I received some helpful feedback regarding my graphs from two posts ago. Some objections were noted, and were not without merit. For example, it was pointed out to me that the huge spike in Covid-19 cases and deaths here in the U.S. was not representative of the large U.S. population vs. the population of other countries. It was argued that, if I weighted the results against population size, that the U.S. would show a much lower infection rate.
This turned out to be true - sort of. When I re-did the totals as a percentage of population size and re-ran the graph, I got some surprisingly different results.
The largest spikes on the graph show the largest number of Covid-19 deaths as a percentage of that country's population size. The largest by far turned out to be Spain (blue spike), with 0.05% of its entire population killed by coronavirus so far during this outbreak. That's one person dead for every 2,000 Spaniards. In close second is Italy (yellow spike), with 0.045% of its population killed by Covid-19, one person dead for every 2,200 Italians. In third place (light pink) is the U.K. with just over 0.03% of its population killed, one person dead for every 3,300 Brits. But very close behind, and even leading the U.K. at one point, is Sweden! (green). It's more jagged line actually shows its death rate was faster than Britain's at first, then it slowed somewhat, then caught up again, and then slowed once more. Sweden had been shown to be one of the lowest totals in terms of actual number of cases and deaths, but when I weighted it against Sweden's very low population size, I found that they were all but tied for third place in terms of the highest death percentage with about 0.022% of its population killed off, one person for every 4,545 Swedes. I had previously tipped my hat to Sweden for its low numbers, but when compared with its population size, Sweden sucked!
And the U.S.? It's the light grey line, coming in at a clear 5th place with 0.018%, roughly one person dead out of every 5,500 Americans. Now, I find that interesting because, even though the U.S. has a very low infection rate when weighed against its large population, it still comes in 5th place out of all countries in terms of deaths!
One criticism I received was "What about Iceland?" Iceland has an incredible health care system, and more people on the island have been tested for Covid-19, percentage-wise, than anywhere else. That means that its infection rate numbers may be the most accurate out of any country, giving us, potentially, the clearest picture about what the actual mortality rate may be. Here's what I found:
The incredibly huge light blue s-curve is Iceland's running total of infection cases, shown as a total percentage of its population. Over 0.5% of its entire population has contracted Covid-19, far outstripping any other country! The next closest is Italy (dark blue) with 0.2% of its entire population infected, and it doesn't even come close! The United states is that tiny, brown speck in the lower-left corner, showing that, sure enough, only a very small percentage of America's population has been infected so far. (Careful! Nowhere to go but up!)
If we take Iceland's total number of deaths, only 10 (!), and divide that by the total number of infections, 1,792 as of April 27, we get a mortality rate of only 0.00558, or roughly 0.56% This is an incredibly low rate of mortality from this disease! Less even than is usually recorded from annual flu viruses. So does that mean, given Iceland's best-testing record, that this is the most accurate mortality figure?
Not so fast! Iceland is a very volcanic country, and pyroclastic ash is a regular occurrence. The eruption which took place in 2010 was big enough to shut down most of the airline flights all over Europe, and created respiratory problems for nearly everyone living on the island. As a result, Iceland's excellent healthcare system has more ventilators per hospital than anywhere in the world - more than enough to accomodate any number of Covid-19 cases, even if there were a huge spike in patients, which hasn't been the case so far. I think it's safe to conclude that this incredible preparedness for respiratory ailments drives down the mortality rate to an amazingly low number in Iceland - too low to be representative of the rest of the world, which is still struggling to catch up with the outbreak in terms of supplies and equipment.
Compare this with the U.S. It's not hard to do the math, here, as two milestones came around April 28th at the same time. The first was passing 50,000 deaths from Covid-19, surpassing the total number of Americans killed during the Vietnam War. The second was passing over 1 million confirmed cases of Covid-19. 50K divided by 1 mil = 0.05, or a 5% mortality rate! Much, much higher than that of Iceland!
So what's going on, here?
One factor is certainly the fact that the U.S. has been under-equipped to do testing from the very beginning, and is still struggling to catch up. The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases is therefore nowhere near the actual number of infections, and this creates an artificially high mortality rate.
But if having adequate health facilities creates an artificially low mortality rate, and insufficient healthcare equipment and low testing creates an artificially high one, where is the truth?
Naturally, it's somewhere in between.
Two doctors recently did a press conference taking the low mortality totals in southern California, and concluding from this that the virus is not so dangerous. Naturally, these two have become darlings of the right-wing media, who wish to glom on to anything which might rescue the economy from Trump's ineptitude. But is southern California representative, either? Couldn't it be that the better healthcare California provides its citizens means that mortality gets driven lower?
Yes. Duh!
Averaging out the mortality rates from other countries, we find the percentage tends to be around 2% mortality for Covid-19. That means that if you get the disease here in the U.S., your odds of dying are probably 1 in 50. But given our lousy preparedness for this outbreak, and the holes in our healthcare system, that number could reasonably be higher.
IF healthcare quality is improved, mortality might be low. In other words, Covid-19 might be no more dangerous than the seasonal flu, BUT ONLY IF HEALTHCARE QUALITY IS IMPROVED! Right now, our healthcare quality is so poor, and Trump's preparedness so lax, there's no reason why we shouldn't expect mortality to be closer to 5%, especially if you happen to have no health insurance.
And with so many going out of work, people are losing their health insurance too. This will drive UP the numbers.
Oh, and here's another thought: Iceland has one of the best social welfare systems in the world, as well as one of the best nationalized healthcare systems in the world. Chalk one up for socialism!
So stay home! Keep social distancing! Stay safe! And if you are protesting a state capital, hoping to prompt things to reopen early, fuck you! If you are doing so armed with a gun, DOUBLE FUCK YOU! You have zero right to endanger others with your protests, much less do so while armed!
Of course, protesting armed is just one small step from red-hats patrolling the streets, too. But I'll leave that Orwellian nightmare for another blog post.
Eric
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