Coronavirus: Death Rates


What fraction of infected people are dying of coronavirus? Some sites and reports are using this formula:
 
That formula comes up with low ratios. Unfortunately, it is wrong. Why? Because most cases are still ongoing/active/open and they could end either way: in recovery, or in death. The right formula to use is:
By that second formula, the death rate globally is 19% . That means 19% of infected people died. It does not mean 19% of people in the world have died.

With me so far? So far it was just logical thinking, but now it gets messy across different countries. The death rate in UK today is a staggering 93%, while Germany is at just 4.6%. How can there be such a huge difference in death rates across rich Western countries? Are Germans that much healthier than the Brits? Are healthcare systems that different in the two countries?  Nope, the answer lies elsewhere, as this article says:
“If a country carries out more tests, and also identifies people with mild forms of the disease, their figure will be much lower.”
Germany is a country that did lots of tests:
“Germany's low case fatality rate is therefore partly caused by the fact it has tested more people and, as a result, has identified more mild instances of the disease.”
Whereas:
“In comparison, in the UK, only people who need medical assistance are being tested and as a result the UK's case fatality rate is much higher.”
Got it? Countries that test a lot find many cases, most of which are mild and so their death rates are lower. While countries that test only those who are very ill identify only the severe cases, for which the death rate is higher.

As I’ve done in all my recent blogs, let’s get to India now. Specifically, India’s death rates in comparison to other countries at the same point of time, i.e., the period corresponding to India’s present day (Day 31):

India (2nd bar from the left) comes out quite favorably in the mix. Wondering if this is just a statistical quirk at Day 31? How does India fare through the entire Day 1 to Day 31 period?
Pleasant surprise, right? India (grey line) has been on the lower side than most countries for much of the first 31 day period. That’s even more surprising since India has taken the same approach as the UK, not Germany. We didn’t do random tests, and hence didn’t register mild cases. We only register the cases where medical assistance is needed, the more severe ones. And yet our death rate is on the lower side…

So the next time you see the headline of “so many deaths yesterday”, take a deep breath and then check out the number of recoveries as well. We are doing better than many, but as China and South Korea have shown, we could do even better.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more