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Comment by PeterStuer | Hacker News Reader

From the opposite side of the spectrum, meet Antwerp Belgium.

First thing they did under the guise of "Corona measures' was lift the low emission zone so the most heavily polluting vehicles could once again roam free in the city, and make all on street parking free.

Their pretends that this was 'to give maximal access to care workers' fell flat immediately as all caseworkers that needed city access already had complying vehicles, and they now have trouble finding spaces to park as all streets are just permanently filled with long-term parked cars. Yet, they still persist with the idiocy.

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> they still persist with the idiocy

Also, according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

is Belgium at this moment, except for San Marino of only 30,000 inhabitants, the country with the highest death rate in the world from coronavirus epidemics, per million of population:

San Marino: 1,208

Belgium: 655

Spain: 519

Italy: 458

UK: 384

France: 369

Netherlands: 275

Sweden: 244

USA: 186

Germany: 77

Greece: 13

I believe, if the rest of the world is not much aware of that fact, that also says something about Belgian politics. I'd love to read more about the perspective of Belgians here.

Edit: see also https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps which I explain in the later post -- that independent, different statistics is, approximately, not disproving the ratios for the European countries, except for the UK, where it seems there was some kind of underreporting of Covid-19 related deaths.

Belgium counts all deaths from care homes as COVID-19 deaths. Hardly a fair comparison, even if I have my gripes with the politics.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-52466471/page/3

"29 Apr: The death toll from the virus in the UK rises to more than 26,000 after care home deaths are included for first time"

Apart from that, luckily, we have also "all deaths" (for any reason whatsoever) statistics for participating EU countries (and, still, UK), so we can compare these too:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

Even there Belgium has had quite high z-score ("computed on the de-trended and de-seasonalized series"), although there are two obviously worse at the peak: UK (much worse and without any indication of improving at the moment, according to the available statistics) and Spain, which already improved.

At the moment it seems to me that it was mostly the UK that just didn't report correctly, not that the others overreported.

I'm not sure on the Belgium situation but there is quite the lag between death and reporting of these care home numbers. For a care home death to be counted towards the coronavirus total a death certificate is required which takes time.

There has also been a large deal of controversy over the counting of care home deaths in the UK with the government consistently being called out by care home operators for unbelievable care home death numbers.

> There has also been a large deal of controversy over the counting of care home deaths in the UK with the government consistently being called out by care home operators for unbelievable care home death numbers.

Do you have something about "unbelievable"? Per BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52284281

"There is a two-week time lag in the data collected for official statistics. The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) are for the week ending 17 April. At that point, there had been 3,096 Covid-19-related deaths in care homes in England and Wales."

"the Care Quality Commission (CQC)" "already has to be notified when there is a death in a care home. It is also now asking care providers to give daily updates on deaths and the number of confirmed and suspected coronavirus cases.

Between 10 and 25 April, their findings show that 4,343 individuals died in care homes from coronavirus."

Looking at euromomo, it appears to me that the UK did not report some deaths related to Covid-19, the question is only where exactly.

Edit: to pjc50:

> San Marino lost 1,208 people (so far) out of 30k?

No. See again: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/san-marino... Total deaths: 41 == 0.12 percent == 1,208 per million

Unbelievably high or unbelievably low?

It's worth nothing from the euromomo site that the latest data is from week 16 (it's currently week 18) and the top of the page says it was last updated in week 17.

They also note on the page:

> Week of study: 17, 2020.Must be interpreted with caution as adjustments for delayed registrations may be imprecise.

This is often problem with comparing covid19 stats, or any stats for that matter.

A better way to compare is excess deaths over seasonal average (or last year's seasonal statistic) per million. That does not tell you exactly how many died of covid-19, but is a more useful comparison.

Among the many COVID stat visualization websites out there, are there any which actually provide that statistic?

>> excess deaths over seasonal average

> are there any which actually provide that statistic?

Sure, as I've linked it here twice already:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

Belgium is among the top three there too.

Also see on ft.com:

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

the "Death rates have climbed far above historical averages" graph.

and from Italy, made on March 16, 2020:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F...

All of these also directly disprove "same as flu" narration. These are all in spite of most of the world having some kind of measures introduced.

NYT did something similar to what you are looking for https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/28/us/coronaviru...

Agreed that’s the better metric, but there is a long lag before mortality statistics are complete in most places. Most jurisdictions report a lower number immediately, and then continue to revise it up for weeks or even months. If you don’t adjust for this it will look like the jurisdictions that complete their reporting most quickly are the hardest-hit.

Correct.

According to what i read, this means that 50% are confirmed cases and 50% are possible cases.

Other countries only count the confirmed cases.

Ironically they were all rolling over each other to call out the Dutch response as too lax and a prelude to doom and disaster.

It wasn't too lax, but it was about two weeks too late.

San Marino lost 1,208 people (so far) out of 30k? That's absolutely horrendous :( A massive tragedy for my favourite microstate, the last of the Eurovision-participating ones.

No, 1208 per million inhabitants. They lost 41.

Thanks for clearing that up.

That's 1,208 per million. The actual number of deaths is 41 as of today.

The stuff I read about Brussels recently on the news tells a different story.

To give one example:

"Brussels has gone yet further. From May 4, the Belgian capital’s entire city core will be a priority zone for cyclists and pedestrians, one in which cars cannot exceed a speed of 20 kph and must give way in the roads to people on foot or on bikes. This comes on top of an ongoing pedestrianization plan designed to make Brussels’ core a more attractive place for people on foot."

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2020/04/coronavirus-r...

Yes, but Brussels is not Antwerp.

Well, that is true. I misread that.

Brussels is run by a socialist/green coalition and has been doing great things for sustainable mobility.

Antwerp is run by a populist extreme right neoliberal party.

"extreme right" with no proof? Vlaams Belang is extreme right, not N-VA which has the mayor of Antwerp. You are listening too much to the leftish Wallonian controlled state media ( cfr. Stéphane Moreau with Nethys / Tecteo on Wikipedia)

They just think the south takes too much advantage ( eg. with 4 million people they have the same voting % in the country as the north with 6 million people).

While the "right" north has to subsidize the "socialist" south for more than 40 years without no improvement at all ( eg. just check the unemployment %)

Highest criminality rates in Belgium are in Brussels, Molenbeek, ... with also, no improvement in the foreseeable future. Station north is a public train station where everyone stays away from ( too dangerous ).

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phane_Moreau_(homme_po...

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nethys

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enodia

All financial political scandals are involved with leftisch politicians: Publifin, La Carolorégienne, Anne-Marie Lizin, Michel Daerden, Van Cauwenberghe ( Charleroi), Agusta-Dassault, ...

And last but not last, specific for Brussels: Samusocial where Yvan Mayeur ( the ex-mayor of Brussels) was involved with Fraud and intimidation, with their "non-profit for homeless people", LOL! It's despicable!

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samusocial_Brussels

I'd prefer Antwerp above Brussels every single day of the year.

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