Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by religious group, England and Wales - Office for National StatisticsDespite all the promises that God will protect the righteous from Covid-19, and the forlorn hope that somehow it was going to kill off people with whom the self-righteous fundamentalists disagree, the facts are turning out to be something very different. Covid-19 is killing more religious people than non-believers, according to figures provided by the UK Office of National statistics.
The reasons for this are many and complex and probably more related ethnicity than to religion (and incidentally a reflection of how religion tends to be inherited with ethnicity rather than something arrived at after objective analysis of the evidence) but one thing is certain: there is no evidence that a deity is using the virus to punish non-believers or to reward believers in any one religion. Jews, Muslims and Christians are no safer for their piety whereas non-believers for a number of reasons are being statistically less affected by the virus.
Atheism is the virus. Covid is the cure.
— andyguy (@andyguy) March 25, 2020
The following chart is probably the key on so ar as this blog post is concerned. According to the UK ONS:
Religious group differences in deaths involving COVID-19, adjusted for socio-demographic factors
Differences in the risk of dying from the coronavirus (COVID-19) across different religious groups are dependent on factors related to the risk of being infected and the risk of dying given infection.
We use Cox proportional hazards regression models to estimate the risk of dying from COVID-19 across religious groups compared with the Christian population. The Christian population is used as the reference group because it has the largest population in the data used. We adjust the model for geographic, demographic, socio-economic, occupational exposure and self-assessed health measures from the 2011 Census; these characteristics have the potential to confound any association between COVID-19 mortality risk and religion. We therefore adjust for these in the model to estimate any excess risk for different religion groups. However, we are currently unable to adjust for factors such as prevalence levels of pre-existing conditions in religious groups; any unexplained increase in risk may be because of factors we have not accounted for as opposed to religion. The statistical models are explained in the technical appendix.
In Figure 3, we show how the risk of death involving COVID-19 varies by religious group for males and females. We report the hazard ratios relative to the Christian group (the reference group) for a range of geographic, demographic and socio-economic characteristics in green as well as for these plus a White and non-White ethnicity indicator (a marker of ethnicity) in blue. The hazard ratios in this analysis relate to the relative differences in the rate of deaths involving COVID-19, assuming survival until that point, between religious groups compared with the Christian group. A hazard ratio greater than one denotes that the outcome occurs at a greater rate than the reference group, while less than one indicates a lower rate.
The risk of death involving COVID-19 is highly correlated with age. After adjusting for age (in green), males and females from the Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh religious groups are at greater risk of a death involving COVID-19 compared with those identifying as Christian. Among Muslim males, the rate was 2.5 times greater than that for Christian males, while for females it was 1.9 times greater.
We also adjust for population density, region, rural and urban classification, area deprivation, household composition, socio-economic position, highest qualification held, household tenure, household exposure, and self-reported health and disability in 2011 (in blue). The fully adjusted results show differences in risk between religious groups that are specific to those religious groups and are unlikely to be associated with any of the factors listed earlier.
Figure 3. How the risk of death involving COVID-19 varies by religious group for males and females
Hazard ratios of death involving COVID-19 by religious group and sex, England and Wales, 2 March to 15 May 2020
Hopefully, these statistics will not only give the lie to claims that Covid-19 is some sort of vindictive punishment on one hate group or another, so far as smug religious bigots are concerned, but also to any absurd notion that faith is some sort of protection so gaithheads can continue to gather together in conditions which turn churches and mosques into hotspots for the virus, so contributing to the disproportionate number of infections and deaths in the religious communities and representing a serious hazard for the rest of us.
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