Keep COVID-19 in Perspective

This project is a clone of the submission labeled: A ‘Keep COVID-19 in Perspective’ page. This is the completed submission including the explanatory video and link to the resource.

The media hype around this is unprecedented, and even some of the mainstream outlets arguably verging on “Fake News”. Not that they are being dishonest, but more ‘omitting’ information that can make things less scary for the general public. For example, it was reported a few days ago in the UK that ‘The youngest person to die of COVID-19 is now 45 years old. He was married with 2 children”. And then as mumbled afterthought “Oh and he had motor neuron disease”. That last part was skipped over and largely not considered or discussed, and the public took away that younger people are dying. But motor neuron disease is sadly a terminal disease and there is no indication of how progressed it was for the poor guy anyway. People are getting frightened and spiraling based on such misinformation. My Mother-in-law died a few weeks ago from inoperable brain tumours. Yet if she had contracted COVID-19 in her final days her death would have been counted as a COVID-19 death, yet god bless her she was dying anyway and nothing could have prevented it. Likewise my friend who died a couple of weeks ago with Bowel Cancer. He would have been counted the same way had he had COVID-19. I believe the stats in the UK, Flu counts as additional deaths to what would usually be the case in the UK (600,000 a year). But the COVID-19 deaths are NOT counted as additional, but just as a death. So on the face of it they are ‘more people dying’ but is it ‘double counting’ deaths that sadly would happen anyway? So, as callous as this may sound and please believe me I don’t mean it in a nasty way, but: o How many people counted as died of COVID-19 were terminally ill anyway? o Therefore how many EXTRA people have died due to COVID-19? o How can people get that in perspective? Ie show a comparison of how many people die of natural causes per day? Heart Attacks? Cancer? Car accidents? Etc o Likewise how many tests have been performed? How many Positive? How many died? o What is the testing criteria? I would hazard a guess that largely those who present with evident symptoms or are most of risks. So how many people have had it and had little or no symptoms? o How does that extrapolate to the population if ALL tested?

I had a family member in tears on the phone today about how scared she is, yet she admitted she knows of no one with the virus and she is oblivious to figures:  Facts are less than 150 people are infected in a county of 832,000 = ~0.02% infected  And only 5 Deaths - and no reporting at all of what underlying issues (if any) were also contributory So I am wondering if a site that can show a mash up of information that could help people keep things in perspective, help people do the right thing by not panicking (stop panic buying etc), and keep perspective as we all stay strong and ride out this horrific pandemic

We could show by country, region state / county etc? Depending on what we can actually get the data for… The problem has been obtaining real holistic data of the number of cases, number of people tested, details of the deceased and any comorbidities, etc. Likewise comparable stats for things like heart attacks, cancer, accident related deaths in the same region etc. Anythign that could be used to put things in perspective.

Coronavirus is VERY real and VERY scary. But let’s keep perspective of the risks and impacts, while we exercise the necessary Social Distancing etc and ride this out with the best result possible.