Global Active Cases Pass 2 Million, Questions Arise About U.S. Accuracy

According to the Bing Covid-19 Tracker, global COVID-19 cases reached 3,269,667. Active cases hit 2,014,922, up 27,315. Recovered cases moved to 1,021,185, a jump of 48,466. Deaths reached 233,560, higher by 5,922.

Total confirmed cases in the U.S. hit 1,095,645. Active COVID-19 cases reached 899,355, up 25,073. Recovered cases were 132,544, a jump of 6,219. Fatal cases in American hit 63,746, higher by 2,242.

Concerns About Accuracy Of U.S. Fatal Case Data

Several incidents in the last 24 hours have caused experts to be skeptical about official U.S. fatal case data.

Bloomberg reported that the White House is using information from a report created by journalists to supplement CDC data about testing. This raises the question about the extent to which The White House will rely on the CDC data or not.

At a more local level, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the state of Florida will not publish data about COVID-19 deaths gathered from local authorities within the state, and then published as a total. The data was released in real-time up until this point. It is possible, according to the report, that the most recent data may be as many as nine days old.

Finally, scientists and the media continue to report that deaths have been undercounted based on a simple formula. If the weekly death rate in a city is much higher in 2020 than for the comparable period in 2019, and official COVID-19 deaths only account for a modest portion of the rise, what has caused the balance of the spike? Incidentally, the same formula can apply to countries other than America. The suspicion is that the missing part of the rise is undiagnosed COVID-19 deaths. The argument has not been proven conclusively but is another reason the U.S. death rate total may be wrong, perhaps considerably.

These inconsistencies mean that COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. may have been undercounted by the thousands. The current official death total of 63,746, may, in reality, be much higher.

Russian Death Toll Modest For A Nation Of Its Size

The Russian government has reported 114,431 confirmed cases. Among these 1,169 people have died. The death rate on the basis of those two figures is 1%. It is the ninth-largest nation in the world by population at 146,745,098.

By contrast, Spain has reported 215,216 confirmed cases, and 24,824 deaths That is a death rate of 10%. Spain’s population is 47,100,396.

Italy has confirmed cases of 205,463, and deaths of 27,967, a death rate of 14%. Italy has a population of 60,238,522.

Russia is much larger than Italy and Spain, but has a much lower raw count of cases and deaths. And, its death rate is a tiny fraction of the other two countries.

Experts will argue that deaths among confirmed cases may rise over time in Russia. This means calculating death rates is an inexact science, and that current death rates by country will change. However, the Russian data diverges so much from Spain and Italy, that it calls for an explanation.

Does Russia have more widespread testing, a better healthcare system, or substantially better social distancing practices than many other countries? Russia has been in lockdown for five weeks, which is not an aberration from any other developed nation.

Russia’s healthcare system is generally regarded as poor. Life expectancy is among the shortest of all nations measured by the OECD, at 72. In Spain and Italy, that figure is closer to 80. Self-reported health outcomes are also near the bottom of OECD measurements. Data compiled by British medical journal The Lancet put Russia in the bottom third of 188 countries based on general public health. In short, it would be hard to argue that Russia has an extraordinary healthcare system or extraordinary healthcare outcomes. This makes the low level of COVID-19 confirmed cases and death all the more perplexing.

Russia’s numbers may seem out of step for more than one reason. Russia may have been hit late in the COVID-19 cycle which began in Europe. Deaths have begun to skyrocket in recent days, and the death toll could change radically in just a few weeks. Alternatively, Russia may not have a data collection infrastructure to accurately capture diagnoses or deaths.

Suffice it to say that, at this point in time, the Russian numbers are out of place.

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