Leading the world?

There are plenty of media proclamations that Australia is “leading the world” in the fight against COVID-19. There are about 235 countries supplying daily data for key elements of COVID activity. I have compiled a comparative table of the top 12 countries in the world with a recovery rate above 90% as at 13th June 2020.

I have excluded China from the list because I simply don’t believe that their data has any integrity.

I chose this recovery measure because it indicated to me that these countries are at a mature level with their own COVID management program.

You will notice that the information for Australia has two entries; a “no background colour" version and a version highlighted in gold. The plain version is what is reported to the Australian public and the rest of the world every day and the highlighted version is after the overnight reduction of 253 old inactive cases from the NSW active cases report.  

You will note that our recovery rate change has taken us from 10^th best to 4^th best performer.

We have the 4^th highest population in the list and have the 7^th lowest number of recorded cases in absolute numbers, but our “per million of population” performance is better with the 4^th lowest in the list.

Our “active cases” performance is where we have different figures. I can’t think of any rational reason why our government has persisted with the wrong data.

Reality is that we have the 6^th highest number of active cases and our ratio between confirmed and active cases is better than six of the other 11 countries in the list.

We come 5^th (numbers) and 3^rd (per mil) in the death figures and we have the 2^nd highest testing numbers and 3^rd best “per mil” count.

The highlighted numbers in other countries for tests and recoveries is where I have detected a lack of change over a number of days, suggesting that these figures do not reflect accurate reporting.

Until about 20th June, we were firmly entrenched in the “top 12”, and therefore must be the envy of many countries, but I don’t think that we should be proclaiming that we are “leading the world”. With the spike of new cases in Victoria in the last half of June, we have slipped to 13th in Recoveries, based on the official Federal figures, but as at 27th June, we are 5th on recoveries, using the individual state and territory data (reduced active cases in NSW added to recoveries). 

Here is the Timeline of 'open' confirmed cases, recoveries, and deaths that I want you to see.

The opinions expressed in this article are my personal opinions and the information that I have provided within the article is, to the best of my understanding, factual. I respect the right of others to have differing opinions. Any errors or inconsistencies are entirely my fault.

Posted By darryl

Updated : 22nd June 2020 | Words : 483 | Views : 726

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