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News Science

The Global Coronavirus Death Toll Tops 500,000 (nytimes.com) 198

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The global total of deaths passed 500,000 on Sunday, while the number of confirmed cases surpassed 10 million. From a report: The grim markers were hit as countries around the world struggle to keep new infections from reaching runaway levels while simultaneously trying to emerge from painful lockdowns. In April, roughly a month after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic, deaths topped 100,000. In early May, the figure climbed to 250,000. Now it has doubled in less than two months. More than a quarter of all known deaths have been in the United States. The number of confirmed infections -- which took about 40 days to double -- may be substantially underestimated, public health officials say. Data released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that the actual figures in many regions are probably 10 times as high as reported.
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The Global Coronavirus Death Toll Tops 500,000 More

The Global Coronavirus Death Toll Tops 500,000

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  • It would be interesting to know the average age of those who died from this virus. And what percentage had access to health care, medical insurance, and antibiotics.

    • Re:Full statistics (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @12:49PM (#60242768)
      Not sure what antibiotics would have done to help.

      • Neither are researchers. That's why they're investigating it. And before anyone has a knee jerk reaction, yes I know covid is a virus and antibiotics are for bacteria.
        https://www.medicalnewstoday.c... [medicalnewstoday.com]

        • That Azithromycin is an antibiotic is pretty much incidental. It's efficacy as an anti-inflammatory is why it's possibly useful in most cases, and also preventing bacterial secondary infections from taking hold. In an article published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases on Jun 05, they said "Based on our experience, the incidence of secondary bacterial infection in COVID-19 is low, especially for patients with mild or moderate symptoms and those hospitalized in the general care unit, suggesting usage of anti

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Max_W ( 812974 )
        The virus damages the lung tissue and then the bacteria jumps in. And antibiotics can only be prescribed. So if a person has no early access to a doctor she is in disadvantageous position.

        • antibiotics can only be prescribed

          Perhaps antibiotics useful for COVID-related problems are only available by prescription in the US, but that's not the case in Mexico, where penicillin is available cheaply for anyone who wants it. In the U.S., bacitracin, neomycin, and polymyxin are cheap and available in supermarkets and even dollar stores.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chas ( 5144 )

      Antibiotics wouldn't help in a viral infection.

      And simply liberally prescribing that sort of thing is why we're seeing more and more antibiotic resistant bacteria.

      • Re:Full statistics (Score:5, Informative)

        by Max_W ( 812974 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @01:14PM (#60242918)
        People with COVID-19 may receive antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections. Often the secondary bacterial infection kills, even if a person survived the viral infection itself. https://www.medicalnewstoday.c... [medicalnewstoday.com]
        • Here's the thing about COVID-19 (and with many other diseases)... nobody actually dies of it. It causes issues that in turn kills the patient. WIth coronavirus, it's usually pneumonia, respiratory failure, some kind of myocardial issue, etc. That's why you hear a lot of people yelling about "my _____ had heart disease and died but they ruled it as coronavirus! It's all a conspiracy!" Yes, your _____ died of a heart complication due to covid-19, that's why it was ruled a covid death.

          It's like HIV... nob
          • Bullets don't kill people, it's the blood loss or heart stoppage that the bullets cause that kills.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Chas ( 5144 )

              You've evidently never seen someone's head splattered with a 30mm round. =)
              The impact trauma of the bullet kills you dead before you exsanguinate or before your heart stops.

    • average age of those who died

      Probably over 70. But that doesn't make them any less human.

      access to health care

      Since the pandemic hit developped nations first, I'd guess basically everyone. Except maybe the U.S.

      medical insurance

      Not required in every developped nation. Again, except in the U.S.

      antibiotics

      Irrelevant. This is a viral disease.

      • medical insurance

        Not required in every developped nation. Again, except in the U.S.

        It's not required in the U.S. either. Pretty much every hospital emergency room is required by law to accept patients regardless of ability to pay. Insurance (or lack of it) only becomes an issue with non-emergency treatment, like chemotherapy for cancer.

    • You can find that here:
      https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

  • Moon Gold (Score:4)

    by Noishkel ( 3464121 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @12:50PM (#60242776)
    And if you believe that the numbers out of China are even remotely accurate then I've got a gold mine on the moon to sell you for cheap. Hell... we've got some suggests that the numbers here in the US are way off. And some people out there thinks that an authoritarian state like China with a long history of downplaying disaster is going to be honest this time? I wouldn't be surprised that we're already looking at the better part of 2 million deaths already.

    • Re:Moon Gold (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @01:08PM (#60242876) Homepage
      Yeah, suitably sized pinches of salt for many countries on the list. China almost certainly missed a lot of fatalities because the bodies were in the ground before they realised what they were dealing with, let alone how to test for it, and even allowing for their draconian lockdown since the figures are still suspect, although probably not to the extent that some are pushing. Russia's figures are also clearly skewed; they have a disproportionate number of cases to their fatalities which one doctor the BBC interviewed claimed was down to instructions NOT to list Covid-19 if there was an underlying symptom that could be put as the cause of death instead. The list goes on. And on.

      What you probably need to look for a fair comparison at are the additional deaths over the normal baseline, which puts the mortality figures for the UK and several other EU countries significantly higher. Even then that's sketchy as not all countries have that data published in readily accessible form, or don't provide the overall number of deaths from all causes in a timely manner to allow comparison - the UK data was months behind during the initial stats, but brought that down to a few weeks before the figures mysteriously stopped being reported. It's going to be a *long* time before we have any really solid indications of how many actually deaths occurred each week/month/overall, and even then there is going to be quite a significant margin of error, I suspect.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Here in BC, we had almost double the total of Corona deaths from opiate poisoning in one month, which was the worst month for opiate deaths by a long shot. Opiates were hard to get due to the lock down and border closing, so the market supplied crap, people were taking the crap they could get hold of alone, and dying.
        OTOH, deaths due to driving were down.
        Anyways even total deaths doesn't tell the whole story.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zocalo ( 252965 )
          True, but you could equally make the case that you wouldn't have had those extra deaths due to opiates if there hadn't been the lockdown, so Covid-19 was an indirect cause in the same way that the reduced driving deaths were also due to Covid-19. It's just another point further along the slope of "Covid-19 related" that starts with when someone with a severe underlying health condition contracts Covid-19 and dies whether you put the primary cause of death down as Covid or the underlying issue.

          As with an

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            It's still complicated, the opiate deaths have been an ongoing problem caused by the Federal government (Federal government is responsible for criminal law in Canada) refusing to decriminalizing opiates, and that's mostly due to the right wingers and how they would react.
            As for the governments, they're already taking responsibility for the deaths in the nursing homes, we had way too many in Canada, and talking about changes. Of course the problems are created by austerity and how they're going to find the m

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        Russia's figures are also clearly skewed;

        Most likely, though I hear (from relatives in Russia) that it's skewed because doctors who deal with COVID cases receive a bonus, and thus they classify aggressively and us the available tests mostly where they expect a positive outcome.

        We have seen similar effects in Europe, where different countries count differently, where some countries don't test the dead, so everyone who died before being tested isn't counted as a COVID case, etc.

    • The numbers out of China can be very well accurate.

      2 million death in China, and no one posts it somewhere, rofl ....

      • Not even close to accurate. They claim 90 million tested to date; I know people all over the country (Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, etc) and none have been able to get tested, nor anyone they know can get tested. With a claimed ~7% being tested so far - there is zero chance of no one I know - or that they know - not being tested. NO ONE in China believes the numbers. But, if you speak up, well - off to jail with you until you confess to "creating soci

    • I wouldn't be surprised that we're already looking at the better part of 2 million deaths already.

      I wouldn't be surprised if Covid deaths are at least 10 times lower than what is being reported, since there are lots of places that are reporting ANY death as a Covid death, and other places doing the same for deaths where the deceased had ANY level of Covid antibodies, and other places recording flu deaths as Covid deaths.

      • And the raise in excess deaths which is often twice the number of registered COVID deaths is of course entirely due to other reasons.

  • Underestimated (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Voice of satan ( 1553177 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @01:06PM (#60242860)

    The death toll is blatantly underestimated. A way to avoid political downplay will be to examine statistics of excessive death rates when they are available. We will have them, later, for the U.S. Probably never for China or Iran.

    For the EU for example: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs... [euromomo.eu] It shows that countries with different communication policies have similar death rates. It doesn't look pretty for the UK in particular.

    For the U.S. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/... [cdc.gov]

    More in general : https://ourworldindata.org/exc... [ourworldindata.org]

    We need to wait until the dust settles a bit but we will get more realistic and sobering numbers. And sadder.

  • Maybe I'm missing something but I seem to have a mismatch in numbers I'm unable to explain.
    Perhapse someone else can help me.
    I keep seeing numbers like this:
    https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] these seem to have a kill rate of 20%

    Yet , the number of deaths reported globally are 500,000 out of 7 billion (global population), which makes the current kill rate , which is to say 0.0000714%
    even assuming 10 times underreporting you would have 0.000714%. So something isn't adding up. Perhapse the numbers are skewe

    • Re:Can someone explain the numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @02:00PM (#60243252)

      First of all you can't math it out as deaths out of total global population. You want deaths out of number of infections. Currently that sits at 500k/10m, which is ~5%. A 5% risk of dying from this is really problematic since we don't have any known way of stopping it - no vaccine, no cure. And it's not like it spreads relatively slow like for example HIV; this stuff spreads to a packed room if one infected person in the room sneezes.

      The reason a lot of people won't realize they had it is that if you're otherwise healthy it's entirely possible that you may only get a slight fever, maybe a runny nose, because your body's normal "WTF are you?" defenses are strong enough to fight it down. The people primarily at risk (and that in no way means the ONLY people at risk!) are those who already have other illnesses their bodies are trying to keep in check, which leaves too few resources to spare to look at this new intruding virus.

      The distancing is to buy time. Time to find a cure or a vaccine, hopefully both. Time to produce enough ventilators. Time to hopefully spread out the infections so the hospitals don't run out of beds. The true nightmare scenario is what you see in India: More patients in need of help than can physically be treated in the hospitals due to lack of beds and gear, not to mention personnel.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        Currently that sits at 500k/10m, which is ~5%.

        No it doesn't and it isn't.

        You cannot divide deaths by infections and get a meaningful number. The infection is at the beginning of the process and the death at the end. What you're doing is going into a restaurant and dividing the number of people who are satisfied with the number of customers - but many of them haven't yet ordered or haven't received the food yet and don't yet know if they'll be happy or not.

        You have to do what worldometer does - https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] - count deaths relative t

        • \You have to do what worldometer does - ... - count deaths relative to the number of cases with outcome (either died or recovered).

          That method has other problems:

          (1) the average time until a new case closes is not the same for a death versus a recovery. This is especially problematic when the rate of daily new cases is rising.
          (2) Recoveries are not tracked that well. On the Worldometer overview, there are a few countries that don't even try to track them, and several that have had few cases for the past four weeks, yet still a large difference between total recoveries and total cases (France, Canada).

          And of course, you can debate wheth

      • How does anyone still believe this with any seriousness? We are past the point where we can only get a full picture from the data... yes, anecdotal evidence is terrible but in this case helpful. Look around you, your situation is probably same as mine though I have no idea where you live. Your area has had a lot of infections as this pandemic has spread far and wide through the world, since as we've always known it was highly contagious. Multiple studies now have confirmed far, far more people have cont

      • With decent care the chance of dying from an infection should be less than a percent, even less than half a percent. Using simple math 120k deaths in the US would mean 10 million cases. There is a problem however: if there is no health care death rates multiply because health care can pull a lot of people through given a lot of time. The number you mention of 5% looks like a rather high estimate for what happens with totally absent healthcare. That does not describe the current situation in the US.

        The degra

      • I'm trying to ask honest questions and was hoping for a more useful answer. why can't you do math out on deaths vs total population, isn't it assumed that sooner or later, the entire population will get exposed? The death rate is supposed to represent total deaths from the desease globally isn't it? Or at least that seems to be what most people believe. That is what people attempt to calculate for the flue at least.

        If 50% of people exposed never know they are sick and 80% of those who get sick enough to

  • The grim markers were hit as countries around the world struggle to keep new infections from reaching runaway levels while simultaneously trying to emerge from painful lockdowns.

    So don't try to ermerge from painful lockdowns before there's an immunization or effective treatment.

    One of the biggest lessons from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is that lockdowns (reverse quarantines, social distancing, and other public health interventions) improve economic results. They work better if they're done longer.

    Accord

    • Re:Lesson from the 1918 Flu pandemic not learned. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Xylantiel ( 177496 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @02:45PM (#60243654)
      You don't even need an effective treatment. Just doing plain old gumshoe test-and-trace and infection control is enough and is working fine in many advanced economies. This is not 1918. The juxtaposition of "lockdowns" vs. rampant spread is a false dichotomy. Many nations have gone back to school, reopened large businesses, etc etc, all while keeping the new infection rate low and stable.
  • And more than a 25% of those deaths are from the US.... which is 5% of global population....

    • Yeah thanks to Deblasio and Cuomo they are responsible for 70% of the deaths in the US. Great job. But Orange man bad, I guess.

  • Immune response ... (Score:3)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @01:55PM (#60243214) Homepage

    This disease is really bad because:

    a) It is very infectious, so spreads fast ...

    b) It causes complications (lung damage requiring ventilators, organ damage, ...etc)

    If there were no complications, it would just be like the flu: most people will get it, but the number of deaths are minuscule.

    The reason for the complications seem to be the immune system response. Why do I say that? Because dexamethasone has been shown to benefit those that have severe symptoms.

    Other viruses do this too.

    Listen to Dr Vincent Racaniello, a Virology professor at Columbia University [youtu.be] describe how some viruses cause pathology due to the immune system response. Watch from that time point, to the end.

    Some examples is Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes causing cell death of virus infected cells. Other examples are cytokines.

    Hopefully, more research will tell which mechanism(s) of the immune system causes this damage, and that may lead to a specific treatment that does not suppress the entire immune system, but only the part that goes into overdrive.

    • Except that somewhere between 20K-60K die of the flu EVERY YEAR in the US.
      COVID isn't really that much more of a hazard to the general populace.
      However, COVID really kicks the asses of a small portion of the population and we generally know who they are.
      Those people at heightened risk need to take precautions. Everyone else can pretty much ignore it.

      • No ordinary flu ever killed 125,000 people in 3 months. Feel free to lick all the doorknobs you like, though.

  • Definitions (Score:3)

    by maz2331 ( 1104901 ) on Monday June 29, 2020 @01:55PM (#60243218)

    It is difficult to compare numbers between countries as they don't all use the same terminology. It appears that in the US, any presence of the virus will count as a COVID death even if the person is asymptomatic and the cause was an unrelated condition, or even injury. Other countries will only count those that they can confirm were killed by the infection itself. It's really easy to get into a GIGO there.

    Another major variable is that nobody really knows what percentage of total infections result in any interaction with medical care and are tested. Some health systems will only test someone admitted to a hospital, whereas others will test anyone presenting with any symptoms.

    I keep in mind a saying that my grandfather liked to use - "Figures don't lie, but liars sure figure."

     

  • But Donald said it would begone by April. He said it would "disappear, like a miracle".

    125,000 dead through his incompetence. So. Much. Winning.

    • That is stupid assertion, that death toll of a virus is due to president? Not his job to make virus victims live. Seems more likely by profiteering by hospital directors that plug people into ventilators for max profit, though it's mostly a death sentence.

      • That is stupid assertion, that death toll of a virus is due to president?

        In this case, yes.

        Trump is directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans due to his shambolic and utterly ineffective 'response' to the pandemic.

  • It never fails. Over 100,000 Americans have died, and every time there's an article about COVID-19, I see the same thing from a certain subset of the population. Oh, but the death rate is just such-and-such. Oh, but what about this? What about that? Whatabout, whatabout, whatabout?

    More Americans have died from this than many (actually, most) of the wars we've been involved in. It could have been handled far better, by leaders at both the national and federal level. If more citizens cared and actually tried

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