Covid 19 Death Rate - UK Worst in World


Update 24/8/20, from the BBC!
A graph showing the only really reliable figure - excess deaths, tucked away in an BBC article about how badly the USA is doing: Coronavirus: Is the US the worst-hit country for deaths?  

Dear BBC the answer is no, we are, look at your own graph! Oddly the article brushes over its own graph.

Update 9/7/20:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality


You may already know that the UK has the 3rd highest number of deaths from Covid-19, behind the USA and Brazil.


Obviously the USA and Brazil have much larger populations.  So the proper way to look at how countries are doing is by looking at the number of deaths as a proportion of their total population - deaths per 100,000 population.

Using this metric the UK has easily the worst record of all major countries.  Nearly twice as bad as the USA, nearly 3 times as bad as Brazil, over 100 times as bad as South Korea and 200 times the death rate of China.


This is using data from Johns Hopkins University as at 23rd June 2020.  It's likely that 3rd World countries hit later than us, such as Brazil and India, will overtake us in time.  Nevertheless it is shocking how badly we have done compared to, say,  Italy and Germany. Not to mention China.


Oddly death rates per 100K population don't appear on the BBC or other UK media.  Just like the images of coffins and the bereaved, which you may remember they happily published when Italy, Iran and China were at their worst.


However if you dig you can find it on the BBC here but you have to scroll down to the  "CORONAVIRUS data in detail" chart and then click on the "Death rate" column to sort it.

China's tiny death rate per 100K will never get a mention in the corporate media.  Not even in a  BBC article about how China's data can't be trusted.

If their rate has been fudged and truly is similar to ours (64 deaths per 100,000 people) it's difficult to see how any regime, even China, could manipulate 64.27 down to the Lilliputian 0.33 deaths per 100,000.

The Johns Hopkins University data is regularly updated here: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality           

Update: Today  23rd June the ONS published the excess death figures for the UK. Excess deaths represents the number of deaths over what would normally be expected had the pandemic not occurred.  It is the most accurate measure because it eliminates the issue of whether deaths were correctly attributed to the virus or not.  The excess deaths figure for the UK is now 65,101.  The UK population is 66,435,600.  65,101 deaths, divided by 66,435,600, times 100,000,  gives a new figure of  97.99 UK deaths per 100,000 population, due to or arising from the pandemic.  Far worse than the already appalling figure of 64.27 above.

Update: 29th June.  The BBC have finally covered this story, tucked away in their business section (and of course no comparisons of the UK with China or Brazil):
"The analysis of Covid-19 deaths and excess deaths showed the UK worse off than the US, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, and Japan."  UK hardest hit by virus among leading G7 nations

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