The New York Times falsely reported that about three out of every 100 people diagnosed with COVID-19 die, a falsehood the outlet later acknowledged.
In a Dec. 14 story claiming COVID-19 can spread from dead people, reporter Apoorva Mandavilli wrote that “up to 70 percent of those infected with Ebola die, compared with about 3 percent of those diagnosed with Covid-19.”
There are two measures of fatalities from a disease: infection fatality ratio (IFR) and case fatality ratio (CFR).
The first takes all infections and adds estimated ones drawn from serological testing and modeling. The second is drawn from only confirmed cases, so is always higher, due to how many COVID-19 cases are undiagnosed….