GCC states = Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar
Cumulatively, about 40,000 cases; Case fatality rate something around 0.5%
New York, about 300,000 cases; Case fatality rate about 7.5%
Seems like there are enough cases in each group that the difference is real.
Because the GCC are lying through their teeth?
I’d bet it’s some weirdness with testing rates, and how they’re recording deaths from COVID-19 vs. other causes of death.
It could be that a milder strain is active in the Middle East, that weather means the virus is harder to catch, that lack of public transportation means a slower transmission, that certain genetic traits more common in the Middle East make the virus less deadly, that they have a more effective treatment method. No way to tell right now.
These are some of the countries that have seen a lot of new cases in the past few weeks. So it could be that there are a lot of recently infected people who haven’t died yet.
There is also some speculation that live vaccines like BCG offer some protection against COVID-19, but as far as I know, that is still unproven speculation.
Or maybe the tests they are using in those regions have a higher false positive rate?
Moved to the Quarantine Zone from GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
For anyone else wondering, “GCC” here apparently means the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Not sure why the OP couldn’t have spelled that out.
<by CP, in the OP>
“GCC states = Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar”
Sure, but that does not tell us what the fuck GCC stands for.
I’m not too convinced any of these explanations explain a difference of this magnitude.
Generally, I assume a certain level of background knowledge for those who take enough interest to post a reply.
In this case, spelling out the exact countries seemed to me to convey sufficient information–and more conveniently–to the reader than does an acronym easily found by anyone ignorant of its expansion.
But thank you for the feedback.
They are all wealthy, small (exception for Saudi Arabia) countries, with excellent health care systems and generous Government social spending and efficient administration who can enforce shutdowns efficiently.
Many of those countries have thousands of guest workers from India, Pakistan, the Philippines and elsewhere. Are they counted in the statistics? Do they have access to those excellent health care systems?
I don’t have a theory about the low rates in the Gulf States, but one reason I can think of why they might be high in New York is the difficulty in getting tested.
I’m not talking about the general availability of tests so much as the difficulties in getting to a testing site.
I’ve read several accounts written by New Yorkers and talked to several New Yorkers that were sick and recovered. Here’s the scenario that keeps popping up.
Someone is sick, sick beyond a bad cold. They call their doctor and they qualify for testing based on their symptoms. They are given the location of the nearest test site. Then they are told NOT to take mass transit, NOT to take a cab, NOT to call an Uber. For many of these people the only alternative was walking.
And most of them were too sick to walk 10, 20 blocks or more to the test site. So they just decided to act under the presumption that they were infected. Some of these people recovered. They weren’t counted. Other got sick enough that they had to be ambulanced to the hospital, where some recovered and some died. The people in the first group weren’t counted at all, while the people in the second group were counted. That group had a much higher fatality rate.
Kuwait: 30/4377
Bahrain: 8/3169
UAE: 111/13038
Saudi Arabia: 169/24097
Oman: 11/2447
Qatar: 12/14096
Total: 341 deaths / 61,224 infections = 0.56%
That is a tiny sample, in an area where the infection rate is rising rapidly. Number of infections in Kuwait is doubling every 10~12 days in several of those countries.
There’s a reason “case fatality rate” is calculated only after the epidemic is over. You can’t calculate it in the middle of the spread because we don’t know how many are actually infected, and how many of the currently infected will eventually die from it. If the patients are taking ~10 days to die from it, and if the infection is doubling every 10 days, that causes a factor of 2 error right there.
Yes, they are counted.
Both NY and the GCC test with a pretty high frequency.
Infrequency of testing does not seem to be a good explanation. 40+K/M for NY; a couple of times higher for GCC.
My first guess would be that people with underling conditions are more numerous in New York. Many of these people would have already died from natural causes in other countries
61K+ cases is a “tiny” sample?
And for none of the GCCs are the daily deaths rising.
I agree that deaths lag new case statistics.
Enforcing “shutdown” has nothing to do with the percent who die once they contract COVID.
I agree their healthcare may be excellent. But it’s hard for me to believe that New York’s healthcare is so lousy your chance of dying if you contract COVID in NY is 10-15 times your chance of dying if you contract it in Bahrain.