Covid-19 statistics

Interesting statistics about the COVID-19 virus.

Comparing the USA against most of Western Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, U.K., France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland) the population difference is only 13,506. Virtually identical for comparison purposes.

Total cases: USA - 2,638,386, Europe - 1,206,712

Deaths - USA - 128,459, Europe - 133,137

Percent of Deaths/Cases - USA 4.87% - Europe 11.03%

Deaths per Million Population: USA - 388.09, Europe - 402.23

Cases % per Population - USA 0.8%, Europe - 0.36%

Tests Given USA-32,602,913, Europe - 26,776,346

Test % per Population - USA 9.85%, Europe - 8.09%

So with less than 1/2 of the cases of the USA, Europe has twice the deaths per positive infection.
Europe has more overall deaths from COVID-19 than the USA.
The USA has given 6,000,000 more tests, almost 2% more of the population than Europe. .
The USA has more than twice the number of positive infections than Europe.

So is the USA really as bad as the media says it is? Or is it all hype?

(I am not saying the virus is not serious)

Data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ 6/29/2020 10:00 am CDT.

Figures lie and liars figure.

Numbers are all over the map, and being manipulated to follow a narrative. There have been millions who had this, and either thought it was a mild cold or the flu, or had no symptoms at all. Never was reported, never required a doctor visit.

Using numbers of hospitalizations and deaths against only known testing gives a highly flawed result.

Capt Ronn,

Agreed.

My point is the "We are all doomed" and the "USA sucks" narrative from the media. When compared to an equal population block in Western Europe the USA numbers are actually better.

Statistics are a dubious business.

It's all hype. It's like when the media goes to a trailer park after a storm -- they know some aluminum will be tossed around. If you look at the charts, the states having spikes now, never had spikes in the beginning. The virus is rolling thru the US. Avg age is lower and the hospitalizations and deaths will be lower.

Now ask yourself this. We are a few weeks after the start of all the protests. Yet you see zero reporting that any of this was caused by the protests. They want us to believe it's all kids in bars and at the beech.

Short of a vaccine we're all gonna get Covid-19, sooner or later. It's the # of deaths that is important. Not the number being tested nor the number testing positive.

Golfman25 said:

Statistics are a dubious business.

It's all hype. It's like when the media goes to a trailer park after a storm -- they know some aluminum will be tossed around. If you look at the charts, the states having spikes now, never had spikes in the beginning. The virus is rolling thru the US. Avg age is lower and the hospitalizations and deaths will be lower.

Now ask yourself this. We are a few weeks after the start of all the protests. Yet you see zero reporting that any of this was caused by the protests. They want us to believe it's all kids in bars and at the beech.

Click to expand...

If the protests were the cause of this (some of them probably are) then the state where I live (Minnesota) would see the most case increases since we had the most protesting going on.....and our numbers are going down...

SkiPharmer said:

If the protests were the cause of this (some of them probably are) then the state where I live (Minnesota) would see the most case increases since we had the most protesting going on.....and our numbers are going down...

Click to expand...

So riddle me this Batman. If the protests haven't caused the spread, it would seem to indicate being outside, in close proximity, and yelling at each other isn't a significant act to spread the virus. Then why are they closing beaches?

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archive.../29/the-media-is-lying-about-the-second-wave/

For months, the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media kept a morbid Covid-19 “death count” on their front pages and at the top of their news broadcasts. The coronavirus outbreak was all about the number of dead. The narrative was intended to boost governors like Cuomo in New York and Whitmer in Michigan, who turned their states authoritarian under the false notion that destroying people’s jobs, freedom, and lives would somehow keep a virus from doing what viruses always do: spread through a population until eventually losing strength and dying out.

The “death count” was always the headline.

But then all of a sudden early in June the mainstream media did a George Orwell and lectured us that it is all about “cases” and has always been all about “cases.” Death, and especially infection fatality rate, were irrelevant. Why? Because from the peak in April, deaths had decreased by 90 percent and were continuing to crash. That was not terrifying enough so the media pretended this good news did not exist.

With massive increases in testing, the “case” numbers climbed. This is not rocket science: the more people you test the more “cases” you discover.

Unfortunately our mainstream media is only interested in pushing the “party line.” So the good news that millions more have been exposed while the fatality rate continues to decline - meaning the virus is getting weaker - is buried under hysterical false reporting of “new cases.”

Unfortunately many governors, including our own here in Texas, are incapable of resisting the endless lies of the mainstream media. They are putting Americans again through the nightmare of forced business closures, mandated face masks, and restrictions of Constitutional liberties based on false propaganda.

In Texas the “second wave” propaganda has gotten so bad that the leaders of the four major hospitals in Houston took the extraordinary step late last week of holding a joint press conference to clarify that the scare stories of Houston hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid cases are simply untrue. Dr. Marc Boom of Houston Methodist said the reporting on hospital capacity is misleading. He said, “quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now.”

In fact, there has been much reporting that the “spike” in Texas cases is not due to a resurgence of the virus but to hospital practices of Covid-testing every patient coming in for any procedure at all. If it’s a positive, well that counts as a “Covid hospitalization.” Why would hospitals be so dishonest in their diagnoses? Billions of appropriated Federal dollars are being funneled to facilities based on the number of “Covid cases” they can produce. As I’ve always said, if you subsidize something you get more of it. And that’s why we are getting more Covid cases.

Let’s go back to the original measurements used to scare Americans into giving up their Constitutional liberties: the daily death numbers. Even though we know hospitals have falsely attributed countless deaths to “Covid-19” that were deaths WITH instead of FROM the virus, we are seeing actual deaths steadily declining over the past month and a half. Declining deaths are not a great way to push the “second wave” propaganda, so the media and politicians have moved the goal posts and decided that only “cases” are important. It’s another big lie.

Resist propaganda and defend your liberty. That is the only way we’ll get through this.

^^^

Golfman25 said:

So riddle me this Batman. If the protests haven't caused the spread, it would seem to indicate being outside, in close proximity, and yelling at each other isn't a significant act to spread the virus. Then why are they closing beaches?

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I don't know Robin. My guess is people hangout at the beaches for a longer period of time and are in close contact with each other for a longer period of time instead of just walking around and many of the protesters have masks.

Statistics are not all paradox and contradiction. It depends on the W’s! Who is conducting the survey, What is the context and agenda, Where are they looking, When is the time period of the survey compared to current events, Why are they conducting the survey in the first place?

Then you can figure out which side of the statistic you agree with.

Anyone else, Without conducting due diligence in their research, should be excluded.

I work with the health technology platforms that collects, aggregates, transmits all the reporting on these cases ( and all other public health) electronically from hospitals and clinics to the CDC, who then transmits to HHS ( Alex Azar’s office).

I’m in the meetings, on the conference calls, on the Webexes.

Health officials know the numbers of reported cases and all downstream statistics are skewed.

They KNOW this.

The political ramifications of addressing the underlying cause are too risky for anyone (Govenors) to address. It would be an admission of failure of the entire Dept of Public Health.

The entire technology infrastructure in healthcare across the US is obsolete and dysfunctional.

Hospital executives and health officials have long ignored this in favor of profit and lobbyists.

If people knew the real details they would vote the bastards out and the healthcare industry would sink into a single payer system ultimately rationing care. This too is political suicide, they only reason Medicare for all is not viable...yet.

They ALL know this.

El Capitan said:

Health officials know the numbers of reported cases and all downstream statistics are skewed.

Click to expand...

How's this for some interesting statistics from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/provisional-tables.htm)? USA deaths:

2017 entire year 2,813,503 (234,000/month)
2018 entire year 2,839,205 (237,000/month)
2019 entire year 2,855,000 (238.000/month)
2020 thru 9/26 2,130,000 (237,000/month)
2020 extrapolated 2,844,000 (237,000/month x 12 months)

If 2020 works out like that (i.e., not as bad as 2019), it seems the lockdowns, etc., were unnecessary. IMO the purpose of lockdowns was not to reduce the deaths but to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.

What am I missing?

Third Edition said:

How's this for some interesting statistics from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/provisional-tables.htm)? USA deaths:

2017 entire year 2,813,503 (234,000/month)
2018 entire year 2,839,205 (237,000/month)
2019 entire year 2,855,000 (238.000/month)
2020 thru 9/26 2,130,000 (237,000/month)
2020 extrapolated 2,844,000 (237,000/month x 12 months)

If 2020 works out like that (i.e., not as bad as 2019), it seems the lockdowns, etc., were unnecessary. IMO the purpose of lockdowns was not to reduce the deaths but to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.

What am I missing?

Click to expand...

A sense of breathless panic.

Third Edition said:

How's this for some interesting statistics from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/provisional-tables.htm)? USA deaths:

2017 entire year 2,813,503 (234,000/month)
2018 entire year 2,839,205 (237,000/month)
2019 entire year 2,855,000 (238.000/month)
2020 thru 9/26 2,130,000 (237,000/month)
2020 extrapolated 2,844,000 (237,000/month x 12 months)

If 2020 works out like that (i.e., not as bad as 2019), it seems the lockdowns, etc., were unnecessary. IMO the purpose of lockdowns was not to reduce the deaths but to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.

What am I missing?

Click to expand...

I followed your link and couldn’t find the 2019 numbers. 2018 seemed to be most up to date. Where did you find the numbers for 2019?

Using a monthly average after a whole year might be useful when talking in broad terms, but using a monthly average based on a partial year may be misleading. Death is seasonal, for example, the annual flu is prevalent in the late fall to early spring, so no flu impact in 2020 numbers. Also suicide and elderly deaths spike in the winter holiday season.

On the broader question, the general effect of the shutdowns and closings probably has had an effect on the accidental death rates, fewer folks driving to work, fewer folks out in the city, etc. Anecdotally, I know from comments made by the Boston Police Commissioner suggest violent crime dropped during the Mass stay at home period.

Now for the comment about shut downs. The President has made the comment that the projected death total at the onset of the Pandemic was 2.2 million if nothing was done. At the same time he said the result of his efforts was the at the time a total of 220k. Separately in another thread here on CSR a discussion of lethality arrived at a projected number of 1.8 million based based on known deaths to date. So to answer your question it would seem that lockdowns, masks and social distancing has saved 1,800,000 lives based on President Trump’s claims or 1,600,000 lives based on the public health experts here on CSR. So regardless of the total number of deaths for 2020, it looks like 1.6 to 1.8 million Americans were saved by the current efforts to date.

The original reason for lock downs was "to flatten the curve" meaning to spread out the incidents so as to not overwhelm the current facilities and allow time to gather/recover supplies and expand temporary facilities.
An this was valid reasoning. And this was practical. And this worked.
And at the time (Jan-Mar 2020) there were no good statistics it was all based on broad scary estimations.

It was never supposed to be a long term lock down.

I too work with technology systems and statistics, none are ever better than the methodology used to gather them.
In the current situation there is NO METHODOLOGY. That is because there is no consistency to how the data is being gathered and how it is being interpreted. You have different countries, governments, agencies, hospitals, different systems all "gathering information" in different manners with differing criteria. This make the numbers mostly useless as a basis for any extrapolation or comparison.

A simple example,
I have a friend who has been tested at least five times over two months, all negative, doctor required before some medical procedures she needed. Is that 5 tests? But its only one person. Over what time frame?
Healthcare and first responders are being tested daily or often now. How does that affect test counts?

I see test counts as a useless stat, testing is a point in time. My wife and I gave blood and tested negative. Doesn't mean I wont be infected today.

Positive case count has some value, but is is really "known positives" a mere portion of the total cases.

ThirdEdtion's CDC stats a good example of the interpretation of stats. What do they mean?
More people died of "Covid-19" in 2020 right? (we are told)
But given the numbers therefore less people died from something else? Less auto deaths due to less driving?
Or would the 80 yo grandmother that died (and yes that is sad) have died this year from something else regardless?
From the annual flu, heart failure, pneumonia, a fall?

Aggregate numbers are very difficult to interpret without all the context of how and when they were gathered.
A hundred years later they are still arguing over the extent of the "Spanish Flu" they all agree it was "bad"...
And a hundred years from now they will argue over the extent of Covid-19 and they will all agree it was "bad".
There is no way to have useful real time statistics on Covid-19 in the US, let alone globally.

hughespat57 said:

There is no way to have useful real time statistics on Covid-19 in the US, let alone globally.

Click to expand...

Too true. That's why, IMO, looking at total deaths for the year is the only way to tell if the Covid-19 pandemic really moved the needle with respect to overall deaths. From historical data we can expect a certain number of deaths per year from all causes. Looking at what's happened and what's projected, 2020 is not at all out of the norm.

A lot of people died of Covid-19. But since the #s seem to say the total deaths are not out of the norm, it seems safe to conclude that many who died of Covid-19 would have died from something else.

It seems we severely damaged the economy in response to a disease that didn't move the needle on overall deaths per year.

The 'breathless panic' mentioned by Golfman25 is likely the key element in the mistakes that were made by politicians and the medical experts advising them. Let's hope we learn from that.

Third Edition said:

How's this for some interesting statistics from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/provisional-tables.htm)? USA deaths:

2017 entire year 2,813,503 (234,000/month)
2018 entire year 2,839,205 (237,000/month)
2019 entire year 2,855,000 (238.000/month)
2020 thru 9/26 2,130,000 (237,000/month)
2020 extrapolated 2,844,000 (237,000/month x 12 months)

If 2020 works out like that (i.e., not as bad as 2019), it seems the lockdowns, etc., were unnecessary. IMO the purpose of lockdowns was not to reduce the deaths but to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.

What am I missing?

Click to expand...

You missed the page where CDC does all the statistical work for you: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Total predicted number of excess deaths since 2/1/2020 across the United States: 236,480 - 318,355
Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19

Going back to your numbers, to the points Henry made, a reading of the fine print reveals that it takes up to 8 weeks for the death numbers to be updated through receipt of death certificates, so using late September means that number was understated. Also, a cursory glance at the chart above shows that deaths are quite seasonal, at a low point in the summer then rising quite a bit in the fall/winter.

I appreciate the CDC's interpretation of the data. Certainly there is a lag in updating death numbers. And yes, deaths are more in fall/winter.

There are many reasons posited in many places that point to the numbers being far worse than reported.

Conversely, it may be the overall deaths for 2020 will be no worse than 2019.

"Time will tell us who is trying to sell us". CSN

If governments were to post by numbers in hospital, deaths by age, health of dead before they were sick we all would get a clear picture of those that are at risk. In Alberta the average of dead according the news paper was 82 years old with only 3 dead that were 30 and younger. With flu season upon us deaths will go up restrictions will probably increase.
I keep writing my elected government and asking for the numbers by age. No response.