What Does the Infection Fatality Rate Really Measure?

Korolev, Ivan

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3572891

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What Does the Infection Fatality Rate Really Measure?

10 Pages Posted: 3 Jun 2020 Last revised: 24 Jul 2020

See all articles by Ivan Korolev

Ivan Korolev

SUNY at Binghamton, Department of Economics

There are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: June 16, 2020

Abstract

This paper studies what the infection fatality rate (IFR) really measures using the potential outcomes framework. I show that the IFR only reflects the outcome in one state. In contrast, popular causal parameters are all functions of the difference between outcomes in two states. I then demonstrate using a simple illustrative example that a disease that has no effect of the risk of dying can have a higher IFR than a disease that increases the risk of dying for everyone in the population. As a result, the IFR may fail to reflect the causal effect of a disease on the risk of dying and hence might not be a suitable measure of how deadly the disease is.

Keywords: case fatality ratio, treatment effects, causal inference

JEL Classification: I1, C21

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Korolev, Ivan, What Does the Infection Fatality Rate Really Measure? (June 16, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3572891 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3572891