Covid-19 deaths; some sage historical perspective

It pays to take a macro historical view if you want to get proper perspective on and context for the global Covid-19 pandemic. Here, the author takes a step back from the media hype and fear-mongering and extracts some historical mortality data, country by country. What does it show? That the coronavirus is a blip on the radar of historical causes of death. In fact, by fitting into the overall pattern of fatal diseases, it could actually be considered ‘normal’. Pundits and professors haul out data and statistics to suit their various arguments. This author makes a sage observation; stats are innocent (neutral actually), its people who selectively misuse them to bolster their arguments. Is he not doing the same thing? Well, the difference is he’s not blowing up one aspect or taking the data out of context. He’s using macro historical data to provide context. Scientists value what they call metadata – that’s what we’re talking about here; a set of data that describes and gives information about other data. It brings to mind that famous old guidance for effective human interaction; self, others and context. Perhaps it takes a pandemic to remind us of that virtuous triangle. – Chris Bateman

By Krzysztof Wojciechowicz*

Was it Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain who said that “there are lies, damned lies and statistics”?

However, statistics are innocent; blame people who use them.

For the last few months we have been flooded with multitude of figures, sophisticated graphs, tables showing danger of the sinister coronavirus. Counting in hundreds, thousands, even millions of victims. In the old days you didn’t need figures to see the disaster – there were piles of corpses in the streets, deserted towns, cities and villages. Now there are no corpses lying  everywhere, but we have  deserted streets, parks, shops, restaurants, etc. And we have media, too.

What strange, media give us more fright than the sight of piles of corpses.

If you are really interested in the background of this phenomenon, you may first ask what is an epidemic or pandemic. It’s easy – for example  in  Merriam Webster Dictionary  you will find a definition and an example: “The 1918 flu was pandemic and claimed millions of lives”.

“Millions of lives”? At last we have some starting point for our analysis. Now we can go to Internet and search in Google for death statistics. Of course, we want some time series showing the history and trends. I toiled a few days on this task. Most of  time series end in 2017; only a few go to year 2018. I have a good experience in looking for statistics, but it took me few days to find data for United Kingdom and United States. If you want other countries, you would need to speak their languages – for example, I speak Polish, but I failed to locate their deaths data. The most recent one is up to year 2017.

But these few days of search proved very fruitful. Please see overall death statistics in United States (by weeks):

The last record (week 15) means middle of April 2020. I realise that this picture may be embarrassing  for coronavirus proselytes. It hardly fits with piles of corpses and the worst national disaster in US history. But it’s true – it comes from US Centre for Health Mortality (https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html)

Now, United Kingdom:

It is on monthly bases, and it ends in March 2020. But if you make calculation, you will find that the level of deaths in three months of 2020 is lower than ten years average for this period! And United Kingdom is one of the leaders in coronavirus pandemia! The data comes from UK Office for National Statistics – the file can be downloaded from the address shown in the graph.

There are some historical events which mark the borderline between epochs. For example, XIX century really ended with the break of I World War. The end of pre-coronavirus epoch occurred like at the press of button.

In South Africa, Daily Maverick (now the most staunch coronavirus proselyte) wrote days before coronavirus epoch:

“The considerable coverage of the flu-like coronavirus while millions of people die annually from flu has been highlighted by website Global Research which reported that there are five million cases of flu worldwide and 650,000 deaths annually, making seasonal flu a “serious concern”, yet the Wuhan coronavirus dominates the headlines.

Likewise, CNBC reported that the flu has already killed 10,000 people across the US as the world frets over coronavirus, saying the flu remains a higher threat to the US public health than the new coronavirus.

Compared to the dozen cases of coronavirus, CNBC reported, “at least 19 million people have come down with the flu in the United States with 180,000 ending up in the hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The flu season, which started in September and can run until May, is currently at its peak and poses a greater health threat to the US than the new coronavirus, physicians say.”

USAToday reported on January 29 that when we think about the relative danger of this new coronavirus and influenza, “there’s just no comparison,” said William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “Coronavirus will be a blip on the horizon in comparison. The risk is trivial.”

If Americans aren’t afraid of the flu, perhaps that’s because they are inured to yearly warnings, USAToday reported. “For them, the flu is old news. Yet viruses named after foreign places – such as Ebola, Zika and Wuhan – inspire terror.”

“Familiarity breeds indifference,” Schaffner said. “Because it’s new, it’s mysterious and comes from an exotic place, the coronavirus creates anxiety.”

Some doctors joke that the flu needs to be rebranded, USAToday said. “We should rename influenza; call it XZ-47 virus, or something scarier,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.”

These innocent jokes of unaware medical men proved to be a sinister reality. The button had been pressed and medical men, journalists, politicians  suddenly became staunch advocates of the new coronavirus era. And in addition to its new sinister name the virus also got a new sinister image:

While waiting for more reliable time series of coronavirus data in other countries, we can try to analyse what we have so far. The most complete long term data I managed to find on Internet for other countries, is that for Portugal, ending Dec. 2019:

As we can see, the death pattern is clearly visible – considerably peaking in winter months. It is common for all the countries in the northern hemisphere:

… and also in southern hemisphere, with reversed winter/summer seasons:

Oddly, in the countries in extreme cold or warm climates, the deaths are not seasonally but randomly distributed:

This would imply that the temperature changes are more responsible for increase in deaths, than transfer of viruses  between people.

The real victims of coronavirus hoax are the south hemisphere countries, situated in temperate climates. They were forced to bear the world coronavirus terror just as they were about to enter the deadly winter season. They came into the new era in the most unfortunate time of low mortality season. Thus,  Australia could boast only 69 deaths; Argentina: 132 deaths; Bolivia: 32 deaths; New Zealand: 12 deaths; Zimbabwe: 3 deaths; Zambia: 3 deaths; Botswana: 1 death; South Africa: 52 deaths. But an order is an order: they had to comply with the world rules, with South Africa leading in the most severe measures: complete closure of all work places, imprisoning people in their dwellings, and most curious – ban on cigarettes and alcohol.

While the northern hemisphere countries have some excusable reason to end their lockdowns due to the lower mortality in summer time, the antipodes are just entering the reverse season. Somehow they will have to relax the terror in order to start rebuilding their destroyed economies, but how to explain it to their people? Hopefully, they can still use their statistics according to Benjamin Disraeli definition.

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