evidence: The 1% case fatality rate of COVID-19 can be thought of as the running percentage of COVID-19 cases that have resulted in death. It doesn’t represent the true average probability of death, though, since the virus, and the global population’s immunity and behavior, have changed so much over time. The conditions are not constant. [...] The biological process of a disease leading to death is complex and uncertain. It is unpredictable and therefore random. Each person has a real physical risk of dying from COVID-19, though this risk varies over time and place and between individuals. So, at best, 1% could be the average probability of death within the population. [...] Case fatality rate is a probability, but only when you look at the specific data set it was directly calculated from. If you were to write the outcome of every COVID-19 case in that data set on a strip of paper and randomly select one from a hat, you have a 1% chance of selecting a case that ended in death. Doing this only for cases from a particular group, such as a group of older adults with a higher risk or young children with a lower risk, would cause the percentage to be higher or lower. This is why 1% may not be a great estimate of personal risk for every person across all demographic groups.