First: I missed it last week when it came out, but here is a study combining a lot of previous work from around the world. It estimates that the fatality rate (specifically, the infection fatality rate) is about 0.75 percent, or in a range between 0.5 and 1 percent.
As the authors note, these are pretty high numbers for any country seeking to pursue a “herd immunity” strategy, which could require more than half of the population to be infected. In the U.S., we could be talking a million or more deaths. They also note, however, that different places seem to have very different fatality rates, though there aren’t enough data to create country-by-country estimates.
Second: Indiana is randomly selecting residents and giving them tests. (Why aren’t more states?) As the New York Times notes, “we now know that it’s likely that about 2.8 percent of Hoosiers have so far been infected with this virus. It also means that the fatality rate in Indiana is about 0.6 percent.”
Third: Preliminary results from hard-hit Spain suggest that 5 percent of the population has had it, and that the fatality rate is around 1.2 percent there.
Update: Make that four. A modeling study out of France (which is consonant with the limited testing data they have) finds that “3.6% of infected individuals are hospitalized and 0.7% die,” and that 2.8 million people, or 4.4 percent of the population, have been infected. It adds that “the lockdown reduced the reproductive number from 2.90 to 0.67 (77% reduction).”