Why Has New Zealand Got Such a Low Covid-19 Death Rate?

[Note: I have caved in to pressure. We will be presenting articles on Covid-19, Cate with a special focus on her home country, New Zealand, while David and I will be trying hard to give you something else to think about in this pandemic-obsessed world. Harry.]

Overnight the number of people who have died from Covid-19 in New Zealand doubled. The total went from one to two. Both of those dying were elderly women with underlying health conditions. The first was in her seventies, the second was aged 95. Yet New Zealand had clocked up 1,283 cases as of 10 April.

If we divide the number of deaths by the number of cases we get a crude mortality rate of 0.15%. Most of the initial modelling was based on a mortality rate of 1%, which is 6.6 time higher. So why aren’t people dying from Covid-19 in New Zealand?

The international left-wing media are pouring out their adoration on our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who has been their darling throughout her term in office. Ardern ticks all the right boxes: young woman (tick), has a baby while running the country (tick), wore a hijab after the Christchurch mosque killings (double tick). Now Ardern is being praised in the Washington Post and on CNN for her handling of the Covid-19 crisis. But not even Saint Jacinda can stop people dying. So what’s the answer?

Here’s a clue. The 95-year-old woman who was reported to have died from Covid-19 had “underlying health conditions” according to the Chief Executive of Canterbury District Health Board, David Meates. The first woman to die was admitted to hospital with co-morbidities, which is another way of saying underlying health conditions. So someone, at some stage, has to make the call to fill out the cause of death on the death certificate, and decide, out of a range of conditions, which one was the underlying cause.

There is very strong evidence that citing Covid-19 as cause of death in Italy was wildly inaccurate and that the numbers were hugely exaggerated. And let's face it, it was Italy’s example that terrified the world int action. There is also strong evidence that deaths from Covid-19 are being exaggerated in the US due to directives from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). So it could simply be that, for various reasons, New Zealand has an accurate, unbiased system for recording cause of death, and that numbers of deaths and death rates in crucial places around the world have been inflated. This could mean the world is being plunged into economic depression to fight a virus that is little more deadly than the annual flu.

I think everyone should watch this carefully researched and presented YouTube video examining the forces determining the accuracy of Covid-19 death rates. It is truly chilling.   

Update 17 April 2020: New Zealand's death rate has risen to almost 0.8%, or 2 per million, as recorded in Worldometer. Compare this to Spain's alleged death rate of 413 per million and the USA's of 105 per million, and a world death rate of 18.7 per million. My argument stands.

Kate Flinders