What is their secret?

Looking at the ECDC figures on the current corona virus, I am struck by one thing: Some countries have tiny numbers of people dead from this disease, and some have enormous death tolls.

A lot of the nations with low COVID-19 mortality totals are not exactly famous for having wonderful medical systems> On the other hand, some of these nations are known for being relatively advanced and prosperous, and have well-equipped social networks.

So, what’s their secret?

I just made a list of all the nations with at least a half-million population that have so far had fewer than a hundred people who have died from COVID-19. After each one I list the number dead through today, June 20, 2020, and their population in millions. From that I derived the number of fatalities per million, or fpm. I have arranged them by continent, and then alphabetically by country name.

In ONLY ONE of these countries is the number of deaths per million population anywhere near what it is in the USA, namely about 354 dead per million to date. (That exception is El Salvador.) Many of the countries I listed have fewer than 1 fatality per million, which I denoted as “<1 fpm”.

In Africa:

Angola, 8 dead, pop 32 Million people, <1 fpm

Botswana, 1 dead, pop 2 M, <1 fpm

Benin, 11 dead, pop 12 M, 1 fpm

Burkina, Faso 53 dead, pop 20 M, 3 fpm

Burundi, 1 dead, pop 12 M, <1 fpm

Cape Verde, 8 dead, pop 0.5 M, 16 fpm

Central African Republic, 19 dead, pop 5 M, 4 fpm

Chad, 74 dead, pop 16 M, 5 fpm

Congo, 27 dead, pop 5 M, 5 fpm

Cote d’Ivoire, 49 dead, pop 26 M, 2 fpm

Djibouti, 45 dead, pop 1 M, 45 fpm

Equatorial Guinea, 32 dead, pop 1.4 M, 23 fpm

Eritrea, 0 dead, pop 3 M, 0 fpm

Eswatini (was Swaziland), 4 dead, pop 1 M, 4 fpm

Ethiopia, 72 dead, pop 112 M ,<1 fpm

Gabon, 34 dead, pop 2 M, 17 fpm

Gambia, 1 dead, pop 2 M, <1 fpm

Ghana, 70 dead, pop 30 M, 2 fpm

Guinea, 27 dead, pop 13 M, 2 fpm

Guinea Bissau, 15 dead, pop 2 M, 8 fpm

Lesotho, 0 dead, pop 2 M, 0 fpm

Liberia, 33 dead, pop 5 M, 7 fpm

Libya, 10 dead, pop 7 M, 1 fpm

Madagascar, 13 dead, pop 30 M, <1 fpm

Malawi, 8 dead, pop 19 M, <1 fpm

Mauretania, 95 dead, pop 5 M, 19 fpm

Mozambique, 4 dead, pop 30 M, <1 fpm

Namibia, 0 dead, pop 2 M, 0 fpm

Niger, 67 dead, pop 23 M, 3 fpm

Rwanda, 2 dead, pop 13 M, <1 fpm

Senegal, 79 dead, pop 16 M, 5 fpm

Sierra Leone, 53 dead, pop 8 M, 7 fpm

Somalia, 88 dead, pop 15 M, 6 fpm

South Sudan, 31 dead, pop 15 M, 2 fpm

Togo, 13 dead, pop 8 M, 2 fpm

Tunisia, 50 dead, 12 M, 4 fpm

Uganda, 0 dead, 44 M, 0 fpm

Tanzania, 21 dead, 58 M, <1 fpm

Western Sahara, 1 dead, pop 0.6 M, 2 fpm

Zambia, 11 dead, pop 17 M, <1 fpm

Zimbabwe, 4 dead, pop 15 M, <1 fpm

In the Americas:

Costa Rica, 12 dead, pop 5 M, 2fpm

Cuba, 85 dead, pop 11 M, 7 fpm

El Salvador, 93 dead, pop 0.6 M, 155 fpm

Guyana, 12 dead, pop 0.8 M, 15 fpm

Haiti, 87 dead, pop 11 M, 7 fpm

Jamaica, 10 dead, pop 3M, 3 fpm

Nicaragua, 64 dead, pop 7 M, 9 fpm

Paraguay, 13 dead, pop 7 M, 2 fpm

Suriname, 8 dead, pop 0.6 M, 13 fpm

Trinidad & Tobago, 8 dead, pop 1 M, 8 fpm

Uruguay, 24 dead, pop 3 M, 8 fpm

Venezuela, 30 dead, pop 29 M, 1 fpm

In Asia:

Bahrain, 57 dead, pop 2 M, 28 fpm

Bhutan, 0 dead, pop 0.8 M, 0 fpm

Cambodia, 0 dead, pop 16 M, 0 fpm

Jordan, 9 dead, pop 10 M, 1 fpm

Kyrgyzstan, 35 dead, pop 6 M, 6 fpm

Laos, 0 dead, pop 7 M, 0 fpm

Lebanon, 32 dead, pop 7 M, 5 fpm

Maldives, 8 dead, pop 0.5 M, 16 fpm

Mongolia, 0 dead, pop 3 M, 0 fpm

Myanmar, 6 dead, pop 54 M, <1 fpm

Nepal, 22 dead, pop 29 M, <1 fpm

Palestine, 5 dead, pop 5 M, 1 fpm

Qatar, 93 dead, pop 3 M, 31 fpm

Singapore, 26 dead, pop 6 M, 5 fpm

Sri Lanka, 11 dead, pop 21 M, <1 fpm

Syria, 7 dead, pop 17 M, <1 fpm

Taiwan, 7 dead, pop 24 M, <1 fpm

Tajikistan, 51 dead, pop 9 M, 6 fpm

Thailand, 58 dead, pop 70 M, <1 fpm

Uzbekistan, 19 dead, pop 33 M, <1 fpm

Vietnam, 0 dead, pop 96 M, 0 FPM

In Europe:

Albania, 42 dead, pop 3 M, 14 fpm

Cyprus, 19 dead, pop 0.9 M, 21 fpm

Estonia, 69 dead, pop 1.3 M, 53 fpm

Georgia, 14 dead, pop 4 M, 4.5 fpm

Kosovo, 33 dead, pop 2 M, 17 fpm

Latvia, 30 dead, pop 2 M, 15 fpm

Lithuania, 76 dead, pop 3 M, 25 fpm

Malta, 9 dead, pop 0.5 M, 18 fpm

Montenegro, 9 dead, pop 0.6 M, 15 fpm

Slovakia, 28 dead, pop 5 M, 6 fpm

Elsewhere:

New Zealand, 22 dead, pop 5 M, 4 fpm

Papua New Guinea, 0 dead, pop 9 M, 0 fpm

Once again, I would very much like the secret of what those countries (apparently) did right, and what the US, Brazil, Mexico, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and a lot of other countries obviously did wrong.

Ideas?

USA: Highest COVID Death toll in the entire world; One of the highest infection rates per capita; and highest number of cases

Making America Great Again – was it really intended to make the USA have the highest Covid-19 death toll in the entire world, PLUS the highest infection rate? What a record!!

Please look at this table, which I compiled from data I found here and here. I have sorted it by the total number of reported Covid-19 deaths and left off almost all of the nations with less than three thousand cases, except for Taiwan and Vietnam.

If you look, you will see that the US (with 105 thousand deaths) is way ahead of every other country — in fact, it’s about the same as the next three or four nations combined (UK, Italy, Brazil, and France).

The US also has the highest number of reported cases in the entire world, with about 1.8 million; that’s roughly the same amount as the next seven nations combined (Brazil, Russia, UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, and India).

No Herd Immunity

People have been talking about herd immunity and low fatality rates. My calculations tell me that we are a long, long way from herd immunity anywhere, and that the fatality rates are rather high.

To get herd immunity, you need to have 70% to 90% of the population that has antibodies – either from a vaccine or from having contracted the disease and recovered by their own body producing the necessary antibodies. I simply divided the total number of reported cases (which is probably too low in every case, but I have no idea by what factor) by the population of each country. What I find is that not a single nation has reached even 1% of their population having been infected and recovered. The highest such rates are in the small nations of Bahrain, Kuwait, and Luxembourg, which have about 7 people diagnosed as having been positive per THOUSAND, that’s 0.7%. The US has about 0.55% positive.

No herd immunity there.

High Fatality Rates

If we divide the number of coronavirus deaths by the total number of cases, we get rather large percentages. For the world as a whole, it’s about 6%, and for the very worst-off nations like France, Belgium, Italy, the UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, and Mexico, your chances of dying if diagnosed positive [EDIT] are over 10%.*

Scary.

	Total Reported Cases	Total Reported Deaths	Calculated fatality rate	Population, millions	Infection rate so far
World	6,104,980	370,078	6.06%	7594	0.080%
United States	1,811,016	105,295	5.81%	327	0.554%
United Kingdom	274,762	38,489	14.01%	66	0.416%
Italy	233,019	33,415	14.34%	60	0.388%
Brazil	501,985	28,872	5.75%	209	0.240%
France	151,496	28,771	18.99%	67	0.226%
Spain	239,429	27,127	11.33%	46	0.520%
Mexico	87,512	9,779	11.17%	126	0.069%
Belgium	58,381	9,467	16.22%	11	0.531%
Germany	183,411	8,602	4.69%	83	0.221%
Iran	151,466	7,797	5.15%	82	0.185%
Canada	90,516	7,092	7.84%	37	0.245%
Netherlands	46,442	5,956	12.82%	17	0.273%
India	182,143	5,164	2.84%	10	1.821%
Russia	405,843	4,693	1.16%	144	0.282%
China	83,001	4,634	5.58%	1393	0.006%
Turkey	163,103	4,515	2.77%	82	0.199%
Sweden	37,542	4,395	11.71%	10	0.375%
Peru	155,671	4,371	2.81%	32	0.486%
Ecuador	38,571	3,334	8.64%	17	0.227%
Switzerland	30,862	1,657	5.37%	9	0.343%
Ireland	24,990	1,652	6.61%	5	0.500%
Indonesia	26,473	1,613	6.09%	268	0.010%
Pakistan	70,868	1,519	2.14%	212	0.033%
Chile	94,858	997	1.05%	19	0.499%
Philippines	18,086	957	5.29%	107	0.017%
Egypt	23,449	913	3.89%	98	0.024%
Colombia	28,236	890	3.15%	50	0.056%
Japan	16,804	886	5.27%	127	0.013%
Ukraine	23,672	708	2.99%	46	0.051%
Austria	16,731	668	3.99%	9	0.186%
Algeria	9,394	653	6.95%	42	0.022%
Bangladesh	47,153	650	1.38%	161	0.029%
South Africa	30,967	643	2.08%	58	0.053%
Denmark	11,633	571	4.91%	6	0.194%
Argentina	16,201	528	3.26%	44	0.037%
Hungary	3,876	526	13.57%	10	0.039%
Saudi Arabia	85,261	503	0.59%	34	0.251%
Dominican Republic	16,908	498	2.95%	11	0.154%
Panama	13,018	330	2.53%	4	0.325%
Finland	6,859	320	4.67%	5.5	0.125%
Czech Republic	9,233	319	3.45%	11	0.084%
Bolivia	9,592	310	3.23%	11	0.087%
Moldova	8,251	295	3.58%	3.5	0.236%
Israel	17,024	284	1.67%	9	0.189%
Nigeria	9,855	273	2.77%	196	0.005%
South Korea	11,468	270	2.35%	52	0.022%
Sudan	4,800	262	5.46%	42	0.011%
United Arab Emirates	33,896	262	0.77%	10	0.339%
Afghanistan	15,205	257	1.69%	37	0.041%
Serbia	11,381	242	2.13%	7	0.163%
Norway	8,437	236	2.80%	5	0.169%
Belarus	42,556	235	0.55%	9.5	0.448%
Kuwait	27,043	212	0.78%	4	0.676%
Morocco	7,783	204	2.62%	36	0.022%
Honduras	5,094	201	3.95%	9.6	0.053%
Iraq	6,179	195	3.16%	38	0.016%
Cameroon	5,904	191	3.24%	25	0.024%
Bosnia & Herzegovina	2,510	153	6.10%	3	0.084%
Bulgaria	2,453	140	5.71%	7	0.035%
North Macedonia	2,226	133	5.97%	2	0.111%
Armenia	9,282	131	1.41%	3	0.309%
Malaysia	7,819	115	1.47%	32	0.024%
Luxembourg	4,016	110	2.74%	0.6	0.669%
Croatia	2,246	103	4.59%	4	0.056%
Australia	7,193	103	1.43%	25	0.029%
Guatemala	4,739	102	2.15%	17	0.028%
Cuba	2,025	83	4.10%	11	0.018%
DR Congo	3,046	72	2.36%	84	0.004%
Azerbaijan	5,494	63	1.15%	10	0.055%
Thailand	3,081	57	1.85%	69	0.004%
Tajikistan	3,807	47	1.23%	9	0.042%
Oman	11,437	46	0.40%	5	0.229%
Senegal	3,535	41	1.16%	16	0.022%
Kazakhstan	10,858	40	0.37%	18	0.060%
Ghana	7,881	36	0.46%	30	0.026%
Ivory Coast	2,799	33	1.18%	25	0.011%
Guinea	3,706	23	0.62%	12	0.031%
Singapore	34,884	23	0.07%	5.6	0.623%
Djibouti	3,194	22	0.69%	1	0.319%
Bahrain	10,793	18	0.17%	1.5	0.720%
Uzbekistan	3,554	14	0.39%	33	0.011%
Taiwan	442	7	1.58%	24	0.002%
Vietnam	328	0	0.00%	96	0.000%

* EDIT: The divisor here is the number of people who have been formally and medically diagnosed as positive. The number of people who have actually been exposed to COVID-19 is probably considerably higher than the number of people who have tested positive, since no country is testing every single citizen, and the technicians are not testing people randomly.

By what factor is the reported positive rate in the various nation’s populations too low? I cannot say, and I’m positive it varies a lot from nation to nation and even within any country or state or region.

CDC gives a much lower fatality rate than I do – they estimate it to be under 1%, which would mean that every single reported positive case represents about 10 to 60 people who got the infection and fought it off unknowingly. That’s the only way you can lower a 6% fatality rate to 0.6% or 0.1%. Does that sound reasonable to you? It would be nice if that were true, but I rather doubt it.

More Educational Miracles (Not!)

I have prepared charts and graphs for 8th grade NAEP average scale scores for black, hispanic, and white students in various jurisdictions: the entire nation; all large cities; Washington DC; Florida, Michigan; and Mississippi.

You will see that there was a general upwards trend in math from about 1992 to roughly 2007 or 2009, but the scores have mostly leveled off during the last decade. I included Michigan, since that is the state where current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has had the mo$t per$sonal influence, but that influence doesn’t look to be positive.

While it’s good that DC’s black students no longer score the lowest in the nation (that would be Michigan – see the first graph), there is another feature of my fair city: very high-performing white students (generally with affluent, well-educated parents) in its unfortunately rather segregated public schools, as you can see in the last graph. 

Can You See The Educational Miracles in DC, Florida, Michigan, and Mississippi?

No?

Even though the Common Core curriculum is now essentially the law of the land (though well disguised), and nearly every school system devotes an enormous amount of its time to testing, and many states and cities (such as DC, Florida, and Michigan) are hammering away at public schools and opening often-unregulated charter schools and subsidizing voucher schemes?

You don’t see the miracles that MUST have flowed from those ‘reforms’?

Neither can I.

I present to you average scale scores for black students on the 8th grade NAEP reading tests, copied and pasted by from the NAEP website for the past 27 years, and graphed by me using Excel. You will notice that any changes have been small — after all, these scores can go up to 500 if a student gets everything right, and unlike on the SAT, the lowest possible score is zero.

DC’s black 8th graders are scoring slightly lower than in 2013 or 2015, even though a speaker assured us that DC was an outstanding performer. Black Florida students are scoring lower than they did 2, 4, 6, or 10 years ago, even though Betsy DeVos assured us that they were setting a wonderful example for the nation. Michigan is the state where DeVos and her family has had the most influence, and it consistently scores lower than the national average. Mississippi was held up for us as a wonderful example of growth, but their score is exactly one point higher than it was in 2003.

Some miracles.

 

EDIT: Here are the corresponding charts and graphs for hispanic and white students:

 

More on PIRLS international assessment of nations in reading

It’s utterly amazing:

Twelve minutes after twelve noon on December 12, 2012, (that is, 12:12 on 12/12/12 has come and gone, and somehow the sky still hasn’t fallen.

American fourth-grade students actually did quite well in comparison to about 50 nations in reading and literacy, according to the most recent PIRLS data. Here are two more graphs that I will share with you, which I took from pages 68 and 69 of that report.

This graph is packed full of information!

First of all, notice that the USA is #7 out of all the 40+ nations when ranked by what percentage of students in each country attained scores deemed “advanced”.  We beat nations like Ireland, Israel, NZ, Canada, Taiwan, Denmark, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, France, Austria, and many more. That’s not bad.

Further, if you look at the middle, vertical blue line that I drew, you notice that the US has the sixth highest rate in the WORLD of students reaching the “high” benchmark as defined by PIRLS.

Finally, if you look at the median percentages, shown at the very bottom of the page and circled in blue by me, you see that the American rankings are way higher (farther to the right) than any of them.

My next graph shows how a few regions did. I’m going to take this with a bit more salt, however:

 

According to this table, Florida alone is #2 in the entire world. Is that really true? I don’t know; it doesn’t appear to be so highly ranked in reading on the NAEP; it’s tied for 12th place with Delaware, Kentucky, and Montana.

But I think it’s fair to say that American kids aren’t doing as poorly as many pundits and politicians keep saying.