The reason the “official” death rate appears to be is rising is that such rates are based upon a flawed assumption. The "official" method, in the early epidemic, had grossly underestimated the true case-fatality rate.

It assumes that no person, currently ill with SARS, will die -- obviously a ridiculous assumption. This early underestimation, when the epidemic was very poorly controlled, was a small comfort, a pleasant fiction for the harried public health workers.

In the US, on April 22, Dr. Julie Gerberding of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) noted this rising rate and understood it was an artefact. She said that worldwide, " ...the postulated mortality rate right now is 5.9 percent. "

On the mortality issue, China has been more honest than the other affected countries. On April 21, Chinese Executive Vice Minister of Health, Gao Qiang, said, "Guangdong has developed some effective methods which can cure 80 percent of the patients." [ 20% cannot be cured – docbear]

It is time to discard early "official" estimates that the mortality of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was 2-5%.

For those who probably have SARS, we know that the true case-fatality rate must be between 9.6% and 58.1%. The best current estimates say the SARS case-fatality rate is between 13.8% and 18.6%.

For an explanation of the "official" method, the "reverse-official" method, Niman's method, and the cohort method of estimating this epidemic's case-fatality rate -- Read the entire item, in the 4/23 SARS Update thread,.