about public health or medicine. The measure is used most often in cardiology (for example, after a heart attack) or in oncology. It is often given in 5-year or 10-year survival rates, although other ranges are also used. The shorter ones are used as metrics for particularly life-threatening conditions, such as a severe MI or pancreatic cancer. Obviously making a “survival rate” claim for COVID in such a short time frame is foolhardy.
For example, here are survival curves for a rare type of skin cancer known as Merkel cell carcinoma. It’s a good representative of how different classifications of cancer by stage have very different prognoses. For this particular cancer, the survival rate of someone with Stage P-IV disease is only about 25% four years after diagnosis. Notice that the survival rates for all of these decrease over time.
This measure cannot be used during a pandemic such as we are experiencing right now. Here’s a very simple example to explain why this can’t be done related to the drops in survival rate as shown above.
For simplicity, assume that the population being observed consists of 100 people. At two weeks, time, one person has died. The “survival rate” is then 99%. At the end of the month, if another five have died, the “survival rate” at one month is 94%. Now that the virus is spreading rapidly in the community, after another month, 21 more die. Now the “survival rate” is 73%. This example shows why mathematically why this measure isn’t used.
The bigger issue related to COVID is that those making this claim are only looking at acute deaths related to the respiratory part of the disease and ignoring all of the other diseases that are triggered by the vascular damage from a COVID infection. Many of these could easily take a decade or more to manifest themselves, especially in younger populations. Given how much chronic disease problems we are already seeing in the part of the population with a history of COVID infection, this should be sounding alarm bells to everyone, especially to the parents of children.
COVID causes problems across many different organ systems and leads to heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, neurological problems, and many others, not to mention damaged immune systems that can increase the risk of infectious diseases as well.
The people who are making some variation of the claim of a “99% survival rate” are simply proclaiming their lack of education in science or medicine and are minimizers and denialists likely repeating this claim from very dubious sources, such as The Brownstone Institute, in this case written by a rabid antimasker. Don’t listen to people like this. They are making money off of lies and causing harm to others in the process.
Improve ventilation and filtrations, wear a respirator, keep current on vaccination, and avoid indoor public spaces. Your health and life depend on it.
