Covid Death Comparisons

[CALSinCM]

Considering that India is all the rage in the media regarding the deadly Indian variant, a bit of research and a well attributed graph help to put the larger picture into perspective.  Larger population so more aggregate deaths, but when put into perspective via comparison of deaths per million in others countries like the UK and US, India seems to be handling the regional epidemic rather well.  It looks like the sine-curve is leveling off.  Kudos Modi.  Good news as the world seems to be exiting the epidemic.  So maybe the dork clouds have a sliver lining.
It would be nice to get back to normal.

Website:  ourworldindata.org (Covid Deaths)
Based on John Hopkins University CSSE datasets

 

 

[ExpatOilWorker]

Unfortunately India is not included in the excess death study by the Economist, but just like in Mexico, Russia, Egypt and South Africa you can probably multiple the Indian fatality numbers with a factor of 2-3, maybe even 4.

 

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

[CALSinCM]

6 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Unfortunately India is not included in the excess death study by the Economist, but just like in Mexico, Russia, Egypt and South Africa you can probably multiple the Indian fatality numbers with a factor of 2-3, maybe even 4.

 

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

I'll take the John Hopkin's official number instead of making up my own statistics with multipliers. 
I trust the science.  I have faith in John Hopkin's University.

[cclub75]

3 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Unfortunately India is not included in the excess death study by the Economist, but just like in Mexico, Russia, Egypt and South Africa you can probably multiple the Indian fatality numbers with a factor of 2-3, maybe even 4.

 

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

 

Even by... 10... India would be behind.... Belgium ! (deads by million)

 

Source : https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

So clearly, that's not the point.

 

The point is : is it over ?

 

We should remember how the north hemisphere felt last july/august... It was over. Already. ????

 

And today, it starts again : USA it's over, Europe as well.

 

Between those 2 summers... we all know what happened...

 

Among many factors, the virus has a form of seasonality. More people are sick in the winter, compared to summer. It's basic. And it works too for coronaviruses.

 

By looking at a few countries like Chili, Uruguay, Bahrein, Maldives, Seychelles... It's clearly not over. Even with vaccines -and that is what many people do not understand.

 

Vaccines have only 1 target : reduce the number of severe cases.

 

They won't eradicate Sars Cov 2 and all its variants.

 

In a normal society, without hysteria, we could handle this situation. Easily.

 

But when a country like Singapore, 5,6 millions people, orders 1 month of lockdown because they have 486 "actives cases" (source Forbes)... or when Thailand, 69 millions of inhabitants, closes its airspace april 3 2020... for a few thousands of cases (in 2020)... most of them without any symptoms.... I mean that speaks a lot.

 

Loud.

 

It won't be over anytime soon.

 

The only real question is : where do we set our collective "sensivity threshold" ?

 

Asian countries are very sensitive... Therefore... it's likely that the crisis will continue. For a long time.

[dabhand]

This recent BBC article gives an insight into why many death rate comparisons are meaningless. This highlights the major inaccuracies found by local journalists when comparing government issued figures with their findings in Gujarat, India. It could easily apply to most other parts of India as well as many other countries worldwide.

 

As for taking John Hopkins figures as gospel.......good luck with that, given the source of their data in many instances.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56969086

[Jeffr2]

2 hours ago, cclub75 said:

 

Even by... 10... India would be behind.... Belgium ! (deads by million)

 

Source : https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

So clearly, that's not the point.

 

The point is : is it over ?

 

We should remember how the north hemisphere felt last july/august... It was over. Already. ????

 

And today, it starts again : USA it's over, Europe as well.

 

Between those 2 summers... we all know what happened...

 

Among many factors, the virus has a form of seasonality. More people are sick in the winter, compared to summer. It's basic. And it works too for coronaviruses.

 

By looking at a few countries like Chili, Uruguay, Bahrein, Maldives, Seychelles... It's clearly not over. Even with vaccines -and that is what many people do not understand.

 

Vaccines have only 1 target : reduce the number of severe cases.

 

They won't eradicate Sars Cov 2 and all its variants.

 

In a normal society, without hysteria, we could handle this situation. Easily.

 

But when a country like Singapore, 5,6 millions people, orders 1 month of lockdown because they have 486 "actives cases" (source Forbes)... or when Thailand, 69 millions of inhabitants, closes its airspace april 3 2020... for a few thousands of cases (in 2020)... most of them without any symptoms.... I mean that speaks a lot.

 

Loud.

 

It won't be over anytime soon.

 

The only real question is : where do we set our collective "sensivity threshold" ?

 

Asian countries are very sensitive... Therefore... it's likely that the crisis will continue. For a long time.

Excellent post!

[chessman]

5 hours ago, CALSinCM said:

I'll take the John Hopkin's official number instead of making up my own statistics with multipliers. 
I trust the science.  I have faith in John Hopkin's University.

If you’re interested in ‘science’, you’ll know that the most reliable way of counting deaths in a pandemic is to look at excess deaths. That’s the most reliable way and is even used to calculate yearly flu deaths.

 

John Hopkin’s University are just collecting and counting up official figures released in different countries and there are many reasons why a country’s official figures may be incorrect. 

[chessman]

5 hours ago, cclub75 said:

But when a country like Singapore, 5,6 millions people, orders 1 month of lockdown because they have 486 "actives cases" (source Forbes)... or when Thailand, 69 millions of inhabitants, closes its airspace april 3 2020... for a few thousands of cases (in 2020)... most of them without any symptoms.... I mean that speaks a lot.

 

Loud.

 

It won't be over anytime soon.

 

The only real question is : where do we set our collective "sensivity threshold" ?

 

Asian countries are very sensitive... Therefore... it's likely that the crisis will continue. For a long time.

Not just Asia,

 

if you look at excess deaths in 2020, countries with high numbers of reported Covid deaths have over 10% more all-cause deaths than would be expected. But some countries with low Covid deaths have had significantly less all-cause deaths than a normal year.

 

Examples:

South Korea -2.9%

Finland -3.1%

Norway -3.6%

Denmark -4.3%

 

despite Covid, these countries had less deaths than in a normal year.

 

Source: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countries-in-2020/

 

but all those countries also took strong measures against Covid.

 

Thailand is not among the listed countries but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it  was part of this group that had less all-cause deaths than expected.

 

Some people will look at the mortality figures in these countries and see evidence that the strong measures were unnecessary but some will see them as evidence that the measures did the job and perhaps prevented the country from having this 10%+ increase we see in the worst hit countries.

 

[Jingthing]

In what bizarro world alternative universe would Modi deserve Kudos for his pandemic response?

[ExpatOilWorker]

5 hours ago, Jingthing said:

In what bizarro world alternative universe would Modi deserve Kudos for his pandemic response?

In a universe where pyre wood is plentiful?

[CALSinCM]

19 hours ago, chessman said:

John Hopkin’s University are just collecting and counting up official figures released in different countries and there are many reasons why a country’s official figures may be incorrect. 

And that can be asserted for virtually every country.  But you have to benchmark with official numbers at some point.  To assert that First world countries are superior at bean counting than developing and third-world countries and then suggest that multiples need to be added to the official numbers reeks of both cultural and racial bias. 
Personally I wont' indulge in that type of baseless pseudo-science that implicitly extols racial superiority of the Western country that the holder of the bias comes from.
That's not science and holding biases such as that have no place in the scientific community.