Guest post by Christian Gefke
The number of coronavirus deaths in Spain stands at nearly 12,000.
The Spanish people are slowly becoming aware that the coronavirus mortality rate must be understood as an excess rate in context to previous years. This number in Spain today is not being debated sufficiently.
Data coming out from the Carlos the 3rd Institute of Health and Science shows that the excess mortality rate in Spain is recorded as due to general causes and the coronavirus is simply one of these.
Mortality rate from Covid-19
This means that so far it has not been published by the above-mentioned institute the exact number of how many of these deaths are attributable exclusively to COVID-19, leaving this up to the Spanish Ministry of Health.
In this context, since the only source for the real numbers is the Spanish Government, it would be relevant to state who are the parties forming the coalition: PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol: the Spanish Peoples Workers Party) a known leftwing party, PODEMOS (yes we can) a communist party openly declaring admiration for Venezuela and the late Hugo Chavez, and the last one being ERC (Ezquerra Republicana Catalana: The leftwing republicans from Catalonia). These three are currently the coalition Government in Spain.
For the reader who does not know about Spanish history or current state of affairs, these parties could well be overstating or understating the facts, and depending on which kind of political opportunity they wish to take advantage of, the data will most certainly be manipulated.
In other words, statistics coming from these guys are not to be trusted.
A collapsed public-run healthcare system.
The primary cause behind the total lockdown and the declaration of the State Of Emergency is the collapse of the public healthcare system, and not the virus itself.
The Spanish Ministry of Health has contextualized this problem in very vague ways. As an example we could pull the 28th of March press conference out of the hat. Regarding the exact number of mortality cases, the representatives from the Ministry stated:
- “…the identification process of the underlying causes of deaths is relative…” – F. Simon
- “…the identification process may contain errors…” – F. Simon
- “…the identification process has many leaks…” – F. Simon
The above can obviously be interpreted in opposite directions. But it’s clear that someone is preparing the ground for future corrections.
Of the above mentioned statements, all of them ended with a warning on how absolutely horrible and horrific the virus is (and not the health-care system), without determining explicitly the exact number of mortality cases caused directly by COVID-19.
Ending remarks.
What seems extraordinary is twofold: the collapsing of the Spanish healthcare system as one, and two, the insufficient data underscoring the exact causes of death.
Obviously it’s a tragedy to see so many people die either from or with the virus. Saving lives is not a question to be debated. But the shutting down of society requires specific scrutiny and thereby justification, and if more people compared to last year are dying as a direct cause of COVID-19, this data must be provided.
We eagerly await the third party accounts of independent institutes scrutinizing the exact number of COVID-19 mortality cases in Spain. But being realistic we recognize that the waiting will be long.
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Christian Gefke, danish nationality and libertarian writer, based in Barcelona and Lanzarote of the Canary Islands. He has an advisory background in civil-law, and graduated from the University of Las Palmas with a degree in legal sciences.
