I was pointed towards looking into the possible impact of Latitude – yes, that’s right! – on Corona related deaths by Ivor Cummins, twitter handle @FatEmperor, who is very much involved in clearing up the pseudo-scientific mess the world has gotten into, wrt. Corona. See for instance this short but very informative video clip.
In that video, Ivor makes it plausible that Corona behaves very much like a normal seasonal flu, and illustrates this by comparing the typical curves for a few northern hemisphere countries with a couple of southern hemisphere ones. And indeed, there is a difference.
So, I did run a Multivariate Regression, with population density and Latitude as predictors, first for all US states, then for about 140 countries of the world (those that I could find relevant stat’s for).
And sure enough – mortality, in terms of deaths normalized by population, is indeed positively associated with Latitude: the higher Latitude, the more deaths. What could possibly be the reason…? Perhaps that seasonal flu’s are more prevalent on higher Latitudes…? Since the flu season is now over and done with on the northern hemisphere, but live and kicking on the southern hemisphere, we might see substantially more cases over the next few months from the southern hemisphere – in fact, we are already seeing that pattern, with some South American countries now being hit very hard.
Anyways, it’s an interesting observation: everything else being equal, it’s better to be on “Lazy Latitudes” than in the cold North (or South)….
Oh, btw: an interesting difference between the US states vs the World at large is that for US states, population density is a better predictor than Latitude, while for the world at large, density barely matters at all… Weird but true.
US States:
World at Large (~140 countries):
systems perestroika - éminence grise 