LETTER: Covid death rate much higher than anti-mask letter claimed

To Ozaukee Press:

A statistic from the letter to the editor published in last week’s Ozaukee Press with the headline, “He chooses not to wear a mask and, like sheep, give up liberty,” needs to be fact-checked.

The writer claimed, “The CDC just came out saying that the death rate of those who contract Covid-19 will be .0035%.” I can’t find that number, and I wonder where it came from. Here’s what I found:

According to CDC’s report on cases and deaths in the U.S. updated July 12, 2020, total cases were 3,236,130, total deaths were 134,572.

Now, if you divide 134,572 deaths by 3,236,130 cases, you come up with 0.042.
That’s 4.2%, not .0035%!

According to the CDC page COVIDView: A Weekly Surveillance Summary of U.S. COVID-19 Activity, “Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 decreased from 6.9% during week 26 to 5.5% during week 27, representing the 11th week of a declining percentage of deaths. The percentage is currently below the epidemic threshold, but will likely change as more death certificates are processed, particularly for recent weeks.” The percentage of deaths was 9% during week 25.  During week 16, it was 23.6%.

Richard Janke
Grafton