Abstract
This paper estimates COVID-19 infection fatality rate (IFR) in early 2020 before pharmaceutical interventions were available on a large population in the United States. The better estimates of COVID-19 deaths in New York City and its high COVID-19 infection rate made it ideal to accurately estimate the IFR. Further, we analyze the deaths and infections in New York City to estimate an overall IFR for the United States of 0.86 percent.