Misinformation about COVID-19 Survival Rate - 99.97% and similar

Claim: 99.97% survival rate for COVID-19

This is quite impossible because in the US, 0.24% of the population have already died due to COVID-19, as of 2021-12-31, representing 1 out of every 403 US residents.

So even if 100% of the US population had already had COVID-19, the "survival rate" would be 99.76% (a death rate that is 8 times higher than the 99.97% figure often cited.

But of course most of the US population has not yet been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Based on the number of confirmed cases in the US, the survival rate is only 98.5%. The actual figure depends on how many infections go unconfirmed.

The math...

As of 2021-12-31...

• The estimated US population was 332,402,978 (https://www.census.gov/popclock/)
• The total US COVID-19 death was 824,301 (https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths)
• The total US COVID-19 confirmed cases was 54,740,000 (https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths)