So, my country had 66,715 excess deaths in the first six months of the year compared to 2019, according to compiled, definitive data from all register offices. That's a nice fit to the 59,594 confirmed Covid-19 deaths during the same time period.
Despite a population three times larger, that's similar to the 63,000 excess deaths registered in the UK until June. Was the pandemic that late to South America compared to Europe? Maybe not. But we know that increasing age exponentially increases the severity of the disease, and Brazil is about 10 years younger, on average, than most European countries. The number of people over 65 is also similar: ~12 million in the UK and Italy, ~18 million in Brazil.
It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that death rates could be <0.1% in Nigeria and >1% in Japan even taking into account the differences to healthcare access, solely due to the average age of their population.
Edit: that would also suggest OC43-CoV is deadlier than SARS-CoV-2 to people without cellular immunity to it, if the 1889 pandemic was indeed the human introduction OC43-CoV, considering the average age back in 1889.
