# Will the ratio of deaths to recoveries maintain a constant ratio as the illness progresses

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-ratio-of-deaths-to-recoveries-maintain-a-constant-ratio-as-the-illness-progresses/852362>\
**Category:** The Quarantine Zone\
**Tags:** covid-quarantine\
**Created:** [April 22, 2020, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-ratio-of-deaths-to-recoveries-maintain-a-constant-ratio-as-the-illness-progresses/852362 "2020-04-22T17:24:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2020, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-ratio-of-deaths-to-recoveries-maintain-a-constant-ratio-as-the-illness-progresses/852362/1 "2020-04-22T17:24:42Z")

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The rate of death to recovery varies by country, and I’m sure a big part of it is how many people get tested (the more widely available the tests are, the more people who will recover vs die).

In the US I think we only test the worst of the worst cases. Our ratio is about 1:2 when it comes to how cases resolve. If you have 3 cases, about 1 will die and 2 will recover of our confirmed cases. As of today, we’ve got about 40k deaths, 78k recoveries. I think the 1:2 ratio has been fairly constant for several weeks. So are we looking at a 30% CFR in the US because we only test the worst of the worst?

Problem is, we’re currently at about 800k confirmed cases and still gaining ~30k cases a day. However our rate of new cases seems to have stabilized at about 30k cases a day for quite a while, probably due to a lack of testing.

> **[Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (2020)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_United_States)**
>
> The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States during 2020.
> By late November 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 had broken out in Wuhan, China.

Death rate has been stable at about 2k deaths a day, but seems to have jumped to nearly 3k deaths in one day yesterday. I don’t know if thats a continuing acceleration or if the rates are constant.