What explains the variation in COVID-19 death rates across European countries? One factor that has been mentioned since early on in the pandemic is population density.
As a BBC article from May of 2020 states: “We know that the density of population is important for the spreading of coronavirus.” The article compares the U.K. and Italy, noting that “the U.K. is considerably more densely populated”.
And indeed, it seems plausible that the virus would spread more easily in areas where people are crammed tightly together than in areas they’re spread further apart. For example, aerosols might linger in the elevator in a multi-storey building, whereas they’re unlikely to travel between one semi-detached house and the next.
This raises the question of how to measure population density at the level of whole countries. The simplest measure is the just the number of people divided by the total land area.
However, this measure doesn’t take account of urbanisation. An ostensibly sparse country could have vast swathes of land where nobody lives. So while the average population density would be low, the majority of people might still be crammed tightly together in cities.
An alternative measure, population-weighted density, is provided by the E.U.’s Urban Data Platform. To calculate this measure for a particular country, the country is first divided into ‘parcels’ of 1km2. The population density within each parcel is computed. Then the weighted average is taken, with weights equal to the population of each parcel.
For example, suppose a country comprises ten parcels, nine of which are completely empty and one of which has a population of 100 people. The average density would be only 10/km2, but the weighted density would be 100/km2.
Using average population density, the densest country in Europe is the Netherlands. But using the UDP’s measure of weighted density, the densest country is actually Spain. (And contrary to the aforementioned BBC article, Italy is slightly denser than the U.K.) While this might seem counter-intuitive, it is consistent with other evidence.
The map below (which was created by the geographer Duncan Smith) shows the distribution of people across Europe at a fine level of detail. Light green and turquoise shades reflect low and moderate population densities; blue shades reflect high population densities.
In Spain, most of the country is unoccupied, but there are a few highly dense areas corresponding to Madrid and other major cities. In Germany, by contrast, there are a much large number of moderately dense areas. As a matter of fact, four of Europe’s five densest cities are in Spain.
As the statistician Alasdair Rae notes: “Spain contains within it more than 505,000 1km squares. But only 13% of them are lived in… So even though the settlement pattern appears sparse, people are actually quite tightly packed together.” (By way of comparison, 60% of Germany’s 357,000 1km squares are lived in.)
I checked to see whether the UDP’s measure of weighted density is associated with COVID-19 death rates across European countries. Two measures of COVID-19 death rates were used: COVID-19 deaths per million up to August 10th, 2021; and age-adjusted excess mortality up to week 51 of 2020. Results are shown below:
There is no relationship on the left-hand chart. And while there is a moderate positive relationship on the right-hand chart, it is mostly driven by Spain (which has both high population density and high age-adjusted excess mortality). When Spain was removed from the analysis, the relationship became substantially weaker.
Earlier in the pandemic, Philippe Lemoine looked at whether weighted density was associated with COVID-19 death rates across European countries, but found “no clear relationship”.
Note that these analyses are highly simplified (and should not be taken as anything definitive). It is plausible that in a multivariate analysis based on a larger sample of countries, clear evidence for an independent effect of population density would emerge.
However, if the true effect of population density were large, you’d expect to find it even in a relatively simple analysis. This suggests that, while population density probably does matter, it’s not the most important factor affecting COVID-19 death rates in Europe.
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If we were all counting ‘covid deaths’ the same way you could make such extrapolations. But figures are skewed by some counting deaths ‘with’ covid, some going back 28 days, etc. Until you can establish (which you cant) a baseline interpretation of a ‘covid death’, no assumptions can be made.
..and then the elephant in the room, different treatment regimes..
Yet another way to count how good one country is.
Covid Resilience Ranking on Bloomberg.This is getting silly.
There are no covid death rates…ONLY death rates…
A simple point, because I am simple, is the number of “deaths” where no co- morbidities are present; in the US and UK, for example these numbers when I last saw them were a very small fraction of the reported “Covid” deaths; how can these public health apparatchiks who are responsible for the policy collation and publishing to the latter look themselves in the mirror?
I believe certain “Beings” can shatter mirrors just by looking. Try a Clove of Garlic on them – much like a PCR test.
Thank you for raising awareness of two ‘facts’ today.
First the ‘fact’ that the ‘not a vaccine’ raises the risk of transmission of high levels of virus to the vulnerable from the jabbed who are blissfully ignorant of their infectiousness.
and
Second, the ‘fact’ that the medical ‘establishment’ is still unable to explain how so-called seasonal respiratory viruses spread and infect, and then cause disease (not unrelated but not the same thing, the disease requires the infection but the infection does not necessarily cause the disease).
No, the only reason people died was because they were denied early treatment, told to quarantine at home and hope for the best thereby infecting everyone in their homes or care homes. Then when their condition deteriorated, the “lucky” ones were admitted into ICUs, put on a ventilator (again without administering any treatment protocols) and were left to die. The rest -masks, mass lockdowns, social distancing were all unnecessary, if not psychologically harmful theatrics that did nothing to stop the virus from spreading. If they would have treated the infected people with the already existing and proven therapies and had advised everyone to boost their immune system by eating healthy, taking vitamins, exercising, spending more time outdoors, losing weight and to get treated early or even prophylactically, millions of lives could have been saved. The death rates were a direct result of politicians’ and “public health officials” ignorance, hubris and greed for power and money.
Ah, Ventilators. Has the NHS offered any of these (Surplus) on eBay yet?
they sent the spares to India to assist in building up their death rates
Population density might be a factor, but how can there be any meaningful comparison between countries when it seems there is no standard method of identifying Covid deaths, and in this country at least it is likely to have vastly overestimated the numbers (ie death from any cause counted as a Covid death within 28 days of a positive test using a test that is not fit for purpose and which shows a large proportion of false positives).
I suspect a bigger factor is how each country counts covid deaths. Silly methods like our own ‘within 28 days of a positive test even if run over by a bus’ make a mockery of stats.
Lies. Damned lies and Statistics. FIGHT. BACK. BETTER. – updated useful information, resources and links: https://www.LCAHub.org/
If this was due to population density,how do you explain the following? South Dakota with an extremely low population density has the 10th highest C 19 mortality in the US.District of Columbia,Delaware with similar sized population living on a much more restricted area has much lower C 19 mortality.
Different data-collection methods, different testing regimes, different death-reporting protocols, different models and algorithms could probably explain all inter-and intra-country variation.
ie. Rhetoric
Sorry I thought the majority of deaths were in institutional settings i.e. care homes and hospitals or have I got that wrong? How many care homes and hospitals are there in the middle of nowhere? Also haven’t WHO admitted that in 95% of deaths other causes were also included? If that’s the case why are we bothering to look into this in the first place? We seem to be going up our own statistical arses for the sake of it.
100% correct! I made a comment on this previously on the thread.
There is no f*cking virus, no test for it , no clinical diagnosis for ‘it’, no pandemic just bulls*it case number mainly made up of healthy people, and as such it doesn’t matter what the population density of an area is!! It is just a very EVIL charade to divide, depopulate and increase the wealth of Big Pharma through snake oil poisons!!
Still swimming within the confines of the official narrative I see….
Daily Sceptic? When will this site start getting Gates Foundation money eh? Perhaps a crossword. Maybe the odd article by Boris or Ambrosio Pritchard?
Its dangerous out there, out of the Lifre Guard’s view – Sharks waiting.
Counter-intuitive? Blimey, I wonder what people think the population density of that sea the Diamond Princess (or whatever that ship was called) was on is?
Exactly
I remember Swedenborg posting some data on this a few months back.
My theory then, and nothing I have seen since would change it, is that as most transmission is nosocomial, hospitals and care homes will be the biggest determinant of spread. Even in sparsely populated countries, hospitals tend to be large and concentrated.
Yes.
Obesity has not been mentioned in the article or the comments. It is recognised that a considerable proportion of younger people who become seriously ill are morbidly obese. That appears to be more of a problem in the UK than in other European countries.
aha, so it’s the density of the individuals within the population that’s important rather than the density of packing the population into a space. LOL
Obesity may be a left over (pun not intended) from evolution and the changes forced by the first industrial revolution – only yesterday in evolutionary, or genetic terms. Agricultural workers displaced from the land to town / slum dwelling now requiring a totally different diet – metabolic – regime. Originally AG Lab’s had a hard physical working life coupled to a natural wholesome diet well suited to their physical energy requirements – even controlling a horse pulling a plough is fairly physical – try it! Transfer them to the mill, factory, etc and their body still expecting the old agricultural regime puts any excess calories into fat reserves for that “rainy day” which never comes. Result obesity, evolution takes its time, ask Darwin.
I too feel that any density relationship to Covid deaths are hard to make a case for.If only it was that simple. I do feel that there are many factors to look at. Not all of what I have written is the answer either.
The Spanish, like the Italians, even the Portuguese, are societies which live more in public spaces. Bars, play areas for kids, parks etc. They embrace and kiss each other more than other counties. That part of life is hard to remove.
These counties have flats which are quite small compared with a lot of other countries.Meeting friends and family away from your dwelling is a normal way of live. There has been in the past talk about proper ventilation begin a key exponentiate in removing risks from the spread of Covid. A lot of flats have communal ventilation pipes and sometimes sizeable shafts. All of these connected with other flats in the same building, thus pushing contaminated air through a building. That is why whole buildings got “hit”. There was a story about this in El Pais newspaper when Spain was in it’s first lockdown. I cannot find it after a long period and the story… Read more »
“The Spanish, like the Italians, even the Portuguese, are societies which live more in public spaces. Bars, play areas for kids, parks etc. They embrace and kiss each other more than other counties. That part of life is hard to remove.”
Are you suggesting that this is a bad thing in those societies? Life is for enjoying not fear. How did they survive all the virus and bacteria previously, Is SARS Cov-2 so much different?
OOPS! sorry its a Bio Weapon, excuse me.
Why not stop these constant attempts to explain something whose cause will remain unknown forever? Even assuming some kind of magic correlation would manifest itself, a causative relation would still need to be proven by making a controlled, repeatable experiment.
Knowledge does not come from speculation. Ever.
The tried and tested way to reduce populations is to start a major war, since that has not happened for over 70 years a virus was introduced to reduce the population (covid-19). However, it hasn’t worked. A major war is coming, possibly starting in Asia.
Pointless discussion. There has been no pandemic.
Plot excess deaths against size ( average number of inhabitants) of the countries care homes. Layer this with whether a country still has local ‘cottage hospitals’ , again average number of patient beds would probably do. That will tell the story.
For instance UK , Sweden and northern Italy have large care homes compared with the likes of Norwayfor instance which has a mutitude of quire small ones.
Countries like Germany and Japan still have local health provision, with local smallish hospitals in many areas.
My point is that most serious infections have been in care homes and hospitals; take these away from the totaland its difficult to see anything out of the ordinary at all.
Your point is valid – but bear in mind that there is nothing out of the ordinary happening anyway, as measured by all-cause mortality – especially when the obvious ‘dry tinder’ effect is taken into account.
Precisely; and Hancock is guilty as charged, responsible for sending these folks home and not treating them.
Yes, and if any of us on this thread had done even half of what that vermin MH has done we’d be be consulting our VERY WORRIED Solicitor now instead of posting comments here!
“My point is that most serious infections have been in care homes and hospitals”
WE seem to have forgotten this. In the beginning, about 18 Months ago, Covid 19 (not SARS Cov 2 virus) was a disease that affected mainly care home residents and hospital patients. The average age for serious outcomes and death being 80+ years. Obviously most of these patients were in poor health and many also very frail. At that time the life expectancy was also 80+ years. As the above cases were about 45% and there would have additionally been a number of similar frail / sick people in their own homes, adding these to the care home & hospital cases we are talking of possibly 55% to 60% in this category.
Very quickly the rhetoric kicked in firstly by adding all those 80+ Years to the extremely vulnerable (EV) list. Rapidly the EV list included the over 70’s, then 65’s (statuary retirement age), then 60’s ( under statuary retirement age) and so on till it will include the new born, (or newly conceived?) All MUST be vaccinated – BY ORDER.
5G rollout fits with the deliberate covid pathogen deployment. The two halfs of binary weapon.
5G is the elephant in the room, the dangerous military communications infrastructure deployed into the civilian domain without any meaningful business case. Fibre optic cables can handle enough data for the so called ‘internet of things’. Why would any responsible governments want to rollout a system that saturates urban populations with frequencies between 8Ghz up to 300Ghz? Standard wifi/mobile phone signals at the 2.45Ghz frequency just heat you up, 5G is frying us.
Exactly! Not enough people realise this.
I concur that 5G is tied in to the Covid19 agenda. 5G proper that is with the millimeter waves and the massive opening up of the spectrum from currently up to 6 GHz to I believe 90GHz, but 300GHz could be right – it changes from one place to the next.
Something which makes this obvious imo is the fact that some people have become magnetised post jab. This has been confirmed by doctors, it’s not a conspiracy theory. This alone should have people screaming from the rooftops but not much has been made of it. I believe these magnetised people have ben injected with something which makes them more susceptible to being controlled and manipulated. There is also a lot of talk of hydrogel being in the jabs which Carrie Madej has spoken about.
As you rightly say, 5G is the deployment of a military grade weapons/comms network rolled into one, and all you get, despite 20,000+ peer reviewed papers confirming EMF is harmful and many thousands confirming wireless is harmful, is people sneering and acting like it’s some sort of joke. They won’t be laughing when the poles go up outside their houses and they start becoming ill… Read more »
I remember this from back the time when it was called Elektrosmog. Adjusting the concept for modern times as Of course, the mobiles without which we can’t even go to the loo are completely harmless. But the next generation of mobiles we don’t yet own will be our undoing !!! doesn’t improve it.
A couple of years from now, people who won’t even go to the loo without their 5G mobiles will claim that 6G (or whatever it will be called) will be our undoing !!!
“I remember this from back the time when it was called Elektrosmog”
So do I, as a retired electronics engineer with more than a few years working on RF. The regulations on RF exposure are based on the thermal effect – heating- so yes your mobile is usually well within safety limits. Furthermore due to skin effect and absorption the radiation will not penetrate into your body especially at the higher 5G frequencies.
Unless you are very close to a high power aerial – an area that would be protected – you are safe.
That said the problem health wise may be caused by the modulation of the RF carrier. The RF will be de-modulated by nonlinearities in your skin – much like the old tyme crystal radio receiver great grandfather used – These minute electrical currents will reflect the low frequency pulsing of the digital modulation and thus interact with your natural nerve signals etc. I’m not a medical or neurological Phd, but I can visualise such random electrical signals causing havoc.
A work round for this problem would be a modulation system that has no LF component. No problem technically, but at present the industry wants to maximise the… Read more »
As I’ve said many times last year (when I was still a Telegraph subscriber) and often here (a few days ago) and elsewhere since, population density and distribution are only one amongst a whole slew of factors that (assuming the pandemic isn’t mostly mass hysteria + actual deaths due to ‘ordinary’ pneumonia and the flu dressed up as ‘COVID-19’ plus add-on deaths because of lockdown-related issues [lack of diagnosis and treatment of other disease, dispair/loneliness in the elderly/mentally vulnerable, etc]) could help explain why certain nations were worse affected than others:
Population density and distribution (as per the report); Demographics by age, health, ethnic background (dark skinned people living in northerly latitides more likely to have poorer immune systems due to lack of vitamin D absorbtion via sunlight), wealth/living conditions, both lifetime and recent; Demographics by where and when immigrants came to the country – i.e. their country of origin may have been very poor/corrupt/war-ridden etc and they had very poor diet, healthcare, polluted environment, stress due to conflict, maltreatment by the authorities, etc, etc. They would likely have poorer immune systems/health than if they came from a relatively stable (but poor relative to the UK say) nation. The economic… Read more »
All of the above and obesity/ diet/ exercise.
Ar pollution may also be important. When it first came to the UK I noticed it was spiking in high pollution areas. It turns out Wuhan and parts of Italy also had high pollution levels. Maybe pollution damge makes it more likely to invade the lungs.
Conversely areas near the sea seem less affected. All of course bearing in mind the shonkyness of the PCR tests.
All of the above, plus employment type and housing arrangements, since it’s been suggested that viral load plays a role in whether someone becomes (properly) infected with the v and how badly it will affect them. In particular – supermarket workers I’d say have been exposed to low, consistent levels of the v throughout so have probably built up some natural immunity. Re housing arrangements – air movement inside buildings resulting in differences in infection rates between tower blocks/blocks of flats or apartments and detached housing? Those old terraces where the front doors and windows open directly onto the street, with shared passageways to the back yard?
As an engineer who’s worked in Construction for many years designing ventilation systems, etc – across all types of buildings, I would say that the most susceptible buildings and thus occupants are:
People living in high-rise blocks of flats, where they have little ventilation (if any) in communal areas and, where it is provided as forced air (via fans), it isn’t well maintained, including any air ducts, and thus is a breeding ground for germs and viruses. This includes the often unkempt/dirty areas where the air is drawn from outside, where piles of rubbish or bird poo is present.
Underground railway networks – similar reasons, plus even more cramped conditions. Ironically, modern trains (including now above ground) and buses that have fixed windows and rely on forced air (often minimal fresh air for the ‘standard’ maximum passenger level and that have air conditioning means that they are far more of a breeding ground for airborne ailments than the older vehicles with openable windows and at most electric heaters for winter use.
Offices, schools/colleges and buildings in general that were designed/built in the 1960s – 1980s that were essentially concrete boxes that are sealed up (no openable windows again) with poor… Read more »
“Needless to say, I have NOT had that vaccine since 2017 and miraculously have not got the flu. ”
Is that a Miracle?
Never had the Flu Jab EVER, must have had the Flu (infection) in all my Years on this planet, but don’t remember. All the “Sniffles” yes, but so?
i can assure you if you’d had flu you would have known about it. i have never had the flu jab either and haven’t had flu for years.
So do you believe that any viral load will cause a serious illness? How many pathogens have visited our bodies and we never noticed it?
We need contact and knowledge of the threats out there to combat them – similarly to protecting out computers etc. against Malware.
I sympathise with anyone who has suffered from a bad attack of Flu or any other disease. It has happened in my own family.
All excellent stuff. I doubt the likes of SAGE would have considered any of this.
“it’s been suggested that viral load plays a role in whether someone becomes (properly) infected with the v and how badly it will affect them.”
And why not????? If that wasn’t true then 1 Virion could cause fatal infection, and how the hell could life have existed for Millions of years?
Ask anyone who claims Sweden did better than the uk due to population density, cultural characteristics or whatever, if they argued at the beginning lockdowns were unnecessary there due to these factors.
Do I care??
That’s exactly my sentiments.
Were they ‘covid’ deaths. Where has pneumonia gone, the prior end of life cause?
Covid has fewer characters than pneumonia. Easier to write down. If you being pedantic do a autopsy – find a pathogen – toss a coin and chose that.
Very nice analysis Noah. Simple and to the point.
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
One of my favourite examples of logic.
The only problem being that there are always more possibilities that one is not aware of – the unknown unknowns!
Fair point.
Surely any data or research which is, at it’s root, based on the garbage PCR test is, for want of a better word, shite?
Correct.
So what about densely populated slum areas and ghettos that were largely unaffected. People there had stronger immune systems?
Obviously, and while I’m about it I would think that many multi-generational households also have stronger immune systems.
There is no pandemic
changing from deaths to cases caused a pandemic