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Comment by pedroaraujo | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I wouldn't trust the numbers reported by the Portugal, in particular the reported number of daily COVID-19 deaths, I feel the numbers are being misreported.

I have been closely following the progress of the situation in the country and the leadership is very messy and very clueless about the entire situation, both from the government and from the portuguese health agency in particular.

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The excess mortality rates don't lie:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country

The excess mortality rates definitely lie, unless you believe that the coronavirus is bringing dead people back to life in Finland.

-10% means that the death rate is 10% less than normal. 90 people dead instead of 100. Not that 10 people are no longer dead.

You don't know what's causing the deaths. Maybe it's lockdown/fear: we know that fewer people are seeking medical treatment for non covid related issues, fewer organ transplants are happening, fewer cancer screenings occuring, etc.

Unfortunately we have a 'mini-outbreak' in the greater Lisbon area right now with 90% of new cases - previously this had been masked in the overall numbers by success in the North of the country, which was hit first, and hard (something similar happened with US data, NY's better numbers hid a growing problem elsewhere).

Data for each county in Portugal is available here: https://github.com/dssg-pt/covid19pt-data/blob/master/data_c... - graphing this data shows that Lisbon and its surrounding councils have been putting on new cases at a steady rate (linear for now!), albeit low numbers in the grand scheme of things. I don't know what the Portuguese government is going to do about that, or how effective their action may be. I live nearby, so I am particularly concerned.

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