Comparisons of figures on COVID deaths between countries need to be taken with a very large bucket of salt, for at least the following reasons:- Countries uses different methodologies for counting COVID deaths (with COVID, of COVID, mentioned on death certificate in any form; within X days of testing positive (regardless of cause); date of death or date of registration etc., etc.)- Misdiagnosis of COVID as something else and vice versa- Not all countries' reporting systems are robust at the best of times. (The UN estimates that, in “normal” times, only two-thirds of countries register at least 90% of all deaths that occur, and some countries register less than 50% — or even under 10% — of deaths). In the pandemic, these may have broken down further or been deliberately distorted.- Different countries have different age profiles. We know that death rates amongst the old are higher than amongst the young - so given the same age group death rates in two different countries, the country with an older age profile will have a greater overall death rate.Given all that, arguably a better way of looking at comparative overall impacts of COVID in different countries is to look at excess death rates - i.e. the number of deaths recorded in a given period above the "expected" number of deaths in that period (usually the average of deaths recorded in the same period over the past 5 years). And even this will be prone to some of the problems set out above (reporting systems, age profiles). And this approach has its own issues (is the baseline of "expected" deaths measured over a rolling 5-year period, over a fixed 5-year period, using regression analysis etc.), all of which may give different results.In both cases, the time period that you are looking at will also affect the figures. As a simple example, if you look at a two year period, if deaths are brought forward from year 2 to year 1, then looking at just year 1 will give a higher death rate than looking at year 1 and year 2 together.Given all of this, unless (or even if) you are an expert in epidemiological statistics, a league table of COVID deaths is not really terribly enlightening - I suspect that people will pick and choose the statistic that suits their prior convictions - I've seen a statistic which (if I've understood it correctly!) gives the UK one of the best excess death rates in the world.
Andrzej Kowalski ● 1547d