Here's a comparison that's fairly up to date regarding where most of our countries of origin stand relative to the Philippines. The further to the right in the graph, the higher the confirmed number of cases per capita, the higher a country sits in the graph, the faster things are getting worse. Here's where the Philippines sits relative to other countries (again per capita) in East Asia. Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, China and Brunei all have hardly any new cases, so they're crowding out the bottom left corner of the graph. Lastly, a graph of the worst hit countries on the planet, worst hit defined as either having >2% infected or having high numbers of new cases (per capita). Again, I added the Philippines for comparison, not because it would rank as "worst hit".
Here's the top 20 testing countries/territories (per capita). For stats on more countries, go here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ And yes, many countries have problems with testing capacity, and that might very well distort the "confirmed cases" comparison to some extent. On the other hand, it can not be said that testing more leads to a proportional increase in "confirmed cases". Just compare Denmark and USA, Denmark tested twice as many as the USA on a per capita basis, but has only 1/5 the number of confirmed cases.
The chart is difficult to explain; I don’t know what the data on “cases” ratios are really saying; I do not know much about the test philosophies. For a simple example, if a country tends to test only those people showing symptoms, of course such testing will bring out more positive cases than testing done on a purely random basis across the population. Who knows, (pardon the pun and WHO really doesn’t know), for many countries it may be a mix. But the one outcome that is free of bias is the total amount of covid deaths in a given country but even there we must assume no bias towards designating deaths as being due to covid for financial reimbursement purposes from government aid programs. The other factor that is free of bias is total population. And deaths per total population is, in addition to being the root of our concerns, probably a very good measurement. It may be the most important measurement, all factors considered. From the chart I am seeing maximum covid death rates in these countries of 700 per million. Many countries are much less. When I divide 700 by 1,000,000 I get .0007 or .07%. The number .07% is still very high because we are talking about “deaths”. I suspect, but have no cites, that it might be similar to motorcycle death rates here. Or perhaps lung cancer or liver disease? Something to be concerned about, YES, but cause for panic NO. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yes, there's differences between countries when it comes to (reported) tests. And not just because there might be a different testing philosophy, but also because some countries report persons/patients tested, while others simply report number of tests performed (while one person may get tested twice to confirm a positive, and several times to confirm a negative after recovery). There's also quite a large difference between countries in the quality of the tests that are performed. Here is where our opinions differ, I am almost certain that there is more of a bias toward unreported Covid deaths, rather than a bias to the other side. One simply needs to consider the billions of people living in poor countries who don't bother to see a doctor when they fall ill simply because they can't afford to. Case in point (as example): you don't really believe that the death toll in the USA is 10 times higher than in India on a per capita basis because the health system in India is 10 times better than in the USA while costing less than one/tenth of what's spent in the USA on health care? All transport accidents caused 12,500 deaths in the Philippines in 2018, or 0.012% of the population. All types of cancer together caused 67,000 deaths, or 0.063% of the population. Both the types of cancer you mentioned scored lower than 0.01%. (source: Philippines Statistics Authority)
Probably has more to do with this. This probably messes with the numbers as well: Strong armed governments get to strong arm the numbers reported, the reporting methods and the way the media reports the numbers in their countries. What does this tell us? I don't know. But it seems to me that it is difficult to compare statistics of different countries when the statistics aren't all measuring the same metric. It's like comparing "gun deaths" of two different countries when one country counts suicides in that metric and the other only counts violent crimes. The numbers are going to tell you two very different stories.
Comparing these with COVID is not a valid comparison. Cancer, liver disease and motorcycle deaths are not communicable diseases. Many people use this convoluted logic as a reason to reduce controls on the spread of COVID. The only reason COVID deaths are so small is because of the controls in place to reduce its spread. If the controls were removed, as many want to do, then YES there would be a cause for panic.
Who is panicking? Just being cautious as one should. Why you have to belittle this all the time and bring in words such a panic or scared etc I fail to undefstand.
Quoting myself; The intent is to set a boundary condition using an extreme term to define my opinion as to what our appropriate action should not be. It is a common method to express one’s thoughts. I do not believe you or anybody else here is literally “panicking”. Thanks. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
