What exactly is the mortality rate of Covid-19? It's hard to tell with so much information (and misinformation) out there. So, having all the data on hand from the last four charts I put together, I thought I'd try to shed some light on what the actual mortality rate might be from this virus. The main problem is, there's so much contradictory data, it's hard to get a true bead on what the actual death rate is.
Check this out:
This graph is based off of the same April 27 totals I used in my previous two blog posts along this subject. As you can see, the numbers per country are all over the place! Perhaps the most surprising number is France, with an 18.35% mortality rate. How on Earth could France, a country with access to high quality health-care, have a mortality rate that high? My speculation is that the virus got into the Islamic slums which are scattered throughout France. These areas have been the subject of some controversy over the last 20 years, as the Muslims who live there have been rendered second-class citizens by a French culture which very strongly prizes its secular heritage, and strongly looks down upon any religion, much less religious extremism. (Je suis Charlie!) As such, once the virus hit those poor and secluded areas, the death toll shot way up, in spite of France's high-quality health care and strong welfare state. I will have to do some further investigations in order to confirm this, but that is my current hypothesis. Italy's high mortality rate is easily explained by the outbreak happening so quickly, and overwhelming their medical infrastructure. In other words, if you let the virus loose and doctors get overwhelmed, the death rate goes way up. That's understandable, as doctors can only do so much. Spain had a similar situation. The U.K. decided it would not oppose the virus at first to let its population achieve herd immunity on its own. Sweden tried the same approach, and it seems to have worked there, but the U.K. has a much larger population with a much higher density of city dwellers. The approach didn't work at all for the U.K., and so its mortality rate skyrocketed to 13.56%, topping even Italy. As such, the U.K. reversed course and began quarantines and social distancing. Boris Johnson finally learned the hard way about Covid-19 when he tested positive and (good for him) recovered.
Why did Sweden's approach work? Well, it only did, somewhat. In terms of spreading the virus, it did so almost as rapidly as Spain and Italy at first. It even spread the virus faster than the U.K. originally! From that standpoint, Sweden's approach was a dismal failure, as I pointed out in my previous blog post. But Sweden's population is very low, and social distancing is already a condition of living in Sweden, with homes widely spaced apart, and cold weather forcing inhabitants to stay indoors most of the time. Quarantines didn't need to be imposed - they were already a Swedish way of life. That, combined with Sweden's excellent government-run healthcare system, kept the death rate very low in that country.
Those countries which show mortality rates in the mid-range areas include the U.S. (5.68%), Germany (3.71%), Iran (6.31%), and China (5.51%). What could be going on, there? In the U.S. and China both, the government initially denied that there was a problem, and only moved quickly to address it after it was clearly too late. That this resulted in almost identical mortality rates in both countries should serve as an important lesson to us. The mortality rate could have been much lower, had the U.S., or China, acted quickly upon initial reports regarding the virus. Hospitals have been overwhelmed in both countries, but only in certain areas; Wuhan in China, and New York in the United States. Germany acted responsibly, for the most part, and kept its mortality down a little better, but still recorded a mortality rate of 3.71%, due to high population density, and an open-border policy within all members of the E.U. It's reasonable to say that the U.S. could have achieved at least a similar number, if it had acted as responsibly as Germany did. If it had, the U.S. could have saved 19,041 lives!
What about those countries which tested low? These nations are Australia, Iceland, Japan, Russia, Singapore, and Sweden. What do they all have in common? Primarily it a combination of having highly managed or very sparse populations, and high quality of health care. In the case of Russia we must consider that they have been falsifying their numbers to show lower mortality. Australia actually had one of the highest infection rates, yet its mortality rate turned out to be quite low. Again, only high-quality health care could explain this. Japan has not only high-quality government-run health care, but also a culture of cleanliness which, frankly, New York City sorely lacks. South Korea tracked the virus using cell phone data and quarantined those areas which were identified as hot-spots. Civil libertarians might object to this based on privacy grounds, but which would you rather have: the corporations having our private data, as we do here in the U.S., or the government having our private data, as South Korea has? Either option makes people uncomfortable, but if there is to be restrictions imposed in any case, either through state-wide quarantine orders, or through governmental data-mining, isn't the better option to have the data-mining? (I'd rather give the data to Uncle Sam than Jeff Bezos any day! But that's just me.) Iceland's health-care is specifically geared to respiratory ailments due to the island's volcanism. Singapore did a strict track-and-sequester approach, similar to South Korea. Sweden, as we've noted, didn't do so well as far as the spread of the virus goes, but its mortality rate turned out to be low, again thanks to citizens having fine government-run health care.
So, it would seem that high-quality of health care matters, and matters a lot! We might be able to keep mortality rates relatively low, if our hospitals could handle the volume of Covid-19 cases. So far, our lock-downs and quarantines are achieving this, except in states with no such orders, such as South Dakota. That ought to be a lesson to us all.
In previous postings, both here and on social media, I have given a mortality rate of about 2%. Given the mortality rates we are seeing in most other countries, 2% is quite conservative. But that still means that anyone who contracts the virus has a 1-in-50 chance of dying from it! If you were handed a bowl of skittles, and told that 1 in 50 were poisoned, you probably would not eat a single one!
And that, my friends, is the point of the quarantine.
Eric
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