We simply do not know why many more die from Covid-19 in some parts of the world than in others

This brings one to an inescapable conclusion that has been obvious since mid-March, at least to anyone who has been prepared to see it: that there is a fundamental difference in the way that this virus has behaved in the Far East compared with Europe and America. It has been far, far deadlier in the latter two, and in a way which cannot even nearly be explained by the way different governments have handled the epidemic. This raises two possibilities: either there is a difference in the virus that has been attacking Western countries or there is a difference in the human populations.

Ross Clark today in the Spectator.


I realise that the virus behaves very differently in different regions and we really do not know why. The virus was far less dangerous in the Far East, which is why only 0.6% of foreigners in Wuhan were infected.

Writing yesterday he quoted Karl Friston, a neuroscientist at UCL, saying Germany has not had relatively few deaths because of superior testing capacity. 

'There are various possible explanations, but one that looks increasingly likely is that Germany has more immunological 'dark matter' – people who are impervious to infection, perhaps because they are geographically isolated or have some kind of natural resistance.'

What we do know, thank God, is that it is not anywhere nearly as dangerous as the WHO originally led us to believe. We do know that if you catch it your risk of dying is somewhere between 0.2% and 0.05%, not the 3.4% the WHO incompetently told the world was the rate in Wuhan (Donald Trump said his hunch was it was below 1%), and that if you are under 65 and in good health the risk is not non-existent but negligible.