Ask yourself: why is the upsetting daily SARS-CoV2 body count not put into perspective with total death cases from the previous day / 7 days / 30 days of the current and last year or last two years?
Death is one of the greatest taboo topics of our society. It is inconvenient to think about it, even though every one of us is aware that our life will end at some point. The vast majority of us want that point to be as far in the future as possible. As a consequence, death is usually not very present in the media. That has changed since the massive outbreak of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV2. One obvious effect of this disease is the high media coverage of casualties due to the sickness while other causes of death are still not covered. The lack of comparing the numbers with normal mortality data obviously has an alarming effect, potentially causing mass panic. For example, Sweden has had no excess mortality in the latest available data (week 13) [1] while employing very modest means.
One question that immediately arises concerns the magnitude of the excess mortality caused by SARS-CoV2. This question is impossible to answer at this stage given the very poor state of available data. For example, less than one percent of the Austrian population have been tested with a reliable method in Austria to this point [2]. Particularly for the tragic case of Italy, it is only known how many people died with a diagnosis of COVID-19, not how many people died as a consequence of COVID-19.
Test coverage is, however, much better in Iceland. No other country performed as many tests per capita. Hence, in this blog post, I start with considering the mortality of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in Iceland. Please take into account that the quality of the data in Iceland can be considered much better than the Austrian data owing to their test coverage. Nevertheless, even in Iceland there is no full test coverage (26 762 per million are tested [3]) leading to the actual COVID-19 mortality rate to be smaller than presented here.
As of March 25th, Iceland faced 2 fatal casualties in 737 people infected with COVID-19. Even for those two casualties it is not certain that the death was caused by the SARS-CoV2 infection. That means the worst case mortality in Iceland is 0.27% until now [3]. That is not a large deviation from the common flu. Among all the confirmed COVID-19 cases in Iceland, 2.04% were hospitalized and only 0.27% were in intensive care [3].
Let us consider the number of deceased people in 2018 in Austria to get a better understanding of the number of victims of COVID-19 seen so far. For reasons of simplicity, the data is presented evenly distributed per day, even though a higher mortality can usually be observed in the cold season. According to Statistik Austria [4], 83975 people died in the year 2018. That is almost exactly 230 human lives ending on average every single day. The first 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been recorded on March 8th. Including today, I take the last 25 days (March 8th until April 1st, 2020) into account. Until now, 146 fatal casualties have been recorded [2]. This means that for the period of the epidemic, 5.84 people have lost their lives per day, on average. Even though a tragedy, this number is very small compared to the average of 230 people dying every day in Austria in the year 2018. Of course, this number is nonsense. I have seen estimates of the average mortality caused by a SARS-CoV2 infection in various scenarios (none providing proper explanations or sources). They range from close to 0 to multiple per-cent and mainly depend on the age distribution of the infected people. In absolute terms, the number of fatal casualties in Austria could range from hundreds, when properly protecting the vulnerable, to more than ten thousand in pessimistic scenarios. The provided data generally remains silent on how many of the casualties were expected to die during the same year by another cause. So for lack of better data, I continue with the completely artificial 5.84 people dying with a SARS-CoV2 infection per day (2131.6 during 12 months). If 6000 people in Austria would die this year solely due to a SARS-CoV2 infection, that number would be 16.44. Assuming 20000 deaths, a daily average would be 54.79.
To put these numbers into perspective, 451 people are confirmed to have died of influenza in the year 2018. This averages to 1.24 lives being lost to influenza per day. However, this number is much higher during flu season. 1293 people died in the year 2018 by pneumonia. An average of 3.54 humans every day. Chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract caused 3164 deaths in Austria during 2018 - 8.67 per day on average. That is much more than COVID-19 so far, even when assuming that every victim diagnosed with COVID-19 died due to that disease. The average age of the people dying by chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract was 78.04 years. Almost no media coverage.
Finally, let us consider the victims of cancer compared to the victims of lung, bronchial and trachea cancer during 2018. 20574 people (56.37 per day) died by cancer, while 4053 (11.10 per day) died by lung, bronchial and trachea cancer. The average age of cancer patients was 73.85. Patients with lung, bronchial and trachea cancer died at a younger average age of 70.9 years.
Death is one of the greatest taboo topics of our society. It is inconvenient to think about it, even though every one of us is aware that our life will end at some point. The vast majority of us want that point to be as far in the future as possible. As a consequence, death is usually not very present in the media. That has changed since the massive outbreak of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV2. One obvious effect of this disease is the high media coverage of casualties due to the sickness while other causes of death are still not covered. The lack of comparing the numbers with normal mortality data obviously has an alarming effect, potentially causing mass panic. For example, Sweden has had no excess mortality in the latest available data (week 13) [1] while employing very modest means.
One question that immediately arises concerns the magnitude of the excess mortality caused by SARS-CoV2. This question is impossible to answer at this stage given the very poor state of available data. For example, less than one percent of the Austrian population have been tested with a reliable method in Austria to this point [2]. Particularly for the tragic case of Italy, it is only known how many people died with a diagnosis of COVID-19, not how many people died as a consequence of COVID-19.
Test coverage is, however, much better in Iceland. No other country performed as many tests per capita. Hence, in this blog post, I start with considering the mortality of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in Iceland. Please take into account that the quality of the data in Iceland can be considered much better than the Austrian data owing to their test coverage. Nevertheless, even in Iceland there is no full test coverage (26 762 per million are tested [3]) leading to the actual COVID-19 mortality rate to be smaller than presented here.
As of March 25th, Iceland faced 2 fatal casualties in 737 people infected with COVID-19. Even for those two casualties it is not certain that the death was caused by the SARS-CoV2 infection. That means the worst case mortality in Iceland is 0.27% until now [3]. That is not a large deviation from the common flu. Among all the confirmed COVID-19 cases in Iceland, 2.04% were hospitalized and only 0.27% were in intensive care [3].
Let us consider the number of deceased people in 2018 in Austria to get a better understanding of the number of victims of COVID-19 seen so far. For reasons of simplicity, the data is presented evenly distributed per day, even though a higher mortality can usually be observed in the cold season. According to Statistik Austria [4], 83975 people died in the year 2018. That is almost exactly 230 human lives ending on average every single day. The first 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been recorded on March 8th. Including today, I take the last 25 days (March 8th until April 1st, 2020) into account. Until now, 146 fatal casualties have been recorded [2]. This means that for the period of the epidemic, 5.84 people have lost their lives per day, on average. Even though a tragedy, this number is very small compared to the average of 230 people dying every day in Austria in the year 2018. Of course, this number is nonsense. I have seen estimates of the average mortality caused by a SARS-CoV2 infection in various scenarios (none providing proper explanations or sources). They range from close to 0 to multiple per-cent and mainly depend on the age distribution of the infected people. In absolute terms, the number of fatal casualties in Austria could range from hundreds, when properly protecting the vulnerable, to more than ten thousand in pessimistic scenarios. The provided data generally remains silent on how many of the casualties were expected to die during the same year by another cause. So for lack of better data, I continue with the completely artificial 5.84 people dying with a SARS-CoV2 infection per day (2131.6 during 12 months). If 6000 people in Austria would die this year solely due to a SARS-CoV2 infection, that number would be 16.44. Assuming 20000 deaths, a daily average would be 54.79.
To put these numbers into perspective, 451 people are confirmed to have died of influenza in the year 2018. This averages to 1.24 lives being lost to influenza per day. However, this number is much higher during flu season. 1293 people died in the year 2018 by pneumonia. An average of 3.54 humans every day. Chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract caused 3164 deaths in Austria during 2018 - 8.67 per day on average. That is much more than COVID-19 so far, even when assuming that every victim diagnosed with COVID-19 died due to that disease. The average age of the people dying by chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract was 78.04 years. Almost no media coverage.
Finally, let us consider the victims of cancer compared to the victims of lung, bronchial and trachea cancer during 2018. 20574 people (56.37 per day) died by cancer, while 4053 (11.10 per day) died by lung, bronchial and trachea cancer. The average age of cancer patients was 73.85. Patients with lung, bronchial and trachea cancer died at a younger average age of 70.9 years.
Again, note that the number of people dying due to COVID-19 might increase, even when averaged over the entire year. In the chart above I stick to the upper bound of average fatalities so far - confirmed data that does not rely on a crystal ball.
Despite the high number of people dying due to chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract as well as lung, bronchial and trachea cancer, tobacco products are taxed at a very low rate in Austria. How much money would you invest in cancer research and prevention given the shocking number of fatal casualties?
Abuse of alcohol caused 550 deaths in 2018, 1.51 per day. Comparing the 550 deaths caused by alcohol abuse in 2018 to the fatal casualties by COVID-19, we might expect concrete political action when it comes to alcohol abuse. Yet, Austria has one of the lowest tax rates on alcohol in the entire European Union while several billion Euros are invested to reduce the death toll of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic.
Finally, Austria had to mourne 1209 cases of lethal self injury or suicide in the year 2018. That is a shocking 3.31 deaths per day. I had no idea how high this number was until doing the research for this posting. I am deeply saddend at the time of writing this blog post. Given the social isolation and the harsh economic sacrifice our government is imposing, the number of cases of suicide or lethal self injury should be closely monitored during the year 2020.
Losing fellow humans we love is always a tragedy and I am deeply sorry for all the casualties that COVID-19 has caused. Likewise, I am deeply sorry for all other people that have lost their lives due to any other cause. We must not forget that these other causes of death exist and how high their death toll is even inside Austria. And I am not even starting on the topic of hunger in the world. In the end, we, as a society, should always keep in mind the means we were willing to invest to reduce this number. Even when expecting a significant rise in the death toll of COVID-19, I have to ask the reader which measures they deem justified for COVID-19, while remaining silent when lives are wasted over the abuse of alcohol or tobacco.
[1] https://www.euromomo.eu/slices/map_2017_2020.html
[2] https://www.sozialministerium.at/Informationen-zum-Coronavirus/Neuartiges-Coronavirus-(2019-nCov).html
[3] https://www.government.is/news/article/2020/03/25/Strict-measures-to-contain-the-spread-of-Covid-19-in-Iceland/
[4] https://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/menschen_und_gesellschaft/gesundheit/todesursachen/index.html
Despite the high number of people dying due to chronic diseases of the lower respiratory tract as well as lung, bronchial and trachea cancer, tobacco products are taxed at a very low rate in Austria. How much money would you invest in cancer research and prevention given the shocking number of fatal casualties?
Abuse of alcohol caused 550 deaths in 2018, 1.51 per day. Comparing the 550 deaths caused by alcohol abuse in 2018 to the fatal casualties by COVID-19, we might expect concrete political action when it comes to alcohol abuse. Yet, Austria has one of the lowest tax rates on alcohol in the entire European Union while several billion Euros are invested to reduce the death toll of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic.
Finally, Austria had to mourne 1209 cases of lethal self injury or suicide in the year 2018. That is a shocking 3.31 deaths per day. I had no idea how high this number was until doing the research for this posting. I am deeply saddend at the time of writing this blog post. Given the social isolation and the harsh economic sacrifice our government is imposing, the number of cases of suicide or lethal self injury should be closely monitored during the year 2020.
Losing fellow humans we love is always a tragedy and I am deeply sorry for all the casualties that COVID-19 has caused. Likewise, I am deeply sorry for all other people that have lost their lives due to any other cause. We must not forget that these other causes of death exist and how high their death toll is even inside Austria. And I am not even starting on the topic of hunger in the world. In the end, we, as a society, should always keep in mind the means we were willing to invest to reduce this number. Even when expecting a significant rise in the death toll of COVID-19, I have to ask the reader which measures they deem justified for COVID-19, while remaining silent when lives are wasted over the abuse of alcohol or tobacco.
[1] https://www.euromomo.eu/slices/map_2017_2020.html
[2] https://www.sozialministerium.at/Informationen-zum-Coronavirus/Neuartiges-Coronavirus-(2019-nCov).html
[3] https://www.government.is/news/article/2020/03/25/Strict-measures-to-contain-the-spread-of-Covid-19-in-Iceland/
[4] https://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/menschen_und_gesellschaft/gesundheit/todesursachen/index.html
Zuerst einmal herzlichen Dank für das Video. Ich habe es mehrfach weitergeleitet und bin gerade dabei einen offenen Brief an die Schulleitungen mehrerer Schulen in Bayern zu versenden. Ich werde auch hier auf diese Seite verweisen mit der Bitte, dass die SchulleiterInnen doch Ihre Politiker oder die Gesundheitsämter auffordern, einen solchen Test offiziell durchzuführen, um auszuschließen, dass es gesundheitliche Schäden bei den Kindern durch das Tragen der Masken gibt. Die Kinder sind eigentlich geschützt durch Artikel 3 der UN-Kinderrechtskonvention. Hier steht, dass das Kindeswohl bei allen staatlichen Entscheidungen, die Kinder betreffen, als "vorrangiger Gesichtspunkt" berücksichtigt werden muss. Dies sollten alle Pädagogen, ErzieherInnen, LehrerInnen beachten. Andernfalls machen sie sich meiner Meinung nach schuldig, wenn psychische oder physische Gesundheitsschäden bei den Kindern entstehen.
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