The death rate for people less than 50 is less than the flu. If you are scared stay home in the basement
Originally Posted by Ranger Dog
It's like flu, if flu killed 900 people a day.
The "rate" isn't important. "Mortality rate" is a fraction derived by using the mortality (an integer that's important in itself, really the only thing that matters) as numerator and number of infected (which we don't know anyway) as denominator.
So "mortality rate" is got by taking a staggering piece of data (122,000 dead Americans and counting) and trying to massage it into a feel-good statistic through division by an unknown number.
Forget the denominator. Keep your eye on that numerator. If you need to get your math on count toe tags and divide by one.