On August 13, 2020 - I compiled a chart (below) to compare the United States to six roughly contiguous European countries with a combined roughly equivalent population to the United States to see if COVID-19 was impacting apples and almost apples about the same regardless of the supposedly far different government responses. I relied on the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Tracking Database for this--the Global Map feature.
I have been updating the numbers regularly ever since. I have started to notice something quite peculiar, though, over the last five weeks. While the JHU data for Europe has reflected the recent spikes in cases in Europe reported in the press, the data on deaths has not only remained unrealistically and improbably stagnant, it is actually moving in the retrograde. Below are the updated figures as of 7:00 PM on September 23, 2020.
These six European countries, despite discovering about 900k additional COVID-19 cases, have not only managed to avoid any mortality from them, but have actually managed to resurrect previously dead COVID-19 patients! This might make the novel corona virus not only one of the least fatal illnesses in the history of mankind, but curiously the guarantor of immortality if you happen to die from it in one of six European countries.
Given the rate of infections/deaths in the United States in early August, we would be justified in expecting 208,222 deaths at this point in September. As you can see, the rate of deaths per infection has come down slightly. But it is not way off the expectation from the August data point. By contrast, the 6 Euro countries' rate of infections/deaths would lead one to believe they would be around 253,106 deaths by now with their massive uptick in detected cases. Now, it is one thing to be below that frightening number due to younger people being more likely to test positive, getting better at detecting asymptomatic cases, getting better at treating cases, etc.--but to have the number of deaths actually go down??
Seriously though, the parallels to the suppression of accurate data during the so-called Spanish flu are hard to ignore here. I hope I am wrong.
