Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[SvennoJ]

Barozi said:

Doubt I've seen this posted here but I found a nice research paper about excess deaths in many countries. There's also a nice table included.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/69336

Shame there's no data for Turkey as I expect that to be heavily undertracked. Many East European, Central Asian and Latin American countries seem to have much higher excess deaths than their official Covid data would lead you to believe. But also countries like Egypt (13 times higher excess deaths than reported Covid deaths) and South Africa (almost 3 times more) show quite a discrepancy.

some "highlights":

Egypt: reported: 6.6k | excess: 87k
Mexico: reported: 220k | excess: 470k
Poland: reported: 75k | excess: 120k
Russia: reported: 110k | excess: 500k
South Africa: reported 60k | excess: 160k

What stood out to me is the huge difference in cases vs deaths between South Africa and Japan

South Africa had 84.5K new cases with 2,352 deaths, Japan 140K new cases with 176 deaths. (last week's numbers)
Looking at the excess mortality, Japan is -15K, South Africa +160K

I guess cases are extremely under tracked in South Africa, of course also Japan is 41% fully vaccinated, South Africa only 8%, yet the median age in Japan is 48.4, in South Africa 27.6, Japan has about 12 hospital beds per 1,000, South Africa 2.3 per 1,000.

Comparing Apples and Koalas it seems.

What's also interesting is that in some countries Covid-19 saved lives. New Zealand reported 30 deaths, yet has 1,900 few deaths due to covid measures, 1,870 lives saved by the pandemic. And while Japan is currently struggling, they're still 5,000 deaths ahead of a non pandemic year.

Silver lining from online schooling, no flu, no pneumonia, no colds, no sore throats etc since the kids stopped going to school. At what risk though, they haven't been 'training' their immune system for over a year now.