[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by redneck

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Question for RedDevil.

So, I was just looking at the Worldmeter site https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Deaths per million population

USA - 275 Deaths per million or Death rate of .0275% per million

Belgium - 784 Deaths per million or Death rate of .0784% per million

Serious question.

Does Belgium count their deaths “with” Covid 19 or “from” Covid 19...???

Here they’re being very liberal with cause of death and using the term Covid “related” and not “from”.

This is to say, at the very least, dishonest and vague .

I’m just curious, nothing else.

I can't say for certain about Belgium(*), but I guess it is more or less the same as for the Dutch: Deaths (and infections for that matter) are only attributed to COVID-19 when the patient has either tested positive or got ill after contact with a proven case and has the right symptoms.

In some cases the count has been adjusted (upwards) well after the fact like when a home of the elderly had massive loss of life and the deceased all had COVID-19 symptoms but none was tested. In that case it would be very unlikely they did not have COVID-19, so that makes sense.

Nonetheless, a week ago we had about 5,500 fatalities attributed to COVID-19 while the excess death toll over the last 2½ months compared to the same period last year was about 9,000; one may assume about 3,500 people died of COVID-19 without being counted as such.

Tests on donor blood samples showed about 3% of them had antibodies for SARS-CoV2. That is way more than the official 0,25% of Corona cases.
But there are tests under way using blood plasma from COVID-19 recoverees in new patients to let the antibodies in the plasma mark the virus for destruction by the patients own immune system.
Many blood donors know that; so those who recovered volunteer en masse while those who have not yet been ill avoid hospitals like anybody else, so the blood sample test results are affected.

In Iceland there were true blind test samples that also had a 3% infection rate IIRC while only 0.5% was accounted for (suggesting only 1 in 6 infections get noticed), but then again Iceland is a typical community and its data may not compare with other countries.

I work in IT.

https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-05-08

(*) Belgium has twice as many deaths per capita than the Netherlands. I bet that's due to a relatively large immigration of Italians just after WW2, and family ties and visits accelerated the infections in February and March when Italy was already hit hard.