Counting COVID19 deaths are critical to the justification of shutting down the world economy, building new hospitals, sending patients (some with the virus) back into nursing homes and the prohibition of social interaction on an unprecedented scale. If the deaths statistics are wrong or manipulated there will be a severe political reckoning.
Fortunately the global government fanatics have not yet abolished the nation states so we can see different national plans to tackle this virus and have the ability (which we would not have in a globally controlled dictatorship) to compare best practice. Sweden has not fully locked down, the USA has only partially locked down and Russia is counting COVID19 deaths in a different way to other nations.
In Russia COVID deaths are 1,915 and COVID cases are 209,688 as at 9th May. Arman Ararat-Zakaryan, who is director of the “Leningrad Region” (not Saint Petersburg) Central Medical Statistics State Agency reports to central government every 6 hours. Through a contact he informs us that
“when proved that a person died of heart or another failure it means that appears on the death certificate even if it is proved that before death the patient had also tested for COVID19.”
In fact the UK indirectly agrees by issuing statistics which differentiate between “Coronavirus deaths” and “deaths with no underlying health conditions”. In the last few days I have chronicled these statistics.
Sunday 10th from Saturday 9th there were 178 fatalities and 12 had no underlying health conditions (and therefore could be certainly death caused by coronavirus).
That is a rate of 6.74% which were certain COVID deaths
Saturday 9th from Friday 8th there were 207 deaths and 19 had no underlying health condition.
That is a rate of 9.178% which were certain COVID deaths
Friday 8th from Thursday 7th there were 332 deaths with 22 having no underlying health conditions.
That is a rate of 6.6% which were certain COVID deaths
Thursday 7th from Wednesday 6th there were 383 deaths with only 44 having no underlying health conditions.
That is a rate of 11.4% which were certain COVID deaths
So if we take an average of these four days’ figures only 8.5% of the UK deaths – described by the Government as COVID deaths – would actually be unequivocally caused by the virus. The rest would be death from serious underlying illness. Instead of the reported figure (to date) of 31,800 cases the actual number would then be 2,700 – which is a UK death rate for coronavirus of 1.23%.
Not really dramatic enough to justify the destruction being wrought on the British and world economy – although it has to be admitted that the UK is a long way from the end of its “infection curve”.
THE SWEDISH EXPERIMENT AND COVID DEATHS AND POPULATION DENSITY
While many have much sympathy with countries like Sweden which pursue their own line on this pandemic it must be said that Sweden’s experiment of a very loose lockdown (gatherings up to 50 people, 50% of public transport still in use, 90% of biggest companies workforce working at home, shops, hairdressers open, even bars, but closed schools and universities) has not played out well so far. If there is a second wave and Swedes have acquired a large “herd immunity” then it might prove otherwise.
But even though more than 50% of Swedish households are single person the strategy does not seem to be working. If we look at COVID deaths among 6 European countries and adjust them for population density
UK Sweden Germany France Italy Spain
Pop’n Density m/sq km 275 23 232 122 200 94
Pop’n Density Ratio 1.0 0.1 0.8 0.4 0.7 0.3
CV19 Deaths 30,000 3,000 7,000 26,000 30,000 26,000
Adjusted for density 30,000 36,000 8,290 58,700 41,168 76,015
So on deaths adjusted for population density Sweden is far worse than the UK or Germany but nowhere near as bad as France, Spain and Italy.
BIGGEST SOURCES OF INFECTION
There was a big Chinese study that traced 2,147 close contacts of 157 confirmed Covid-19 cases. The overall infection rate was six per cent, but it was much higher among:
friends (22 per cent)
family members (18 per cent)
And by location, the main risk factors were:
homes (13 per cent)
transport (12 per cent)
dinner and entertainment (7 per cent).
So locking people up in their homes is not a wise course not least because sunlight is regarded as important to enhance Vitamin D and hence virus resistance. In the outdoors the Chinese study found that the infection rate falls to the 0-5 per cent range. At least the new regulations for England (from this week) recognise this.
THE WORLD RECOVERS SLOWLY
My latest calculation of the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic in the world at large can be seen in the following. Recoveries as a percentage of all cases – by date:
5/5/2020 32.89
6/5/2020 33.36
7/5/2020 34.08
8/5/2020 34.6
9/5/2020 35.1
10/5/2020 35.7
The two centres of the pandemic are now Russia and the USA, as Europe gradually completes the infection curve – with Switzerland and Austria now seemingly over the outbreak and Germany and France rapidly approaching the end.
The UK has the furthest to go with a completion of the classic Bell curve now looking like about a month away – and Sweden about a week or 10 days after that!
