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Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation

In testimony before US Congress on March 11, 2020, members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee were informed that estimated mortality for the novel coronavirus was 10-times higher than for seasonal influenza. Additional evidence, however, suggests the validity of this estimation could benefi...

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Autor principal: Brown, Ronald B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cambridge University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7511835/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32782048
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2020.298
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author Brown, Ronald B.
author_facet Brown, Ronald B.
author_sort Brown, Ronald B.
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description In testimony before US Congress on March 11, 2020, members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee were informed that estimated mortality for the novel coronavirus was 10-times higher than for seasonal influenza. Additional evidence, however, suggests the validity of this estimation could benefit from vetting for biases and miscalculations. The main objective of this article is to critically appraise the coronavirus mortality estimation presented to Congress. Informational texts from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are compared with coronavirus mortality calculations in Congressional testimony. Results of this critical appraisal reveal information bias and selection bias in coronavirus mortality overestimation, most likely caused by misclassifying an influenza infection fatality rate as a case fatality rate. Public health lessons learned for future infectious disease pandemics include: safeguarding against research biases that may underestimate or overestimate an associated risk of disease and mortality; reassessing the ethics of fear-based public health campaigns; and providing full public disclosure of adverse effects from severe mitigation measures to contain viral transmission.
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spelling pubmed-75118352020-09-24 Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation Brown, Ronald B. Disaster Med Public Health Prep Concepts in Disaster Medicine In testimony before US Congress on March 11, 2020, members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee were informed that estimated mortality for the novel coronavirus was 10-times higher than for seasonal influenza. Additional evidence, however, suggests the validity of this estimation could benefit from vetting for biases and miscalculations. The main objective of this article is to critically appraise the coronavirus mortality estimation presented to Congress. Informational texts from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are compared with coronavirus mortality calculations in Congressional testimony. Results of this critical appraisal reveal information bias and selection bias in coronavirus mortality overestimation, most likely caused by misclassifying an influenza infection fatality rate as a case fatality rate. Public health lessons learned for future infectious disease pandemics include: safeguarding against research biases that may underestimate or overestimate an associated risk of disease and mortality; reassessing the ethics of fear-based public health campaigns; and providing full public disclosure of adverse effects from severe mitigation measures to contain viral transmission. Cambridge University Press 2020-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7511835/ /pubmed/32782048 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2020.298 Text en © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2020 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Brown, Ronald B.
Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation
title Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation
title_full Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation
title_fullStr Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation
title_full_unstemmed Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation
title_short Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation
title_sort public health lessons learned from biases in coronavirus mortality overestimation
topic Concepts in Disaster Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7511835/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32782048
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2020.298
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