The Extent of the Covid Tragedy: Counting the Dead

Originally, it seemed that the Covid virus was centered on the wealthy countries and many of the poorer ones were being left rather unscathed.  That assumption has proved to be false.  One of the issues in assessing the impact of the virus is the lack of accurate data available from the less-developed nations.  The most useful information would be the number of excess deaths during the pandemic compared to previous trends.  However, that data is often not available.  In an article from May of this year, The Economist attempted to provide a more useful estimate of the number of actual deaths due to the virus by looking at a range of secondary indicators.  A summary of its results can be found here, with more detailed information available here. 

“Using known data on 121 variables, from recorded deaths to demography, we have built a pattern of correlations that lets us fill in gaps where numbers are lacking. Our model suggests that covid-19 has already claimed 7.1m-12.7m lives. Our central estimate is that 10m people have died who would otherwise be living. This tally of “excess deaths” is over three times the official count, which nevertheless is the basis for most statistics on the disease, including fatality rates and cross-country comparisons.”

The number of recorded deaths in the available tallies is misleading, underestimating the severity of the pandemic.  These “official” summaries also mislead in identifying where the deaths are occurring.  

“The most important insight from our work is that covid-19 has been harder on the poor than anyone knew. Official figures suggest that the pandemic has struck in waves, and that the United States and Europe have been hit hard. Although South America has been ravaged, the rest of the developing world seemed to get off lightly.” 

“Our modelling tells another story. When you count all the bodies, you see that the pandemic has spread remorselessly from the rich, connected world to poorer, more isolated places. As it has done so, the global daily death rate has climbed steeply.”

“Death rates have been very high in some rich countries, but the overwhelming majority of the 6.7m or so deaths that nobody counted were in poor and middle-income ones. In Romania and Iran excess deaths are more than double the number officially put down to covid-19. In Egypt they are 13 times as big. In America the difference is 7.1%.”

At the time of the article, India was undergoing a tremendous increase in the number of infections and deaths due to Covid with total deaths in the 200-300 thousand range.  A current tabulation places the number of deaths at 420 thousand.

“Our model suggests the country is seeing between 6,000 and 31,000 excess deaths a day, well in excess of official figures around the 4,000 mark. This fits with independent epidemiological estimates of between 8,000 and 32,000 a day. On the basis of the model it would appear that around 1m people may have died of covid-19 in India so far this year. Again, this does not seem out of line with other estimates.”

This suggests the number of deaths in India is perhaps about four times larger than numbers being put out by India’s authorities.  A more recent estimate reported by the Associated Press, India’s pandemic death toll could be in the millions, suggests that The Economist’s estimates may be too conservative, at least for India.

The study reported looked at excess death data from seven of India’s states and estimated that if the findings were applied to India as a whole, the number of deaths would be about 10 times the official rate.

“The report released Tuesday estimated excess deaths — the gap between those recorded and those that would have been expected — to be 3 million to 4.7 million between January 2020 and June 2021. It said an accurate figure may ‘prove elusive’ but the true death toll ‘is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count’.”

All those uncounted deaths indicate the number of infected individuals providing a platform for the virus to experiment with new versions of itself was vastly greater than thought.  New dangerous variants of the virus may exist that have yet to emerge.  If vaccinating 7 billion people is not practical, the only way to counter this process is to move quickly to provide vaccinations to those most at risk for infection.  Wealthier countries, trying to minimize the risk to themselves, have cornered the market on the available vaccines, often stockpiling more than they can immediately use.  This is not the best strategy in a pandemic.  If one region is undergoing runaway infections, the whole world is at risk.