I haven’t updated on COVID-19 for a while. There no longer seems much point in doing so. Any pattern there was in the data – the reported data I should add – no longer exists. Is that suspicious? I should say so. The images below tell the story.
The world today passed the 7 million total cases threshold while only now also passing a death count of 400,000. How this came about makes no sense at all after a complete turnaround in the previous data pattern some 7 weeks ago – during the second half of April when the accumulated Active and Closed cases graph lines began diverging instead of maintaining some parallel trajectory.
Until that time the total cases and total deaths count moved in parallel, as you might rationally expect they would. Since that time, total cases have been rising more steeply than ever before during this outbreak while COVID-19 related deaths have not only stopped rising in similar fashion but have been actually falling (on a daily count basis). The image showing the two current daily counts (introduced by Worldometers shortly after this turnaround began – as far as I am aware) give the picture.
Why would that be? I’m not going to speculate but I did provide some possible reasons in a previous post some weeks ago.
Anyway, this suspicion around the validity of the figures being reported makes any further reporting of death rates quite meaningless, but for one last time – using the same method I used in previous calculations (which is still valid for the reported data) – I will give the current death rate standing.
Two weeks ago the total caseload stood at 5.5 million, meaning that since then a further 1.5 million cases have been added. It is from these new cases any future deaths (mostly in the next 2 weeks will be drawn). We can therefore assume that the rest of the almost 3.2 million active cases, that is the remaining 1.7 million, are in recovery since thay all were counted more than 2 weeks ago. Adding this 1.7 million to the current closed cases (since they will all eventually be counted there anyway) we arrive at a closed or recovering case count of 5.5 million – which is now, incidentally, around 79% of all accumulated cases for the outbreak – and should therefore provide us with a reasonably accurate death rate figure (for the data, not necessarily for reality), assuming no great changes in the virus or further waves emerging.
The simple calculation for current COVID-19 death rate based on time-matched, closed or recovering cases then is: 400,000 / 5,500,000 * 100 or ~7.3%
Make of that what you will. Also make what you will of the fact that only those nations that have suffered obscenely catastrophic numbers of deaths and/or cases would have any intrerest in, or make any marked impression on the total data, caused by any misrepresentation of their own national figures.
Not Something Else 
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