The CoronApocalypse – By The Numbers

I started to do a little investigation of the numbers I’ve seen about COVID the world over. I had just heard that Japan had gotten over the hump with under 900 COVID deaths and no lockdown. How could that be? The COVID numbers I am using are from the “worldometer.com” site. So, I’m curious about why the COVID numbers appear to be so skewed… and why? (As a disclaimer, I’m sorry to load this up with so much math but there’s really no other way to look at it that I can see.)

As I originally discovered…

1. The US population makes up about 4.25% of the world’s population.
2. Reported COVID cases in the US make up 30.5% of world cases.
3. Reported COVID deaths in the US make up 28.5% of world deaths.

Looking further at the United States…

NY, NJ, IL, MA, and PA (states with the highest cases) make up 37% of the US population, but have reported 56% of US COVID cases and 47% of US COVID deaths.

NY alone, with 6% of the US population, has reported 21.5% of US COVID cases and 29% of US COVID deaths. In fact, with a mere 0.26% of the world’s population, NY is, supposedly, responsible for 6.5% of the world’s COVID infections and 8.25% of the world’s COVID deaths. NY’s population to world population versus NY COVID deaths to world COVID deaths is a ratio of 31.7-to-1. Do you understand the unlikeliness of that?

Now, contrast the above state’s stats to the populations of CA (11.9%), FL (6.5%), and TX (8.27%), states with large populations but seem to have fared well. So, CA, FL, and TX make up 27% of the US population, with 11.8% of reported US COVID cases, and 7.6% of US COVID deaths.

Boiling that down to raw numbers… a ratio… (thus removing the differences in population sizes and deaths related to those populations), the deaths to population ratio percentages of the first set of states to the second set is 5.3-to-1. Thus, for every 1% of the population of CA, FL, and TX that succumb to the COVID, 5.3% of the population of NY, NJ, IL, MA, and PA die.

Why so big a difference?

What do the profligate spenders of the US Congress think is the answer to every problem? To throw money, loads of money, at it. So, we came up with this idea that to “flatten the curve” to “slow the spread,” everybody had to stay home and thousands and thousands of businesses needed to cease operations. Overnight, millions of Americans needed a handout, lacking the hand-up that a job provides so, in stepped the already-bankrupted federal government. Money for all… and if a state could prove adverse effects from those dying from COVID, and that its health care system was being overwhelmed, well… there was money for that, too.

It’s been stated that the more havoc a state can attribute to the COVID, the money it can get. I do not have accurate data on that yet but, you can be sure, I will keep looking. There’s got to be something behind the wildly divergent numbers we are seeing and where there’s smoke, there’s, usually, fire.