I read today in this News Dot Com article the assertion that:
Covid-19 has a mortality rate of 1.06 per cent in Australia. Around 1,400 Aussies are currently in hospital with the virus, including 288 people in Intensive Care Units across the country.
And since it seems that basically anyone can be a fact-checker these days, I thought I’d give it a crack.
My conclusion:
Misleading
Let’s dig in.
The Australian Health site here keeps fairly up to date statistics of COVID events, including “cases” and deaths.
Here is a snapshot of the total numbers around the country as I type this article on 20 October 2021:
So, with a little maths we can see that this does in fact demonstrate a total mortality rate of 1.06%.
Therefore we can give our newsy friends a big green tick, because technically speaking they managed to divide the correct numbers by the other correct numbers.
However – this isn’t the number we should be looking at, because it’s simply not granular enough.
First – How COVID Deaths are Reported in Australia
When COVID first popped up, each state had its own ways of reporting deaths.
The result is that the statistics were about as reliable as promises made in the lead up to an election. In some cases we had people dying in motorcycle accidents reported as COVID deaths, which is obviously stupid.
Have those numbers been removed from these? Who knows, since apparently we just decided to gloss over that bit.
What I can tell you though is that the health site currently says that it counts something as a COVID death:
As per the COVID-19 national guidelines, a COVID-19 death is defined for surveillance purposes as a death in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID19 (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery from COVID-19 between illness and death. Where a Coroner’s report is available, these findings are to be observed.
Let’s interpret this for a moment. A death counts as a COVID death if:
- the person had COVID19; and
- there is no clear alternative cause of death.
This is what I like to call a “low bar”.
Basically if we don’t bother trying to find out that something else killed a person, then it was COVID.
And since we don’t seem to bother actually running tests for anything else these days (like the flu, for example) the chances of us finding a clear alternative cause of death are pretty slim.
The result here is that attributing a death to COVID is the default position. The statistics, therefore, represent the highest possible death rate of COVID and not a considered reflection on the actual cause of death.
It’s also probably fun to point out here that the extreme difference between how easy it is for something to be declared a COVID death, and how hard it is for something to be identified as an adverse reaction to the COVID vaccine (don’t worry – I’ll fact check myself on that statement at some point).
Conclusion – the result is that declaring COVID to have a mortality rate of 1.06% based on these figures is inherently misleading. At best we can declarea COVID19 to have an absolute maximum mortality rate of 1.06% based on these figures – because on closer reflection and testing the number would only ever go down.
Next – Age Matters
Now the rubber really hits the road, because as a 40 (shock) year old man I’m not that interested in overall statistics – I’m more interested in whether I’m going to die or not (I know – pretty selfish).
I’m also interested in my kids, because of course we’re all freaking out about the health and safety of our kids at the moment.
So let’s look at the age breakup of cases and deaths.
For reasons that I shan’t speculate on, these aren’t actually in a helpful single table, but rather spread across two tables. Here are two pictures (the first cases, the second deaths – broken up by age and gender) as at 20 October 2021.
OK so now I grab my calculator and we find the following mortality rates by age:
- 0-9 age bracket – ZERO percent mortality rate
- 10-19 age bracket – 0.017% mortality
- 20-29 age bracket – 0.0287% mortality
- 30-39 age bracket – 0.0432% mortality
- 40-49 age bracket – 0.166% mortality
- 50-59 age bracket – 0.679% mortality
- 60-69 age bracket – 1.8% mortality
- 70-79 age bracket – 6.645% mortality
- 80-89 age bracket – 18.6% mortality
- 90+ age bracket – 30.77% mortality.
Phew! That was a lot of maths – I think I need a rest.
Now here’s the thing – the stats obviously go up right on the 60 age bracket – EVERYTHING under that is less than the 1.06% number being trotted out.
And where only around 15% of the population is over the age of 65, this is where it gets misleading.
MOST people reading that statistic of 1.06% do NOT have that mortality chance, even on these openly maxxed out death statistics.
Which leads to…
Outliers
In my view, including the 80+ age bracket statistics in the generally published figures is manifestly misleading. That data heavily skews the statistics on mortality.
I could do some maths to support this, but I did enough maths earlier.
It’s generally accepted that the elderly are more vulnerable to basically everything. We can add to that the fact that many elderly are in aged care, where spread of disease and generally poor nutrition, conditions and care amount to significantly different health factors than those NOT in aged care.
Let’s be clear: 766 out of 1558 deaths currently reported occured WITHIN RESIDENTIAL AGED CARE. That’s just a smidgen under 50% of the reported COVID deaths.
But we’re including those in data related to the general population, and using that as part of our decision making which impacts those not in aged care – despite it being a unique combination of factors not found anywhere else.
So telling me that I have a 1% chance of dying from something when that’s 8x what the actual data shows and includes those outlying figures, is frankly just an exercise in scaremongering.
And Lastly… Where are the Co-Morbidities?
By this point most people know that pre-existing conditions have a massive impact on how COVID affects people.
Have you noticed what’s happened though? We don’t even mention it anymore. The data isn’t that easy to find, and if it is it’s buried in a dense and nearly impossible to read piece of medical literature. Certainly politicians aren’t talking about it, and news outlets aren’t reporting on it.
Obesity is the obvious one which has a dramatic impact on outcomes, although apparently it’s not PC to mention that.
So here’s an interesting and different one for you – this paper here based on CDC data suggests that anxiety was (at the time at least) running a close second in terms of increasing bad outcomes from COVID.
So let’s be clear:
- Co-morbidities have a massive impact on COVID19 outcomes;
- Anxiety is a major co-morbidity that increases your chance of dying from COVID; and
- The news and politicians of the day are literally telling you you’re going to die every morning, locking down the states on a whim (unless it’s football) and crushing small business under their emergency-powered-boot.
- This increases your anxiety levels, because your life sucks (how about a 7-day snap lockdown that lasts for 77 days, anyone?)
- Which makes you more vulnerable to adverse consequences of COVID.
Happy days.
Wrapping Up.
I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at a fact check.
My conclusion is that the assertion of a 1.06% morbidity from COVID-19 is strictly correct but entirely misleading.
Have a nice day.
