The Pattern of Coronavirus Spread in Iran and the World; A Statistical Comparison

A statistical comparison shows that either the pattern of coronavirus infection in Iran is completely different from the world, or officials are not telling the truth. The exponential growth in the number of coronavirus victims in Iran has not been seen in any other country so far.

Kianosh Jahanpoor, head of the public relations and information center of the Ministry of Health, officially confirmed for the first time on the first day of Esfand that two people had died from the new coronavirus in the city of Qom. On the morning of the fifth of Esfand (February 24), he announced that this number had reached 12 people.

If these figures are correct, it means the number of victims of the virus known as COVID-19 in Iran increased sixfold in four days. The number of people infected with this respiratory disease was reported to be 64 people five days after its entry into Iran was confirmed, which is close to 13 times the number of infected people announced on the first day of Esfand.

Saeid Namaki, Minister of Health, announced on the evening of the first day of Esfand, after the first meeting of the coronavirus prevention and control headquarters chaired by Ishaq Jahangiri, First Vice President, that the number of people infected with coronavirus was five.

Wuhan, the major city and center of Hubei Province in China, is known as the epicenter of coronavirus spread. The number of coronavirus cases in China by February 24 was slightly over 77,000.

Johns Hopkins University, one of the oldest and most prestigious research universities in the United States, by launching a special website, monitors and publishes information about the spread of coronavirus around the world.

More Infected Than Iran, Far Fewer Deaths

Based on information published on this website, by February 24, after China, the highest number of new coronavirus cases were identified in South Korea, which includes 833 people. The death toll in South Korea by that day was reported to be eight people.

Apart from these two countries, Italy with 215 cases, Japan with 154, Singapore with 89, and Hong Kong with 79 cases are countries where the number of identified cases exceeds Iran. The number of deaths in these countries has been between two and four people.

Strangely, the Islamic Republic, although ranking seventh in terms of the number of infected people, ranks second after China in terms of the number of deaths.

Coronavirus is not equally dangerous and deadly for all age groups, and older people are more at risk of death from COVID-19.

The World Health Organization estimates the ratio of infection and death from coronavirus to be between two to three percent. This estimate applies to all countries in the world where cases have been identified with little variation, and the mortality rate in most countries, except Iran, is even lower than this.

Statistics Infected with Concealment and Lying

In Iran, the death toll from coronavirus reaches about 20 percent relative to those infected. If this stark difference is not due to some very specific and unknown type of coronavirus in Iran, it is likely due to a more well-known and widespread disease in the Islamic Republic; the disease of concealment and misstatement.

Oficials of the Islamic Republic, about four months after the bloody suppression of protesters in November, still refrain from presenting accurate statistics on the victims and detainees of these suppressions and only resort to denying the figures of international organizations and media.

The incident of the crash of the Ukrainian airline, which was shot down by two air defense missiles of the Revolutionary Guards, killing all 176 passengers on board, is just one of the latest examples of concealment and misstatement by the Islamic Republic’s officials, who refuse to hand over the airplane’s black box to its owner or a country capable of reading it, in order to hide the truth.

Filtering of Coronavirus Information Website

It is not very surprising that officials of the Islamic Republic, who cut off Iranian users’ access to the global internet during November protests, filtered the Johns Hopkins University information website when they began admitting the spread of coronavirus in Iran, forcing citizens to use VPNs to access it.

Iraj Harirchi, Deputy Minister of Health and Secretary of the Special Headquarters for Prevention Management of Coronavirus Pollution, expressed regret on the fifth of Esfand that “most countries in the world” refrain from publishing accurate information about the spread of coronavirus in their country, and therefore the Islamic Republic, as the only country publishing “true statistics,” has been “more prominent.”

This senior official of the Rouhani government’s Ministry of Health told the ISNA news agency: “Most countries report the mortality rate based on the number of confirmed and suspected cases, and on this basis the ratio of deaths is low. If we were to measure the statistics of deaths from coronavirus in the country based on a fraction of infected and suspected people, the mortality rate in Iran would be about one percent.”

Unfounded Claim by Deputy Minister and Estrangement from Resignation

This claim is unfounded and incorrect regarding most countries according to available evidence. South Korea’s official news agency recently reported that when the number of coronavirus cases in the country was around 550 people, health officials tested 22,633 suspected people and reached this number of confirmed cases.

On Monday, the fifth of Esfand, the Health Minister appeared in parliament to report on the spread of coronavirus in Iran in a closed session. Ahmad Amirabaadi Farahani, representative of Qom, told reporters on the sidelines of this session that the number of coronavirus victims in the city is “around 50 people” contrary to officials’ claims.

The Deputy Minister of Health said that if the number of coronavirus deaths in Qom is even a quarter of that number, he would resign. It is not unlikely that the number of deaths in Qom is actually what the parliament representative said, but what is very unlikely and almost never experienced in the Islamic Republic is the resignation of officials after their misstatements are revealed.

Source: DW