I began collecting data on the 26th of March and chose what was then the top ten countries by 'infection': China, Italy, Spain, the US, Germany, Iran, France, Switzerland, the UK, and South Korea. To these I added the world statistics as well as Australia - just because I live here - and on the 12th of April 2020 I added (and backdated) Sweden as a control group of a 'non-lockdown' country (although South Korea also did not have extensive lockdowns).
I also kept the statistics of the top ten countries by 'death', starting 26th March: Italy, Spain, China, Iran, France, the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. Obviously I added the world total, Australia and Sweden to remain consistent with the above list.
Throughout, I wanted to chart the following:
- Daily infection totals (numeric),
- Daily infection increase (numeric),
- Daily infection totals (percentage of total population),
- Daily infection increase (percentage of total population).
- Daily death totals (numeric),
- Daily death increase (numeric),
- Daily death totals (percentage of total population),
- Daily death increase (percentage of total population).
I have not factored daily population increase by new births into my data (which would give a more accurate picture); instead I have merely assumed static populations by world and by country. I also generously assumed that all data provided by Johns Hopkins University is correct. I recorded Johns Hopkins data once per day at exactly 10:00am Australian Eastern Standard Time. For the US, Chinese and Australian death data, I utilized the Worldometer source due to the fact that they are tallied as whole countries there rather than by city/state as on the Johns Hopkins website (just saving myself some work!)
Now, I found some oddities in the data. On the 5th of April, France's daily 'infections' were 5 times higher (~25,000) than any other given day. On the 15th of April, France's 'infections' were clearly revised 6,514 cases lower than the previous day. Since I only record the data once per day, this was glaringly obvious. The most alarming revision was of the US data for the 14th of April. On that day alone there was an increase of 127,306 cases, about 4 times higher than any other single day for the US. This number had been subsequently revised lower on the 15th of April, an overall decrease of 77,426 cases. Similarly, on the 14th of April, the entire world was tallied at 2,019,320 cases. This had been revised lower on the 15th of April to 1,973,715, a decrease of 45,605 cases on the previous day.
For the death data, oddities occurred for France on the 3rd of April when almost 3 times the average daily deaths for COVID-19 were recorded. The French death data then fluctuates wildly from this point, some days recording 1,000 or 1,400 deaths per day, others 500, others 800. Belgium sees almost a doubling of its recorded death rate on and after the 8th of April, as did the US. Most other countries have relatively stable death data.
Other oddities include Iran, which is seeing remarkably small daily increases of approximately 0.002 to 0.005% total population per day for its infections, and 0.0001 - 0.0002% per day for deaths. When compared to other populations, some countries, in spite of lockdowns, exhibit the highest daily increases in infections, in the range of 0.011-0.017% population per day (Spain), and 0.007-0.010% per day (Italy). Sweden, with no enforced lockdown except for the over-70s, sees an average daily infection rate of 0.003-0.006% of their whole population per day. South Korea did not enforce a country-wide lockdown at all; its infections have more-or-less ceased.
The greatest surprise comes when we perform a 180 on the infection percentages. We will notice that the number 99% quickly becomes a repetitive theme. As of today, 15th of April:
99.994% of China's population is uninfected.The deaths data is basically a factor of 10 less than the above, so I won't even bother listing by country the fact that 99.99% of most countries' populations are still alive in spite of a 'rampaging virus' that's supposed to be decimating us by the millions.
99.729% of Italy's population is uninfected.
99.817% of USA's population is uninfected.
99.633% of Spain's population is uninfected.
99.842% of Germany's population is uninfected.
99.91% of Iran's population is uninfected.
99.798% of France's population is uninfected.
99.698% of Switzerland's population is uninfected.
99.858% of UK's population is uninfected.
99.979% of South Korea's population is uninfected.
99.889% of Sweden's population is uninfected.
99.974% of Australia's population is uninfected.
99.974% of the World population is uninfected.
Moreover, of the some ~12,462,000 total world deaths of every cause since the 25th of January 2020, assuming the World Factbook's 152,000 deaths per day figure, only 1.01% of these are accounted for by our 'rampaging' COVID-19. This means that 98.99% of people who have died since the 'outbreak' began did not die from COVID-19. And, like I said before, this generously assumes the death data provided by Johns Hopkins is correct.
It should be plain to anyone who can think that we are living in a classic case of The Boy Who Cried Wolf mingled with The Emperor Has No Clothes.
About the author
Joshua Michael lives in Sydney with his wife and has not managed to lose a day of work as a part-time bus driver due to COVID-19. He enjoys critical thinking and challenging the cultural meta-narrative. He is currently undertaking a post-graduate degree program researching the interplay between ancient Caananite-Hebrew mythology and plasma physics.
If your GPS directed you to drive you and your familiy off the edge of Beachy Head, would you do it? Maybe not, but they would, if they haven't done that already.
It's like that line in that Cassiopaeans session... "just as your computers will destroy you", or whatever it was.