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I read this article with interest as my wife is from Belarus.
It is surprisingly naive and a good example of how just looking a statistics can lead to very misleading conclusions.
Belarus is in denial about covid and doctors are encouraged to not attribute deaths to it, instead citing other causes such as pneumonia. The cases reported are reported despite political pressure to not report so are substantially below the likely actual number. The term ‘political pressure’ used in this context is not like political pressure in Western Europe. In Belarus political pressure means jail without trial or even death if you don’t follow the line.
The author underestimates the effect political power influences over all aspects of Belorussian society, including medicine. There will be political pressure on keeping the numbers low, and that includes the reporting.
Whilst Belarus does have a high number of hospital beds, they are just that, beds. The actual medical care is extremely poor, standards of nursing almost non existent, which is why Belarus has a relatively high death rate and poor life expectancy. Whilst they may claim a large number of icu beds this is misleading because patients are admitted to icu for conditions that in the U.K. would be dealt with on the wards. They have minimal access to ventilators or advanced NIV techniques and even less staff competent in using them.
The testing systems the author identifies are of extremely dubious reliability.
In Belarus both my mother in law and her 95 year old mother have had covid and were admitted to hospital. Both have survived but with long term complications. Both were admitted to hospital but, as is usual, received negligible care whilst there and their survival was more a matter of luck than the capabilities of the medical profession.
The situation in Belarus is far far worse than it may appear to distant observers, especially those relying on remote statistics who fail to consider the facts behind the numbers.
Dear Editor, what it really means is if you ignore the virus it is not a threat to public health.
Perhaps please explain how this is only 'one of the lowest rates of deaths', what other countries report such low death rates??
'Although the low death numbers are encouraging, some experts fear that many coronavirus related deaths are registered as cases of pneumonia'. Hysterical ,where in most countries all pneumonia cases are registered as covid deaths. You are desperately trying to support covid rather than just realising the reality of the covid hoax. Belarus remains a terrible blow to the covid promoters brcause it is fundemental proof that if you don't create covid deaths they do not happen and therefore covid is a hoax., which is a very sinister and dangerous reality, which people are too scared to believe.
Re: Covid-19: How does Belarus have one of the lowest death rates in Europe?
Dear Editor
I read this article with interest as my wife is from Belarus.
It is surprisingly naive and a good example of how just looking a statistics can lead to very misleading conclusions.
Belarus is in denial about covid and doctors are encouraged to not attribute deaths to it, instead citing other causes such as pneumonia. The cases reported are reported despite political pressure to not report so are substantially below the likely actual number. The term ‘political pressure’ used in this context is not like political pressure in Western Europe. In Belarus political pressure means jail without trial or even death if you don’t follow the line.
The author underestimates the effect political power influences over all aspects of Belorussian society, including medicine. There will be political pressure on keeping the numbers low, and that includes the reporting.
Whilst Belarus does have a high number of hospital beds, they are just that, beds. The actual medical care is extremely poor, standards of nursing almost non existent, which is why Belarus has a relatively high death rate and poor life expectancy. Whilst they may claim a large number of icu beds this is misleading because patients are admitted to icu for conditions that in the U.K. would be dealt with on the wards. They have minimal access to ventilators or advanced NIV techniques and even less staff competent in using them.
The testing systems the author identifies are of extremely dubious reliability.
In Belarus both my mother in law and her 95 year old mother have had covid and were admitted to hospital. Both have survived but with long term complications. Both were admitted to hospital but, as is usual, received negligible care whilst there and their survival was more a matter of luck than the capabilities of the medical profession.
The situation in Belarus is far far worse than it may appear to distant observers, especially those relying on remote statistics who fail to consider the facts behind the numbers.
Andrew Thompson
Competing interests: No competing interests