COVID-19 Fact Checks

FALSE: COVID-19 daily death count lower than other diseases

Rappler.com
FALSE: COVID-19 daily death count lower than other diseases
The graphic shared on social media uses outdated numbers
Claim:

The global death count of COVID-19 is much lower than other diseases including tuberculosis, hepatitis B, pneumonia, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and many others.

A graphic comparing various diseases through a bar graph contained this claim, which suggested that the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic was exaggerated and only caused “fake fear.” It cited the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and medical journal The Lancet as its sources.

Claim Check, Facebook’s monitoring tool, flagged a post containing the graphic for fact checkers to verify. It was shared on September 2 and was reported at least twice for containing false information. Social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle spotted a similar post that was shared on August 9.

Rating: FALSE
The facts:

The graphic used outdated numbers (as of March 9, 2020) that did not reflect the situation when the graphic was shared on Facebook in August and September 2020.

On Sunday, September 6, WHO recorded a death toll of 5,446 worldwide – about 27 times the daily death toll of 205 as of March 9. The death count per day started to rise toward the end of March, and has been fluctuating daily up to the present.

Screenshot from World Health Organization

The cumulative death toll for COVID-19 stood at 876,616 as of September 6. Roughly, this translates to around 3,506 deaths per day based on Rappler’s calculations if counted starting from December 31, 2019, when China first reported the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.

Lisa Lockerd Maragakis, senior director of infection prevention at Johns Hopkins University, explained in this article that much is still unknown about COVID-19 compared to other diseases such as the flu.

“The COVID-19 situation is changing rapidly. Since this disease is caused by a new virus, the vast majority of people do not yet have immunity to it, and a vaccine may be many months away,” Maragakis wrote. WHO says there is still no approved cure for COVID-19 to date.

In contrast, other diseases mentioned such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, hepatitis B, and malaria already have approved drugs and/or vaccines for treatment and prevention.

Anthony B. Masters, a Royal Statistical Society ambassador, also questioned in an article in July how the graphic arrived at exact figures when the available statistics from the sources mentioned such as WHO and CDC were only annual estimates.

The timeframes of the available data for each disease also vary, making it hard to compare with each other. Rappler found that the latest available data as of 2020 for tuberculosis deaths were for the full year of 2018 (1.5 million), hepatitis B for 2015 (887,000), pneumonia for 2017 (2.56 million), and malaria for 2018 (405,000), among others. – Pauline Macaraeg/Rappler.com

Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time. 

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