UnHerd: Freddie Sayers talks to Professor Hendrik Streeck about why he thinks lockdown measures were initiated too quickly, and how his findings show a Covid-19 fatality rate of 0.24-0.36%.
The deadliness of Covid-19, measured. At UnHerd, we’ve spoken to experts at both ends of the range of estimates, from Neil Ferguson (who believes the IFR to be just under 1%, perhaps 0.8-0.9%) to Johan Giesecke who maintains that it is nearer 0.1%, or one in a thousand.
This may sound like splitting hairs — they are both under one percent after all — but in reality, the difference between these estimates changes everything. At the lower end, a much more laissez-faire policy becomes possible, and at 30,000 deaths it starts to look like the UK has already been through the worst of it; at the higher end, a policy of continued ultra-caution is necessary because a more relaxed approach could mean hundreds of thousands of additional deaths.