Fatalities in this outbreak have taken some time to occur, actually much longer than was assumed first up. WHO/CDC are not reporting that time at present, but the cases that have been looked at show a progression that takes between 7 days and 14 days from contagion to death. That increases the mis-match in the CFR methodology, however, the reported fatalities are not following a consistent progression compared to reported cases for the early to mid January data (slip fatalities at the end of January forward by 10 days, and they are almost equivalent to the number of cases reported at the earlier time, when the fatal cases were exposed to the virus, yet 10 days later in the data, this is not the case).
Actually, it makes some sense. If many of the early exposures were to other hospital patients, then those people were probably sick to begin with, and the virus only added to their other issues. I've also read some reports that most victims are male - I wonder if that relates to the smoking rates in China? (I've seen various numbers, but apparently somewhere around 50 percent of the men but few women smoke.) Areas of China also have a lot of pollution - if the virus affects the lungs, then surely pollution and smoking aren't going to help.