On a Swiss Doctor's Dated COVID19 "Facts"

June 30, 2020

"Swiss Policy Research (SPR), founded in 2016, is an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit research group investigating geopolitical propaganda in Swiss and international media." Their switch to epidemiology then is based on a presumption that the coronavirus scare is some geopolitical propaganda trick. "Facts about Covid-19 (2020) a comprehensive analysis of medical aspects" (compiled in April) is a compendium of arguments the virus poses little danger and that lockdown measures are the real threat. The url suggests the article was originally "a swiss doctor on covid 19," so the author will be called "the Swiss doctor," and we can say a possible expert was involved in the SPR's foray into critical epidemiology. But someone's unsound medical reasoning is summed up at the start: “The only means to fight the plague is honesty.” (Albert Camus, 1947). Of course that was some kind of metaphor, but the implication, in context, is that the real danger here is the lie that the virus is a danger.

This article is long with points that are wrong, a few that are right, some I'm not sure about. I don't have the time to review all of them. was suggested to back a claim of widespread prior immunity, so I'll start with that, and note a few other points that popped out along the way.

5. Up to 60% of all persons may already have a certain cellular background immunity to Covid-19 due to contact with previous coronaviruses (i.e. common cold viruses). The initial assumption that there was no immunity against Covid-19 was not correct.

They may be onto something here, or not. The linked study page explains how, in blood samples from a year and more before COVID19 existed, "pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-cross-reactive T cell responses were observed," suggesting "some potential for pre-existing immunity in the human population."

Importantly, we utilized the exact same series of experimental techniques with blood samples from healthy control donors (PBMCs collected in the 2015–2018 time frame), and substantial cross-reactive coronavirus T cell memory was observed.

 Importantly, pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-cross-reactive T cell responses were observed in healthy
donors, indicating some potential for pre-existing immunity in the human population.
ORF mapping of T cell specificities revealed valuable targets for incorporation in candidate vaccine development and revealed distinct specificity patterns between COVID-19 cases and unexposed healthy controls.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3

The details go over my head - I don't know T-cells and such enough to know whether this should or does translate to any degree of actual immunity. But I know a person who knows a lot more about diseases and spread, whose position is somewhere between mine and the "covidiots" who deny the danger. I asked about this, and he says this other path to immunity is worth study and sees some clues it may be in play, but no one knows for sure either way just yet. Sounds like more study is needed before you could say for sure "The initial assumption that there was no immunity against Covid-19 was not correct."

I forgot to check where the "up to 60%" pat came from, but that doesn't seem to pan out. We'd be starting close to herd immunity, having the virus fade off almost as soon as it began. That doesn't happen except in China, where it was forced to happen by human actions. The stating immunity seems much closer to 0%, and may be just that. Whatever defense this prior T-cell immunity might be, it's not a magical solution to the problem we have. It'll be already in effect, making the problem just what is rather than a bit worse. It didn't stop us from getting past half a million dead, and it's not likely to do much for the next halves of millions to come (though if it is real and relevant, its effect might magnify in time).

Such immunity might have a best bet of applying in China, where previous SARS exposure is the highest. But it was petty bad until suppressed - basic CFR: 4,634 deaths out of 83,500 cases = 5.55%
China's reportedly high testing rate would suggest that's close to it - ~5% who got it died, mostly because they were hit by surprise (back in October?) with no one specially protected for some time. People were tracking it in and out of nursing homes and all that, completely unaware. As it turns out, something like 5% of cases that require hospitalization die almost everywhere, under the better-prepared conditions most nations enjoy (this basic CFR ranges to less than 1% to frequent rates like 8-10% and even higher sometimes). But ,,,

1. According to the latest immunological and serological studies, the overall lethality of Covid-19 (IFR) is about 0.1% and thus in the range of a strong seasonal influenza (flu).

...it's true that leaves out the likely huge number of milder unconfirmed cases most nations have, due to low testing. With decent efforts at shielding the vulnerable, actual death rates are... possibly as low as suggested, 1/10 of 1% but probably much higher - probably at least 0.5%, likely over 1%, maybe about 2% ... and it will be somewhat variable.

Something between core lethality and highly-contagious nature seems to make it far deadlier than a seasonal flu. Influenza yearly deaths: between 290,000 and 650,000 is commonly given, citing JHU.
That's without brakes (no special lockdown, just some people get shots, etc.). WITH strong brakes (global lockdown), the spread of COVID19 is much less than it would be, forced quite low and to effective zero in some places. But the global average is currently accelerating on many new fonts, likely to grow even faster now that it's got its foot in nearly every door on Earth - back in April it had barely begun to do this. We're now just past half a million dead, and the second half should come quicker, the next million ... harder to say. (see Coronavirus death rates over time, and the coming updates)

506,000 killed so far, 85% (431,000) of those came since April 7, in less than 3 months. 431,000 dead in 81 days = 5,320/day. This same rate takes us to 1 million in 93 days, by late September.  Say it slows down then a bit so we're only at 1,410,000 by year's end, or about one year into the pandemic. That'll be 217% of a high-death year for flu, 486% of a mild one. And again, that's WITH the control measures SPR et al. complained were counterproductive. Say these rules are decreasingly followed for the next 6 months ... conservatively, we might see another 960k dead = 1,466,000 in about one year, including the slower take-off months: 225% of a bad flu year, 505% of a mild year.

If it had run naturally with no brakes like we do with the flu (a straighter comparison), it's hard to imagine it being any less than 3-4x as deadly as the flu in a bad year. Something like 6-8 times sounds closer to me. Imagine the situation in Wuhan or Lombardy, raging worldwide just for these last few months, and still going. It's a nightmare. We would already have at least one million killed, probably two or three millions, with more coming fast.

"2. In countries like the US, the UK, and also Sweden (without a lockdown), overall mortality since the beginning of the year is in the range of a strong influenza season..."

Perhaps, as of writing in April, which was faaaar too early to make such a call. It's this bad now and was that bad then with extra measures, even in Sweden, and with the other two reflecting the same lockdown measures they oppose. Is it really fair to include the effects you deny in the low numbers you cite to deny the effect? No. And it'll keep getting worse in all three places, even with those measures, and will keep doing that for some time. It would be far worse and worsening far faster if national and local governments had failed to rein the virus in. The Swiss doctor must know this, but consciously works around the point, continuing ...

"... in countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, overall mortality is in the range of a mild influenza season."

Even now, it's not much worse. Switzerland especially got case transmission hugely reduced (10-50 cases/day lately, when it was about 1,000/day from March 19 to April 9). As such, there are now 0-3 new Swiss deaths on most days, when there were 50-100/day in the first half of April. The other two have also done quite well, and they all three have employed the hated lockdown, and credit that for the difference. I had  these partly plotted, updated here, and adding Denmark for another example. Note how people get better and better at not dying over time. Is that because the virus gets nicer or because of something people do?

Sources I checked, latest numbers as displayed when I checked a couple hours ago:
https://www.bing.com/covid?vert=graph
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Why not compare China? They still have well under 5,000 deaths for over 1 billion people, with very few new cases on average, and about one death per MONTH, not per day. Because everyone knows COVID19 was eradicated there with stern lockdown measures we'd never tolerate, besides contact tracing and every other tool available. That plus the good rates in Germany, Austria, Switzerland who copied the Chinese better than most, with US and UK trailing, might show that lockdown is a big part of this low-fatalities argument AGAINST lockdown. The portion is probably high but could be debated, and clearly it shouldn't be ignored.

No mention is made of Italy, Spain, Belgium, Iran, Wuhan, Queens (New York), King County (Washington) any other country, region, or city hit early on with something deadlier than a full flu season crammed into just a few weeks before they got transmission suppressed. All of them did this with stay-at-home lockdown orders. Obviously, the better option of early containment couldn't or didn't work there, so "lockdown" is nearly everyone's plan B. 

There couldn't be any mention by the Swiss doctor (except maybe via an update - it's said these have been made into June) of how Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Armenia, South Africa, Guatemala, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and other nations are now experiencing drastic case growth and sharply rising deaths as well (many others started looking bad, then stopped reporting, so note the current death toll is low). Iraq and El Salvador at least have more than doubled their prior, non-trivial death toll in less than 2 weeks time, since June 18. (I will be showing this in a few days as the second of two updates to this project - note a span of slowest growth was shown there as the latest thing, but the next 2 2-week spans have each shown inceasingly wider and faster growth.)  Regions and cities within these nations are seeing even more drastic growth in both areas, despite containment efforts (but to map them over time as I do is harder in most cases, so I only track a few like Mexico City and Santiago, Chile.).

3. Even in global “hotspots”, the risk of death for the general population of school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not taken into account."

Example, using a current hotspot, not one in play then: since mid-May, about 200/day are dying from/with COVID19 in Rio De Janeiro, a city of 6.5 million (Brazil has various local lockdown measures, but no nation-wide one). Even if the testing rate is quite low, do they really have anything like 200 traffic deaths per day there?


Just a few other points:

"The Californian physician Dr. Dan Erickson ..." is a hack with financial motives supported with bad reasoning.
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2020/05/accelerated-nonsense-on-covid19.html

"In Nigeria, according to official figures, more people have so far been killed by the police enforcing corona curfews than by the corona virus itself." BBC cited reports claiming "enforcers have killed 18 people in Nigeria since lockdowns began on 30 March," while "Coronavirus has killed 12 people, according to health ministry data." As of April 16 it was in fact 50% more people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52317196

Now it's 565 573 killed - still quite low, thanks to lockdown. If the same rate of killing had continued, there'd be 848 people killed ... all for defying lockdown orders? If  those initial claims were even true,
that would be a very troubling detail, but complicating factors aren't mentioned and in fact it's not clear the killing were even related to lockdown or just happened in that time, or if that's unusually high.

On the Blame for the Binedama Massacre (etc.) in Mali

A Start to AN Independent Investigation
(open to revision)
June 19, 2020
adds June 21, edits June 24

Background: Mali in Crisis

I haven't followed the situation in Mali, a landlocked west African nation of 20 million,. In general, Mali has been in a low-key insurgency since 2012, following the the NATO-led Jihadist takeover of Libya. This took a turn for the worse on Sunday (June 14th) with a disastrous ambush of Malian troops (Forces Armées Maliennes - FAMa) near the village of Boki-Wéré in the volatile Mopti region (see map below). Of the 64 troops in the convoy, AFP reports, "about 20" were able to return from the mission, while 24 are believed killed, and the rest listed as missing, most likely captured (along with their weapons, vehicles, and uniforms). This comes as two Egyptian soldiers with the UN peacekeeping force MINUSMA were killed when their convoy came under attack on the 13th in northwestern Mali (same link), and not long after French forces working with the government in Mali claimed credit for killing Abdelmalek Droukdel, the Algerian leader of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), in an operation on June 3.

How JNIM fighters sometimes look

Islamic State (ISIS, Daesh) has been active there and surrounding counties, frequently fighting for influence with the other, "moderate" Islamists - including AQIM. Among the latter, a Jamaat Nasr al-Islam Wal Muslimin (JNIM - Wikipedia) has emerged, as a Syria-style regional re-branding of the local Al-Qaeda franchise: initially "Nusrat al-Islam," they were founded on an allegiance to al-Qaeda Emir Ayman al-Zawahiri, AQIM's Emir Droukdel, the Taliban's Emir, Osama Bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That was followed with a direct merger with AQIM to become Al-Qaeda's official branch in the area. JNIM seem to be a leading force now, graciously offering to negotiate peace with the Malian government on some terms, including at least that French forces assisting them and killing their terrorist bosses had to leave.

The JNIM statement noted that recent popular protests agreed on the point about former colonial power France. Indeed, a quick Twitter search shows recent protests have demanded French forces must leave, and also that the serving president Keita needs to resign. People also want opposition leader Soumaila Cissé released, directing demands at the government. (He was kidnapped in March while campaigning in central Mali, and wound up held by Jihadists somewhere in the desert.) Other protests in recent months demanded the UN special mission (MINUSMA) must leave Mali. Another time, rockets were launched on a MINUSMA camp in the Timbuktu region, where "protesters" were killed by security forces, as a police officer was "taken and killed by demonstrators, police station destroyed & arms seized at Niono, Segou Région." (Sept. 19, 2019)

Protesters, peaceful and otherwise, human rights monitors and others have increasingly criticized Mali's military over alleged violations of Human Rights, with abductions, summary execution, and recently even village massacres of the kind we'll consider. Last year, also in the Mopti region, a round of such violence seems to have been a tit-for-tat communal type, escalating to some 160 killed in the worst attack, on the Fulani village of Ogossagou on March 23, generally blamed on a Dogon militia (WP). Fulani militants and/or terrorists were blamed for other attacks, including on the Dogon village Sobane Da, killing 35, on June 10 (about 50 attackers, arriving on motorcycles, with a few trucks - WP).

The serving Prime Minister and his whole government resigned last April, seemingly over these allegations (reason not given, but it followed talk of "a possible motion of no confidence in the government because of the massacre and failure to disarm militias or beat back Islamist militants."). Human Rights Watch had concluded the problem (as it existed in 2018) stemmed from "the limited presence of Malian security forces," not so much its brutal presence (all the clashing communities - Bambara, Dogon, and Peuhl (Fulani) - "accuse the Malian security forces of failing to adequately protect their communities."). This direct implication of the military in the violence in newer, if not exactly brand-new as of the June allegations (an area I may look into more).

If I had followed or investigated these allegations, I might be more inclined to accept the latest charges, or less so, depending what I had learned. But what I've learned elsewhere, combined with what I see here, leads me to suspect the story as it's been lodged, and I feel those questions are at least worth raising for others to consider.

Background: Recent Attacks on the Map

The area of focus here is the south-central Mopti region - south of Timbuktu, east of Segou and the capitol Bamako, It's far from where AQIM's Droukdel was reportedly killed in Tessalit in the country's north (Arab News), having recently crossed over from Algeria, where he'd been hiding for years. It's worth wondering why he did that - big plans in Mali? My own basic map is inset at right (Mopti region roughly marked in orange). It's this central area, a possible choke-point between the desert north and the populated south, that's shown in a handy map of some deadly ISIS-JNIM attacks on military forces over the last couple of years, most of them across the border in Niger and Burkina Faso.

More recent attacks not included there, on May 29 and 30:
June 1 tweet: "This weekend there have been three jihadist attacks in Burkina Faso that have left 52 dead." On the 30th, "two attacks against a market and a military convoy took place in Kompiembiga and Foube" and "an attack on the border with Mali took place on Friday (May 29)."

Next and likely of direct relevance: A Malian army (FaMa) patrol was ambushed on May 31 "between #Simerou and #Binedama (circle of #Koro)." Two wounded soldiers "received first aid at the MINUSMA temporary operational base in #Madougou. #Mali🇲🇱#A4P#ServingForPeace " (MINUSMA June 4 tweet) Another source (includes the stock photo of a FAMa pickup truck patrol below) says it was around 3 p.m. on the 31st that an army patrol (engaged? "accroché") an armed group "near the town of #Souroundé in the borough of #Diankabou." They also heard "a FaMa vehicle was set on fire and the soldiers retreated." (See map below - Binedama, Diankabou, and Simerou located. As for Sourounde, not sure: a "Sorou" is a bit SW of Simerou, even further from Diankabou.

May 31 MENASTREAM tweeted on "#Mali: Series of clashes between #FAMa & militants in #Mopti & #Ségou." It was "presumed #JNIM" that "repulsed FAMa and burned vehicle in Binedama (Koro)" or around there. Also on this day:
- FAMa national guard routed militants in Mondoro
- JNIM claimed attack on FAMa in Ké-Macina, seized 2 vehicles, arms, equipment (map: well west of Binedama area, but worth adding in the wider map below - just a few kilometers from Boki-Wéré where the deadly ambush of a FAMa patrol happened 2 weeks later, perhaps using these stolen tools to help steal even more, to help ... do whatever they try next.)
https://twitter.com/MENASTREAM/status/1267302650325991425

New village massacres allegedly began on that same day, May 31, or at least tried to. In fact Fulani opposition sources claim it was at Diankabou, some 15-20 km north of that ambush, or somewhere nearby (like 15-20 km south?) that a "similar" operation to the ones to come was somehow prevented by "numerous interventions." And presumably JNIM sent a "patrol" running ... in what might be two versions of the same incident. That coincidence is obviously interesting. We'll come back to that.

There would be a successful massacre June 3 a ways to the east at "Niangassadiou" killing 14 - as it happens, near Mondoro, where militants were routed the 31st, but not that we hear of on the 3rd. Then came the deadliest one right in Binedama on the 5th, killing a reported 29 civilians, including at least two women, one young girl and one teenage boy. The first word on these incidents came only on June 5 and mostly on the 6th, regarding both Binedama and the days-old and possibly avoided massacres. Added on June 6 wee reports of nine killed at Massabougou, some ways to the west, not far from Ke Macina, where JNIM had shown and improved their capabilities a week earlier (see second map, and note two villages of the same name, so placement's not certain).

I found Mapcarta had this area very well-covered, letting me find every town named (some only because nearby towns were also named) - here it is set to Binedama for starters: https://mapcarta.com/17265766
I took some time to make this map of my own starting with those (red boxes), as reports got the middle name wrong (or spelled unusually) - NiangassaDIou. (the other red dots refer to the other alleged massacres of Dogon civilians - which I'll explain below - while purple and blue are for other relevant locales, and other locales are in white just for reference, along with some roads.)

I finally decided to make a wider map to include later discoveries that's also better in most ways. Having both of these doesn't seem that useful, but then neither does deleting the one.

The Western, Activist-Informed View
The French AFP news agency's widely-cited report heard from 4 government/elected officials, all anonymous, allegiances uncertain: "A local government official in Koro" said that the raid occurred on Friday afternoon, killing 29. "Two other local officials" gave a lower death toll of 26, "adding that the village was torched and its chief killed." "An elected official from the area" was the source for the claim "men dressed in Malian army fatigues" had carried out the raid, and that "they had burned down buildings and killed the village chief." As told to AFP, two women and a nine-year-old girl were among those killed. Tabital Pulaaku, a Fulani association, "released a statement later on Saturday saying that 29 people had died and called for an independent probe led by the United Nations. The government didn't deny or confirm, but pledged to investigate.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200606-militant-attack-kills-more-than-two-dozen-in-central-mali
https://maliactu.net/malimassacre-a-binedama-larmee-pointee-du-doigt-amnesty-demande-une-enquete-credible/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/twenty-six-killed-village-torched-in-central-mali-attack/ar-BB157Wxx?ocid=msedgntp

Spain's government at least condemned the attacks, welcomed the government's promise of an investigation, and urged locals to pursue peace and reconciliation.
http://www.exteriores.gob.es/Portal/en/SalaDePrensa/Comunicados/Paginas/2020_COMUNICADOS/20200610_COMU043.aspx

Ousmane Diallo, researcher for West Africa at Amnesty International is quoted as saying "The Malian authorities must conduct independent and credible investigations in order to punish those responsible for these abuses" which he suggests happened during "military operations."
https://www.studiotamani.org/index.php/themes/politique/23741-massacre-a-binedama-l-armee-pointee-du-doigt-amnesty-demande-une-enquete-credible

Late on June 5 (4:06pm my time) #Mali : Army suspected of abusing civilians today. More than 20 people killed this afternoon Friday, June 05, 2020 in #Binedama commune Madougou circle of #Koro region of #Mopti. ( Tabital Pulaaku).
https://twitter.com/Baba_A_/status/1269043058148081669

Burned village aftermath video from ocisse691

Masta Yattassaye (translated): "#Binedama Peulh village in the circle of #Koro , region of #Mopti after the passage of a detachment of the Malian army. Malian soldiers killed at least 30 people. The victims were all slaughtered. This is the work of the Malian army in the center of #Mali."
(Includes graphic photo I'll show below.)
https://twitter.com/kaartanke/status/1269022875777990664

"#Mali : 43 women and children executed on June 3 and 5 in Niangassadiou and Binedama. Our condolences to the relatives and families of the victims"
https://twitter.com/segadiarrah/status/1269934802679054336

A written statement from Tabital Pulaaku association: https://twitter.com/kaartanke/status/1269308789792145410
translatuing some copied text, I can make out this as saying:
* 5 June 40 pickup massacre Binedama commune of Madougou, circle of Koro. 29 killed, including 2 women, aged 70 and 63
* 3 June Niangassadiou dans la Commune de Mondoro, killing 14? (8 Peul/Fulani, 6 Tuaregs) (map: Mondoro didn't come up directly, even though mapcarta has "Mondoro-Habe" with "Niangassagou" close by)
* 31 May at Diankabou, circle of Koro: "a similar operation had been attempted against the Peul neighborhood of the village of Diakbabou ... it failed thanks to numerous interventions.  (elle a échoué grâce â de nombreuses intervention. Si rien n'est fait ...) If nothing is done the infernal spiral of violence will continue."

June 6 - Nine more killed by FaMa in Massabougou, near Dogofori, Niono, Segou. Victim list attached. https://twitter.com/kaartanke/status/1269360119223123970/photo/1 Map: Massabougou, near a "Dogofryba" and a "Dagabory", close to Niono, Segou, and just a ways north of Ke Macina and Boki-Wéré. At the last minute I ealized there are two Masabougos close by, one with two Ss. I had marked the wrong one, changed it to be the one closer to said towns. This is some 100km + off the west edge of my oiginal map, added to the wider one - not likely to be done by the same fighters, but quite likely connected. It is near the siezed weapons at Ke Macina, and the successful ambush at Boki Were - an area of capable militant activity.

Witnesses say they saw the killers wearing Malian army fatigues and/or arriving at Binedama in 40 army trucks. It's said there's visual proof of this, and while I haven't seen it yet, I wouldn't be surprised. Statement by "Abou Sow" president of the Tabital Pulaaku association: “It is a column of army vehicle. There are photos, pictures. They arrested many people whom they summarily shot. And among those slaughtered were women and children. We received a first list of 29 people on which I counted 18 people between 56 and 78 years old, ”

M. Yattassaye: "A mission of the general inspection of the armies went today to the bereaved village of #Binedama . As they approached, the inhabitants deserted the village as if to boycott them. They went to get them." (??)
https://twitter.com/kaartanke/status/1270460308654641152

A Critical Review
1) Takfiris in Costume?
First, no one claimed responsibility - everyone has or would deny doing this. So if Malian troops were the culprits, would they be seen in broad daylight in their own trucks, wearing their own uniforms, as claimed by some? Possibly, but not intelligently. They might instead go in civilian clothes, or even disguised as Jihadists, to keep the blame on their enemy. Conversely, JNIM-AQIM-ISIS types, if they wanted to do the same, might commit the crime in army fatigues, in broad daylight, and wind up seen in alleged opposition photo and video proof. That's just what these guys allegedly did, and that rings suspect.

I haven't even seen this evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if it exists. If so, it could mean the killers were FaMa soldiers. But then militants can steal uniforms from soldiers they kill or kidnap or bases they overrun, have them handed over by defectors. The killers wearing uniforms (if they truly did) is no proof who hired them. In fact, it may as likely point to their enemies.

The same can be true of military vehicles, sometimes ... and here, JNIM admits to seizing two FaMa "vehicles" (field trucks?) just a few days earlier at Ke Macina, besides any others they'd gotten earlier and might still have (note that uniforms could have been seized too at Ke Macina). Otherwise, the same model trucks, maybe with a paint job and fake decals - could be used for some video "proof." that would require access to a garage or a shed... To use them in the field requires an ability to evade security forces. In the restive, lawless Mopti region, that seems likely enough. But I'm not convinced that column of army trucks even existed at the right time and place. Aly Berry: “It is a column of army vehicle. There are photos, pictures" - of the same convoy, or in a recycled video they pretend is connected?

Iranian Press TV cited the figure 26 dead at Binedama and called it a "suspected Takfiri militant attack." Takfiri means sectarian or genocidal, mainly referring to Sunni extremist groups like Al Qaeda, especially where they fixate on destroying some religious enemy group. Why and by whom it was "suspected" these might be behind Binedama is not explained in the article, but the Iranians at large (Press TV, etc.) have widely documented that kind of thing in Syria and elsewhere, and I agree we may be seeing it again here.

Christian news source BosNewsLife heard from aid workers in Mali how "Heavily armed suspected Islamic jihadists on motorcycles have targeted mainly Christian Dogon farming villages in central Mali, killing at least 27 people" not in this incident but in a strong of incidents in "recent weeks" and in the vicinity. "Seven were killed, some burned alive, in the village of Tillé. Another 20 ethnic Dogon villagers were shot or burned to death in neighboring Bankass and Koro,” confirmed Christian aid group Barnabas Fund citing local officials. The latest murders of mostly Christian farmers in central Mali began May 26 and lasted till the next day, according to regional authorities."
https://www.bosnewslife.com/2020/06/08/islamists-kill-dozens-of-christians-in-mali/

Yacouba Kassogué, the deputy mayor of nearby Doucombo: "We were surprised by the attack on the village of Tillé. Seven were killed, all Dogons, some of them burned alive."
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/2020/june/36-reported-dead-as-attacks-on-christian-villages-in-mali-and-nigeria-continue/

(map: Bankass and especially Koro are semi-central towns south of the Binedama area, possibly used as shorthand for villages near them. Tillé was located later, placed roughly, along with the towns it's close to.)

How JNIM fighters sometimes look

At the top of the article was an image of heavily-armed Jihadists on motorcycles, being with the Al-Qaeda franchise JNIM. Here it is again. I don't suppose these reports are any more proven true than the claims against the Malian army, nor against local Dogon militias. But they're well worth considering, just from these basic reports, and there may be more to discover in this area. And of course many kinds of armed groups can go about on motorcycles ... terrorizing Christian villages in JNIM's emerging Malian emirate. That does sound like a jihadist activity, and the witnesses will have had more specific evidence, probably pointing the same way, suggesting these roving killers are real, and could carry out massacres like those in June, if they had the motive (it's presumed they wouldn't, but see below, sections 4, 5).

burned (grain storage bins?) at Binedama

2) Visual Record of the Binedama Massacre

There are a few videos and images of the village aftermath in general, as at right, and a few others that seem to show a 2019 incident instead. Here it's mainly about the victims and how they died. There may be more on it, but I'm citing one photo and one video.

The photo right below is graphic, but not the worst that way, and important as primary evidence. I don't know of any other photos of any quality. Any reader who does could let me know in a comment. Source: M.Yattassaye on Twitter

At least 11 or 12 people are seen complete in this pile, the feet of another on the right (joining into another array not seen here), and another body is laying obliquely off to the side, right where that motorcycle parked. I can't tell what women's clothing is for sure, in Mali (let alone Fulani vs. Dogon), but this might include one or both of the women said killed, or might be all men. These seem like fit older men who appear younger than they are, aside from at least one clearly young guy with more hair. One (front left) has a severe wound to the back of the head - bullet exit, probably. Otherwise the manner of killing isn't clear. The bodies were arranged in this pile, some time after death, but they display no rigor mortis - they were killed no more than a few hours before this photo

A video shows what must be the same bodies mostly covered up with sheets and such. This pans to the right to show the guy connected to those feet, and another 3-4 covered bodies with more feet visible, and several sets of peacefully removed footwear nearby. It's customary for some people - Islamists, not sure who else - to remove peoples' shoes before executing them. two other bodies in white are seen a ways apart (one probably being the one noted by the motorcycle), and a seemingly smaller body covered in blue is seen further off the a side (maybe the one child mentioned as dying - a 9-year-old girl). A composite view below tries to show them all, mostly continuously.
Source: M. Yattassaye: https://twitter.com/kaartanke/status/1269023265080606720

I think that's a total seen of 18-20 bodies. I presume they're right about the widely-agreed 26 tally, and maybe the 29 tally. That depends on why the discrepancy. There were no reported abductions, but a disputed death toll can become suspicious in that light. It's said 2 women were killed, maybe it's 3, and all older. Just one young girl was said to be killed. The fate of any females of intermediary age may be of some interest.

We hear the soldiers used their authority to "arrest" these people and execute them - (Aly Barry: "They arrested many people [whom they] summarily shot." ) But these victims don't appear to have been arrested peacefully. None of them clearly have their hands bound - at least one might, but others clearly don't.
* I see on the man in the front, right, dark clothing torn in the back, clearly punctured as if by bullets lining up now with the left thigh, back side, but his inner right knee seems to shot through.
* Back right in green and white seems to have bullet holes to the right side legs,
* and I see two men each with one foot blown off, and a blood-filled left shoe that doesn't match either of them (at least 3 people with a foot shot off). Most of these people were gunned down, even having their feet literally shot out from under them, as they tried to flee. You might flee from army troops coming to arrest you, and you'd pretty surely run from criminals come to kill you. As told, the soldiers arrived in their 40 trucks, but didn't use them to remove the evidence of their crime, leaving at least this major half of the bodies behind to be found by ... men on motorcycles, with AK-47s.

We've heard about armed Islamists "on motorcycles" gunning people down in nearby villages at this time. Nothing I see here clarifies these are the same, but nothing suggests otherwise either. As noted above, in the reverse psychology of a false-flag operation, a jihadist appearance might as well point to army guys posing as jihadists. Except this was seen on the fringes, not advertised, it's not clearly jihadist, and has contrary stories advanced. Whatever this appearance says is more likely genuine.

3) JNIM Reported Interventions in the Area, and Lack Thereof
The general trend is that JNIM is now capable of beating the army in attacks and ambushes, routing patrols, stealing weapons, and most recently killing or capturing some 44 of them at once at Boki Were. They're clearly capable of raiding any village they wanted, if that suited their purposes. And they'd be capable of preventing a government attempt, given the right circumstances. They seemingly claim to have done just this.

The ambush of the FaMa patrol at Simerou on May 31 killed no one but burned a vehicle, wounded two soldiers, and interrupted their security work in the area. That same day at Diankabou, some 15-20 km north of that ambush, an "opération similaire" to the coming massacres reportedly "failed thanks to numerous interventions." (T.P. statement) What kind?

M. Yattassaye tells me another attack after Binedama was prevented after someone called the military brass, who apparently ordered their subordinates to call off the attack. ("Encore plus intéressant, après le massacre de Binedama, les mêmes soldats se sont dirigés vers un autre village fulani mais heureusement Tabital Pulaaku, grande association fulani a vite alerter la hiérarchie militaire qui a permis de sauver ce village") That's one kind of "intervention," but a strange one. It implies an ambiguous military role - able to order a massacre stopped when pressed, but then either unable or unwilling to stop the next three.

But that would be two foiled massacres. I think he's confused; it was the earlier alleged attempt that was allegedly foiled somehow. And a military intervention is more likely than "alerting the heierarchy." Most likely, that would be JNIM, and they refer to the same ambush of a small patrol, exaggerating it to a massacre force of 40 tucks (if it was very "similaire" to Binedama). Mr. Yattassaye might have presumed it was later, because that helps explain why they knew how urgent it was to step in somehow; coming before the massacres at Binedama and Niangassagou, it could be recognized as similar in hindsight, not at the time of "intervention." And it also raises the question why whoever would intervene however when they didn't even know what was coming, but then fail to do so on the next three occasions when people were murdered. JNIM didn't manage to intervene the same way on the 5th at Binedama, right between their successful ambush and the foiled massacre, nor at Massabougo on the 6th - they can attack the army all they want in those areas, but they can't seem to prevent their devious massacres. That rings suspect, as these crimes then feed conveniently into the Jihadist narrative.

I would suggest the "intervention" that prevented bloodshed at Diankabou was by the Islamists, who called off their own plans for a "similar operation" they intended to pin on the army; their tip-off to the plan was hatching it themselves. They could guess the ambush would be reported and might look bad; if they were shown to be the winning military force in the area that day, they might actually get blamed for the nearby "FAMa massacre," so wisely, they called it off. It might have been smarter to not mention that plan they sensed, but once you have evil planned for your enemy, you were ready to spill some blood in their name, it may be hard to call that back entirely just because it didn't get to HAPPEN. You might still claim they had planned to do that, but luckily you stopped them. We'll return to this concept, combining it with the next one.

Anyway, claims aside, what this ambush-intervention shows is there were organized militants active in this area on both sides. The army was not on top May 31 at Bindeama, but might have ruled the field on June 5. Or not. If someone storms a village, it's worth keeping an open mind as to who and why, despite those alleged uniforms. In fact, maybe because of them. To decide who it most likely was, we'd need to consider motives and the available evidence, as we're doing.

4) Family Targeting / Man of Peace
The victims at Binedama were reportedly all Fulani (Peul), pastoral Muslims with some sympathy for JNIM and their ilk, and therefore it should be non-Muslims who killed them, as most might reason even without the assurances FAMa did it. But it wasn't just against the community at random; an elected official and two other officials told AFP the attackers killed the village chief of Binedama That may be a mix-up, or they may have killed a second chief of another village, as one source (and just the one) claimed: "more than 40 people had been coldly killed by FAMA elements, including two village chiefs who had their throats cut."  (Maliweb.net)

An informed-seeming source (Masta Yattassaye) tells me The chief's name was Idrissa Barry. He also posted a photo (at right) with his explanation (from French): "The village chief of #Ouro_Naye who moved to #Binedama with the inhabitants of his village and where he saw his home village entrusted is one of the victims of #Binedama. Influential man, actor of peace, he always fought for a return of peace between Fulani & Dogons." In another tweet, it's explained Barry was the village chief of Ouro Naye  but after the attack on his village by "Dozos,"  he and his family moved to take refuge in Binedama where he was appointed chief [in Binedama] by the former chief. Odd story. Was Ouro-Naye left without a chief after that? Did anyone even live there? Dozos = Dogon hunters, app. a nickname, perhaps like "Shabiha" in Syria, or "African mercenaries" in Libya, 2011. I found a Naye on the map just SE of Binedama, likely the place referred to (top / smaller map: purple dot).

In incidents like this, I've often found signs of family targeting. Here, of the 29 fatalities at Binedama, all of them are named Barry except for one: Nouh Yero Djibo Tamboura, age 60. (see list below, from https://twitter.com/fuutaanke19/status/1269265641728544770) But that might be so meaningful; Yattassaye says Barry is so common it's almost the regional name: "The majority of the Fulani in this area are Barry and Tamboura (who are a bit in the minority)." Aly Barry, a presumably unrelated official from Tabital Pulaaku, was a prime source informing AFP. There's a video where another source sounds like his son, by name (same last name, middle name Aly).

The accomplished chief is listed by Tabital Pulaaku as victim #22: Idrissa Amirou Barry, age 63. (inset: a sharpened version of the provided list). #24. Yousoubou Idrissa Barry, 36 sounds like a probable son. Therefore 23. Hassana Mobbo Barry, 58 might be the wife-mother... if Arabic tradition, she'd keep her father's name, but it sounds likely enough it was the same name to beging with. But the "two women" listed are older (63 and 70), listed at the end. Hassana sure sounds like a female name - a known one Arabic one. (Idrissa sounded feminine too, and not a name I've seen - but checking: it's an Arabic male name). But then, Hassana appears as a middle name for another victim with the man's name Hamidou (and suggesting that his father was named Hassana), as well as a likely bother, Aminata Hassana Barry. So maybe it is just the two women that were killed. I leave that point.

There are no names I've noticed given for the victims at Niangassagou. The second slaughtered chief, if thee was one, may have been the chief of that village. Massabougou has all 9 named, including another Barry victim (outside the area where it's so common = a bit more likely to be relevant) - Demba Barry, no middle name given. Two are named Cissé (a father named Mamma? and son named Kola - connected the the detained opposition leader?), 6 named Bah, 1 Diallo.

It seems likely to be accepted that the army guys killed Chief Barry and all of his family members they could find, maybe to intimidate Muslims into surrender, or provoke them into greater rebellion, or something foolish or sinister like that. motive; Masta Yattassaye suggests:

"Des habitants de cette zone accusent souvent les militaires de s'opposer a la réconciliation entre fulani et dogons. Une paix entre les deux communautés majoritaires les mettraient seuls face à leur responsabilité face aux terroristes." 

As I read it, keep the locals fighting so the government can (ignore? collude with?) the real problem of the jihadists. That doesn't strike me as a likely motive. He might add the Fulani side is NOT the Jihadist one, but I'd suggest the that line runs through the Fulani community, not magically around it.

An "actor of peace" who had moved to Binedama only to die there logically did so because he was threatened at home and felt safer in Binedama. The prior attacks and threats were almost surely by whoever finally killed him, or allies of theirs. It was allegedly Dogon fighters, then the Malian army. But perhaps it was by JNIM.

Peace can come in many ways, not all of them just. I haven't seen specifically what Chief Idrissa Barry proposed to achieve reconciliation between the Dogon and Fulani communities, but he sounds kind of in-sync with the official Malian government position: "The Government invites, despite these tragic and regrettable events, the populations of the localities concerned to continue the mediation efforts initiated by the notables to achieve reconciliation and social cohesion between all communities in the country." (source) It seems quite possible he was one of those same notables, killed to frustrate the government's reconciliation project. Would Al-Qaeda types bent on overturning another infidel regime to implement another Islamic State want to terrorize the peacemakers with such an example?

Yes. Government "collaborators" or "informers" or "agents of Shaytan" - opponents of escalating conflict, engineered crisis, and regime change disaster are sometimes killed by "their own" who favor discord ad radical change. There are countless cases of this known of worldwide, especially in the Muslim world but everywhere else too.  Some such incidents are widely and some barely noted or left unreported. Some are noted upside-down after being successfully blamed on the other side, as I fear this story seeks to be. So let's consider an example of that that succeeded, an example to avoid.

5) Al-Bayda, Syria, and another Man of ... Not the Takfiris

At least 70 Sunni Muslim civilians were massacred, in early May 2013, in Syria's mostly peaceful, Alawite-majority Tartous province. But it happened at the all-Sunni village of Al-Bayda, and initial reports blamed Alawite and Christian "Shabiha" militias from the surrounding villages, with government support, for the brutal slaying of men, women, and children. Those claims were generally accepted, adding to the growing but largely fake record of "Assad regime" brutality against its own people. At right: a photo I'm pretty sure was taken around dawn, some time before the second army detachment even aived.

It turns out at least half of those Sunnis killed were from one extended family, related to influential local cleric sheikh Omar Biassi. A retired Imam of one of the town's mosques, he was a government supporter, ultimately a man of peace and interfaith dialog, but increasingly vocal in opposing the insurgency, demanding it be crushed. He had personally endured threats including a burned car before, the night on May 1/2, a secret cell of terrorists had been found in al-Bayda - al-Nusra or what, I'm not sure - one of those Takfiri outfits. It seems they were alerted and managed to ambush an army unit sent to arrest them in the pre-dawn hours, killing some soldiers and capturing the rest. The details remain murky; some reports had Sheikh Biassi stepping in to help negotiate the soldier's release. But in the end it seems to soldiers were killed, along with Sheikh Biassi and his wife, several grown children, grandchildren, siblings, and in-laws found in their homes across town, gathered, and brutally murdered - some 3 dozen total. (the rest of the victims are a few smaller families, and a number of men, perhaps including the kidnapped soldiers passed off as civilians.)
https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/05/syrias-al-bayda-baniyas-massacres-and.html

They say the "Shabiha" ripped the fetus from a woman in advanced pregnancy, even showing a tiny fetus as a victim, but the only pregnant woman known in the pool (Safaa Ali Biassi, IIRC) was seen intact on rebel video, after her alleged murder but before any such cutting. That of course suggests that touch of mutilation - if not the murder itself - was added by people aligned with the "activists" deceptively documenting the crime.

So opposition forces in al-Bayda proved militarily predominant with an ambush, then in the lack of state security, they rove the town and kill "their own people" - whom they actually consider enemies for being related to a man of peace. Then they blame security forces and/or their allies, playing the "we'd never kill our own" card. That's a precedent. It's what didn't quite happen in Diankabou on the 31st, but they think it had been planned. Binedama could be the same story, on a smaller scale and without the proof of Islamist militant supremacy, But it seems to have a lot of the same elements, and you don't need proof to know they could take over some homes in a town, after they've chased off the national army on other days.

Continuing in Syria, May 2013. It seems the militants hopped on their own motorcycles and fled al-Bayda after the killings, letting the town be filmed under government control later the following day. The "activists" tried to fudge all the killings to the night after, but it's pretty clear most or all of it happened the night before, in the hours after that ambush. Where did the militants go next? A couple days later came a huge massacre in nearby Baniyas, at the outlying Sunni-majority Ras al-Nabe district (where insurgents had been killing soldiers in ambushes since April 10, 2011!) Blamed on the same "Shabiha" villains, this was murkier, seemingly deadlier and more gruesome yet, including some more relatives and in-laws of Sheikh Biassi, along with a bunch of other people - whole families of them. It was muddled by the fact that Alawi (Alawites) also lived in Baniyas just blocks away. And it was odd how some 30+ of them all wound up hacked and tossed from the roof of one building they came to be living at. The important event in the "Al-Bayda and Baniyas Massacres" story was the first one that killed for sure only Sunnis, to help prove who was behind it.

So ... Jamaat Nasr al-Islam Wal Muslimin surely wouldn't kill their own Muslim, Fulani people? They just might, depending who they are. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but can we be sure it's not what happened?

Postscript, June 21:
@MENASTREAM Jun 12 "#Sahel: #AQ's Thabat News Agency published a map claiming to depict areas under #JNIM control & the group's movements, as well as government controlled areas in #Mali, #BurkinaFaso, and #Niger. Obviously arbitrary and exaggerated, still interesting in terms of perception"
I made my own map with the incidents discussed above superimposed on these areas, to interesting effect (taking a guess now on where the May 31 border clash might be). "Contested" means the army is still present in force (around the area's central cities (Timuktu, Mopti, Segou), the general population center, and linking highways) but challenged in force, including the Ke Macina raid and the Boki Were ambush. No massacres of civilians are reported here. Areas of JNIM claimed control include all the slayings blamed on them and on FAMa. Maybe they mean they control those areas now, but not quite in those days? Maybe FAMA does their massacres there to implicate JNIM? They just forgot to ditch their own uniforms?

Above I mentioned the protests, which have continued.  I don't mean to defend a government that genuinely is corrupt and incompetent, perhaps even colluding with Al-Qaeda, where a change in leadership might improve things. That's entirely possible, if not my suspicion, and I don't know the details. But last year a government resigned over allegations I don't think had been proven yet, if ever. Now on the back of alleged massacres of Muslims by Mali's army, they insist "IBK" is the problem and must "demission." Four Supreme court justices (conservative Muslim ones?) have resigned to protest Keita's refusal to resign. A "charismatic" Salafist preacher, Mahmoud Dicko, is leading the protests. Is he the one that could stop Al-Qaeda, or the one who could make peace by letting them take over 2/3 of Mali?

Consider two Malian newspapers, one pro-Dicko, one pro-Keita. By the hyperbole on the covers, one gets the sense the truth must be somewhere between these poles. But most likely one view is more authentic, home-grown, and reality-based. Which one? That's for the Malian people to decide, and not just the ones herded into these protests.
https://twitter.com/Baba_A_/status/1274862351523643393/photo/2

Now that Al-Qaeda is beating the national army out of half of Mali, Sheikh Dicko and others could perhaps muster their charisma to suggest a genuine compromise solution that lets everyone stand united enough to raise army recruits, boost public support for them, anything to help turn back the tide on what they all claim to be the core problem. Instead, they increase the pressure for regime change as top priority. They had damn well better be right about that. Of course Dicko et al. want al-Qaeda gone, but first another government must fall just as the problem worsens, in fact taking advantage of that. And they insist French forces must leave (because they're killing the Al-Qaeda leadership setting up shop in Mali?). And while Islamists are killing UN peacekeepers in the field and "protesters" fire rockets on their camps, the peoples' demands include MINUSMA monitors must leave (to keep them from investigating things like the Binedama massacre, as they're seen here doing?) The protesters might even insist the Malian army needs to be reformed and purged,
now that they're directly accused of sectarian massacres like Binedama. But they don't need to include this in their chants; hopefully it'll follow in the wake of the regime change they seek.

And so I'm not entirely sure the Malian people out in the streets against their president have their heads on straight. Maybe they do, but compare to Syria ... Sheikh Biassi (as mentioned above) and some 90% of all Syrians always supported their government and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA)
against the Islamist takeover effort there. Some "protesters" insisted on blaming Assad and an Iranian-Shi'ite conspiracy for everything, from shooting the first peaceful protesters to creating and controlling ISIS. But some among them were the ones shooting policemen and fellow citizens, then  killing and kidnapping soldiers, with massive support from various governments, fighters and arms smuggled in from Turkey, and would join ISIS as soon as it existed. A bunch of Islamists initially called "Fee Syrrian Army" then took control of whole areas, claiming it was "to protect the protesters," but soon they were suppressing protests themselves, imposing strict sharia law, and freely massacring and kidnapping citizens and foreigners along both religious and political lines, while managing to have Assad and his forces blamed for killing tens of thousands of civilians on thin to no evidence, blaming barrel bombs, chemical weapons, and more. But the state and the people at large kept an eye on the reality of their situation and held firm and finally, with assistance from Russia and Iran, turned back the tide and reclaimed nearly all of their occupied territory.

Now, could they have done that if they had kept blaming and changing one government after another over the constant allegations? No. The Islamists of Jaysh al-Islam and Jabhat al-Nusra would have taken Damascus and installed an "emir." In Syria, holding firm like that was the right course.  If it really is different in Mali and they need to switch horses in mid-stream, best do it quickly. Otherwise, I suggest skip the horse-changing entirely, skip it quickly, and get right to the team effort of saving Mali.

Side-note: these mass protests defy the government's COVID19 lockdown orders. The protesters will say those were an excuse to bar protests, and that could be. But these measures are used by nearly all world and regional governments regardless of any protest plans, because they also have the effect
of slowing transmission of a highly contagious and fairly fatal pathogen. Such huge gatherings of mostly-unmasked people in close proximity is sure to increase cases and deaths from COVID19 - I'll be watching for the reported segment of that (but so far, it doesn't look as bad as it could be - 20-50 cases/day, less than 2,00 total, and just 111 confirmed dead.)

I also saw at least two MINUSMA monitors who contacted the virus working in Mali managed to die there from it. With that and the killings, they probably want to leave, so protesters take heart.

Coronavirus Death Rates Over Time

Adam Larson aka Caustic Logic
June 7, 2020
edits 6-10
updates July 3, August 2

Background on this project
In my prior graphics exploring COVID19 death rates, I included some different tolls over time in a range of nations. Starting with a bar graph by UK Column back in late April meant to show lockdown countries had bad or no effect on death rates, I've made a couple if rebuttal graphics, starting in this blog post, and working up to this in a recent Twitter post, using the same proportional deaths-per-million UKC started with:

Part of the point there was to show China, and Iran, and how the supposed lockdown plot so many folks are alarmed about is probably not a political conspiracy - rather, it appears to be a real issue faced by all kinds of government, nearly all of whom rationally chose the effective response. Is that answer boring? Sorry.

But the variance over time is also something that starting image didn't consider, and didn't have as much time TO consider as I have now. The graph above compares levels from May 13 and May 21. That was interesting and seemed worth expanding on. So I started right off with a more systematic look at death rates over time, split into six spans of about 2 weeks each (aside from the first, covering whenever up to March 22) running up to the present - or a couple days ago now, June 4. And along the way I included far more nations, for a broader-yet reading over space as well as time.

As the morbid "massacre marketing" guy, let's say, I'm looking at deaths here. It might be more useful in general to look at infection rates, which also entails problems like overwhelmed hospitals (besides a lot of people who didn't even feel it). SARS2/COVID19 is not known for its extreme lethality - it seems to harm and kill far more readily than the common flu, but perhaps 99% of those infected so far survived. (It seems debatable to me, the tallies we have are incomplete and far from final, and it's not clear how many unconfirmed cases exist, and just how few of those (presumably very few) add to the fatalities rather than survivals.)

What really sets this virus apart is its rapid spread and ability to cause its effects on a mass scale in short order. But the scale is such that, even with transmission slowed by a global lockdown, and even though it's not super-deadly and that everyone tries to shield the elderly - it has already killed at least the 400,000 people just now confirmed. Nearly all of that has happened in the last three months despite lockdown, and that number is now growing a bit faster as the virus keeps being contagious but people can't keep sitting still. It will certainly be passing at least one million mark it's almost halfway to, and maybe several of them, depending. That, and the nature and speed of it is something I'll be watching.

Deaths from (or "with") the virus of course rely on its presence, so they tend to rise with its general spread. As I'll show, they rise less or even fall where the spread is generally suppressed. But fatality is variable even more so on a limited spread (one way or another) to those who would die. So lower rates will reflect a mix of:
a) general spread reduction and
b) specific reduction to the most vulnerable, and
c) other factors, including quality of medical care, etc.)

So for assessing the value of lockdown and other mitigation efforts, death toll is a bit limited. It reflects other factors, and excludes other benefits like hospital case load, besides the substantial costs of economic and social lockdown. But death seems to be the part that grabs the attention of mortals, that drives the most worry, and is perhaps the virus' most debated and misunderstood feature.

Or put another way, the relative lack of deaths so far is widely misinterpreted. I hope to provide some clarity on that.

The series given a fancy name CORONAVIRUS DEATH RATES OVER TIME (as of June 4, 2020)
My two sources tracking and compiling WHO data:
https://www.bing.com/covid

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Ongoing Lombardy updates: https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/tree/master/schede-riepilogative/regioni

Source on Birmingham: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/uknews/11753789/birmingham-coronavirus-worst-hit/

Populations used: quick internet search for each, looking fo the latest (and usually biggest) number, finding Worldometer's 2020 estimates seemed closer than even the latest actual counts, I used these for nations. For states and other places, Wikipedia, whatever popped up and seemed good. I take the number of millions, not the number, and round it off variously, sometimes to one or two decimal points, maybe three for tiny numbers. Ex: China is 1,438, UK is 67.5, Iran 84, Turkey 83.7, Mexico City is 8.8, and Iceland is 0.36.

Time spans used: basically bi-monthly, starting from some dates I already covered, running 14-16 days, then simple 14-day spans for the last two (and any further spans I add), so they compare directly, while the earlier ones are a bit different. It's used enough it's worth putting the key right here.

Note that deaths follow infection by a few days to about two weeks or longer (?? details...), so the end of one span basically reflects realities at the end of the previous one.

Scale used: moderately magnified scale for smallest numbers, moderate reduction of scale from 800 up - not the best set-up, but I'm not re-doing it all. The scale is pretty steady in the middle, light gray, darker for magnified bottom, lighter for rolling-away upper end. So understand all bars have fatter bottoms we can read a bit better, and the tallest ones have their tops a bit truncated. The middle still has more space than it needs, I now see.

At right is a basic illustration of exponential growth, as it would look on my charts (including the lower and upper distortion, somewhat). Let's say the shaded spans are varying but semi-uniform, unspecified periods of doubling, as the pixels double in each span (in the middle anyway). In a calendar-based system, the growth will vary with local dynamics, but with stupid but crowded animals, each period should grow lager and larger at a steady rate until around the threshold of herd immunity is reached - which, as I'll explain, we are nowhere near. Only then would it slow and finally stop. (a full bar showing that might have 6 exponential spans as at right, then a 7th span just bigger than 6, a smaller 8th and 9th, a tiny 10th one, and then nothing.)

Even herd animals will employ "social distancing" along the way to group immunity (look it up), and with humans, we can massively change the course with science and communication, slow the spread greatly and even stop it completely - not that that's always easy. And you might notice in the plates below, no country has results like the bar at right (though some cities come close). Many start out that way, with the second span far deadlier than the fist, with one span sometimes doubling the last. But they have a tendency to then stabilize and even shrink over later periods, sometimes even getting cases and deaths so low they have zero for an entire span, or maybe forever. That is, wherever effective measures are taken.

The InfoGraphics here:
Plate A: the deadliest fronts, so far

This looks at the early hotspots I know of, aside from the Diamond Princess cruise ship (China, Iran, Italy), and the places hit even harder, but slower:  USA (states of NY and WA as examples of internal variance), lockdown Europe's highest death rates (Ireland, France, Spain, tiny Andorra, Belgium), the herd immunity crowd (Sweden, Brazil, Belarus), and between the last two classes, those in Europe now on lockdown who started with HI (NL, UK)

Plate B: How most of the world has fared so far

Starting with the three famous for doing poorly (China, Iran, Italy), they anchor the majority of countries and regions that have done no worse, with a vast majority of the world's people and lower death tolls than seen in plate A. The emphasis here is on showing higher rates as I noted them, but also a sampling of sizes and patterns. Seven harder-hit localities are also shown along with 47 nations under some kind of "lockdown" stay-at-home order (as far as I know). 11 others who've managed varyingly without such a policy, each for their reasons, are also shown: "no lockdown" (NLD), managed with early containment (EC), some closures and local lockdown (PLD), and no evident embrace of "herd immunity" (HI), as with those on plate A.

So looking across these, we can see where it spread more early on (lighter pink shades) vs. in later phases (red-brown). You have to zoom in to see some the spans, and some aren't there - occasionally a place has zero deaths (or it rounds down to it), so it doesn't show. I show fractions down to about 0.05, rounded up to 0.1, shown as a small 1/8 bar 1px wide (ideally - see Egypt, others).  Especially in bigger countries, tiny early returns are sometimes done in partial lines or little blocks - that hit me halfway through, as others have full lines I exaggerated a bit to even be visible, or were unfairly rounded to zero.

Plate C: Spread over time in the United States of America, so far

Lockdown orders: Not all are noted - in fact jut a few; unless otherwise specified, all states appear to have issued some such orders. Each order that is shown here is marked roughly in its time span, as dated. (the marker has nothing to do with the background scale, except to suggest why subsequent periods experienced less fatalities.) Any relaxation of said orders is even less-noted - just two cases.
NLD = no lockdown, as I've read - president Trump's 'Coronavirus guidelines for America' applied to everyone, but five states declined to add their own specific orders: Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Nebraska (4 shown here - I picked the worst case between the Dakotas.)

As discussed a bit below, localities can be hit harder than states or nations that average together areas of many kinds. City data is limited on my end end and may be extreme, but in the US, I looked at some counties. In the Bing tracker, these don't have date breakdowns, just total fatalities. At least the top 4 here, all in New York and New Jersey, had death tolls well above Lombardy's rate of 1600/million:  two were just above and two just below the mark of 2,000/m. Or something like 1 out of every 500 people alive in these 4 counties ... now isn't.

This was done a few days ahead of other graphics on May 30. Some updates one week later, just on 2 of those contests:
* Queens NY (2172.4) vs. Essex NJ (2127.5)
* Cass ND (329.7) vs. King WA (258.3). King added about 2 points. Cass added about 90. In a week.
* The whole bunch of smaller counties at or near zero will be at least a bit smaller. All US numbers are growing a bit faster than most numbers in the world.

Discussion on what this all shows

1) lockdown saves lives - not singlehandedly, but ... This was a highly contagious pathogen with vigorous growth everywhere it appeared, until people stopped moving around so much in some areas. The virus does not teleport through walls, on 5G waves or otherwise. But the more important change regarding death toll is keeping it from spreading specifically to certain people who would die from it (hereafter "those who'd die"). We're learning it's hard to say just who all these are, but they benefit from a slowed general spread (mostly attributable to lockdown) and from their own protective measures.

Still, deaths continue at a moderate average rate that tends to be smaller where "lockdown" measures are smart and widely adhered to. Take China: they've effectively eliminated the virus for 1/6 of the world's people, and they did it months ago. Unless you think coronavirus would naturally claim just TWO lives in China in the last 1.5 months ... a lot of lives have been saved just there. At least a few thousand have been saved in the other 5/6 of the world, maybe even hundreds of thousands so far.  In the end we might prevent tens of millions of deaths (if the end is far enough out).

Even that, in a world of more than 7,000 million people, is arguably not such a big deal. The costs of all this lockdown are considerable, and the whole trade-off remains debatable. But let's insist the debate take honest consideration of the basic fact that lockdown is helping greatly to mitigate a genuine disaster. The costs may not be worth it, but they're not for nothing. Sorry, but the math can't be that easy.

2) Those who've really dealt with the virus deal with it for real: See China as the example most extremely manifested - a hard blow in one area triggers a sort of immune response that chokes the virus into virtual annihilation. I re-examine that here with a new timescale for its details, new colors, and a 9-span scale where the last didn't need a color, and the two before needed to be exaggerated to even appear.

Softer but effective containment can be seen with a similar pattern that hits zero in Iceland, New Zealand, a few others like Hawai'i - all with just 10-22 dead on the way, and a lot of ocean around them. Bigger problems squeezed to more than zero and that persist include Iran and Italy (plate B, the other gold boxes), and in Denmark with the biggest early death toll here outside a gold box (note span 1 goes back to whenever, and is huge - they had 125 dead by the end of February.) Good collapsing of expected growth can also be seen in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Washington State, most of those in the second row. The Dominican Republic suppressed it well after a late start and bad rate in span 3. Greece shows clearly the start of exponential growth in spans 1 and 2, almost perfectly inverted into exponential decrease over the later spans, and all nice and stubby (low deaths per populace).

3) why "no lockdown" doesn't seem to fail as badly as you'd think: A few podunk places with sparse populations and limited contact with the outside world think they can get by without lockdown or early containment, and for some reason. So it's no surprise they tend to do okay without, so far: North Dakota has 86.8/m dead (well below national average), with Pres. Trump's lockdown advice, but none added by the state. Belarus with 26.9/m (Plate A, right side) seems grossly undercounted compared to their exploding cases, and to Pres. Lukashenko's promise Coronavirus would kill no one there (deaths were happening, but he declared the first 23 were racked up to any comorbitity that could be found, and suggested the rest would or should be). Here's a current list of middling-top countries by cases, with Belarus now ahead of the Netherlands, but their strangely low death rate compared (note that Qatar is apparently undercounting even worse, reporting less than 1/10 of 1% - unless I'm missing something, they're engaged in absurd falsification). Global average is currently 5.797%. So undercounting might help some of these numbers stay low.

Some might count Brazil, having not passed the mark of 200/m dead (5.33% rate). Local lockdowns have kept it from being worse, but that advantage is being squandered by the Bolsonaro government on its third Health Minister of the crisis. Cases are rising sharply; deaths in Rio De Janeiro are now well past Belgium's average, headed for 1,000 and then Lombardy levels quite soon (plate A).

No-lockdown policies that work tend to rely on successful early containment - not on letting it rip towards herd immunity - and to play out in island nations, where infected people can't just swim there unchecked (see lower box on plate B). If they can get it contained and watch arrivals closely, they can keep it contained, and many do. Taiwan did well, stays well at less than one death per million - which was just seven dead, and it still hasn't gone up, and new cases remain at or near zero. But they did prepare a plan B centered on lockdown, not on an "oh well" herd immunity some now promote. Japan did less well, has slowly climbing deaths, just past 900 now (that's just over 7 dead so far for every one million citizens). NLD states of the USA, connected as they are to other states, do far worse than island nations, ranging between 75-200/m so far, and rising pretty on-par with the rest. Iowa, pop. 3.16 million, was at 183.2/m (579 dead) for plate C. Three days later it's 189.2 (598 dead).

Malawi has (or had) lockdown orders under Supreme Court review. They also seem to have an implausible frozen death toll of 4 that's held for a couple of months. It's possible they have it that in-check, with no lockdown policy. But I doubt that. I didn't look into the story there any further, nor into Indonesia, or fuller details on the others.

But I noted no-lockdown Nicaragua had rising numbers, then a pause in updates; On May 25, a paltry 25 confirmed cases suddenly jumped to 3,425 and deaths leapt (w/post-mortem confirmation, I presume) from 8 to 58, then no update for a week at the Bing counter. Johns Hopkins tally froze at 35, not 58. Both have by now been updated and settled on an revision in the middle at 46 dead, 1,446 cases. None have been added. A few days later it was revised to 46 dead, 1,118 cases. Can they wiggle it back to zero? (note June 10: No - Nicaragua's numbers keep rising slightly from that fudgy re-start point - 55 dead, 1464 cases.)

Optional: more on incomplete counts
Zambia (lockdown as far as I know) has a similar issue; the counts rises on May 14 from a few cases and a few dead to 654 cases and to 0, then 7, then 42 dead, on the graph. Then no graph updates for three weeks. But the number of cases listed went up to 1,057, and the deaths listed reverted to 7, agreed to on the Johns Hopkins list. Now it's 1,089 on both lists, and both are stuck at saying 7 dead, the virus seemingly contained, that 42 then silence being just a typo? (note June 10: just now something was jiggled and they report 10 deaths, not 7, or 42, or anything added since, but cases up to 1,200.)

Other similar cases in Africa:
Tanazania: jump in data 4-18, slow rise to 5-8, no news
Benin: jump in data 5-10, last news 5-14
Eritrea: last news 4-18.
Mayotte: last news 4-21.

Zimbabwe, Uganda, Togo, all others I checked remain in touch, even with recent leaps and similar, small death tolls so far. Sudan's graph stopped, but numbers came in showing moderate rises (359 dead now). But a significant part of the deaths in Africa these last weeks has gone unreported. And I don't have a screen capture for this one, but I saw South Africa's tally jump by some 3,000 deaths, then quickly revert to the 300+ they had, climbing only slowly from there, then faster (952 as of writing - 16.4/million). Are they hiding the bulk of a much larger death toll? If so, the only evidence I've seen suggests they admitted to it briefly, but maybe retracted for fear the bad news would make people give up on lockdown (?). And maybe that was just a data entry error.

Aside from Nicaragua, I didn't notice any such cuts in news outside Africa. But North Korea has never appeared as reporting at all. Neither has Turkmenistan, that I've seen. Do they both really have nothing to report?

4) Insights on "herd immunity": This is a concept misunderstood by many, perhaps by me. Some think collective or "herd immunity" happens at a random point in the spread, usually the point that helps them argue lockdown was unneeded; the community at large, or the virus in that area, changes so that it spreads or at least kills less, just about the same time it reaches crisis level that lets the government impose restrictions. They're certain the restrictions have nothing to do with the mysterious natural change that occurs just then.

But as I gather, "herd immunity" happens not by magic and not totally, but when the virus finds far more immune people than susceptible ones. A few infections and deaths may still occur, but outbreaks mellow and fizzle out, and the virus might fall through the cracks. The problem is, this happens after a virus has mainly run its natural course - barring a vaccine we don't have yet, a solid majority become immune only after they've been infected - and survived. Most will live, but only after spreading it to others, some of whom won't, and they might add to the hospital burden along the way. I don't believe it happens by any lucky mutation or telepathic immunity transfer prior to this, not even to make some anti-lockdown argument; viruses have no political point to make - they just replicate.

The usual threshold for herd immunity, as I gather, is something like 80%, ranging to maybe below 70% or up to 90% of the population who might be exposed (basically everyone). The extremely contagious nature of this virus suggests the higher end will apply - 90% may need to be infected before we can stop worrying about people being infected. This is an absurd solution for such a dangerous pandemic - invite almost the entire problem, then the last scraps of it will go away? Not the right answer.

What we see is nowhere near the HI threshold anywhere on Earth. San Marino, a micostate within Italy, population ~34,000 (0.034m), might be close: they had a startling 1,236 confirmed infected - about 1/3 of them, surely others unconfirmed - possible herd immunity level, o likely to see a mild touch of it. 42 died (a very high per-capita rate of 1,236/m) but a while back - the last two were on 4-26 then a straggler on 5-23. They still get 0-4 new cases a day in such a tiny populace, so full herd immunity seems to elude them.

It may be halfway there in Stockholm, where they bragged of 30% infection some time ago, and it's likely true by now, perhaps past 45%. Herd Immunity is farther off in Sweden at large - maybe 25% there. It's maybe like 10-20% along in other hard-hit places, and yet to really begin or resume the creep in other places, like India and China, where 1/3 of the world's people live (it may be starting in India, but still not resuming in China). Most of Africa, Southeast Asia, scattered other nations have kept it contained from low to no levels, and lots of areas within countries already hit have all of their progress towards herd immunity ahead of them.

So to be clear, there is no basis on earth for infection or death rates to fall due to natural collective or "herd" immunity. Falling rates at this time can only result from artificially suppressed transmission. (as far as I know - again, I'm no expert)

Now consider the damage caused so far is from incurring, on average, just a small portion of the infections needed to achieve that goal. 400,000 dead might be just 5-10% of what we'd need for global herd immunity (which would be 4-8 million dead). It might be lower, or higher - I don't really know. Do you?

And consider early herd immunity proponents Netherlands and United Kingdom (plate A). Both started with a let-it-rip policy along with Sweden, but quickly changed course to more of a lockdown plan. See how Netherlands had the worse initial lesson (higher per-capita death toll in the early spans), and then apparently learned it better, achieving far better suppression, with the UK's terrible death rate going on double theirs. This further underlines point 2.

Even ahead-of-the-curve Sweden admits some of its regret; their chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell publicly defends his overall herd immunity plan, but admits it's imperfect, having killed more than they'd like, just so far, and that they would do it differently if given another chance: "If we were to encounter the same disease, given exactly what we know about it today, I think we would reach a conclusion to act somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did," The nation's leading epidemiologist just didn't realize how contagious it was, or did but chose to barrel ahead and see a lot of costly old folks die. And others shared his total ignorance; Tegnell adds that they understood the elderly were at high risk of death, but "we didn't know that the disease would enter (care homes) so easily and for the spread to be so big."

Well, knowing or carefully guessing such things was their job. They know it now, based on a lot of trial and fatal error. Whether it could have been guessed seems like a philosophical question; Tegnell now wonders "if there had been any way to prevent that," like what the rest of the world did? Could they have noted their early partners in the HI camp - the UK and Netherlands - saw cause to change course, and follow suit? Yes, they could have and should have, but chose to keep the faith, which has caused far more deaths than Sweden should have had; see charts, plate A: Stockholm, had 884/m killed by June 4, higher than Belgium's rate, and rising to be far above - heading for Lombardy rates, but a bit slower. Faster now - 3 days on, Stockholm has 2,137 dead - for its 2.38 million people, that's 897.5/m.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/sweden-coronavirus-expert-defends-strategy-but-admits-failing-to-protect-the-elderly/ar-BB14YG1v?ocid=msedgntp
See also: https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/25/covid-19-how-trustworthy-and-humane-is-swedens-pandemic-strategy/

And besides fatalities, those who live sometime pay a heavy price - cardiac and circulatory damage has been widely documented in survivors, already proving fatal in at least a few cases. However much of that has happened, we'll need maybe 20 times more of it before we can enjoy the fruits of herd immunity. And so, I still suggest every person and every community that has avoided the virus so far to try and keep it that way, forever if possible.

5) Locality variances: Hubei vs. China, Lombardy vs. Italy, Queens vs. NY vs. USA, Stockholm vs, Sweden, Rio De Janeiro vs. Brazil - the former wind up with more far more infections and deaths by far than their national averages. This only makes sense, considering how viruses spread.

Diamond Princess - extreme example:
3,711 passengers and crew - 712 cases - 13 deaths = 19% infected, 1.8% of infected died (note: middling-older people take cruises the most - not the young, nor they very old). The ship had .00371 million people. 13 dead makes for 3,504/million, far above any land-based toll. To hit herd immunity, it would have to hit probably 4x as many or more (prob. above 80%), killing about 4x as many. But I believe the captain ordered some kind of cabin lockdown to limit spread.

Many lockdown critics would support that call - after all, that was on a boat, not a nation spanning maybe hundreds of miles. Indeed, geography adds cushioning, but only so much. In the end, it may be entirely eroded by time - those 13 were infected during the span of a cruise turned extended quaratine - however long, it was measured in days. The rates it's far higher than ae current, and have taken a couple of months to build up. And they'll have x months to keep going too.

The highest national average so far might be San Marino - a tiny enclave in Italy - that had deaths even higher than Lombardy's, but not shown on plate A (is it a nation? A region? Do I want to re-scale this so it fits?). Population ~34,000 (0.034m), just 42 died to hit that level. I don't have the stats for New Yok City itself, but the buroughs as counties have death tolls a bit past 2,000/m in a few cases, and New Jersey has about the same - so more than 1 in 500 has died. The USA averaging great cities and great plains is at 330 (New Jersey: 1335/m. New York: 1235/m, California just over 100/m Texas: just 63.1/m, and half the states around that or lower, so far). Italy and UK are around 550-600/m, with Italy's Lombardy region just over ~1,600 - nearly half what that ship saw. Birmingham in the UK was at 896/m last I heard: 1,076 dead in "the West Midlands city" (The Sun) where the population seems to be ~1.2 million. Rio De Janiero, pop. 6.5m, had 6,010 dead on June 4 (924.6/m) and 3 days later it's 1,021/m (a further 629 dead - 210/day in one city). Belgium is a bit over 828 and barely rising at all, while the smarter or luckier half of Europe is mainly between 60 and 100/m or even lower and stable, and it ranges down to a suppressed 3.22 in China, in the 3-10-50 range over other sizeable nations.

In that light, a lot of captains of state order people to stay in their cabins as possible. Is that really surprising?

Okay, I'm done for now.

Update, July 3:
The ensuing weeks saw increased growth, mainly in newly-opened battlefronts all over the planet. Back on June 18, I tallied the next -week span and issued a single plate focused on bad growth rates. A first version was hastily posted on Twitter. Then I adjusted some numbers that hadn't been finalized (several nations called early, US states called too high), the global total, and the right date, and made this improved version. I meant to post it here then, but never did.

Now another two weeks has passed ... . The global death rate is accelerating a bit now, but not by much - it holds pretty steady on average, including the many containment success stories like Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark here (done on the side for someone who didn't want to learn after all (blocked and likely muted me) - that's common, BTW - covidiocy requires maintenance). But the trend in many areas shown above continued, in some of those places and others I noticed later. As the global death toll passed 500,000, cases were soaring worldwide, and while the deaths that caused is lower than it has been (and/or pending), a lot more people died in the next 14 days, with a growing number waiting to join them. Here's the (final?) plate for July 2, at 521,298 confirmed deaths (Already as of writing, it's at 525,491).

Latin America has done poorly. Death rates over 250/m in Peru, Chile, and Brazil, with Mexico coming near that. The worst growth there is in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Bolivia, all with moderate prior tolls roughly doubled in the last 14 days. Some localities of course do worse; Santiago, Chile, just reported some 3,000 new deaths from earlier, bringing their rate close to that or Rio DeJaneiro. Brazil (along with Russia) just at the end stopped providing regional death tolls, or a plotting of them over time (or at least they disappeared from the Bing tracker I use.)

India has increased growth, now close to 13/m dead (17,834 and rising faster). That's not massive on average, and slower now in Maharashta/Mumbai, but recently increased cases and death in Delhi map as shown, now at 96/million dead, (currently 7-2 shows 2,803 - a repeat of the prior tally. 0 deaths being unlikely, I took the next rise to 2923 and used that). Pakistan is a bit worse off at about 20/m dead, Bangladesh a bit less so as 11, and all three had more die in the last 2 weeks than in the previous 2 weeks.

In the Middle East, Iraq has done worst among those I follow, more than doubling their previous death toll in these 2 weeks. Saudi Arabia has about the same 50/m dead as Iraq. Egypt is not much better off, and Saudi Arabia is worsening , Afghanistan and Yemen saw continuance of a death expansion. Iran had its improved rates worsen for a second span. E. Europe and the Caucasus has bad growth in Azerbaijan, Armenia. N. Macedonia, Albania, and Moldova fared poorly. Russia had enough new deaths to sit now at 65/m, just a hair under the global average of 67.18. Kazakhstan's small populace wasn't spread out enough to prevent deaths doubling to 188, and nearby Kyrgyzstan fared worse, suddenly shooting to a death toll on par with India's. Syria and Venezuela saw limited fatality situations fall apart further. Sub-Saharan Africa is seeing inceased fatalities all over, especially in Cabo Verde, Equatorial Guinea, C.A.R., S. Africa, Eswatini, Angola, Malawi, Ghana, Kenya, and mighty Ethiopia. Nigeria saw moderate growth, enough to include here. Some who seemed to not be reporting now appear to be reporting sporadically.

The UK, Sweden, Canada, others in "the West" did well enough at keeping deaths low they didn't merit inclusion here. Especially places like Italy, Spain, Belgium, New York, and New Jersey that were hit hard early on, they continue to keep transmission and deaths low, whatever the hassle it continues to take. The USA average is not much worse than the UK, but includes enough bulk and potential, and some bad sub-patterns it's included. At just over 130,000 dead, we're at close to 375/m average now, close to 6x the global average. Alabama has a bad trend that's likely to get worse - some morons there take it on themselves to host coronavirus parties, where people compete to contact it and win a cash prize. ("several" such parties known of just in Tuscaloosa). That's bound to play into the death toll as it passes the 1,000 mark soon. A few states included just for not holding it as steady as others - there might be worse patterns I missed, but generally the US is doing a lot better than the worst places otherwise shown here.

And still, China ... the eternal 4,634 dead listed at the Bing counter is challenged by the tracker run  by Johns Hopkins University 4,641 - and I've seen it rise recently when the other didn't. It seems they've missed some seven deaths, adding to the two they list, that would be nine people dead, out of 1,438,000 people, over the last 2.5 months. They still sit at 3.227 dead for every one million people, currently 1/20 of the global average and falling.

Update August 2: As of July 30, many nations have revised or should revise their death tolls - a look at the scale of this suggests at least 25% more people have died than is currently admitted, and it could be nearly twice, or as high as 1.3 million dead already, despite the extreme measures. See here for the details.