are numbers mounting? OR nothing to see here

NEW YORK (AP) — Covering the coronavirus story requires careful navigation and constant attention.

News organizations trying to responsibly report on the growing health crisis are confronted with the task of conveying its seriousness without provoking panic, keeping up with a torrent of information while much remains a mystery and continually advising readers and viewers how to stay safe.

“It’s hard to tell people to put something into context and to calm down when the actions being taken in many cases are very strong or unprecedented,” said Glen Nowak, director of the Grady College Center for Health and Risk Communication at the University of Georgia.

But that’s what journalists in charge of coverage say they need to do.

“I keep reminding the viewers that still, based on two very large studies, the vast majority of people who get this infection are not going to get sick,” said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical correspondent. “They’re going to have a mild illness, if any, and they’re going to recover. This tends to be very reassuring to people. But I don’t want to minimize this. We’re dealing with something that is growing and becoming a legitimate pandemic.”

Case fatality rate (CFR) is the proportion of deaths within a defined population of interest. Case fatality rate measures the severity of the disease that causes death. For example, among a total of 200 patients with disease A, 20 of them died from the same disease within 30 days; the 30-day case fatality rate = 20/200 ∗ 100 = 10%.

Similar to incidence rate, mortality rate and case fatality rate can be estimated by the number of deaths in a certain person-time.

Case fatality rate is usually calculated for acute infectious diseases.