![Why is Russia’s Covid-19 mortality rate so low? Why is Russia’s Covid-19 mortality rate so low?](https://morningtopnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/200429191720-putin-coronavirus-0428-super-tease-768x432.jpg)
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But in Russia, where the pandemic arrived about the same time as Brazil, the mortality rate sat at less than 1%.
No matter the reason, the extremely low mortality rate is quite unexpected. So, I compared various factors to try to understand what’s going on.
Therefore, the known and measurable risk factors for severe disease point to Russia having at least a comparable, if not a higher, death rate than Brazil.
So, is Dr. Malinnikova correct? Is the difference really due to testing and the apparently efficient Russian health care system?
And what about nursing home deaths — are these being included as Covid-19 related, even if a test was not performed?
As in the US and elsewhere, accurate classification of a Covid-19-related death remains very important to our understanding of the disease and the effectiveness of our attempts to control it. However, certainty about how, exactly, a person died remains a very difficult determination.
Diseases are not independent of each other: someone with heart disease will predictably fare worse with pneumonia than someone without heart disease — but should the person die, what is the true cause of death? Probably a collision of illnesses that collectively overwhelm a person rather than a single nameable cause.
This means that the cause of death can be tilted one way or another while still remaining accurate. And with a disease such as Covid-19, where political tensions are evident in many countries, this latitude (and the temptation to exploit it) calls to mind the chilling statement popularly attributed to Josef Stalin, though it’s far from clear that he said it: “It is not who votes but who counts the votes that matters.”
In other words, the death rate from Covid-19 in Russia and worldwide is defined not by an internationally agreed upon definition, but by the authorities who are reporting. Once again, we may find our understanding of Covid-19 stymied by an altogether new uncertainty — this one not medical at all, but entirely the product of political calculations.
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