
Coronavirus: Iran cover-up of deaths revealed by data leak - thdespou
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53598965
======
Traster
I'm sorry but I'm finding it very difficult to see how this isn't straight up
propaganda from the BBC.

>The number of deaths from coronavirus in Iran is nearly triple what Iran's
government claims, a BBC Persian service investigation has found.

This is false. There is a very important distinction between confirmed deaths
due to coronavirus, and deaths of people who may have shown some coronavirus
symptoms. One is clearly an undercount, one is clearly an overcount and they
aren't measuring the same thing. So to publish _on your state broadcaster_ a
story deliberately mis-representing that fact is a bad move.

The data even shows that the confirmed coronavirus deaths track
proportionately to suspected coronavirus deaths - actually showing that it's
highly unlikely that the numbers are being manipulated.

If you go here:
[https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/](https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/) the UK
government gives the exact same measure that Iran uses as their official
number.

~~~
pasabagi
To be fair, the BBC is about as independent as your average non-state media
company, and definitely less entangled with the past five governments than
anything owned by Murdoch.

That said, it is a bit awkward, given the UK's own undercounting.

~~~
seamyb88
> To be fair, the BBC is about as independent as your average non-state media
> company, and definitely less entangled with the past five governments than
> anything owned by Murdoch.

Absolutely not true. From propagating the idea that life-long advocate of
equality, Jeremy Corbyn, is antisemitic, to sending well-fed journos out on
boats to chase migrants (never people, migrants) around asking them what they
want, the BBC is a Conservative mouth-piece.

~~~
nickcox
Not to mention _literally_ portraying the chancellor as Superman. [1]

[1] [https://www.thenational.scot/news/18620765.bbc-slammed-
portr...](https://www.thenational.scot/news/18620765.bbc-slammed-portraying-
rishi-sunak-superman/)

~~~
phatfish
And Corbyn was Lenin. I think that tells you all you need to know about the
BBC.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jeremy-
corby...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jeremy-corbyn-
newsnight-denies-photo-photoshopped-a8262351.html)

------
stunt
They maintain two lists. Official list is whomever they checked positive for
COVID-19 before or after death.

Second list which has leaked now is people who had died with suspicious
symptoms but not tested for COVID-19 for whatever reason.

They admitted way before this that they believe real death toll might be 3
times higher than official numbers, and real infected might be up to 5 times
higher than official numbers by comparing average/expected death rate and
clinics reports.

I think this is an issue in many countries right now. The numbers are real as
much as they get to test their population and everyone knows that.

~~~
hnarn
It should be trivial to calculate excess deaths compared to the same period
averaged over last X years, so if countries cared about transparency they
could just share that, and the issue of non tested deaths would be somewhat
minimized.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
That statistic wouldn't be tremendously easy to interpret, since you'd have to
account for the expected distribution of the differential and any secondary
effects which the public health response might have caused. These effects
aren't negligible and could easily produce errors similar in scale to what the
BBC's calling a cover-up.

~~~
hnarn
> secondary effects which the public health response might have caused

You're correct, but this is still relevant. It all depends on how the
statistic is presented. Excess deaths shouldn't be presented as "deaths due to
Covid-19 infection", but it could be presented as "deaths related to the
Covid-19 outbreak", and people who died from cardiovascular disease because
they didn't seek help due to the pandemic are still very much relevant since
they are just that: _related_ to the Covid-19 outbreak.

After all, if you save 100 people in ICUs after they contracted Covid-19
that's good, but if 1 000 people die of other causes because they were scared
to go to hospital then that is still relevant to understanding how the
pandemic affected deaths in general, and how the response could be improved in
the future compared across countries.

------
Synaesthesia
Looking at number of total deaths, it's possible a lot of countries are
undercounting coronavirus deaths.

~~~
fiblye
The NYT has a tracker for this:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-
missing-deaths.html)

A few countries are close enough to be considered accurate. Some are off by
over 100%.

~~~
swebs
Why isn't China on that list as well?

~~~
rjtavares
We don't have reliable information for how many people die in China per week,
so we can't compare.

------
zkid18
I appreciate the journalist's work, but I still confused if there is exist the
standart way to count COVID-19 death.

> Tehran, the capital, has the highest number of deaths with 8,120 people who
> died with COVID-19 or symptoms similar to it.

Not sure how Iran had formalized the similar symptoms and if they count death
from another deceases that were triggered by COVID-19.

Imo the cover-up reasons seems weak.

~~~
DangerousPie
The standard way is to count how many deaths there were in excess of what
would be expected in a normal year. That way you're not relying on testing
capabilities and you're not relying on how different countries define a death
due to COVID. You're simply asking "how many more people have died this year
than would have died normally".

Of course this will also include deaths not directly caused by infections with
the virus. But it gives an overall picture of the impact of the virus and its
downstream effects on a country and allows comparisons between countries.

~~~
tremon
_The standard way is to count how many deaths there were in excess of what
would be expected in a normal year._

Yes, but you can only do that in aggregate over a larger period, you can't use
it as a basis for daily statistics, not in the least because not all deaths
are recorded the same day they occur. The daily death tallies are based on
confirmed cases only, in pretty much every country.

That means underreporting of cases is the norm, not the exception [0]. I must
say those graphs are a bit hard to interpret, but if I understand correctly: a
gray bulge above the dark gray dotted line implies excess deaths not
officially attributed to Covid-19. From those figures, it seems only Denmark
and Germany are accurately reporting Covid deaths, and Belgium, France and the
US may be overreporting the death tally (although it can also mean that not
all deaths in the past weeks have been recorded yet in the official figures).

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-
interactive/2020/may/29...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-
interactive/2020/may/29/excess-deaths-uk-has-one-highest-levels-europe)

~~~
jtbayly
The excess death numbers in the US are from the CDC, and their numbers are
incomplete unless you go back about 8 weeks. I don’t know why people keep
creating graphs and charts from their incomplete data! It paints a wrong
picture every single time.

~~~
toast0
Creating a graph with only data from 8 weeks ago would be an accurate graph,
but it would tell us what we should have been doing 8 weeks ago, not what we
should be doing now. Of course, death is already a lagging indicator, so
really this would tell us what we should have done 10 weeks ago. It's just not
an actionable graph, because it's too delayed.

Of course, using incomplete data may not tell us anything either. It's also
not an actionable graph, because there's too much uncertainty.

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dsabanin
Russian cover up is still waiting to be exposed.

