As the United States continues to distribute the first COVID-19 vaccines, a viral tweet shared what it called “COVID-19 survival rates” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to minimize the severity of the virus and the need for vaccinations.
“CDC COVID-19 survival rates,” said the emoji-filled tweet from Emma Jimenez, a blogger and conservative activist. “Age 0-19 – 99.997%. Age 20-49 – 99.98%. Age 50-69 – 99.5%. Age 70+ – 94.6%. Why a COVID-19 vaccine is being launched so aggressive? Hmmmm. “
Screenshots of the tweet were also shared on Facebook and Instagram, where they were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news and misinformation in its News Feed.
The age-specific “survival rates” listed in the article did not come from the CDC, however. CDC spokeswoman Jasmine Reed told PolitiFact that the agency has not released any age-specific COVID-19 survival rates, nor has mortality rates available.
“Survival analysis is highly complex,” said Reed. “The CDC does not have the data to calculate survival for COVID-19. It is not clear where social media users are obtaining this information.”
“We don’t have that data, so we don’t know,” added Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. “And neither does the person who posted it (the tweet).”
Incomplete Origin
The tweet did not cite a specific CDC source for its “COVID-19 survival rates”. PolitiFact tried to contact Jimenez via messages to his conservative Latin accounts on Twitter and Facebook, but we received no response.
The numbers align with the parameters included as part of the CDC’s planning scenarios designed to help public health agencies model the impact of the pandemic.
In a September document entitled “COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios”, the agency listed five sets of parameters that represented different levels of disease severity and transmissibility, with the aim of helping public health agencies to model to estimate the effects of the virus.
The infection mortality rates listed in the scenario marked as the “best current estimate” correspond to the “survival rates” listed in the tweet. But these infection mortality rates, the document says, are based on data as of August 8. And there are other caveats.
Lead Stories unmasked a Facebook post citing the same scenarios to erroneously claim that the CDC had downgraded the gravity of COVID-19 to something less than the flu.
The CDC document says that the scenarios “are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19” and “do not reflect the impact of any behavioral changes, social distance or other interventions”. He also says that “uncertainty remains around almost all parameter values.”
The tweet also ignored the toll that a seemingly small death rate can take when a disease spreads out of control. Johns Hopkins University estimates the rate of fatalities observed – calculated as the number of known deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases – at about 1.8% for the United States. At that rate, if every American got COVID-19, there would be almost 6 million deaths.
Doctors have improved treatment of the disease since the beginning of the pandemic, PolitiFact reported. But the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths reported each day in the United States has skyrocketed in recent weeks. The “excess of deaths” remains above historical norms. The risk of serious diseases caused by the coronavirus increases with age, says the CDC.
Survival rates are difficult to estimate
In a pandemic, data such as survival rates are difficult to pinpoint, Prins told PolitiFact. These rates are generally calculated over a longer period of time, not as a snapshot.
“Deaths and death reports delay the identification of new cases, sometimes for months, so we never get to know who ‘survived’, unless we establish a period of time that we’re looking at, as we do with five- annual survival rates in cancer, or the disease goes away and we can look at the pandemic as a whole, “said Prins.
“In addition, we know that there are side effects of COVID-19, such as myocarditis, that can appear well after ‘recovery’, but can cause death later, so that survival and mortality rates are more accurate after some time. “
A broad vaccination effort would prevent more deaths, protect people from serious illness, slow down the spread and put the United States on a path back to normal.
PolitiFact decision
A tweet said that “CDC COVID-19 survival rates” are 99.997% for people aged 0 to 19, 99.98% for people aged 20 to 49, 99.5% for people aged 50 to 69 and 94.6% for people over 70 years old.
The CDC has not released survival rates and does not have the data to do so. It is unclear where the tweet numbers come from, but they correspond to the numbers listed as part of the CDC’s “planning scenarios” used to plan a response to the pandemic.
We have classified this post as fake.