Sunday, October 18, 2020

Europe & North America are in trouble; in the U.S., Trump's negligence is allowed to continue, as tens of thousands die needlessly

Coronavirus: just fake news
     Recently, I wanted to get clear about Covid-19 cases/deaths around the world. Things aren't looking so good, especially in Europe and North America.

     I found a BBC article that provided useful graphs indicating comparative numbers. 

     The main graph listed countries by number of deaths, but I was more interested in death rates. So I modified the chart in order of rates: number of deaths per 100,000 people. I included only those nations with death rates of 50 or above (per 100K). The US is #11, with Mexico at #10 and the UK at #12.

     Obviously, a country can have a high death rate with low raw numbers owing to its small population. The real standout here is Brazil, with a rate of 74 per 100k and over 152,000 deaths. (On the other hand, the rate there has trended downward in recent weeks; good news.) 

     (Check out Peru as well.) 

     The US has far more deaths but its rate is much lower: 66 per 100k. (Our recent trends are not good, however. See below.)


Here's similar data from Johns Hopkins:


RECENT TRENDS:
Trends are also important.
The data below are also from Johns Hopkins:

Recent trends have been good in India, not so good in the US.
Note that India is low in deaths per 100k (8.4 compared to our 66.3).

In recent months, the trend has been good in Brazil (until very recently), but poor in France

The UK sucks about as badly as we do. What's that all about?
(Maybe the arsehole-as-leader factor.)


Big problems in Belgium

New cases of COVID-19 weekly for top 7 regions in the world.
European Union/UK and North America are standouts, in a bad way. South Asia, too, has
worrisome numbers, but, recently, trends have been good. Not so in Europe/US.


Above average death
From BBC, August 22:

Some argue that this is the truest measure of Covid's impact

Mysterious deaths in blue (Covidry uncounted)

In OC, things don't look too bad. Stable for now. But the cold is coming.
Then what? Rates will go up again.

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