New Study from Ioannidis: Covid’s IFR in 2020 Was Less Than 0.1% for Those Under 70, Even Lower Than Previously Believed

A new study on Covid-19’s infection fatality rate (IFR) by age from a team led by Dr. John Ioannidis, the world’s most-cited physician, estimates that Covid’s IFR in the pre-vaccine era was under 0.1% for those under 70—even lower than previously believed.

Dr. Ioannidis et. al. found that across 31 national seroprevalence studies in the pre-vaccine era, the median IFR was 0.0003% at 0-19 years, 0.003% at 20-29 years, 0.011% at 30-39 years, 0.035% at 40-49 years, 0.129% at 50-59 years, and 0.501% at 60-69 years. This comes out to 0.035% for those aged 0-59 and 0.095% for those aged 0-69.

(Credit to Will Jones at The Daily Sceptic)

Overall, according to the study, “At a global level, pre-vaccination IFR may have been as low as 0.03% and 0.07% for 0-59 and 0-69 year old people, respectively.”

“The current analysis suggests a much lower pre-vaccination IFR in non-elderly populations than previously suggested.”

Ioannidis et. al.’s findings represent a considerable downward revision from what was previously the most-cited study on Covid’s IFR by age, which held the IFR to be approximately 0.004% at 0-34 years, 0.068% at 35-44 years, 0.23% at 45-54 years, and 0.75% at 55-64 years.

Dr. Ioannidis has been studying Covid’s IFR since early 2020, when he published his prescient article in Stat News titled “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.”

Ioannidis previously led the publication of a peer-reviewed WHO bulletin in late 2020 estimating Covid’s overall IFR to be about 0.23% globally, and another peer-reviewed study soon after in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation revising that estimate downward to an IFR of about 0.15% globally.

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Michael P Senger is an attorney and author of Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World. Want to support my work? Get the book. Already got the book? Leave a quick review.