Extra UK stats on Coronavirus

I know it’s bad to obsess about statistics for live issues – whether election results or pandemics – but whilst recognising there are individual people and tragedies behind every number I have to admit it has been fascinating to look at stats on worldometers.info and gov.uk and Nigerian Centre for Disease Control.

One thing is clear – as different countries try different techniques within their own abilities and contexts, not all stats are comparable. So the UK issued ‘recovery’ stats for about a week, 15-22 March, then stopped at 135 recoveries. This does bad things for worldometers.info‘s graph of deaths vs recoveries, which is clearly more meaningful for other countries.

Nigeria rightly (but possibly prematurely) celebrated when the first detected case recovered and for some time the recoveries exceeded deaths, unlike the situation in the UK where deaths have seemed to far exceed recoveries.

There seem to be 2 significant factors at play here:

The good news is that we just need to take Jesus up on his clear offer of eternal life.

In many ways covid-19 changes nothing significantly. The mortality rate for humans is still 100%. It’s just now we have our normal illusions of adequacy and control shattered for a bit. That’s helpful. The psychological crutch of idolatry or atheism (practical or theoretical) does no-one any good really.

And that’s why it’s worth us helping translate the Bible into local languages in Nigeria. What the world needs is not just clear and reliable information on covid-19, but clear and reliable information on sin, death, judgment and God’s solution.