David Paton

The dangers of comparing different countries’ death rates

Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

Using differences in coronavirus death rates between countries to draw out policy conclusions is becoming a very popular pastime. Unfortunately, as Michael Baum has pointed out already in The Spectator, it is rarely a productive one. Over the weekend, Dr Elaine Doyle of the University of Limerick tried her hand, arguing that high death rates in the UK relative to Ireland reflected badly on the UK policy approach to tackling the virus.

At the time of writing, the UK has reported 12,868 hospital deaths of coronavirus patients, a rate of about 193 per million, while the Republic had reported 435 hospital deaths, a much lower rate of about 89 per million.

But the UK is a very different country to Ireland. Much is still unknown about the virus but it seems likely that the virus may hit some ethnic minority groups disproportionately, while population density and rates of international travel are key factors in the speed of spread. These all suggest reasons why mortality rates may be higher in the UK than Ireland.

Perhaps Dr Doyle would have been better looking at mortality rates in Northern Ireland on the grounds that it is much closer geographically and culturally to the Republic than the rest of the UK. But the Northern Irish hospital death rate so far is 83 per million, slightly lower than their southern neighbours. Should we conclude from those figures that Northern Ireland’s decision to close schools much later than in the Republic of Ireland was the right one? Of course not. Evaluating coronavirus policy at this point in the crisis is a tricky job. Doing so on the basis of differences in death rates is just daft.

Apart from demographic and cultural differences, countries may be at different points of the virus cycle meaning a comparison at a single point in time is meaningless.

The case of Sweden where bars and schools have stayed open is another good example.

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