The pattern of the spread of the coronavirus in Iran and the world; a statistical comparison

A statistical comparison shows that either the pattern of coronavirus infections in Iran is completely different from the rest of the world or the authorities are not telling the truth. The surge in the number of coronavirus victims in Iran has not been seen in any other country, at least so far.

Kianoush Jahanpour, head of the Public Relations and Information Center of the Ministry of Health, officially confirmed for the first time on March 24 that two people had died from the novel coronavirus in the city of Qom. He announced on the morning of March 24 (February 24), that the number had reached 12.

If this statistic is correct, it means that the number of victims of the virus known as Covid-19 in Iran has increased sixfold in four days. The number of people infected with this respiratory disease has also been announced as 64 five days after its arrival in Iran was confirmed, which is nearly 13 times the number of cases announced on March 1.

On the evening of March 2, after the first meeting of the Coronavirus Prevention and Response Headquarters chaired by First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, Health Minister Saeed Namaki announced to reporters that the number of people infected with the coronavirus was five.

The metropolis of Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, is known as the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. The number of coronavirus cases in China had slightly more than 77,000 as of February 24.

Johns Hopkins University, one of the oldest and most prestigious research universities in the United States, has launched a special website to monitor and publish information about the spread of the coronavirus around the world.

More infected than Iran, far fewer victims

According to information published on this site, as of February 24, South Korea has the highest number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus after China, with 833 cases. The number of deaths in South Korea has been reported to date as eight.

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

Strangely, although the Islamic Republic is in seventh place in terms of the number of infected people, it is behind China in terms of the number of victims.

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

The World Health Organization estimates the coronavirus infection and death rate at between two and three percent. This estimate is true in all countries around the world where cases have been identified, with slight variations, and the death rate is even lower in most countries, except Iran.

Statistics infected with the disease of concealment and lying

In Iran, the death toll from the coronavirus is about 20 percent of the number of infected people. If this huge difference is not due to the spread of a very specific and unknown type of coronavirus in Iran, it is most likely due to a more well-known and widespread disease in the Islamic Republic: the disease of concealment and falsehood.

About four months after the bloody crackdown on protesters in November, Islamic Republic officials are still refusing to provide accurate statistics on the victims and detainees of these crackdowns, and are content to simply deny the statistics of international institutions and media.

The incident of the Ukrainian airliner crash, which was shot down by two IRGC anti-aircraft missiles, killing all 176 people on board, is just one of the latest examples of cover-up and falsehood by the Islamic Republic's agents, who, in order to conceal the truth, are not handing over the plane's black box to its owner or to a country that has the ability to read it.

Coronavirus information site being filtered

It is not surprising that the Islamic Republic's officials, who cut off Iranian users' access to the global internet during the November protests, began to filter the Johns Hopkins University information site after admitting the spread of the coronavirus in Iran, forcing citizens to use a filter breaker to access it.

Iraj Harirchi, Deputy Minister of Health and Secretary of the Special Headquarters for Managing the Prevention of Coronavirus Infection, expressed regret on March 25 that “most countries in the world” are refusing to publish their country’s real information about the spread of the coronavirus, and for this reason, the Islamic Republic has “become more visible” as the only country publishing “real statistics.”

This senior official from the Rouhani government's Ministry of Health told ISNA: "Most countries announce the death rate based on the number of confirmed and suspected cases, and accordingly, the death rate is lower. If we were to measure the number of deaths from the coronavirus in the country based on the fraction of infected and suspected cases, the death rate in Iran would be around one percent."

The Deputy Minister's baseless claim and alienation with resignation

This claim is baseless and false according to the available evidence in most countries. South Korea's official news agency recently reported, when the number of coronavirus cases in the country was around 550, that health officials had tested 22,633 suspected cases, arriving at this number of confirmed cases.

On Monday, March 25, the Minister of Health appeared in parliament to report on the coronavirus outbreak in Iran in a closed session. Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, a representative from Qom, told reporters on the sidelines of the session that the number of coronavirus victims in the city is “around 50,” contrary to officials’ claims.

The Deputy Minister of Health said that he would resign if the number of coronavirus victims in Qom was even a quarter of this number. It is not unlikely that the number of victims in Qom is actually the same as the MP said, but what is very unlikely and almost unheard of in the Islamic Republic is the resignation of officials after their false statements are revealed.

Source: DW