The Table with data from 30 countries comprises a total of 446,916 Coronavirus cases, which is 90.8% of the 492,443 cases reported worldwide until a few minutes ago, and is therefore more than a good reference sample. These 30 countries have recorded 21,640 deaths, which is 97.6% of the 22,180 deaths globally.
If we skip Bangladesh – where total reported cases and deaths are both too low to be believable, the next 4 countries (Italy, Indonesia, Iran, and Spain) have recorded an average of 8.643% deaths (out of the people tested positive for Coronavirus / COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 / 2019-nCoV. That’s more than 1 in 12 people, a very high mortality rate.
Even the next 8 countries (the Philippines, the Netherlands, France, UK, Egypt, China, Belgium, and Japan) have recorded a 4.424% mortality rate.
Overall, 23 of the 30 countries in the Table have reported an average mortality rate of 5.415% – or more than 1 in 20 people. The mean or average for all 30 countries is 4.842% and the median is 2.39%.
Like me, you must have also heard many “experts” say on TV (or videos / articles) that this pandemic of Coronavirus has a very low mortality rate. I have heard figures of between 0.3% and 2% being talked about.
The data seems to paint a very different picture, doesn’t it? And why are some countries reporting mortality rates much higher than the mean or the median?