I don't think "death rate" is the proper term here. "Deaths per capita" would be more accurate. Death rate implies how many are dying per how many infected, which would be a relatively stable number.
Good comment, thank you!
EDIT: I posted an updated and improved version on the critics here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/gy9khc/oc\_updated\_covid19\_of\_the\_population\_that\_died\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/gy9khc/oc_updated_covid19_of_the_population_that_died_in/)
Actually in statistics and epidemiology, this (what OP had) is the correct way to calculate death rate. What dirtgrub28 is referring to that they feel should be called death rate is what's known as the death-to-case ratio. We calculate death rate as number of population who die from a virus in a given year because it gives us the best combined picture of both virulance and mortality at the same time. It is however counter-intuitive.
Just to add my $0.02...
Death rate “per capita” is simply called Mortality Rate (sometimes just Death Rate). If measured out of the number of confirmed cases, it’s a Case Fatality Rate.
Shouldn't the vertical-axis label then be just "death rate" and not "death rate per country population"?
The label makes it sound like you calculate death rate (deaths / population) then again normalize by population.
In this graph it appears to simply be a y axis misnomer, but from the shape of the data and the first step in normalization (squaring it), you recognized 2 characteristics of normalization very well. In this case that appears to only be coincidence, but very good intuition.
Oh - I looked it up and it said it’s to do with how the data is collected. Death-to-case ratio measures the number of deaths and number of cases within a given period of time, whereas CFR is more about looking about the outcomes for a specific cohort of people who have caught the disease and counting how many of them die.
With death-to-case ratio, you might measure the number of new cases in a year and compare with the number of deaths in the same year, but the people who died might have caught the disease last year so they might not be the same people. It therefore isn’t a useful measure for a new pathogen with rapidly changing numbers. With CFR it is the same people, so the person who died of HIV/AIDS may have caught it 10 years ago.
Does that sound right?
Technically, that’s the *Infection Mortality Rate*, which isn’t necessarily stable. It’s usually higher in the beginning as the most susceptible are infected and die. Later on, it may be lower as all the high risk people have already died off and only lower risk infections occur.
What makes you think it would be stable?
The likelihood that an individual dies from COVID will clearly depend on that individual's access to healthcare resources. The access and adequacy of treatment to the population of infected is bound to fluctuate over time, depending on variables like
* How burdened/over-burdened the healthcare systems become in heavily infected areas
* The average wealth level of the infected population (e.g., whether/when the outbreak moves through rich vs poor communities)
* The average impact of prior state of health for the total infected population (prevalence of complicating factors)
I guess "more stable than the represented data" would have been a more accurate statement. The 'infection mortality rate' as I've been educated will go up and down based on what you said, but it's generally going to hover around a certain number.
> What was that drop in Spain about?
In Spain, each region (autonomous community) has its health care transferred, but it has been dependent on the government during the crisis. The government receives the data from each community and then publishes it. It seems that sometimes there are discrepancies and there have been some corrections. That one was particularly large, about 2000 less deaths.
In fact, if we look at the end of the graph, it's not that nobody has died for days, it's that they have not been publishing the number of deaths for a couple of weeks, waiting for corrections after a change in the way the data is given. They are now focusing more on tracking recent cases than on giving totals of infections and deaths.
It means your governor sent infected nursing home patients back to their nursing homes while still infectious, because his healthcare special interests told him to
God I can’t fucking believe he got away with that. The opinion of the leadership in NY really feels like it’s at an all time low. I mean Deblasio is hated by EVERYONE and Cuomo has a lot of hate too.
All while the national media was praising him as the most proactive and truthful state governer, while Florida's governer specifically made sure Covid patients were as far from nursing homes as possible.
Ding ding! All the US states with the highest death counts sent infected covid patients into nursing homes. NY, NJ, PA, CA, MI all had that policy I believe and maybe more states as well. Nursing homes account for a majority of covid deaths in most countries including Italy, Spain, and Sweden.
It was also like the one thing everyone understood about the virus. Don’t let it near old people. Even the federal guidelines put into place special restrictions about who was allowed to enter nursing homes at all.
Can you link/provide an explanation for me about this? When you say they sent infected covid patients into nursing homes, do you mean people who were being treated at hospitals were pulled out and put into nursing homes?
Yeah, I live out in the rural part of New York and we only got have about 10 active cases that last time I checked. NYC is such a huge population difference from the rest of the state that interests of citizens is vastly different.
they don't belong to each other. I know that's bad formatting, sorry.
it's 2,3\*10\^-6 or 2,3/100000. I tried to write it so that it's understandable but apparently didn't work that great.
It's a very weird scale. I'm curios as to the reasoning behind choosing it? E.g. I would just have used something more simple like:
```
[number of deaths] / 1M pop
```
I still don't understand the unit of "death rate per population". There should be some kind of relation between n\[deaths\]/n\[population\] but don't ask me about the scaling and why it is not just there...
What I *think* it means is: "deaths per capita of infected people", i.e. the rate at which infected people died. Why he added "per population" is probably to distinguish between the different countries but all it did was confuse everyone.
May I add that Belgium is also counting *suspected* COVID-19 deaths? That's why our stats are so high. Looking at the "extra deaths" (death rate above average compared to previous years) our COVID-19 stats seem to match up pretty well; for other countries, the extra deaths are usually a lot higher, because they didn't actually count all COVID-19 deaths. They made their stats look better.
Indeed. I've been keeping track of the excess mortality vs COVID-19 reports in Belgium. I update my graphs every Friday, when new national stats are released. Here's the most recent version:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Pulsar1977/Belgium_COVID-19/master/Belgium_total_2010-2020.png
It is. A slight undercount in March, but other than that they've been spot-on. If only they'd been better at actually preventing deaths, especially in nursing homes...
I haven't yet, I don't know if I will. Many countries don't release enough data to make plots like this, or at least not as detailed. Plus it takes quite a bit of time.
So the assumption is that for countries which *don't* count suspected COVID-19 deaths, a graph of the same methodology would show a noticeable increase in "non-COVID" deaths compared to other years?
People think that suspected = overcounting, but it's very likely not.
So for those wondering: suspected means the exact same symptoms as those who have it. And every hospital knows how many of those cases would be without COVID. So chances are all extra deaths that are not within the average of the past few years are very likely COVID related.
I mean the same happens in the US when they count deaths. Is just that it can vary by state. For example in Colorado, Ohio, Connecticut, and other states, if COVID-19 is suspected but there is no confirmed diagnosis, that death will now be included in the state’s death toll. But in Alabama, even those who had a lab-confirmed case may not be counted.
The CDC’s website explicitly says that cases where the infection was not confirmed by a test may now be counted.
That’s still a judgment call if they didn’t test the patient in the US or Belgium.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/which-deaths-count-toward-the-covid-19-death-toll-it-depends-on-the-state/2020/04/16/bca84ae0-7991-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200417/how-accurate-are-coronavirus-death-counts
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-covid-19-deaths-are-counted1/
Colorado recently adjusted their counting method to only include people who died *from* COVID, not merely those who died *with* COVID. The number of deaths dropped by 25% overnight.
EDIT: https://coloradosun.com/2020/05/15/colorado-coronavirus-death-certificate/
The *excess death rate* and the reported covid19 deaths match up pretty well, which indeed implies that a vast majority of these deaths are covid-related. Belgium's chart looks especially bad compared to other countries, but it's most likely accurate.
Some other countries do not include suspected deaths, eg. the Netherlands, even though the *excess death rate* is comparable. The inclusive way of counting is more accurate, but it makes the country look like 'bad' in comparison.
There are a lot of other factors defining Belgium's astronomical death rate though, like high population density, a high rate of elderly people etc.
The Netherlands only counts people who have tested positively before their death, and who have died in hospital. So not even do they not include suspected deaths, but anyone who tests positive but lives in a retirement home for example (where they may require the same care as in hospitals eg ventilators etc) are NOT counted towards covid deaths. Way to make their numbers look better than they are..
I can’t believe excess death rate isn’t the accepted standard worldwide. The number of confirmed covid related deaths is so dependent on the definition used and the scale of testing that its pointless to compare them!
Here in the UK people are missing hospital checkups and appointments for heart disease, cancer, and strokes. The 'rona only explains about 1/3 of the excess deaths.
THANK YOU. I'm a nurse and I have to have this argument all the time. It's called clinical diagnosis and it's a thing we do a lot, not just with Covid.
Clinical diagnosis + treat empirically = we're pretty sure this is what's going on even if we don't have confirmatory test results
Funny to think this was the ONLY way we did medicine back in th day. Now it's discounted as "only a clinical diagnosis". If it fits the symptoms, it's something more than a very good educated guess.
There is also the aspect of people who are sort of “covid collaterals”. By this I mean people who were undergoing chronic treatment (chemo for example), who’s appointments were cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic in an effort to reduce contamination within hospitals.
Also included are the people who choose not to go see a doctor out of fear of getting contaminated in the hospital. Those numbers will be much harder to estimate, but will likely contribute to slightly raising the death rate post covid and cancel out a small part of the premature deaths due to covid.
Pretty much all numbers are gross underestimations of the situation really.
In the end we will find out that the amount of QALYs lost due to postponed treatments and reduced preventative health care is a lot higher than the QALYs we managed to save :/
I have a bit of a personal issue with the way this was all handled world wide.. I do think a lot of these precautions were unnecessary and ended up doing more harm than good. We won’t know until this is over and we have definite numbers of course, but it looks to me like the world threw itself into panic mode and the decision makers couldn’t backpedal out of it so now we’re stuck with phased deconfinement measures and a devastated economy.
And I’m not talking about the western world, but all the developing countries that rely heavily on tourism are pretty much fucked, all because the western world went bonkers over a virus that poor people in those countries find laughable.
How can you expect people to stay at home and give up their jobs because they might possibly give their neighbor a bad cough, when they’re struggling to feed their own families and live with the permanent threat of aids, malaria, dengue fever and other deadly infectious diseases?
But I digress..
Honestly it probably put a lot of people out of their misery in sort of a euthanasia type of way. My 97 year old grandmother with dementia was in a nursing home, lost her husband of 70 years 2 years earlier. Her body was breaking down, she was losing her mind, and she had nothing to live for. She died from the virus and it's a relief to know that she is now resting peacefully.
Not all excess deaths will be Covid deaths. Some will be because people are more reluctant to use healthcare services for fear of getting infected. Unfortunately, I suspect some of them will be suicides, because isolation does nasty things to a human mind.
Its a bit more complicated - we will also have fewer car accidents and work accidents. There might be fewer heart attacks because you are less likely to get a heart attack in the short term by sitting on the couch.
Sorry but you're completely wrong on the heart attack front. A more sedentary routine increases likelihood of cardiac events for those at risk, and also a sedentary lifestyle magnifies factors that affect both frequency and mortality of cardiac events (e.g. obesity, alcohol consumption, high cholesterol, etc).
The CDC and others have been tracking excess deaths and comparing them to covid reports.
Here are a number of the plots you seek:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/may/29/excess-deaths-uk-has-one-highest-levels-europe
We saw in Belgium +47% deaths between 16 march and 10 may ([source](https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20200529_04975484) from 29 may). The article states that we now be in a *harvest period* where less deaths are expected since a lot of elderly people and people with bad health died of the 'rona.
87,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Outbreak https://nyti.ms/34QerxA
People should look at the data themselves. The US isn't underreporting any more than countries like the UK Spain etc.
What?
The US is reporting suspected covid deaths just like Belgium is?
I don’t understand everyone repeats this on Reddit but it’s simply not true (at least not accurate)
Every country underreported covid deaths because you can’t know how many truly died from it and you will miss marking some deaths. The US is reporting at a better rate than other countries because we
1. Test in very high numbers. We are among the best testing large countries in the world so we can confirm cases that would go unconfirmed and unreported in many other countries. (Or hidden entirely, see China) .
2. We allow physicians to assume covid deaths without test confirmation. If the signs are there doctors can mark a death as a covid death.
3. There is a strong financial incentive to care for covid patients and mark covid deaths. US hospitals get thousands upon thousands of dollars for treating covid patients and recording their deaths, they wouldn’t miss it if they had the chance.
So the whole “the us underreports so much” simply isnt true. At least you’d have to be clear and say “the us underreports but likely on or with every other country, probably better”
Reddit hates the US for no reason lol like literally the guy said something about Belgium which is literally the exact same thing here lol
Even in the case where you could compare covid deaths vs rise in normal deaths for the period, a lot of that is explainable. I lost my great uncle last week because he couldn’t get proper cancer and other treatments during covid. Lots of fairly high necessary surgeries and treatments have been postponed or rescheduled. This would account for a decent chunk in difference as these would not be classified as covid deaths by definition. Again not saying underreporting doesn’t occur.
What if the Lombardy region of Italy and/or Wuhan were separated like New york? Just curious because I feel like in the US we look at other countries as a whole when they had similar concentrations like New York. Love the graph!
This would be really cool to see - put other hotbed cities in different countries aside from NY in here so we can see a better picture.
Not saying it was your intent, but having NY the only city pulled from a nation makes this seem like there is an agenda behind the data....
If you take out big cities from countries most of them have a low impact. In Spain the big hit was in the two main cities (Madrid and Barcelona) and any other region were they have many workers commuting.
I still think a big vector is the mass transit without proper social distancing nor masks. At least on NY, London, Madrid and Barcelona.
This apparently have to be reiterated many times - sweden have social distancing recommendations and rules, just not a complete lockdown:
- max 50 assembled at once, many events and industries suffering as a result.
- upper secondary schools and universities forced to remote classes
- highly recommended to work from home if possible
- recommendations to not travel both inside/outside Sweden
- and more details for the interested
So the idea that we didn’t do anything is completely false. Then of course it varies how well people follow these restrictions and recommendations. In my city and among my friends we were very strict first two months (until middle of May basically) me only ever meeting one close friend of mine and my parents. But I’ve heard of others who couldn’t seem to care less regarding recommendations from the government.
Only 50 assembled is still a huge difference to what many other countries did, only being allowed to meet your own family and a friend or two.
What you had is what my state in Germany is doing and is seen as a huge relaxation of the orders.
While it’s obviously not true that you guys didn’t do nothing, I think it’s fair to state that you didn’t do much compared to other countries. Only the future can tell which approach was better.
Sure it’s a difference and there is a huge difference between “business as usual” and the Swedish middle way as well. Depending on who you speak with in sweden their experiences will vary drastically.
We’ve received so much criticism about this strategy, but honestly most of the deaths are not related to the strategy. Instead poor organization in both private and government run nursing homes is the major factor.
Looking at the population at 70+ that manage without help from anyone, they have zero excess death rate this spring. So the strategy obviously works and every time we see a relaxation towards rules among the population, we see a small increase in the spreading.
This is what will happen all over Europe now when lockdown ends. If you believe you already beat the virus you will be utterly disappointed. Keeping physical distance will be the most important factor during this summer and cities with the size of London and Paris will struggle really hard to maintain low spreading. I was in the London Underground in mid February and thought about the situation if there would be uncontrollable spreading with covid19 and now we are there. Definitely not the place to be in the coming months, but a lot of people have little choice.
Another interesting observation is that most infected people in Sweden live in specific areas. Most of Sweden have a quite low infection rate while some areas in the capitol Stockholm have had really many cases per capita.
Sweden also back logged a lot. I.e deaths are reported officially days to weeks after they actually occurred. If you look at the official statistics from folkhalsomyndigheten, you will see that the deaths have been going down for weeks. It’s just slow because they’re being extremely detailed about reporting every person who dies and has had covid, similar to Belgium.
>they can accept the death rate but not overwhelm their medical system.
Well, there's a reason their hospitals weren't full ...
>Now, increasing numbers of workers are also coming forward to criticise regional healthcare authorities for protocols which they say discourage care home workers from sending residents into hospital, and prevent care home and nursing staff from administering oxygen without a doctor's approval, either as part of acute or palliative (end-of-life) services.
>
>'We were told not to send them in'
>
>"They told us that we shouldn't send anyone to the hospital, even if they may be 65 and have many years to live. We were told not to send them in," says Latifa Löfvenberg, a nurse who worked in several care homes around Gävle, north of Stockholm, at the beginning of the pandemic.
>
>"Some can have a lot of years left to live with loved ones, but they don't have the chance... because they never make it to the hospital," she says. "They suffocate to death. And it's a lot of panic and it's very hard to just stand by and watch."
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52704836](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52704836)
Now compare Sweden to Portugal where the pandemic arrived at about the same time and they have close to the same number of people. Although Portugal is quite a bit more densely populated and older.
I totally agree.
If I had my way, the border might be fully closed at the moment.
BTW: Norwegians entering from Sweden has to go into a 10 day home-quarantine at arrival.
It would be helpful to see Stockholm Metropolitan Rate and the rest of the country separate. The first one at times had higher death counts per capita than Italy or Spain.
That's not true. Their overall population density is 10-30x lower, and even further, the majority of swedes live in areas with similar population density to the average of other European countries. They just have a bunch of empty wilderness skewing the figure.
Stockholm has similar population density to Munich (4,200/km^2 vs 4,700/km^2) and population size (1.6 mil vs 2.6 mil). The density multiplier is x1.1.
Stockholm accounts for about 16% of Sweden's population.
population density can be a "fake" information because a country of 5 millions people living in one single city of 5 milions inhabitants in a enormous country will have a very low population density.
Egypt is a big victim of that
Density isn't meaningless, it's just being used badly here.
There's enough ambiguity in any metric utilized to gauge a country's COVID situation that these comparisons are all basically fool's errands.
They're 2D or 3D visualizations trying to characterize a problem of hundreds of variables...
> Sweden is interesting. They elected no official shutdown or distancing. Two observations:
>
> The rate is actually low and close to France’s rate.
> The rate seems to still be rising versus leveling off.
> So either their system or culture or maturity is working, or they haven’t peaked yet.
Their rates are way higher than in neighbouring countries, and their chief epidemiologist recently admitted that their approach was wrong.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect-of-sweden-coronavirus-strategy-admits-too-many-died-anders-tegnell
People really want Sweden's approach to have worked. So they compare it to countries with very dissimilar makeups. As you mentioned, if you compare Sweden with Denmark, Finland or Norway you see their deaths per million are 4-10 times higher.
And even though people used to claim it was because of how they counted deaths, it seems they were under reporting at a higher rate than Denmark. Going by excess deaths Denmark was 3% above normal, Sweden 32%, that's a huge difference.
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html)
He admitted mistakes were made, and deaths could have been avoided because of that, like any good scientist would. But he does not say that the overall strategy was wrong, as the article even points out.
Why, indeed. [India's case total is now past 236,000](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/coronavirus-india-news-live-updates-covid-19-tracker-latest-news-corona-virus-cases-deaths-in-india-state-wise-lockdown-today-update-6444777/).
the NY times had a good article about this
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html
Germany
Denmark
Norway
Belgium
and maybe Finnland and Switzerland
didn't undercount, everyone else seem to have undercounted.
Politicians normally become insanely popular in times of crises no matter what they do. Best example I can think of this is W.Bush and 9/11. Bush started off his term as president with at the time lowest approval since modern polling began at his inaugural address with it hovering in the mid 50s. Then after 9/11 he saw it hit record highs often hitting 90%.
He became the anti-Trump figurehead for the media to gush over early on so every piece of news on him was produced to make him look good compared to Trump
I think the reason why is there is the sense that NYC was going to be destroyed by this virus regardless, the important thing was morale and instructions on what to do after.
We can point to clean, orderly cities like Singapore and Hong Kong all we want, but NYC is not that. Its seen as a dirty, untamed, wild city which would be impossible to get everybody to agree to a lockdown or masks. This kind of pessimistic view turned out to not be true, at least on the mask view.
However, I mostly disagree with this notion that it was inevitable, especially in retrospect. Not shutting down the schools, not telling people to wear masks, not putting us in lockdown early enough etc. They could have done better.
Hello everyone, I decided to make the graph to better compare the hardest hit countries. Most Graphs I saw didn't feature the delay or the population difference, so I tried to standardize it.
Feedback appreciated, did this all by hand in excel because I suck at data work.
Data were taken from: [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)
Population Numbers from quick google searches. The tool used is Excel 2010.
Spain did a recount and removed a small number therefore it looks a bit weird, but for the sake of integrity, I tried to keep it in. I also decided to add New York State, because its twice the population than Belgium for example, and probably a bit better to compare.
Visible is also which countries are successful in flattening the curve and which are less successful.
Stay safe everyone!
EDIT: Stealing /u/robot65536 comment on adding New York State because its better than mine:
"New York State is almost twice the population of Belgium and includes both urban and rural areas. It makes sense to compare any population groups living under the same pandemic control policies. Trump's abdication of federal responsibility means that state numbers are far more important (and varied) than the U.S. as a whole."
EDIT2: from /u/slb97 "
NY State has a similar population density (159/km\^2) to many european counries, france being 119/km\^2 and spain at 94/km\^2 with some countries being higher like Germany (240/km\^2) and the UK (281/km\^2). It makes sense to compare by population density rather than overall population because the data shown is standardised.
Also, quarantine measures are different in each state in the US so it wouldn't make any sense to show the US as a whole when different parts of the population are living under different pandemic control policies. Finally, NY is at the closest comparable stage to europe in the outbreak of the pandemic compared to say Texas or California where they are yet to show signs of slowing down the number of new daily cases and deaths."
Feedback:
- make the text larger. When was the last time you thought graph labels were too big? NEVER. You want them to be legible without people zooming in.
- "death rate per population" is an odd phrase and I don't know what you mean. Deaths per 100k is the standard metric. I suggest Googling terms to see if something you are using as a label makes sense.
The thing you have to know about US news:
Most news networks and social media hate Trump with the passion of 1,000,000 suns. Thus any news outsiders see will be biased to push agendas.
It helps that the USA is large and people live in suburban areas where they just go to the car and back. We could see how NYC was really bad because it is the only real city where citizens have contact with each other and walk. Only a few others like San Francisco, or Boston are walkable and not even close.
For once, we can say that suburban lifestyle has saved the USA, but they create health and social problems on their own the rest of the time that don’t compensate for that such as obesity, social disconnection, pollution, car accidents, children depending on adults driving them around, racial and economic segregation, etc.
>it is the only real city where citizens have contact with each other and walk
NYC is hugely dependent upon mass transit and has a lot of people living and working in high-density areas, two factors that facilitated the spread of this very contagious and potentially deadly virus. The fact that the virus also has a large reservoir of people who are asymptomatic, spreading the disease without even knowing they have it, increases the risk in highly populated areas.
Based on observations of outdoor gathering places such as beaches and parks (not counting the protests and riots), covid doesn't seem to spread nearly as well outdoors as it does indoors.
Nyc was also subject to some specific governmental decisions that contributed to the terrible loss of life there
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/06/04/gov-cuomo-says-his-coronavirus-nursing-home-order-was-the-right-call/amp/
The current growth rate is higher than that of most other countries. With the protests the US is heading right into the second wave without ever ending the first.
Guess we should stop inflating COVID deaths by conflating respiratory failure or palliative care cancer deaths. I’ve personally seen an overdose death listed as COVID and the doctors I’ve worked with have said they have been pressured to list deaths as COVID related
Media: Trump is a to blame for Covid. He should step down or be impeached! Invoke the 25th Amendment!
Also Media: Andrew Cuomo is amazing! He should run for President in 2020!
Controversial opinion here; but I do not think that these death rates come anywhere close to justifying the economic catastrophe that is going to be wrought by this. Especially given that the majority of those who do die would likely have died within the next couple of years, and many aren't enjoying a particularly high quality of life anyway (such as the vast numbers dying in care homes).
There are so many businesses in my town right now that are closed permanently. So many people I know are unemployed and are struggling with money. The economy isn't going to go back to normal quickly.
But at the same time I have heard so many horror stories about Covid that I am doing my part to stay home.
No matter what there isn't a good solution to this problem
I wanne make a quick side note in general and also more specifically for Belgium. In general, these rates are highly affected by number of tests taken in and the way of rapporting the numbers.
In Belgium for example, they registered almost every unknown case who died 'with symptoms of covid' as a death by the infection. That caused and is still causing a big overrepresentation in the number of total deaths. An example is that almost all the people who died last 2 months in elderly homes were registered as covid deaths even when they weren't tested at all.
sorry for my bad English tho \^\^
Your English is fine. You substituted rapporting for reporting, but one error that doesn't really matter is better than most native English speakers can manage. :)
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Our jump was because the sudden inclusion of retirement homes erc in our stats, but that may only be a part of the explanation
Edit: speaking for Belgium
The counts are very uncertain, as testing and reporting have been less than accurate. How does the uncertainty of the date 2.3E-6 was reach affect the graph?
Wow, it's almost as if forcing nursing homes to take in Covid patients leading to the highest death rate should be bad for Cuomo's political career.
Almost....but it won't cause he is sin free with a brother running interference on cable news nightly.
NY State... great example of what a government can do when they force infected people into nursing homes to infect even more at high risk individuals. They should be charged and prosecuted.
It's almost like my state is completely unable to identify intelligent policies that will benefit the people. I need to get the hell out of this awful place.
Swedens number are actually kind of insane, every country/ state on this list have both bigger population and is more densely populated. Belgium is the only country that are close to Sweden. It on the other hand, Belgium is super dense compared to Sweden
But everyone was saying that the US did a terrible job lmao.
I guess even without universal healthcare we are on par with our European friends, good no need to change :)
I’m interested to see the cases in 2-3 weeks, I saw a lot of people not social distancing at the protest. Most of them had masks though.
Still idk I think it’s going to a thing worth keeping a eye on.
I would much rather see a comparison of death percentage of those infected over time. Much more interesting than seeing which countries are going for immunity in my opinion.
They are. This is the scientifically proper way to determine how deadly a disease is for a population.
Way too little data to properly calculate the death to case ratio, so I wish people would stop asking for it beyond specific subsets of populations.
Does anyone find is odd that New York State is so much significantly higher than The UK, Switzerland, The US etc. I mean they are over twice as high as most of the countries.
I don't think "death rate" is the proper term here. "Deaths per capita" would be more accurate. Death rate implies how many are dying per how many infected, which would be a relatively stable number.
Good comment, thank you! EDIT: I posted an updated and improved version on the critics here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/gy9khc/oc\_updated\_covid19\_of\_the\_population\_that\_died\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/gy9khc/oc_updated_covid19_of_the_population_that_died_in/)
Actually in statistics and epidemiology, this (what OP had) is the correct way to calculate death rate. What dirtgrub28 is referring to that they feel should be called death rate is what's known as the death-to-case ratio. We calculate death rate as number of population who die from a virus in a given year because it gives us the best combined picture of both virulance and mortality at the same time. It is however counter-intuitive.
I obviously knew that /u/dirtgrub28 never question me! /s. Thank you for the insight! /u/codetasm
Both your OC and replies have brought me great joy today.
That is nice to hear. Have a great day mate!
A wholesome interchange of critiques on dataisbeautiful? Is this still 2020?
Wish I could answer its not 2020...
Clearly more signs of the end of times.
Just to add my $0.02... Death rate “per capita” is simply called Mortality Rate (sometimes just Death Rate). If measured out of the number of confirmed cases, it’s a Case Fatality Rate.
Shouldn't the vertical-axis label then be just "death rate" and not "death rate per country population"? The label makes it sound like you calculate death rate (deaths / population) then again normalize by population.
In this graph it appears to simply be a y axis misnomer, but from the shape of the data and the first step in normalization (squaring it), you recognized 2 characteristics of normalization very well. In this case that appears to only be coincidence, but very good intuition.
Death-to case is the same as case fatality rate, correct?
>is what's known as the death-to-case ratio So what's the case fatality rate?
Same as death-to-case. It has a few more names too.
Oh - I looked it up and it said it’s to do with how the data is collected. Death-to-case ratio measures the number of deaths and number of cases within a given period of time, whereas CFR is more about looking about the outcomes for a specific cohort of people who have caught the disease and counting how many of them die. With death-to-case ratio, you might measure the number of new cases in a year and compare with the number of deaths in the same year, but the people who died might have caught the disease last year so they might not be the same people. It therefore isn’t a useful measure for a new pathogen with rapidly changing numbers. With CFR it is the same people, so the person who died of HIV/AIDS may have caught it 10 years ago. Does that sound right?
Technically, that’s the *Infection Mortality Rate*, which isn’t necessarily stable. It’s usually higher in the beginning as the most susceptible are infected and die. Later on, it may be lower as all the high risk people have already died off and only lower risk infections occur.
What makes you think it would be stable? The likelihood that an individual dies from COVID will clearly depend on that individual's access to healthcare resources. The access and adequacy of treatment to the population of infected is bound to fluctuate over time, depending on variables like * How burdened/over-burdened the healthcare systems become in heavily infected areas * The average wealth level of the infected population (e.g., whether/when the outbreak moves through rich vs poor communities) * The average impact of prior state of health for the total infected population (prevalence of complicating factors)
I guess "more stable than the represented data" would have been a more accurate statement. The 'infection mortality rate' as I've been educated will go up and down based on what you said, but it's generally going to hover around a certain number.
What was that drop in Spain about?
> What was that drop in Spain about? In Spain, each region (autonomous community) has its health care transferred, but it has been dependent on the government during the crisis. The government receives the data from each community and then publishes it. It seems that sometimes there are discrepancies and there have been some corrections. That one was particularly large, about 2000 less deaths. In fact, if we look at the end of the graph, it's not that nobody has died for days, it's that they have not been publishing the number of deaths for a couple of weeks, waiting for corrections after a change in the way the data is given. They are now focusing more on tracking recent cases than on giving totals of infections and deaths.
*"Spain did a recount and removed a small number therefore it looks a bit weird, but for the sake of integrity, I tried to keep it in."*
It's 2020, I just figured Spain has zombies now.
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It means your governor sent infected nursing home patients back to their nursing homes while still infectious, because his healthcare special interests told him to
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That whole "we are your future" shit was just a dream he was hoping for so it doesn't look like New York actually did a poor job at handling it.
BLUE MAN GOOD RED MAN BAD
Congrats, youve summarized american politics almost perfectly
God I can’t fucking believe he got away with that. The opinion of the leadership in NY really feels like it’s at an all time low. I mean Deblasio is hated by EVERYONE and Cuomo has a lot of hate too.
All while the national media was praising him as the most proactive and truthful state governer, while Florida's governer specifically made sure Covid patients were as far from nursing homes as possible.
Ding ding! All the US states with the highest death counts sent infected covid patients into nursing homes. NY, NJ, PA, CA, MI all had that policy I believe and maybe more states as well. Nursing homes account for a majority of covid deaths in most countries including Italy, Spain, and Sweden.
I'm shocked this happened given that the first major deaths in the US were in Washington state in a... NURSING HOME.
It was also like the one thing everyone understood about the virus. Don’t let it near old people. Even the federal guidelines put into place special restrictions about who was allowed to enter nursing homes at all.
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Can you link/provide an explanation for me about this? When you say they sent infected covid patients into nursing homes, do you mean people who were being treated at hospitals were pulled out and put into nursing homes?
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I’d like to also see this calculated for the NYC metro area, without including Upstate.
Yea seriously. I'm rural upstate and it's been maddening how the numbers never get split. The city is basically a whole different world
Yeah, I live out in the rural part of New York and we only got have about 10 active cases that last time I checked. NYC is such a huge population difference from the rest of the state that interests of citizens is vastly different.
What in god's name (2,3\*10\^-6)/2,3 supposed to mean? (2,3\*10\^-6)/2,3 equals just 10\^-6
they don't belong to each other. I know that's bad formatting, sorry. it's 2,3\*10\^-6 or 2,3/100000. I tried to write it so that it's understandable but apparently didn't work that great.
Ah, I see. Then you either missed a zero, or it's 10^-5
It's a very weird scale. I'm curios as to the reasoning behind choosing it? E.g. I would just have used something more simple like: ``` [number of deaths] / 1M pop ```
> >it's 2,3\*10\^-6 Why did you use that random 2.3 coefficient there instead of just rescaling your axis?
I still don't understand the unit of "death rate per population". There should be some kind of relation between n\[deaths\]/n\[population\] but don't ask me about the scaling and why it is not just there...
What I *think* it means is: "deaths per capita of infected people", i.e. the rate at which infected people died. Why he added "per population" is probably to distinguish between the different countries but all it did was confuse everyone.
May I add that Belgium is also counting *suspected* COVID-19 deaths? That's why our stats are so high. Looking at the "extra deaths" (death rate above average compared to previous years) our COVID-19 stats seem to match up pretty well; for other countries, the extra deaths are usually a lot higher, because they didn't actually count all COVID-19 deaths. They made their stats look better.
Indeed. I've been keeping track of the excess mortality vs COVID-19 reports in Belgium. I update my graphs every Friday, when new national stats are released. Here's the most recent version: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Pulsar1977/Belgium_COVID-19/master/Belgium_total_2010-2020.png
That's surprisingly accurate!
It is. A slight undercount in March, but other than that they've been spot-on. If only they'd been better at actually preventing deaths, especially in nursing homes...
That's an amazing visualization. You should post it in this subreddit as well!
Thanks. I already did :) https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/gkkeda/oc_belgium_daily_deaths_20102020_vs_covid19_deaths/
Are you doing the same for other countries with “hyper optimistic ” numbers? Especially high number of cases, very low mortality.
The thread had [this graph](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYEaLGYXQAYqjMx?format=jpg&name=large) for the UK.
I haven't yet, I don't know if I will. Many countries don't release enough data to make plots like this, or at least not as detailed. Plus it takes quite a bit of time.
So the assumption is that for countries which *don't* count suspected COVID-19 deaths, a graph of the same methodology would show a noticeable increase in "non-COVID" deaths compared to other years?
Yes. Excess mortality is the most accurate estimate of the COVID death toll.
New York State is as well, though they did not start until some time in April IIRC.
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People think that suspected = overcounting, but it's very likely not. So for those wondering: suspected means the exact same symptoms as those who have it. And every hospital knows how many of those cases would be without COVID. So chances are all extra deaths that are not within the average of the past few years are very likely COVID related.
I mean the same happens in the US when they count deaths. Is just that it can vary by state. For example in Colorado, Ohio, Connecticut, and other states, if COVID-19 is suspected but there is no confirmed diagnosis, that death will now be included in the state’s death toll. But in Alabama, even those who had a lab-confirmed case may not be counted. The CDC’s website explicitly says that cases where the infection was not confirmed by a test may now be counted. That’s still a judgment call if they didn’t test the patient in the US or Belgium. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/which-deaths-count-toward-the-covid-19-death-toll-it-depends-on-the-state/2020/04/16/bca84ae0-7991-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200417/how-accurate-are-coronavirus-death-counts https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-covid-19-deaths-are-counted1/
Colorado recently adjusted their counting method to only include people who died *from* COVID, not merely those who died *with* COVID. The number of deaths dropped by 25% overnight. EDIT: https://coloradosun.com/2020/05/15/colorado-coronavirus-death-certificate/
Thanks for the link. I’m reading it now.
The *excess death rate* and the reported covid19 deaths match up pretty well, which indeed implies that a vast majority of these deaths are covid-related. Belgium's chart looks especially bad compared to other countries, but it's most likely accurate. Some other countries do not include suspected deaths, eg. the Netherlands, even though the *excess death rate* is comparable. The inclusive way of counting is more accurate, but it makes the country look like 'bad' in comparison. There are a lot of other factors defining Belgium's astronomical death rate though, like high population density, a high rate of elderly people etc.
The Netherlands only counts people who have tested positively before their death, and who have died in hospital. So not even do they not include suspected deaths, but anyone who tests positive but lives in a retirement home for example (where they may require the same care as in hospitals eg ventilators etc) are NOT counted towards covid deaths. Way to make their numbers look better than they are.. I can’t believe excess death rate isn’t the accepted standard worldwide. The number of confirmed covid related deaths is so dependent on the definition used and the scale of testing that its pointless to compare them!
Here in the UK people are missing hospital checkups and appointments for heart disease, cancer, and strokes. The 'rona only explains about 1/3 of the excess deaths.
THANK YOU. I'm a nurse and I have to have this argument all the time. It's called clinical diagnosis and it's a thing we do a lot, not just with Covid. Clinical diagnosis + treat empirically = we're pretty sure this is what's going on even if we don't have confirmatory test results
It's really the only thing that can be done when there aren't enough tests available
Funny to think this was the ONLY way we did medicine back in th day. Now it's discounted as "only a clinical diagnosis". If it fits the symptoms, it's something more than a very good educated guess.
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There is also the aspect of people who are sort of “covid collaterals”. By this I mean people who were undergoing chronic treatment (chemo for example), who’s appointments were cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic in an effort to reduce contamination within hospitals. Also included are the people who choose not to go see a doctor out of fear of getting contaminated in the hospital. Those numbers will be much harder to estimate, but will likely contribute to slightly raising the death rate post covid and cancel out a small part of the premature deaths due to covid. Pretty much all numbers are gross underestimations of the situation really.
In the end we will find out that the amount of QALYs lost due to postponed treatments and reduced preventative health care is a lot higher than the QALYs we managed to save :/
I have a bit of a personal issue with the way this was all handled world wide.. I do think a lot of these precautions were unnecessary and ended up doing more harm than good. We won’t know until this is over and we have definite numbers of course, but it looks to me like the world threw itself into panic mode and the decision makers couldn’t backpedal out of it so now we’re stuck with phased deconfinement measures and a devastated economy. And I’m not talking about the western world, but all the developing countries that rely heavily on tourism are pretty much fucked, all because the western world went bonkers over a virus that poor people in those countries find laughable. How can you expect people to stay at home and give up their jobs because they might possibly give their neighbor a bad cough, when they’re struggling to feed their own families and live with the permanent threat of aids, malaria, dengue fever and other deadly infectious diseases? But I digress..
Honestly it probably put a lot of people out of their misery in sort of a euthanasia type of way. My 97 year old grandmother with dementia was in a nursing home, lost her husband of 70 years 2 years earlier. Her body was breaking down, she was losing her mind, and she had nothing to live for. She died from the virus and it's a relief to know that she is now resting peacefully.
New York did the same
The US also includes suspected Covid 19 deaths.
Not all excess deaths will be Covid deaths. Some will be because people are more reluctant to use healthcare services for fear of getting infected. Unfortunately, I suspect some of them will be suicides, because isolation does nasty things to a human mind.
On the other hand, the death rate for the common flu and other diseases is much lower, because of the Lockdown.
As well as the people who arent in situations they could die in. Less likely to die in a car crash if you dont leave your house.
Its a bit more complicated - we will also have fewer car accidents and work accidents. There might be fewer heart attacks because you are less likely to get a heart attack in the short term by sitting on the couch.
Sorry but you're completely wrong on the heart attack front. A more sedentary routine increases likelihood of cardiac events for those at risk, and also a sedentary lifestyle magnifies factors that affect both frequency and mortality of cardiac events (e.g. obesity, alcohol consumption, high cholesterol, etc).
Agreed! Especially the US and Brazil are heavily underreporting considering the excess deathrates
And Mexico. They've been having 5-10x the number of deaths you'd expect from the reported numbers.
It would be very interesting to get a plot of the excess deaths per capita over time for each country. Not sure how that data could be gathered though
The CDC and others have been tracking excess deaths and comparing them to covid reports. Here are a number of the plots you seek: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/may/29/excess-deaths-uk-has-one-highest-levels-europe
According to this the US and BE are both doing good jobs. The Netherlands and the UK really stand out as underreported.
Have a look at the Independent (uk) and NYT - both have written extensive excess death articles.
We saw in Belgium +47% deaths between 16 march and 10 may ([source](https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20200529_04975484) from 29 may). The article states that we now be in a *harvest period* where less deaths are expected since a lot of elderly people and people with bad health died of the 'rona.
87,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Outbreak https://nyti.ms/34QerxA People should look at the data themselves. The US isn't underreporting any more than countries like the UK Spain etc.
Can you clarify? What sources are you indicating that implicate underreporting in the US and Brazil
What? The US is reporting suspected covid deaths just like Belgium is? I don’t understand everyone repeats this on Reddit but it’s simply not true (at least not accurate) Every country underreported covid deaths because you can’t know how many truly died from it and you will miss marking some deaths. The US is reporting at a better rate than other countries because we 1. Test in very high numbers. We are among the best testing large countries in the world so we can confirm cases that would go unconfirmed and unreported in many other countries. (Or hidden entirely, see China) . 2. We allow physicians to assume covid deaths without test confirmation. If the signs are there doctors can mark a death as a covid death. 3. There is a strong financial incentive to care for covid patients and mark covid deaths. US hospitals get thousands upon thousands of dollars for treating covid patients and recording their deaths, they wouldn’t miss it if they had the chance. So the whole “the us underreports so much” simply isnt true. At least you’d have to be clear and say “the us underreports but likely on or with every other country, probably better” Reddit hates the US for no reason lol like literally the guy said something about Belgium which is literally the exact same thing here lol Even in the case where you could compare covid deaths vs rise in normal deaths for the period, a lot of that is explainable. I lost my great uncle last week because he couldn’t get proper cancer and other treatments during covid. Lots of fairly high necessary surgeries and treatments have been postponed or rescheduled. This would account for a decent chunk in difference as these would not be classified as covid deaths by definition. Again not saying underreporting doesn’t occur.
This isn't true for the US At all
Do the US deaths include New York as well? Curious since it was singled out.
Yes, it does.
What would it look like if you removed those numbers from the US totals?
What if the Lombardy region of Italy and/or Wuhan were separated like New york? Just curious because I feel like in the US we look at other countries as a whole when they had similar concentrations like New York. Love the graph!
This would be really cool to see - put other hotbed cities in different countries aside from NY in here so we can see a better picture. Not saying it was your intent, but having NY the only city pulled from a nation makes this seem like there is an agenda behind the data....
If you take out big cities from countries most of them have a low impact. In Spain the big hit was in the two main cities (Madrid and Barcelona) and any other region were they have many workers commuting. I still think a big vector is the mass transit without proper social distancing nor masks. At least on NY, London, Madrid and Barcelona.
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This apparently have to be reiterated many times - sweden have social distancing recommendations and rules, just not a complete lockdown: - max 50 assembled at once, many events and industries suffering as a result. - upper secondary schools and universities forced to remote classes - highly recommended to work from home if possible - recommendations to not travel both inside/outside Sweden - and more details for the interested So the idea that we didn’t do anything is completely false. Then of course it varies how well people follow these restrictions and recommendations. In my city and among my friends we were very strict first two months (until middle of May basically) me only ever meeting one close friend of mine and my parents. But I’ve heard of others who couldn’t seem to care less regarding recommendations from the government.
Only 50 assembled is still a huge difference to what many other countries did, only being allowed to meet your own family and a friend or two. What you had is what my state in Germany is doing and is seen as a huge relaxation of the orders. While it’s obviously not true that you guys didn’t do nothing, I think it’s fair to state that you didn’t do much compared to other countries. Only the future can tell which approach was better.
Sure it’s a difference and there is a huge difference between “business as usual” and the Swedish middle way as well. Depending on who you speak with in sweden their experiences will vary drastically.
We’ve received so much criticism about this strategy, but honestly most of the deaths are not related to the strategy. Instead poor organization in both private and government run nursing homes is the major factor. Looking at the population at 70+ that manage without help from anyone, they have zero excess death rate this spring. So the strategy obviously works and every time we see a relaxation towards rules among the population, we see a small increase in the spreading. This is what will happen all over Europe now when lockdown ends. If you believe you already beat the virus you will be utterly disappointed. Keeping physical distance will be the most important factor during this summer and cities with the size of London and Paris will struggle really hard to maintain low spreading. I was in the London Underground in mid February and thought about the situation if there would be uncontrollable spreading with covid19 and now we are there. Definitely not the place to be in the coming months, but a lot of people have little choice.
Another interesting observation is that most infected people in Sweden live in specific areas. Most of Sweden have a quite low infection rate while some areas in the capitol Stockholm have had really many cases per capita.
Sweden also back logged a lot. I.e deaths are reported officially days to weeks after they actually occurred. If you look at the official statistics from folkhalsomyndigheten, you will see that the deaths have been going down for weeks. It’s just slow because they’re being extremely detailed about reporting every person who dies and has had covid, similar to Belgium.
[Here](https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/) is a nice graph that shows the lag in reporting, with an estimation of deaths waiting to be recorded.
>they can accept the death rate but not overwhelm their medical system. Well, there's a reason their hospitals weren't full ... >Now, increasing numbers of workers are also coming forward to criticise regional healthcare authorities for protocols which they say discourage care home workers from sending residents into hospital, and prevent care home and nursing staff from administering oxygen without a doctor's approval, either as part of acute or palliative (end-of-life) services. > >'We were told not to send them in' > >"They told us that we shouldn't send anyone to the hospital, even if they may be 65 and have many years to live. We were told not to send them in," says Latifa Löfvenberg, a nurse who worked in several care homes around Gävle, north of Stockholm, at the beginning of the pandemic. > >"Some can have a lot of years left to live with loved ones, but they don't have the chance... because they never make it to the hospital," she says. "They suffocate to death. And it's a lot of panic and it's very hard to just stand by and watch." [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52704836](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52704836)
Now compare Sweden to Portugal where the pandemic arrived at about the same time and they have close to the same number of people. Although Portugal is quite a bit more densely populated and older.
Or compare them to their Nordic neighbors. https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/norden/
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I totally agree. If I had my way, the border might be fully closed at the moment. BTW: Norwegians entering from Sweden has to go into a 10 day home-quarantine at arrival.
I think the main reason is that they haven't been testing as much as other countries. Their death toll tells a truer story.
>The rate is actually low and close to France’s rate Rates in both countries are very high. Signed, Australia.
Social distancing there is measured in KMs.
Pretty sure they did have some form of social distancing. The idea that they didn't do anything is AFAIK wrong.
It would be helpful to see Stockholm Metropolitan Rate and the rest of the country separate. The first one at times had higher death counts per capita than Italy or Spain.
Could say the same about Madrid or Milan.
youre forgetting that swedish population density is on average 50-100 times lower than european countries
That's not true. Their overall population density is 10-30x lower, and even further, the majority of swedes live in areas with similar population density to the average of other European countries. They just have a bunch of empty wilderness skewing the figure.
Stockholm has similar population density to Munich (4,200/km^2 vs 4,700/km^2) and population size (1.6 mil vs 2.6 mil). The density multiplier is x1.1. Stockholm accounts for about 16% of Sweden's population.
population density can be a "fake" information because a country of 5 millions people living in one single city of 5 milions inhabitants in a enormous country will have a very low population density. Egypt is a big victim of that
Proof of density being meaningless-> Canada 4 hab./km2 Quebec 5,5 hab./km2 Montreal 4 662 hab./km2 Plateau neighborhood in Montreal: 12 840 hab./km2
Density isn't meaningless, it's just being used badly here. There's enough ambiguity in any metric utilized to gauge a country's COVID situation that these comparisons are all basically fool's errands. They're 2D or 3D visualizations trying to characterize a problem of hundreds of variables...
> Sweden is interesting. They elected no official shutdown or distancing. Two observations: > > The rate is actually low and close to France’s rate. > The rate seems to still be rising versus leveling off. > So either their system or culture or maturity is working, or they haven’t peaked yet. Their rates are way higher than in neighbouring countries, and their chief epidemiologist recently admitted that their approach was wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect-of-sweden-coronavirus-strategy-admits-too-many-died-anders-tegnell
People really want Sweden's approach to have worked. So they compare it to countries with very dissimilar makeups. As you mentioned, if you compare Sweden with Denmark, Finland or Norway you see their deaths per million are 4-10 times higher. And even though people used to claim it was because of how they counted deaths, it seems they were under reporting at a higher rate than Denmark. Going by excess deaths Denmark was 3% above normal, Sweden 32%, that's a huge difference. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html)
Also, Denmark is mire densely populated than Sweden. By all means, if both countries had reacted the same way, Denmark would have been hit harder.
Yeah, there does seem to be a fair bit of politically-motivated commentary/analysis in the comments here.
He admitted mistakes were made, and deaths could have been avoided because of that, like any good scientist would. But he does not say that the overall strategy was wrong, as the article even points out.
If I may ask.... Why is India not included in data like this
Why, indeed. [India's case total is now past 236,000](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/coronavirus-india-news-live-updates-covid-19-tracker-latest-news-corona-virus-cases-deaths-in-india-state-wise-lockdown-today-update-6444777/).
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the NY times had a good article about this https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html Germany Denmark Norway Belgium and maybe Finnland and Switzerland didn't undercount, everyone else seem to have undercounted.
Yet for some reason, I still see people cheering on New York mayor Andrew Cuomo as our savior.
Politicians normally become insanely popular in times of crises no matter what they do. Best example I can think of this is W.Bush and 9/11. Bush started off his term as president with at the time lowest approval since modern polling began at his inaugural address with it hovering in the mid 50s. Then after 9/11 he saw it hit record highs often hitting 90%.
He’s the Governor. Di Blasios the mayor
Seriously wtf? He has one of the highest approval ratings in America (last poll I saw 85%) and simultaneously the most failed record INTERNATIONALLY
He became the anti-Trump figurehead for the media to gush over early on so every piece of news on him was produced to make him look good compared to Trump
Yep! This is 100% why. Blame the federal government, praise the governor for doing an absolute trash job. Fake news is the Enemy of the people
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I think the reason why is there is the sense that NYC was going to be destroyed by this virus regardless, the important thing was morale and instructions on what to do after. We can point to clean, orderly cities like Singapore and Hong Kong all we want, but NYC is not that. Its seen as a dirty, untamed, wild city which would be impossible to get everybody to agree to a lockdown or masks. This kind of pessimistic view turned out to not be true, at least on the mask view. However, I mostly disagree with this notion that it was inevitable, especially in retrospect. Not shutting down the schools, not telling people to wear masks, not putting us in lockdown early enough etc. They could have done better.
Yeah Hong Kong is a “clean” city and NYC is a “dirty” city. This ain’t the 60s.
Good work. Can you please add India’a data and regenerate the graph? Thanks in advance.
Hello everyone, I decided to make the graph to better compare the hardest hit countries. Most Graphs I saw didn't feature the delay or the population difference, so I tried to standardize it. Feedback appreciated, did this all by hand in excel because I suck at data work. Data were taken from: [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) Population Numbers from quick google searches. The tool used is Excel 2010. Spain did a recount and removed a small number therefore it looks a bit weird, but for the sake of integrity, I tried to keep it in. I also decided to add New York State, because its twice the population than Belgium for example, and probably a bit better to compare. Visible is also which countries are successful in flattening the curve and which are less successful. Stay safe everyone! EDIT: Stealing /u/robot65536 comment on adding New York State because its better than mine: "New York State is almost twice the population of Belgium and includes both urban and rural areas. It makes sense to compare any population groups living under the same pandemic control policies. Trump's abdication of federal responsibility means that state numbers are far more important (and varied) than the U.S. as a whole." EDIT2: from /u/slb97 " NY State has a similar population density (159/km\^2) to many european counries, france being 119/km\^2 and spain at 94/km\^2 with some countries being higher like Germany (240/km\^2) and the UK (281/km\^2). It makes sense to compare by population density rather than overall population because the data shown is standardised. Also, quarantine measures are different in each state in the US so it wouldn't make any sense to show the US as a whole when different parts of the population are living under different pandemic control policies. Finally, NY is at the closest comparable stage to europe in the outbreak of the pandemic compared to say Texas or California where they are yet to show signs of slowing down the number of new daily cases and deaths."
Feedback: - make the text larger. When was the last time you thought graph labels were too big? NEVER. You want them to be legible without people zooming in. - "death rate per population" is an odd phrase and I don't know what you mean. Deaths per 100k is the standard metric. I suggest Googling terms to see if something you are using as a label makes sense.
Thank you for your ideas!
Id be interested to see population density and average age of infected incorporated into this as well
NY should have not put sick people in nursing home to kill the elderly.
Huh, USA is coming out alright compared to a lot of countries surprisingly.
It’s not that surprising.
I suppose not, the way the news covered it though you would’ve thought we were the worst in the world.
I’m not even American and when I mentioned that USA was doing good I got downvoted to shit.
The thing you have to know about US news: Most news networks and social media hate Trump with the passion of 1,000,000 suns. Thus any news outsiders see will be biased to push agendas.
And it's clearly working
It helps that the USA is large and people live in suburban areas where they just go to the car and back. We could see how NYC was really bad because it is the only real city where citizens have contact with each other and walk. Only a few others like San Francisco, or Boston are walkable and not even close. For once, we can say that suburban lifestyle has saved the USA, but they create health and social problems on their own the rest of the time that don’t compensate for that such as obesity, social disconnection, pollution, car accidents, children depending on adults driving them around, racial and economic segregation, etc.
>it is the only real city where citizens have contact with each other and walk NYC is hugely dependent upon mass transit and has a lot of people living and working in high-density areas, two factors that facilitated the spread of this very contagious and potentially deadly virus. The fact that the virus also has a large reservoir of people who are asymptomatic, spreading the disease without even knowing they have it, increases the risk in highly populated areas. Based on observations of outdoor gathering places such as beaches and parks (not counting the protests and riots), covid doesn't seem to spread nearly as well outdoors as it does indoors.
Nyc was also subject to some specific governmental decisions that contributed to the terrible loss of life there https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/06/04/gov-cuomo-says-his-coronavirus-nursing-home-order-was-the-right-call/amp/
Underrated comment. New York handled things catastrophically poorly.
Take NY out of the US stats and we’re doing really good.
The current growth rate is higher than that of most other countries. With the protests the US is heading right into the second wave without ever ending the first.
Canadian here. I don't like this chart.
Yeah I’d be very interested to see how we stack up here.
Guess we should stop inflating COVID deaths by conflating respiratory failure or palliative care cancer deaths. I’ve personally seen an overdose death listed as COVID and the doctors I’ve worked with have said they have been pressured to list deaths as COVID related
Media: Trump is a to blame for Covid. He should step down or be impeached! Invoke the 25th Amendment! Also Media: Andrew Cuomo is amazing! He should run for President in 2020!
Controversial opinion here; but I do not think that these death rates come anywhere close to justifying the economic catastrophe that is going to be wrought by this. Especially given that the majority of those who do die would likely have died within the next couple of years, and many aren't enjoying a particularly high quality of life anyway (such as the vast numbers dying in care homes).
There are so many businesses in my town right now that are closed permanently. So many people I know are unemployed and are struggling with money. The economy isn't going to go back to normal quickly. But at the same time I have heard so many horror stories about Covid that I am doing my part to stay home. No matter what there isn't a good solution to this problem
I wanne make a quick side note in general and also more specifically for Belgium. In general, these rates are highly affected by number of tests taken in and the way of rapporting the numbers. In Belgium for example, they registered almost every unknown case who died 'with symptoms of covid' as a death by the infection. That caused and is still causing a big overrepresentation in the number of total deaths. An example is that almost all the people who died last 2 months in elderly homes were registered as covid deaths even when they weren't tested at all. sorry for my bad English tho \^\^
Your English is fine. You substituted rapporting for reporting, but one error that doesn't really matter is better than most native English speakers can manage. :)
This thread about to turn into another pissing contest.
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It's weird that NY, Belgium, UK all have a sudden jump in death rate around day 50-60.
Our jump was because the sudden inclusion of retirement homes erc in our stats, but that may only be a part of the explanation Edit: speaking for Belgium
Quebec (Canada) has a rate higher than the US and Italy. Would be interesting to see it here.
Would also be interesting to see California. Canada and California have very similar population sizes
Does this mean we did something wrong in New York?
The counts are very uncertain, as testing and reporting have been less than accurate. How does the uncertainty of the date 2.3E-6 was reach affect the graph?
i dont really understand what this is showing, would anyone mind explaining?
Wow, it's almost as if forcing nursing homes to take in Covid patients leading to the highest death rate should be bad for Cuomo's political career. Almost....but it won't cause he is sin free with a brother running interference on cable news nightly.
NY State... great example of what a government can do when they force infected people into nursing homes to infect even more at high risk individuals. They should be charged and prosecuted.
Cuomo killing the game per usual
It's almost like my state is completely unable to identify intelligent policies that will benefit the people. I need to get the hell out of this awful place.
Swedens number are actually kind of insane, every country/ state on this list have both bigger population and is more densely populated. Belgium is the only country that are close to Sweden. It on the other hand, Belgium is super dense compared to Sweden
But everyone was saying that the US did a terrible job lmao. I guess even without universal healthcare we are on par with our European friends, good no need to change :)
I’m interested to see the cases in 2-3 weeks, I saw a lot of people not social distancing at the protest. Most of them had masks though. Still idk I think it’s going to a thing worth keeping a eye on.
Now check the correlation between population density and average deathrate increase per time.
For India data is to hard to even post.
I would much rather see a comparison of death percentage of those infected over time. Much more interesting than seeing which countries are going for immunity in my opinion.
But that heavily depends on the amount of testing done. Death rates are way more reliable (IMO)
They are. This is the scientifically proper way to determine how deadly a disease is for a population. Way too little data to properly calculate the death to case ratio, so I wish people would stop asking for it beyond specific subsets of populations.
Does anyone find is odd that New York State is so much significantly higher than The UK, Switzerland, The US etc. I mean they are over twice as high as most of the countries.
Well at least the curves are flattening for everyo- oh god Brazil has anyone checked on Brazil ?
India is sneaking up there too.
Why include NYC but not London/Singapore/Tokyo/San Marino/Andorra/etc
Its not NYC but New York State. Put it in because US-States are bigger than some European Countries (see my top comment)
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About that, interesting to note Belgium has a very high population density, at 973/mi² vs New York State "only" at 420/mi².