An alternative way to look at coronavirus pandemic management in Hungary
This is another of those 'why didn't I think about this before?' moments. The data are there, only not many people put them together quite like Balázs Pártos does. Despite being a fairly simple calculation, some explanation of what you see is definitely due.
The vertical axis represents the number of registered cases (people with positive COVID-19 tests), and the horizontal axis represents the number of COVID-19 deaths per one million population, both for all the 180 countries.
Hungary is the big red dot; the small blue dots are the other 179 countries.
The dashed line is a trend line. The best linear fit according to the position of the dots. It shows the average of the 180 countries. NOT their weighted average, but their average.
The horizontal axis is scaled between 0 and 4,000, while the vertical axis is scaled between 0 and 160,000.
160 / 4 = 40
The dashed line is largely the diagonal of a square (a rectangle that is almost a square but it’s not). This is largely 45 degrees relative to the two axes. The dashed line works like an y = x function, which means that moving a unit to the right equals moving a unit up.
160 / 4 = 40
Alright, what's with these figures now?!
Put simply, this means that the global average is 40 infected people for one dead. More professionally, the global Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is cc. 100/40 = 2.5%, or [1/40] X 100 = 2.5%.
It is not exactly that much, because of various reasons: (i) there are only 180 countries and territories in this review instead of 220, (ii) neither the square, nor the diagonal are perfect, (iii) the trendline shows an average rather than a weighted average. Let’s say it’s roughly 2.5%. (But if you’d really like to know: calculating with data by worldometers as of 24 May, there were 3,487,081 COVID-19 deaths and 167,987,389 infected people, which gives us a ratio of 2.07%.)
How to read the country positions
- If a country sits on the trendline, it fares as the world average (in this case the average of the 180 most populous countries with data as of 24 May 2021).
- If a country is north of the trendline, it tests more people than the global average (more positive cases), or its health care system functions better and/or their population is of a better general state of health (fewer deaths).
- If a country is south of the trendline, it’s exactly the opposite: fewer tests, worse health care, and/or worse general state of health.
Importantly, being south of this ’divide’ is not a huge problem in itself, provided that you are in or very close to the bottom left corner. In that case, your testing practices are not the best, your health care system could perform better and/or the population could be healthier in general, but at least you don’t have a high number of COVID-19 deaths.
If a country is north of the trendline, it is not automatically in a bad situation, unless it is in the extreme top right corner. In that case it performed a zillion tests (e.g. the USA, way north of the line), but a lot of deaths too (e.g. because of a high obesity prevalence and the diseases that come with it).
And then there are special cases. When a country is way south of the line and to the right. Well, we said special cases, while the correct statement is that there’s one special case.
You guessed it right: it’s Hungary.
That fat red dot.
that's us, folks.
Where the government (and the people too) is proud how successfully it has managed this pandemic. Meanwhile, SARS-CoV-2 is the deadliest in the world in Hungary, with 3,069 deaths per one million population (as of 24 May).
That gleaming red dot is Hungary. It hurts the eye to look at.
How did it get there? Registered COVID-19 cases / population X 1 million = 83,262; [Deaths / Population] X 1 million = 3,069.
What a huge success, right?!
In case you wonder which countries are the closest to Hungary, here they are:
- Bosnia and Herzegovina --- 62,342; 2,805
- Bulgaria --- 60,382; 2,538
- North Macedonia --- 74,433; 2,558
