Coronavirus deaths of Wikidata notable people | Hacker News Reader

Coronavirus deaths of Wikidata notable people

wikidata.org

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A morbidly interesting fact, the total number of coronavirus deaths as of 2020-04-13 is 118,304 which makes the list total of 411, ~0.35% of the total deaths. [1] This compares to the 950,903 living "notable" people on Wikipedia out of the world population of 7.594 (~.013%) [2]

[1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9814707

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Living_people

Two small caveats: there are more people in Wikidata than on the English Wikipedia, and Covid deaths are certainly underreported for the world's poor. Comparing the number of living people from the US or NYC with respective entries might be interesting.

Another caveat: some people on that list became notable because of them dying of covid-19.

Very sad to hear about Tim Brooke-Taylor this morning. I remember The Goodies fondly, and came across ‘I’m Sorry I Haven't a Clue’ a few years ago and have listened to series after series since. He’ll be missed.

Is there a list like this for total deaths, year over year for notable people? I imagine, just looking at notable deaths would avoid some of the extrapolation and estimation issues of looking at normal deaths while still providing a large enough sample to be somewhat representative of the population. Would like to see if the number of deaths this year is out of the ordinary, or if this is like any other year (keeping in mind life expectancy has been decreasing for the past few years.)

This list isn't intended to suggest a lot of people die from Covid-19, just as you can't deduce the true lethality of the disease by looking at it's statistical significance among a non-representative group while massive countermeasures are employed.

Maybe I'm ignorant of how this works, but some of those people are a) not notable, or b) only notable because they died from covid-19.

What is this list?

I think to be in the list you need to have a Wikipedia page before your death, but some of them may not be in the English edition as I've checked

Yeah, many of them seem to have no Wikipedia page in any language. Seems weird.

Originally I submitted it as "Coronavirus deaths of Wikipedia notable" people but changed it to Wikidata because it uses a different notability hurdle. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Notability

There is also a list that only contains people with a page present on english Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_due_to_coronavi...

I haven't submitted that list because a) I felt the Wikidata list was more extensive and thus hopefully more updated (actually it's created automatically) and b) Wikidata had pictures.

Of course some people will become notable becautse of their death. I was mainly interested in the question as I read about Conway and wondered how many people like him with tremendous achievements have already died of Corona or will die.

Also, studying biographies gives a different view than only studying the numbers.

Does not contain any references that show that the individual in question in fact died from COVID.

Click on a person's name, scroll down to the Cause of Death property.

So why does not nobody post a list of last year's notable flu deaths then? Of more from two years ago, as the flu hits every two years. So far the numbers don't persuade anybody that this should a world crisis.

http://euromomo.eu/

In my country (Spain), fatality rates for March have tripled for what is usual. They don't know where to store so many corpses, in fact they're using ice skating places as morgues. So it's obviously more than a flu and the systems are collapsed.

Don't bother. People making statements like this have already made up there mind. You are not going to change his.

In the US, we are currently sitting at 21k deaths (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_t...) after states slowly started locking down throughout March and this month. There are also several stories of hotspots having completely overburdened hospitals with patients dying in hallways. The medical system currently in place is stretched to its absolute limit in many places.

Contrast that with the previous 2018-2019 Flu season, where 34k died with 0 lock downs of any kind. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

This is nothing like the flu.

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