Meta-Analytic Inference for the COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rate

Estimating the COVID-19 infection fatality rate (IFR) has proven to be challenging, since data on deaths and data on the number of infections are subject to various biases. I will describe some joint work with Harlan Campbell and others on both methodological and applied aspects of meeting this challenge, in a meta-analytic framework of combining data from different populations. I will start with the easier case when the infection data are obtained via random sampling. Then I will discuss drawing in additional infection data obtained in decidedly non-random manner.