Epidemiological Philosophy of Pandemics

Raham, T. F.

Objectives: Currents estimates of total cases of COVID-19 are largely based on previously determined case fatality rates (CFR)s. The background theory in this study is based on two: There is no evidence that during epidemics CFR is fixed throughout time or place and there is evidence that viral load (dense of infection) leads to more fatalities. Study Design: This study was done to look for any relationship between mortality rate (MR) presented as deaths/ million (M) population with both of the total cases / (M) population (density of infection) and of CFR. We chose 31 countries with testing coverage > 400,0000 tests /M and with> 1 million population. Methods: We used ANOVA regression analyses for testing the associations. Results: CRF is not a fixed ratio as it changed with a change in (MR). The COVID-19 deaths / million data were fit to calculate the total cases through the equation: total deaths /M =0.006593 X (total cases to the power 1.016959) with a too highly significant correlation between total deaths / 1M and total cases (P-value 0.0000). There was a high positive influence of COVID-19 MR on the CFR (P-value = 0.0002) by non-linear regression (power model), through the equation: CFR = (0.093200) X (total deaths/ M.) to the power 0.366580 Conclusions: There is new evidence of using MR for estimation of CFR and total cases through uniform formulas applicable during this pandemic and possibly for every epidemic. This evidence gives us an understandable idea about epidemics' behavior.