New study suggests coronavirus is not as deadly as we thought

The world is practically confined. The premise for keeping billions of people at home is that this stops the spread of a virus whose mortality is between 1% and 3%, according to studies by the World Health Organization. In the United States, for example, the decision to close everything was based on models that indicated that without confinement, 2 million Americans would die.

Some experts questioned this assumption. They argue that known cases are probably only a small portion of the actual number of infections, and therefore the high case fatality rates may not be such. "We . . .