[HN Gopher] Excess Deaths in 2020
___________________________________________________________________
Excess Deaths in 2020
Author : panic
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-04-29 12:41 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kieranhealy.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kieranhealy.org)
| erfgh wrote:
| I'm suprised by the number of people arguing for and against the
| lockdowns using just deaths statistics.
|
| Lockdowns of the duration that we experienced should be illegal
| because they take away the citizens' liberties to an extent that
| no government should be able to take them away. It has nothing to
| do with health.
| efnx wrote:
| If I read your comment correctly, whether or not the lockdowns
| are legal should Not have anything to do with health. So what
| you are saying is that you don't care if it's a health risk -
| nobody should ever be able to order you to stay in your home by
| fear of fines or imprisonments etc.
|
| IMO that would be fine so long as we had a citizenship that was
| well educated and the topic of virus spread had not been
| politicized to the point that certain groups believe the virus
| itself is a conspiracy.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >Lockdowns of the duration that we experienced should be
| illegal
|
| I fully agree with you. If people want to sit at home it should
| be a personal choice. However people do like to control other
| peoples lives, that is the bottom line and they will use any
| argument to justify it.
| ghaff wrote:
| The thing is though that, by and large, there never were
| "lockdowns" in the US. I'm sure there are exceptions but most
| people were free to go out in public if they wanted to
| (perhaps with masks/distancing), many types of "essential"
| businesses remained open, etc.
| fumblebee wrote:
| All this being with lockdowns, which are demonstrably effective
| at slowing viral spread. Just imagine what these charts would
| look like _without_ lockdowns.
| [deleted]
| JoeData wrote:
| Here is some more data.
|
| Deaths from all causes has declined rapidly in the U.S. since
| January. The red dotted line is my best attempt to correct for
| reporting lag: https://i.imgur.com/z8M0k2h.png
|
| Excess deaths exceeded COVID deaths every week of the pandemic:
| https://i.imgur.com/MeGMsRx.png
|
| Total excess deaths in the U.S. were about 500,000 for 2020. The
| excess breaks down as 77% COVID, 16% non-COVID natural causes,
| and 7% external causes for the whole year. External causes
| include homicide, suicide, accidents, overdoses/poisonings.
|
| The count of COVID deaths include COVID as underlying cause of
| death (91%) and COVID as a contributing cause (9%). Even when
| including the contributing cause, it looks like COVID deaths were
| significantly undercounted in the first wave March/April/May and
| somewhat undercounted in the later waves.
| https://i.imgur.com/YjZeI2E.png
|
| Deaths from most major categories were higher or unchanged:
| https://i.imgur.com/TDGwVU9.png
|
| Excess deaths by age group: https://i.imgur.com/oKda9Dl.png
|
| Ages 0-14 had lower than normal deaths in 2020.
|
| Non-COVID excess deaths by age group:
| https://i.imgur.com/8pJnauz.png
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| >Excess deaths exceeded COVID deaths every week of the
| pandemic: https://i.imgur.com/MeGMsRx.png
|
| Not entirely sure how to parse that statement, but I think most
| people would interpret that as "non-COVID excess deaths
| exceeded COVID deaths", which doesn't match what's on your
| graph. E.g. for week 15, expected deaths = 55k, deaths - COVID
| = 63k and all deaths=79k.
|
| The only truthful way to interpret your statement is that
| "excess deaths (including COVID deaths) exceeded COVID deaths".
| Which isn't that interesting of a statistic.
| JoeData wrote:
| > "excess deaths (including COVID deaths) exceeded COVID
| deaths"
|
| Yes, that's what I meant. I didn't think it was ambiguous.
| Lots of people think that COVID deaths were exaggerated.
| There are countries (with not very many COVID deaths) where
| the number of excess deaths is less than the number of COVID
| deaths. There are even countries with negative excess deaths
| for the whole year, even though they had some COVID deaths.
| extra88 wrote:
| I'd expect lower or negative excess deaths in countries
| with very effective COVID responses because those responses
| can also prevent other causes of death. Masks, hand
| washing, social distancing also prevent the flu and other
| diseases. Lockdowns and working from home can reduce
| commuting and traffic-related deaths (though I heard in
| some places in the U.S. car deaths were up, possibly
| because drivers were driving faster and more recklessly on
| the lightly trafficked roads).
| joshuamorton wrote:
| It is very interesting. It means that either covid deaths
| were undercounted, or something else unique to 2020 also
| killed a large number of people, or both.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| It appears as though you're using the first interpretation,
| and assuming it's true. It is not. I agree it'd be very
| interesting if true.
|
| The second interpretation (which is the one I called "not
| interesting") just means there was at least one non COVID
| death in each interval, and the total deaths never dropped
| below the average number of deaths. One could reasonably
| assume there was at least one non-COVID death per week,
| making that part of the statistic useless, and you could
| just state the total deaths.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| No I'm using the second interpretation. It doesn't mean
| that there was one non covid death on each interval, but
| that there was one non covid death above the baseline of
| the expected number of deaths. Or in other words, deaths
| were always higher than expected, even after accounting
| for deaths attributed to covid.
|
| The number of unattributed excess deaths is fewer than
| the number of covid attributed excess deaths, bit _it
| should be zero_ , because the null hypothesis is that the
| only things killing people are "the same stuff as last
| year" and covid.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| >there was one non covid death above the baseline of the
| expected number of deaths
|
| While a true (and interesting) statement, that's not what
| the OP said. He said "Excess deaths exceeded COVID
| deaths", not "Excess deaths minus COVID deaths exceeded
| expected deaths". Again, the second statement is true
| (based on his graph), but not all all what he said.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > He said "Excess deaths exceeded COVID deaths"
|
| Yes, and this is the right statement!
|
| Excess deaths minus covid deaths _should be zero_ ,
| because the null hypothesis is that covid is the only
| thing contributing to the excess deaths.
|
| That there are additional excess deaths beyond covid
| deaths is interesting (and means, as I originally said,
| that covid deaths are undercounted, or that some other
| unknown force is killing people).
|
| The statement you provide as an alternative "Excess
| deaths minus COVID deaths exceeded expected deaths",
| doesn't make sense. Excess deaths are already above the
| expected deaths.
|
| Let me run an example.
|
| Last year, 100 people died each month. This is the
| expected number of deaths. This year, 150 people died
| each month. This gives us 50 excess deaths. 40 deaths are
| attributed to Covid. So, 10 are of unknown origin. This
| is interesting!
|
| If the excess deaths - covid deaths exceeded expected
| deaths, you'd have to have 40 covid deaths, 110 deaths of
| unknown origin, and 100 "expected" deaths, which would
| also be quite interesting, but abjectly terrifying too
| (the death rate would need to more than double).
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| FWIW, an economist published this paper recently estimating "the
| cost/benefit ratio of lockdowns in Canada, in terms of life-years
| saved, is between 3.6-282":
|
| > Generally speaking, the ineffectiveness of lockdown stems from
| voluntary changes in behavior. Lockdown jurisdictions were not
| able to prevent noncompliance, and non-lockdown jurisdictions
| benefited from voluntary changes in behavior that mimicked
| lockdowns. The limited effectiveness of lockdowns explains why,
| after one year, the unconditional cumulative deaths per million,
| and the pattern of daily deaths per million, is not negatively
| correlated with the stringency of lockdown across countries.
| Using a cost/benefit method proposed by Professor Bryan Caplan,
| and using two extreme assumptions of lockdown effectiveness, the
| cost/benefit ratio of lockdowns in Canada, in terms of life-years
| saved, is between 3.6-282. That is, it is possible that lockdown
| will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in
| Canada's history.
|
| http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf
| Retric wrote:
| That's exactly the kind of paper you get when economists are
| publishing outside their specialty. Most interesting example
| was he excluded any data that was counter to his theory and
| used highly overfit data. "Whether Atkeson (February 2021) has
| correctly modeled the Covid-19 virus is not at issue."
|
| They can't exactly do cost benefit analysis without models to
| compare, but their cherry picking models to support their
| assumptions and then happy that their assumptions where
| validated by their models.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| The point he's making in that section is that by accounting
| for voluntary changes in human behavior (or failing to
| account for it as many models did) will drastically affect
| the results of _any_ model that attempts to predict the rate
| of spread.
| Retric wrote:
| Human behavior is also influenced by messaging. You can't
| assume economically rational actors in the real world when
| modeling actual behavior as people don't know actual risks
| etc.
|
| In a non lockdown world where schools are open and
| attendance is mandatory... well it's clear to the average
| person the government doesn't think people need to stay
| home. _Sure, old people are dying in hospitals but I am 40
| so it's nothing to worry about_ etc.
|
| However, shut everything down and people get the message
| that this is serious irrespective of the actual dangers
| they personally face.
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| > shut everything down and people get the message that
| this is serious
|
| the Pajama Class say this and then wonder why their
| "messaging" doesn't go over well with anyone who's not
| able to log into zoom and chat it up with their
| comfortable, salaried, urban-elitist compatriots
| Retric wrote:
| I am sorry that reality doesn't line up with your
| preconceived notions so you feel the need to lash out
| with name calling etc.
|
| Consider sitting, back taking a deep breath, and then
| stepping away from the computer to do something you
| enjoy.
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| > reality doesn't line up with your preconceived notions
|
| I'm claiming this precise thing, that you're arrogantly
| presuming that _everyone_ can just hole up in their house
| like the elite class of people who do nothing but berate
| the (almost always) lower class people who do not have
| the privilege to stay home.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > that you're arrogantly presuming that everyone
|
| Gp didn't claim that. You're putting words in their mouth
| and lashing out for things they never said.
|
| A reasonable interpretation of their claims is that even
| if not everyone can hole up, government policies that are
| intense encourage everyone to hole up as much as they
| can.
|
| It's also worth mentioning that many, many working class
| people did not enjoy the fact that they had to take on
| risk in order to survive. Pretending everything is fine
| simply offloads even more risk onto those people.
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| You do realize that normative claims like "they ought",
| "government should", etc. are precisely the faculty-
| lounge, haughty idealism, that's worth absolutely nothing
| to people _as they are_ , spoken from a position of
| privilege, condescension and fake expertise?
|
| Notice how teachers act as though they're above everyone
| else? Refusing to work, whereas normal people that aren't
| of means largely kept working, and didn't act like
| paranoid agoraphobes exaggerating their actual risk?
|
| It's no secret that most people overestimate their risk
| by an order(if not multiple) of magnitude.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| This has nothing to do with what I or the other poster
| said. I'll reiterate that many people who were forced to
| work were not happy about that fact.
|
| You're somewhere between pretending those people don't
| exist and claiming that those lower class people who
| didn't want to work but had to are also morally bankrupt.
| It's neither coherent nor respectful of those you claim
| to be defending.
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| Per your bio, you work at Google. You're divorced from
| the experience of struggling people.
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| > and then happy that their assumptions where validated by
| their models
|
| This was done in the pro-lockdown measures camp all the time,
| epidemiologists, etc. love using models based on assumptions
| that are used to show scenarios as evidence of the original
| assumptions.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I thought that the purpose of lockdown (in the UK at least) was
| to prevent health care from being overwhelmed, at which point
| deaths would drastically increase.
|
| So we don't really know how many people would have died without
| lockdown to make a comparison, but it would have been a lot
| higher.
|
| If the health service is completely overloaded it means people
| would start dying from all sorts of other things too.
|
| Am I missing the point?
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| > I thought that the purpose of lockdown (in the UK at least)
| was to prevent health care from being overwhelmed
|
| Which never really pans out (field hospitals, hospital ship
| sent to NYC, etc.) - they got strained and perhaps local
| spots overwhelmed, but never doomsday scenarios we hear
| bandied about without any evidence. His point is that
| lockdown doesn't really change behavior and places that don't
| have strong mandates end up largely practicing safer behavior
| anyway.
|
| I think there's also a strong argument that lockdown ends up
| decreasing the time spent outdoors, which promotes spread.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| If you're looking for a doomsday scenario, what's happening
| in India _right now_ is probably the worst we 've seen
| since the pandemic started. Essentially every hospital in
| every major city is full and there are patients dying
| outside.
| ansible wrote:
| Yup. Having insufficient bed space and medical supplies
| will kill people that might otherwise have survived a
| Covid-19 infection.
|
| Anything and everything must be done in each country to
| prevent the hospitals from filling up.
| calvano915 wrote:
| Was also looking real bad in Brazil a few weeks ago.
| greedo wrote:
| Still is. I expect Brazil to exceed the US death toll in
| about 100 days.
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| They've got a fundamentally different society and
| lockdown is a luxury policy that only rich nations (and
| people) can afford.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > They've got a fundamentally different society
|
| You have to say more than this.
| majormajor wrote:
| > Which never really pans out (field hospitals, hospital
| ship sent to NYC, etc.) - they got strained and perhaps
| local spots overwhelmed, but never doomsday scenarios we
| hear bandied about without any evidence.
|
| "The thing you were trying to prevent didn't happen,
| therefore you didn't need to try to prevent it" is really
| curious reasoning. "It didn't happen, therefore it was
| because we did this things" is also a weak claim, but the
| reverse seems far sillier. Especially if you look at the
| hot spots where things got worst, like Italy or India.
| Instead of being glad we avoided that, we're whining that
| we had to do anything at all.
|
| > His point is that lockdown doesn't really change behavior
| and places that don't have strong mandates end up largely
| practicing safer behavior anyway.
|
| Again, this is a curious claim. If lockdown doesn't really
| change behavior, how can lockdown be responsible for the
| things it's being blamed for like isolation and economic
| impact? That is then the fault of the pandemic, and the
| natural behavior changes that resulted, instead!
|
| Note how toilet paper was gone from grocery stores BEFORE
| any official action was taken.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| I guess the point is that if lockdowns are ineffective, you
| are going to reach the overload point regardless. The fact
| that it did not happen means that I would not have happened
| anyway.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| You're treating healthcare overload as a binary condition
| when it is not. It matters how much your healthcare system
| is overloaded. If the system is 10% over capacity, then 1
| out of 11 people aren't getting proper treatment and run an
| increased risk of dying. If your system is 50% over
| capacity then only 2 out of 3 people are getting proper
| treatment. Neither is great, but they're objectively not
| the same levels of risk or outcome.
|
| Even if lockdowns are ineffective at preventing overload,
| it doesn't follow that they can't reduce the severity of
| that overload, or that the outcome would be the same either
| way.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| That's quite a bit of stretch to say. There are thousands
| scenarios where medical system would collapse completely
| and people would either make it on their own or die. With
| secondary effect of everybody else with life-threatening
| condition dying too.
|
| Would it be end of humankind? Nope, but I sure as hell
| don't want to be part of such selfish civilization just
| that cashflow is maintained
| tgb wrote:
| They're arguing simultaneously "lockdowns had no impact on
| people's behavior and therefore had no benefit" and "lockdowns
| had massive negative costs". Lo and behold that is the _exact_
| mistake the paper is making! It 's basing the cost analysis off
| the following question:
|
| >Suppose you could either live a year of life in the COVID era,
| or X months under normal conditions. What's the value of X that
| makes the AVERAGE American indifferent?
|
| Yet you'll notice this is _not_ about lockdown versus non-
| lockdown this is "normal" versus COVID. Moreover, the number
| they use for X is just made-up. Talk about the pot calling the
| kettle black - this is the exact mistake the author goes on and
| on about for the other side of the cost/benefit equation.
|
| This paper is super sketchy in other ways - it's clearly a
| personal diatribe, not an attempt to be accurate. Like:
|
| > Lockdown is a formal,state-mandated "one size fits all"
| version of the social norm "keep your distancefrom people who
| are sick."
|
| Is the author unaware of asymptomatic transmission? If all we
| had to do was keep away from sick people, then this would have
| been a SARS-1 outcome.
|
| > As a result, the ICL model made some dire predictions ... For
| instance: "In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or
| spontaneous changes in individual behaviour ... In total,in an
| unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000
| deaths in GB and 2.2 million in the US..."
|
| The US has achieved 1/4 of those deaths _with behavioral
| changes_ (from lockdowns or not), so 2 million without any
| behavioral changes seems like a good estimate from early data.
|
| Fig 2B is clearly over-fit on past data. I doubt it will hold
| up well.
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| > "lockdowns had no impact on people's behavior and therefore
| had no benefit" and "lockdowns had massive negative costs"
|
| I think you're overlooking the idea that "lockdowns", as we
| know them, do little other than impose massive costs and
| anxieties on society, while failing to achieve their main
| objective i.e. complete immobilization and eradication.
|
| So you end up with all the costs of the policy with little
| upside because the dynamics of spread seem very
| heterogeneous, mass-spread seems to happen in relatively few
| people in very particular scenarios (crowded _indoor_ areas -
| notice that lockdown ends up pushing the entire society,
| especially the least healthy and most vulnerable, indoors).
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It depends some on how lockdowns are implemented. Where I
| live, for instance, they outlaw indoor dining but still
| allow outdoor dining, which seems to me to be exactly what
| they should do.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Big problem with this type of calculation: it is based on the
| prior n-years of data. These figures do not consider that the
| just this year, the leading edge of Baby Boomers are achieving
| their average life expectancy and dying. There needs to be some
| corrective math that takes the birth rate at (current year -
| average life expectancy) into account.
| Thiez wrote:
| I doubt a rising wave of baby boomer deaths is going to have a
| significant change on those statistics, but if your objection
| is correct, the death rate should continue to rise, so in a
| couple of years we can look back and see if you were right. Or
| look at mortality by age.
| jnwatson wrote:
| We don't have a system where you hit 75 years old and drop
| dead. Everybody got a year older, and ~21% of those were baby
| boomers. The statistical impact of that on a year-by-year basis
| is minimal.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| On average, that's exactly the system we have. Nice attempt
| at sounding authoritative while attempting to invert a
| fundamental reality, that more births obviously results in
| more deaths.
| DataDaoDe wrote:
| One thing I would like to know, and I don't know enough about
| mortality measures so maybe someone who does could chip in, would
| be essentially what is the probability of observing a year like
| 2020 with respect to all cause mortality. Is it in 99th-
| percentile or are we looking at an observation within a standard
| deviation of the expected value,etc.
| simonh wrote:
| Given the range of values over 5 years it seems pretty unlikely
| for most states, but might not be out of the question for say
| Hawaii or Vermont say. Unlikely, but not impossible.
|
| One factor to bear in mind is the 5 year period includes a
| particularly nasty flu season in 2017-18 so the last 5 year
| period includes a high outlier.
|
| The thing is over the long term all kinds of outlier events pop
| up, like this one, but it's hard to think of any with this
| magnitude. 9/11 killed 3k people in one go, but that's only one
| tenth of the excess deaths in New York from Covid in a single
| month. Even the 1906 Earthquake that devastated San Francisco
| only killed less than 1% of the city's population. World War 2
| had an appreciable effect of course at 300k deaths over about 3
| years.
|
| If we're including other pandemics of course there's the
| Spanish Flu which also killed about half a million Americans or
| more, against a population a third the size.
| JoeData wrote:
| Short answer: In the U.S., 12 standard deviations.
|
| In the U.S., deaths were 16%-17% higher than expected. The
| death rate was 17.8% higher than in 2019. Excess deaths were
| higher in 1918, but every other year since 1900 is lower.
|
| Using 1946-2019 as our sample, the average yearly change in
| death rate is -0.2% with a standard deviation of about 1.47
| (percentage points). The biggest increase in this year range
| was 3.1% (2.2s).
|
| If we go back before the antibiotic era, the biggest one-year
| increases are in 1918 (29.3%) and 1929 (7.2%). Note that
| statistics before 1933 don't include all states.
|
| For some other ways of looking at the data, here's an
| economists blog post:
| https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2021/01/06/excess-morta...
|
| (He was writing in January, so had less complete stats.)
| DataDaoDe wrote:
| Thanks! That blog post was an interesting read, age adjusted
| mortality rates was something that hadn't occurred to me as
| someone unfamiliar with this type of data.
| Tade0 wrote:
| As a data point in my country (Poland) there haven't been that
| many deaths since WW2.
|
| The pre-war population of this country was around 34mln - a
| figure reached again in the early 70s - while currently it's
| slightly less than 38mln, so this event can definitely be seen
| as rare.
| StavrosK wrote:
| This is terrible, but at least I can show this to my "AlL-CaUsE
| MorTAlItY WiLl Be tHe SaMe" friend so he can ignore it.
| heswrongsoru wrote:
| You're made for each other. Excess deaths capture the deaths
| from lockdown related causes too, like my grandmother, who died
| when her social life was indefinitely stopped, and teenagers
| that committed suicide due to lockdowns
|
| Excess deaths don't tell us how deadly COVID really was, they
| tell us how deadly COVID plus the COVID response really were.
|
| Someday historians will argue: which was worse? The disease or
| the treatment? I don't think it's as clear cut in reality as
| you or your "friend" that you're mocking think.
|
| Maybe both of you should try listening to the people you
| disagree with
| watwut wrote:
| > teenagers that committed suicide due to lockdowns
|
| This turned out to be false expectation. Turns out that while
| teenagers were unhappy and did not enjoyed the situation,
| they were able to adapt without destroying themselves.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > Excess deaths capture the deaths from lockdown related
| causes too, like my grandmother, who died when her social
| life was indefinitely stopped, and teenagers that committed
| suicide due to lockdowns
|
| If only we had an easy mathematical tool to calculate how
| many people in the excess mortality numbers didn't die of
| COVID. We could call it "subtraction".
| audunw wrote:
| The problem with blaming the response, is that a strong
| response with very strict lockdowns is sometimes a result of
| a weak early response. That is, if you hesitate with doing
| lockdowns, you'll eventually be forced to do a much more
| severe and longer lasting lockdown anyway. A weak response
| will also overrun the hospitals, which makes it difficult for
| them to diagnose and treat other diseases.
|
| Norway has had no significant excess mortality through the
| entire pandemic. In recent months it has been well below 0%.
| It has been consistently been better than Sweden, which has
| had less restrictions and a similar culture.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-
| scores...
|
| The restrictions in Norway has been less severe than many
| places with higher excess mortality. Why is that? My theory
| is that Norwegians have been very compliant with advice and
| restrictions set by the government, and the government has
| been pro-active with enacting restrictions. This has helped
| contain and suppress the spread of the virus to smaller
| geographical regions, so that other areas can avoid
| lockdowns. And it reduces the duration of outbreaks, meaning
| you can lift restrictions again more quickly.
|
| So my theory is that fighting against restrictions is
| extremely counter-productive. It only serves to create a
| culture of ignoring government advice, and makes politicians
| hesitate to enact necessary restrictions early, with the end
| result being more restrictions in total, not less.
| petertodd wrote:
| Sweden had an abnormally low death rate in 2019; Norway did
| not. Averaged over the past two years, Sweden's death rate
| in 2019 and 2020 is just 1.2% above 2018, as compared to
| Norway's 0.48% below 2018.
|
| It's quite likely that many people who would have died in
| 2019 in a normal year died in 2020 instead.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/611743/number-of-
| deaths-...
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-
| of-...
| pnutjam wrote:
| I love it when people who ignore all the data and intelligent
| discussion around a subject argue that people aren't
| listening to them.
| samth wrote:
| Suicides were down in 2020 in the US. Australia had long and
| strict lockdowns, so has Vietnam. But they have negative
| excess deaths in 2020. There's no evidence whatsoever that
| lockdowns increased deaths, with the possible exception of an
| increase in fatal traffic accidents due to more speeding.
| 015UUZn8aEvW wrote:
| I'd like to see a version of this analysis that incorporates all-
| cause mortality from a much larger time period; say the past
| fifty years rather than the past five.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Lies, damn lies and statistics.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Why?
| 015UUZn8aEvW wrote:
| Because it would give people a better intuitive sense of how
| bad COVID is in a larger civilizational/historical context.
|
| Over the past 12+ months, people have accepted enormous
| infringements on freedoms in their everyday lives. Many of
| the public health measures that we take as a matter of course
| in the "new normal" - lockdowns, social distancing, extended
| closing of churches, etc.- are things that would have been
| almost unthinkable as recently as January of 2020.
|
| If you look far enough back, to some point in the twentieth
| century, you'll find a time at which the baseline infectious
| disease risk in everyday life was higher than it has been in
| the COVID-era US. But people at that time went to crowded
| theaters, ate in restaurants, packed together in churches and
| schools, and so on. Restricting these things could have
| decreased their all-cause mortality, but they clearly found
| that option unacceptable.
|
| Note that this isn't an issue of whether people "believe in
| science" or "believe in data". It's an issue of risk
| tolerance. People a few generations ago understood the Germ
| Theory of Disease perfectly well, and they knew that they
| could reduce the spread of infectious disease by implementing
| the kinds of measures we've implemented for COVID. And yet
| they didn't implement these measures, except in very minor
| and temporary ways. We've become far more risk-averse than
| they were. And the question of whether that's a good thing is
| not an empirical question.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I don't understand your argument. You're saying that
| because people didn't mind dying from infectous diseases at
| a time where scraping your hand could prove deadly, we
| shouldn't mind it today either?
| 015UUZn8aEvW wrote:
| It's not a question of what people "mind" or "don't
| mind", it's a question of what level of risk people will
| accept in order to live a normal life. Hiding away from
| people may reduce risk in a lot of ways, but most people
| find it unacceptable.
|
| Before COVID, I was under the impression that most
| Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an
| admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken
| about that.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Before COVID, I was under the impression that most
| Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an
| admirable sentiment.
|
| Are you under the impression that you were experiencing
| pure liberty before COVID? Because it's pretty obvious to
| me that there was an acceptable level of restraints that
| society generally agreed to, and those levels changed due
| to the pandemic. It's a fun saying, but it's in no way,
| shape, or form realistic.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Are you suggesting that since we didn't have full liberty
| before the pandemic we should be ok with less liberty
| during the pandemic and into the future? Because by
| accepting these measures now I can guarantee they'll
| become the new norm just like the changes after 9/11.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Because by accepting these measures now I can guarantee
| they'll become the new norm just like the changes after
| 9/11.
|
| What measures are you referring to with this? Masks
| clearly aren't going to stay around, and there's a push
| to reopen everything and get life back to normal as soon
| as possible.
| watwut wrote:
| > Before COVID, I was under the impression that most
| Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an
| admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken
| about that.
|
| America is country with most strict safety standards in
| pretty much anything I ever heard of. Including kids
| playground structures.
| caddemon wrote:
| 50 years ago was 1970. I agree that just comparing last
| year's death rate directly to rates from the past 50
| years would be a bad analysis, but I think this is some
| hyperbole too.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| That doesn't seem like an empirical question at all.
| Whether it's a good thing depends on what you value.
| caddemon wrote:
| In a vacuum it would give you more of a sense about how much
| of an outlier this year was. But obviously enough other
| things have changed over the last 50 years that the numbers
| would stop being comparable. Perhaps looking at a 5 year
| sliding window to see how big the peaks usually are relative
| to their surrounding years could get at this with a bit less
| confounding.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Which is exactly what the article did in its first graph.
| caddemon wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something they only use a single 5
| year window to look at the 2020 peak. I meant if you
| slide the window back over the past 50 years, what other
| peaks show up and how much larger are they then the other
| years in their window?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Ah, I misunderstood your point. You're missing nothing.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| While that would be interesting, it would be a less direct
| measure of COVID's impact, as other variables are introduced.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The tricky thing about discussing covid-19 mortality is that
| there are always confounding variables. The disease is
| deadlier for people with pre-existing conditions,
| particularly cardiovascular.
|
| A common line of argument online is "it's just the flu, and
| we don't panic like this for flu season every year."
| Observing a spike in total deaths puts that line of thought
| to the test.
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Why does it only go until 2015?
|
| This seems like data that would be better understood as per
| capita all cause mortality versus time over the last century.
|
| Anyone know where to find that plot?
| StavrosK wrote:
| Why? You want to compare pre-COVID to COVID.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Wouldn't you end up confounding a lot of different issues with
| that? Lifestyles and medicine has radically changed a fair bit
| in the last century, and so you'd end up with a bunch of
| confounding factors.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/23/us/covid-19-d.
| ..
|
| This is close to the analysis of interest.
|
| It's true there are so many confounding issues, e.g. obesity
| rates have never been higher and are a huge cofactors,
| population inversion, etc.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Interesting that _way_ fewer people died after the 1918
| pandemic. I assume it "weeded out" all the people who were
| likely to die soon anyway, but what's more interesting is
| that the negative bar seems to be _longer_ than the
| positive one, which would somehow mean that the pandemic
| _saved_ lives? Very odd.
| caddemon wrote:
| Assuming it's not just noise, could be that technology
| developed or cultural norms changed because of the
| pandemic saved some lives down the line.
|
| Also, weren't deaths in the first year of life much more
| common back then? Maybe there were just significantly
| less people having kids right after the pandemic.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 1918 was also during WWI. While they mark that with the
| pandemic, are they including US service member deaths
| during the war in death totals? I'm trying to find a
| breakdown by year, but the total US deaths from the war
| was around 100k.
|
| Even taking them as evenly distributed over 1914-1918
| (inaccurate) that's 20k extra deaths in each of those
| years.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Antibiotics became widely used in the last 100 years. We've
| learned a lot as a species in that time.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Exactly. And we've gotten better with cancer, but we've
| gotten worse with obesity. There's a bunch of layers to
| apply, so I don't know how factoring in the excess
| mortality from 1957 or 1942 is particularly useful if
| you're looking at how much upset COVID causes society.
| sim_card_map wrote:
| For some reason Europe saw a lot fewer excess deaths in 2020.
|
| For example, in Germany it was only ~ +3%, and Sweden, which
| didn't lock down and had no mask mandates, had a lower death rate
| than in 2012:
|
| https://i.redd.it/73x3fysmu7k61.png
| [deleted]
| StavrosK wrote:
| That's interesting, why is that?
| caddemon wrote:
| I'm not sure it's really a good comparison to pick a subset
| of European countries and compare them to the whole US. Some
| countries seem to have handled it better than others, which
| we could definitely learn from, but I don't think it is a US
| vs Europe problem like some other commenters seem to be
| implying. We could also compare Italy, Belgium, Hungary to
| Vermont.
| tokai wrote:
| Higher obesity in US maybe?
| StavrosK wrote:
| I doubt the entire US became sharply more obese in the past
| year, though, so much so that it also died from it.
| awild wrote:
| I'm assuming tokai is saying that because obese people
| are more likely to have complications from Covid19, the
| US saw a higher increase in excess deaths, given that the
| obesity rate is higher than eg Germany.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Oh, I see, I thought they meant that the excess deaths
| were caused by obesity, not by COVID19 leading to higher
| rates of death among the obese. That makes more sense.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| This also explains some of the racial disparities in
| COVID deaths since the obesity rate for blacks is 49.6%
| vs 44.8% for Hispanics, 42.2% for whites, and 17.4% for
| Asians
| croon wrote:
| The suggestion wasn't that they were dying from obesity,
| but from its correlation with covid. Not sure if it can
| account for the increase, but in conjunction with pretty
| terrible handling of the crisis during 2020 I could
| imagine it at least.
| StavrosK wrote:
| That makes sense, I misunderstood, thanks.
| graywh wrote:
| the US was already more obese than Germany -- and obesity
| seems to correlate with higher covid-19 mortality
| alexilliamson wrote:
| But the pandemic could have hit the more obese American
| population harder.
| [deleted]
| spamizbad wrote:
| Probably a combination of:
|
| - US letting it rip through vulnerable populations with the
| promise of "herd immunity" being right around the corner
|
| - Fewer hospital beds available in less populous areas.
|
| - Taking COVID seriously became a culture war issue. So while
| some countries might've had its youth catch it while mostly
| keeping it away from older populous, the US had the opposite:
| less vulnerable youth took it relatively seriously, with lots
| of 60+ flaunting safety measures they felt were oppressive
| ohlookabird wrote:
| It seems to vary also a lot by region. Take for instance this
| local news article from yesterday about excess death in some
| east German states:
| https://www.dnn.de/Region/Mitteldeutschland/Uebersterblichke...
|
| Among other things it says the excess death in last December
| among members of a large health insurer (AOK) rose to 250% of
| the previous year in various heavy hit regions like Zwickau,
| Gorlitz and Sachsische Schweiz ("So stieg die Ubersterblichkeit
| im vergangenen Dezember unter den sachsischen AOK-Mitgliedern
| in den Landkreisen Zwickau, Gorlitz und Sachsische Schweiz auf
| 250 Prozent des Vorjahresniveau.").
| neatze wrote:
| Europe is light years ahead in medical emergency services, when
| compared to US, this my limited observation, I am EMT volunteer
| in US.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| That's interesting. I'm a layman at best, but I've always
| heard that the US health care infrastructure is really good,
| as long as you are eligible for care in the first place.
| Given the potential astronomical cost of a sudden uninsured
| health emergency, it would seem that the money is there for
| it to be that way at least. I'm not american so I've only
| heard anecdotes though.
| neatze wrote:
| I meant in terms of emergency services response in general
| and transport/care from incident to hospital. I can't speak
| much about care in hospitals. But initial response to COVID
| was substantially worse in US then in Europe, in my
| subjective perspective.
| whizzter wrote:
| Sure, but if you look at the general trend in Sweden the death
| rate had been in a steady decline for many years so 2020 was a
| clear trend breaker.
|
| Some call Sweden a nanny state and it's true in some regards as
| there had been changes to regulations (esp laws regarding
| smoking in bars,etc), comprehensive cancer screening
| initiatives, road construction laws,etc to decrease the impact
| of common mortality causes.
| caddemon wrote:
| Germany was one of the countries that I remember handling it
| pretty well in the early days though. Italy, Spain, Belgium,
| and to some extent UK and France were the ones towards the top
| of the Worldometers per capita deaths IIRC.
|
| What I wonder from that table though is why does Germany seem
| to have a higher death rate than peer countries over the prior
| few years? They are in line with Estonia and noticably higher
| than all the other countries listed.
| etripe wrote:
| Well, the first outbreaks in Europe were in Italy and Spain,
| too, so I'd say they had more of an excuse than the rest of
| us.
|
| A big contributor (at least according to local
| epidemiologists) was the numbers here in Belgium were over
| reported, whereas most countries under reported. There was
| also an issue getting accurate numbers, because (mostly
| privately run) elderly homes weren't looking into it
| carefully enough to distinguish between Covid and other
| causes. That said, balls were definitely dropped.
| tucosan wrote:
| Especially for Germany, the statistics are not complete for
| 2020. They will be in a few months hopefully.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I'm curious if there's a good way to breakdown how much is caused
| by COVID vs., say, caused by the lockdown (i.e. delayed elective
| medical procedures, suicides, etc.). For example the US suicide
| rate declined from 2018 to 2019, but went back up in 2020.
| Naively assuming that all of the increase was due to the effects
| of the lockdowns would attribute ~2,880 suicides to them (or more
| if in a counterfactual world the suicide rate was going to
| continue declining if there hadn't been a lockdown). Obviously
| the real causes of these suicides would be difficult to
| impossible to determine with certainty, making this a difficult
| path to explore.
|
| In the UK a study predicts a 7.9-9.6% increase in breast cancer
| deaths within 5 years of diagnosis due to diagnostic delays
| caused by COVID. For other cancers their estimates vary, i.e.
| 15.3%-16.6% for colorectal, 4.8%-5.3% for lung, etc. thelancet.co
| m/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(20)30388-0/fulltext
|
| Basically I guess what I'm really trying to get at is that while
| COVID is certainly a terrible disease, there seems to have been
| little to no cost-benefit analysis performed by policy makers
| regarding the lockdowns and other attempts to combat it.
| insickness wrote:
| The health impacts due to social/psychological effects alone of
| lockdown may be substantial. As an analogue, the annual spike
| of deaths around the holiday period increases "somewhere
| between 3% and 9% depending on the demographic group you look
| at, and between 1% and 10%, depending on the cause of death
| analyzed."
|
| https://www.us-funerals.com/deaths-spike-on-christmas-day/
| xorfish wrote:
| You could compare the excess deaths for New Zealand, South
| Korea, Australia and other countries that were able to prevent
| Sars-CoV-2 from spreading with strict lockdowns.
|
| Diagnostic delays are not caused by lockdowns. They are caused
| by an overwhelmed health care system or the fear of infection,
| both of which are caused by high incidence.
|
| You also need to consider the damage that long covid possibly
| do over the next 30 years. If only 1% of the working age
| population that got infected suffers permanent disability, then
| the cost-benefit analysis will show that a low incidence
| strategy is clearly the better strategy.
|
| Here are the statistics for Australia. They had a strict
| lockdown when cases where high.
|
| https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provis...
| xupybd wrote:
| To add some stats. In Au and NZ we had a big drop in flu
| cases https://info.flutracking.net/reports-2/new-zealand-
| reports/
|
| Not sure what that did to the death rate.
| orangecat wrote:
| _You also need to consider the damage that long covid
| possibly do over the next 30 years._
|
| Yes, and also the long term damage of lockdowns. Some
| children will be permanently harmed by the loss of education,
| and many people will be dealing with the effects of social
| isolation for quite a while.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > Diagnostic delays are not caused by lockdowns. They are
| caused by an overwhelmed health care system or the fear of
| infection, both of which are caused by high incidence.
|
| That's simply false.
|
| It was reported that a lot of US hospitals layed off elective
| staff through most of 2020.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Or even by state. Hawaii had a strict lockdown but low excess
| mortality.
|
| Arizona and Texas had weak lockdowns but high excess
| mortality.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| There's absolutely no correlation between lockdown policy
| and mortality. For example, click the link above and
| compare Florida to California. Florida has been wide open
| since last summer (over 9 months now) and has performed
| about the same as California. And you can cherry pick
| Hawaii, but New York and New Jersey have been among the
| most strict lockdowns and they find themselves in the top
| 3.
|
| It seems to help to be an island country or state though,
| or a geographically isolated region like South Korea or
| Alaska, as they can screen people coming into the country
| and there's not a lot of cross-pollination with tight
| border controls.
| melling wrote:
| This is a falsehood that people have been promoting since
| last summer
|
| From the WSJ on July 16th, 2020, someone trying to
| promote the idea that it was only a Blue state problem:
|
| =======***
|
| "Here are some real numbers to put things into context,
| and it's obvious the problem is certain incompetent blue
| state governors.
|
| As of today:
|
| Florida (population 23M) COVID deaths: 4,782
|
| Texas (population 30M) COVID deaths: 3,561
|
| New York (population 19M) Covid deaths: 25,014
|
| New Jersey (population 9M) COVID deaths: 15,665"
|
| =====
|
| I recently compared these numbers in early March I
| believe
|
| Florida: 31,523 for 26,741 additional deaths
|
| New Jersey: 23,521 for 7856 additional deaths
|
| New York: 48,410 for 23,396 additional deaths
|
| Texas: 45,274 for 41,713 additional deaths
|
| -------------
|
| NY: 48,410/25,014 = 1.9 times more death
|
| FL: 31,523/4,782 = 6.5 times more death
|
| Florida and Texas lead in deaths after the first wave
|
| March 6, 2021
|
| Florida: 31,523 for 26,741 additional deaths
|
| New Jersey: 23,521 for 7856 additional deaths
|
| New York: 48,410 for 23,396 additional deaths
|
| Texas: 45,274 for 41,713 additional deaths
| petertodd wrote:
| > Florida has been wide open since last summer (over 9
| months now) and has performed about the same as
| California.
|
| Remember that Florida has a significantly older
| population than California too. 2.1% of the population
| >85 years old vs 1.3%; 17.6% over 65 years old vs 10.6%.
| COVID deaths are very concentrated in the elderly. The
| CDC estimates that the 85+ age group has a 8700x higher
| chance an infection leading to death, and a 95x higher
| chance of infection leading to hospitalization, than the
| 5-17 age group. The article appears to be using non-age-
| adjusted excess deaths. So California and Florida being
| equal is a strong sign that California did significantly
| worse.
|
| https://www.infoplease.com/us/census/florida/demographic-
| sta...
|
| https://www.infoplease.com/us/census/california/demograph
| ic-...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-
| data/investi...
| melling wrote:
| How much other causation have you looked into? For
| example population density?
|
| Miami is a small city of 500,000 people.
| floxy wrote:
| The Miami metropolitan area population is 6,000,000.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statis
| tic...
|
| ...with a density of 1004 people / sq. mi., compared to
| the NY metro area with a density of 5313 people / sq.
| mi..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_metropolitan_area
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area#
| com...
| melling wrote:
| Yes, NY is clearly is densely populated. I guess I would
| look for the differences with California.
|
| LA has more people (13.2 million) but appears to be less
| densely populated with 550 people per sq mile.
|
| I didn't follow California but I know Florida was offered
| as a place that not locking down worked.
|
| I can look into it a little more. Florida has a lot of
| cases, and most came after the first wave. The same with
| Texas.
| viraptor wrote:
| > caused by the lockdown (i.e. delayed elective medical
| procedures, suicides, etc.)
|
| That's a dangerous way to phrase it. People would delay the
| elective medical procedures due to covid, even without
| lockdown. Overwhelmed hospitals would enforce the same. The
| covid/lockdown split of excess deaths is very complicated in
| itself.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > Overwhelmed hospitals would enforce the same.
|
| Not necessarily. There is always the option of triaging COVID
| victims into palliative care (which can be very fast and
| administered even by non-specialist personnel) and away from
| intensive care. While that has never been official policy due
| to the political optics, there have been claims that it was
| done on a hospital-by-hospital basis in Italy and Sweden for
| elderly victims. If the voting public were clearly informed
| that it was an option they could choose as an alternative to
| lockdowns, it may well have seen significant support from the
| population.
| petertodd wrote:
| Since natural immunity is durable, an unmitigated pandemic
| would be over sooner. So in many circumstances the hospitals
| would be overloaded for less total time and thus lead to less
| non-covid excess deaths.
|
| Here in Canada, excess deaths in 2020 for the 15 to 64 age
| range has been abnormally high, starting in March. Yet,
| unlike older age groups, the level of excess does _not_
| follow the pattern of reported COVID infections. That looks
| like deaths from lockdown and delayed medical care.
|
| I personally know people who, for example, put off getting
| potential cancers checked out due to fear of covid.
| Similarly, I had to convince some people to go to the
| hospital for potentially serious non-covid symptoms who were
| afraid to do so because of covid.
|
| Source: https://mpidr.shinyapps.io/stmortality/
| [deleted]
| BadInformatics wrote:
| This analysis presumes that hospital emergency and critical
| care capacity is flexible (it's not), that we can expect
| medical professionals to keep on performing at 100% in the
| face of overwhelming stress (they will not), and that
| Canada would somehow succeed at what Italy did not back in
| the first half of 2020 by doing _even less_ mitigation. An
| argument in favour of no mitigation would have to
| demonstrate:
|
| 1. covid-related mortality _and_ morbidity would not make
| up for any drop in other excess deaths
|
| 2. short-term stops on all non-critical care would, on
| balance, result in a significant drop in excess deaths over
| longer-term stops on a smaller percentage of non-critical
| care
|
| 3. hospital systems and their staff would still be intact
| after such a large wave. This may sound crazy, but while
| we're trading anecdotes you may be surprised at how many
| ICU nurses considered quitting because of how hard the
| latest surge hit. These are the people who dictate how many
| "ICU beds" we have, not the physical beds themselves!
|
| 4. that we can make any kind of meaningful analytical
| statement on covid mortality vs excess mortality for a
| specific age group given the lack of reporting data on
| both. In particular, data from coroner's offices on covid
| deaths has a huge lag time at present. Looking at case
| counts only is a poor proxy given you have to model
| infection -> death/recovery/discharge lag times,
| geographical variations and healthcare capacity as well.
| The HMD link merely provides total counts and proportions
| with no additional commentary. You can find more specific
| discussions on the subject [1], but they don't cover
| demographic breakdowns over time and necessarily maintain a
| high degree of uncertainty.
|
| I don't think it's controversial to say governmental policy
| here has been sub-optimal at best. But to say that one
| extreme approach or the other is what we ought to have done
| based on woefully incomplete data is a stretch too.
|
| [1] https://health-
| infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/epidemiological-s...
| petertodd wrote:
| > This analysis presumes that hospital emergency and
| critical care capacity is flexible (it's not), that we
| can expect medical professionals to keep on performing at
| 100% in the face of overwhelming stress
|
| No I'm not. Remember, what I said was: "So in many
| circumstances the hospitals would be overloaded for less
| total time and thus lead to less _non-covid excess
| deaths_. "
|
| Let's assume hospitals are severely overloaded, and are
| simply unable to treat COVID patients. The pedantic
| meaning of what I said will certainly be true: _non-
| covid_ excess deaths will be less.
|
| But the steel-manned version - less excess deaths in
| total - could still be true if lockdown drags on
| sufficiently long, and COVID-19 is sufficiently mild,
| and/or the marginal benefit of hospital care on survival
| is low enough.
|
| > hospital systems and their staff would still be intact
| after such a large wave. This may sound crazy, but while
| we're trading anecdotes you may be surprised at how many
| ICU nurses considered quitting because of how hard the
| latest surge hit. These are the people who dictate how
| many "ICU beds" we have, not the physical beds
| themselves!
|
| I'm well aware. Frankly, I suspect that problem is made
| worse by a long, dragged out, pandemic. People can often
| handle a short period of extreme stress better than they
| can handle a much longer period of high stress.
| BadInformatics wrote:
| > Let's assume hospitals are severely overloaded, and are
| simply unable to treat COVID patients. The pedantic
| meaning of what I said will certainly be true: non-covid
| excess deaths will be less.
|
| Even the pedantic interpretation does not necessarily
| hold. Though healthcare resources for life-threatening
| conditions are not strictly zero-sum, many of them would
| effectively be once covid overwhelms existing ICU and ED
| capacity. There are plenty of examples of personnel being
| pulled from e.g. cancer care or cardiology teams to help
| in covid wards. This directly translates to increased
| wait times for patients in those categories, much like
| would happen if people were putting off getting checked
| out themselves.
|
| Moveover, hospitals and healthcare systems to not just
| "bounce back" after being severely overloaded. Staffing
| is already strained, and unless you ban clinicians from
| taking leave you would see cascading reductions in
| capacity after a couple months of being overloaded. This
| is to say nothing of the equipment shortages we had in
| the early days of the pandemic. Ultimately, patients who
| would require care for non-covid reasons would still
| suffer because of a massive backlog. Determining whether
| this backlog would be larger or more/less harmful when
| amortized compared to what we have now requires health
| economics analysis that I am certainly not qualified to
| perform.
|
| > Frankly, I suspect that problem is made worse by a
| long, dragged out, pandemic. People can often handle a
| short period of extreme stress better than they can
| handle a much longer period of high stress.
|
| This feels right to me too, though I've not the
| literature to verify it. However, it's an equally valid
| argument for strict short-term lockdowns a la New
| Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, etc. That is to say,
| it does not follow that not mitigating is the only
| reasonable strategy to prevent a dragged out pandemic.
|
| A better (if grim) post-hoc analysis of Canada would be
| to compare the Atlantic provinces (less densely
| populated, strictly enforced interventions), the other
| smaller provinces (less densely populated, few
| interventions until recently) and the large provinces
| (densely populated, moderate but very poorly enforced
| interventions). My guess is that all three approaches
| will not be found to be equally effective.
| ebiester wrote:
| Even still, you're balancing the number of people dying from
| the lockdown against the number of people who would have died
| if the hospitals would have been completely overwhelmed (a la
| NYC, Wuhan, India, and Italy in various times of the pandemic.)
|
| The "what ifs" get harder to calculate.
| mxcrossb wrote:
| > there seems to have been little to no cost-benefit analysis
| performed by policy makers regarding the lockdowns and other
| attempts to combat it.
|
| What evidence do you have of this? This seems like a baseless
| criticism.
| RacfeelBudkind wrote:
| On the other hand Covid-19 would have killed many more people
| directly if action hadn't been taken to mitigate it's spread.
| Probably _exponentially_ more people, based on how viruses
| typically spread.
|
| In other words, the comparison isn't between how many people
| Covid-19 _did_ kill and how many preventative measures did. It
| 's between how many it _would have_ killed and how many
| preventative measures did. While there 's a lot of uncertainty
| in how many people Covid-19 would have killed, it's still
| certainly higher than the preventative measures.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Probably exponentially more people, based on how viruses
| typically spread.
|
| It will be decades before we know the answer to this, if we
| ever do. Trying to justify these lockdowns while in the
| middle of the storm is fools errand. Heads are running way to
| hot and brains aren't thinking clearly.
|
| What we've done over the last year represents one of the
| largest uncontrolled public health experiments ever
| performed. The best part is all the billions caught up in the
| experiment never consented and many don't even know it was an
| experiment.
|
| Society has never, ever had a pandemic plan that includes
| what we've done over the 14 months.
|
| Only through the passage of time, when all the people who
| instituted these policies are no longer with us and all the
| costs of these lockdowns will be laid bare, will history
| truly be able to judge our actions.
|
| (Personally I think history will take an incredibly dim view
| of lockdowns and those who enacted them)
| allturtles wrote:
| You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. How is it
| that people who think the lockdowns were net beneficial
| need to wait 'decades' to decide, but you're allowed to
| conclude now that they were a terrible idea?
|
| It seems to me we should all state our positions now with
| the information we have available now, and let the future
| take care of itself.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Because he/she stated it as a personal opinion while the
| other person said it as a matter of fact that couldn't be
| questioned.
|
| I'll go a step further and actually suggest that
| authoritarian lockdown measure haven't done as much as
| they've been touted as doing. This is pretty easy to see
| by comparing states with less lockdown measures vs. ones
| that went full economy shutdown. Most of the "open"
| states aren't any worse off than the ones who went
| lockdown crazy and in some cases they're actually better
| off when you look at spread and death.
| RacfeelBudkind wrote:
| > Most of the "open" states aren't any worse off than the
| ones who went lockdown crazy and in some cases they're
| actually better off when you look at spread and death.
|
| This could also indicate that states where Covid-19 had a
| bigger impact responded by enacting stronger mitigations.
| What makes you prefer your interpretation?
| vmception wrote:
| All while the topology in all jurisdictions is so
| different that it will never be possible to directly
| compare
| deeg wrote:
| What states are you comparing? Massachusetts and NYC
| locked down pretty hard and their post-April numbers look
| pretty good compared to, say, Texas, Florida, and South
| Dakota.
| hedora wrote:
| The lockdowns weren't unprecedented. We did something
| similar in 1918, and it backfired in the same ways. As a
| bonus, last time, a much more deadly strain emerged and
| ended up ripping through the population killing young
| adults and middle aged people.
|
| If they hadn't locked down for the first wave, they
| probably would have reached herd immunity before the
| second, more devastating wave. This time, we have a
| vaccine, so we'll probably avoid that, at least.
|
| That's a long-winded way of saying that it's a safe bet
| that people will take a dim view of the 2020 lockdown in
| hindsight.
| ghaff wrote:
| >We did something similar in 1918,
|
| I looked at this a while back and, as far as I can tell,
| there were relatively limited interventions in the US. If
| you read beyond the headline of this link [1], for
| example, it doesn't seem as if you had much in the way of
| workplace closures and, in general the "non-
| pharmaceutical interventions" were for a fairly limited
| period of time. This study concludes they helped but the
| data is inconsistent and hard to interpret.
|
| [1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-
| perspective/2007/08/study-sa...
|
| "The researchers report that all the cities used at least
| one of the three main categories of NPIs, and 15 used all
| three at the same time. The most common combination was
| school closures and public gathering bans, used by 34
| cities for a median of 4 weeks. All the cities except New
| York, Chicago, and New Haven (Conn.) closed their schools
| for some period of time; the median was 6 weeks."
| [deleted]
| sgt101 wrote:
| I think, very sadly, that India is giving us an insight now.
| It must be remembered that the situation in India is into a
| society with some immunity from earlier infections and also
| some immunity from vaccination (I think ~10% combined) which
| muddies the water a bit. But, still the picture of an
| unmoderated c19 epidemic is horrifying.
| petertodd wrote:
| Something I haven't found is detailed breakdowns of who is
| actually being infected this time around.
|
| India did have very strict lockdowns. Yet, very high rates
| of antibodies were also measured in some areas. Those
| strict lockdowns may have been successful in shielding
| _some_ of the population from covid, and that part of the
| population is getting infected now. India is a very unequal
| society, with a very wide range of wealth present in the
| same areas.
|
| In the US in some lockdown states there have been dramatic
| differences between infection rates between different
| socioeconomic levels. While in other states that were more
| open, that has tended to be less true.
| hedora wrote:
| In the US, 33-50% of the population apparently had antibodies
| pre-vaccination, and we apparently did a terrible job keeping
| it out of nursing homes (so the percentage that caught it
| that died was higher than it would have been across the whole
| population).
|
| So, it would have killed 2-3x more people, max. There were
| strategies that were developed after the 1918 pandemic that
| probably would have saved more people than the lockdown at
| much lower cost, but they were ignored by the politicians.
| The basic idea was to focus all resources on protecting the
| vulnerable, and let the disease run its course quickly.
| Effectively protecting the vulnerable during extended
| lockdowns is extremely difficult, and the COVID lockdown was
| no exception.
| majormajor wrote:
| > So, it would have killed 2-3x more people, max.
|
| You are very cavalier with somewhere around 1.1-1.6 million
| extra deaths, to date. That's your GOOD number?
|
| If that's your anti-intervention argument, I'm unconvinced.
| Saving a million lives is worth a lot to me.
| sgt101 wrote:
| >In the US, 33-50% of the population apparently had
| antibodies pre-vaccination
|
| Where did that number come from?
|
| I have read more like 8% (https://www.thelancet.com/article
| /S0140-6736(20)32009-2/full...)
|
| So - 2 to 3x... Nope. 8 - 10x.
|
| What I want to know is why you have constructed this belief
| and want to propagate it when it is refuted by a google
| search in 10 seconds flat?
| maxerickson wrote:
| I wonder if the theory that previously infected people
| are reacting more strongly to the first doses is true?
|
| I had no real reaction to the first one and a day of
| increased fatigue so far with the second.
|
| Anecdotally, many more people are having stronger
| reactions to the second.
| runako wrote:
| > 2-3x more people, max
|
| Rounding, that's possibly _another_ 1-2 million people.
| Those are big numbers!
|
| Also one quibble in that most of the US did not have an
| extended lockdown. Here in GA ours lasted basically a
| month. As others have said, people voluntarily stayed home,
| in part because the exponents of letting the disease "run
| its course" tended to exhibit a level of comfort with
| millions of deaths that perhaps is not widely shared in the
| population.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| The obvious way to do this analysis is to look at all cause
| death rates in countries that locked down successfully, like
| china, new zealand, or australia, and see that there was no
| spike
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| Suicides declined in 2020 [1]
|
| Cost benefit analysis is important. But it's pretty clear the
| vast majority of excess deaths were covid related, because
| there's a very strong correlation between excess deaths and
| reported covid cases/deaths, even when you look at different
| states that had different peaks at different times, and no such
| correlation to other responses like different types of
| lockdowns. More delayed / indirect / long-term effects might be
| harder to measure though.
|
| [1]https://www.axios.com/suicide-decreased-in-2020-pandemmic-
| me...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Weird, the first result when I did a search claimed it went
| up to 14.8 per 100,000 this year, from 13.9 per 100,000 last
| year according to the Google summary, but the actual page
| doesn't seem to actually have that data: https://www.americas
| healthrankings.org/explore/annual/measur...
|
| Looks like the CDC data is still preliminary? So I guess
| we'll have to wait and see what the actual number is.
|
| EDIT: Looking through the charts on that link it does list a
| 14.8 for 2020 suicides but doesn't seem to have a source?
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| Likewise, you should cite a source for your statistics in
| your original post.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Isnt that true during many major world events that are bad? I
| cant remember the study but I recall reading that during WW1
| and WW2 suicides declined greatly even though it was a
| terrible time for many.
| watwut wrote:
| This is going to depend which place and group of people you
| talk about. Suicides of Jews in Germany went up by the
| start of WW2 - source is Richard J Evans; Third Reich
| Trilogy. He had no stats about non-jews. But, being
| oppressed and humiliated definitely made some Jewish
| Germans to kill themselves. (Convolute phrase, but plenty
| of them considered themselves Germans, so.)
|
| And it was much easier to commit suicide by lettin other
| people kill you too.
|
| America is might be different, because it did not happened
| on their soil.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Yeah, but some claim overall "deaths of despair" went up [1],
| which is probably better to use here.
|
| [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/deaths-of-despair-
| during-c...
| petertodd wrote:
| For example, overdoses and suicides are often quite
| difficult to distinguish.
|
| Suicidal ideation does appear to have increased: https://ww
| w.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm?s_cid=mm... But
| it doesn't correlate well to actual suicide rates. It's
| also quite possible that the emphasis on suicides has in
| fact raised awareness enough to prevent them. Or perhaps
| the way people are dealing with the stresses that lead to
| suicide has changed, resulting in that being expressed in
| some other way. Or a mix of all these factors.
| grumpyautist wrote:
| That's an assumption made off incomplete data.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > In the UK a study predicts a 7.9-9.6% increase in breast
| cancer deaths within 5 years of diagnosis due to diagnostic
| delays caused by COVID. [...] Basically I guess what I'm really
| trying to get at is that while COVID is certainly a terrible
| disease, there seems to have been little to no cost-benefit
| analysis performed by policy makers regarding the lockdowns and
| other attempts to combat it.
|
| I see this line of reasoning a lot, even in mainstream media
| here in Sweden, but it seems flawed to me. As I see it
| diagnostic delays and delayed elective care is caused by _a
| lack of_ lockdown or other stringent decease control measures.
| It's when hospitals are overrun by people infected with SARS-
| CoV-2 that they have to delay other care. This happens due to
| rapid spread of the virus, which happens when lockdown is _not_
| imposed.
|
| What's the argument for the parents opposite line of reasoning?
| whizzter wrote:
| As a datapoint on Sweden, we have a normally pretty well
| functioning breast cancer screening system where women
| between 40-74 are to be offered a screening opportunity every
| other year.
|
| In 2019 more than 800 000 screenings were done (with 8288
| cancer cases discovered in the country that year) and this
| system has been credited for pushing down the yearly cancer
| deaths due to earlier discoveries.
|
| In 2020 there was 160 000 less screenings so we can probably
| expect an increase in number of deadly cases in the coming
| years.
|
| (Source, https://www.dn.se/sverige/en-av-fem-kvinnor-
| screenades-inte-... )
| bjornsing wrote:
| Ok, but again: The primary reason for this is the
| significant spread of SARS-CoV-2 which has overwhelmed
| hospitals. This in turn could have been prevented with
| lockdown(s). Right?
| rm445 wrote:
| The hospitals weren't (all) overwhelmed but were focused
| on managing the pandemic. Fewer appointments scheduled,
| procedures pushed back, no weekend services, that kind of
| thing. Perhaps an element of patients huddling at home
| and being less proactive in their own care.
|
| (Btw I'm not in healthcare. If anything my point is a
| logical alternative to the idea that overwhelmed covid
| wards could be the only thing affecting other services.
| But it's my impression of how things seemed to be, at
| least in the UK).
| rednerrus wrote:
| This comment section is a pretty strong argument that we are
| living in a post-truth future.
| lettergram wrote:
| I'm always fairly torn by these numbers (I've done a lot of
| research and tracked this[1]). There's a lot of confounding
| factors...
|
| The lockdowns increased the rate of suicides substantially.
| Largely suicides occur in people 65+, so a 100% increase in
| suicides would be some 150k deaths in the same age range as
| COVID.
|
| https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml
|
| Murder is also up some 50% and there were riots...
|
| Not disputing the excess deaths, just the causes aren't all that
| clear imo.
|
| [1] https://github.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis
| altacc wrote:
| The problem with "what about other increases in cause of
| deaths" is that you have to find a LOT of these reasons to even
| begin to compete with Covid-19 as a cause. When the increase in
| deaths is in the hundreds of thousands it is not adequate to
| point to something that potentially increased the deaths by
| hundreds or thousands and say that's enough evidence that the
| Covid numbers are grossly inflated. You need to provide
| evidence backing your claims for hundreds of thousands of
| deaths.
|
| Looking at the NIMH link you sent, I'm not sure where you're
| pulling that data from as 65+ isn't in the chart but some quick
| maths shows it would be about 9k people, so your assumed 100%
| increase would only lead to an extra 9k deaths from suicide in
| that group. The total for all age groups is 48k, so you'd need
| a 200% increase in all ages to get to that number.
|
| However, if we look at this, based on CDC data:
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778234 "From
| 2019 to 2020 ... suicide deaths declined by 5.6%." So you
| really need some strong evidence to back that suicides went up
| at all, let alone by 100%. It would also be very difficult to
| blame false attribution of suicide deaths to Covid-19 without
| equally strong evidence as there are usually pretty strong
| clues to the cause of death in suicides.
|
| The riots & associated high levels of aggression between social
| groups did not lead to a high number of deaths, definitely not
| enough to have a significant impact on total deaths, unless you
| have a good source for that claim.
|
| Murder rates seem to be up by about 36.7% across the US, but
| even then that increase is not enough to cause a significant
| bump in the numbers. There are normally about 870 deaths per
| 100,000 in the US due to all causes. Murder is about 5 in
| 100,000 (2018) so a 36.7% increase in that 5 gives 7, an
| increase in 2 per 100,000. That's an increase in the death rate
| of 0.23% due to increased murder. The CDC number I just checked
| is a 15.9% increase in deaths for 2020.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise...
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Your suicide statistic link doesn't have any data for the 2020
| year. And in my region suicides are down.
| https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/suicide-deaths-in-alberta-in-2020...
| shlant wrote:
| > The lockdowns increased the rate of suicides substantially
|
| why did you link to stats that only go to 2018?
|
| Suicides are down in 2020[1]
|
| 1. https://www.axios.com/suicide-decreased-in-2020-pandemmic-
| me...
| hn8788 wrote:
| Succesful suicides were down, but attempted suicides and
| overdoses were both much higher.
| gloryless wrote:
| This is nonsense. Suicides are down in 2020. It was a virus
| that killed people, the deaths were reported. Conspiracy
| theories are so exhausting
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| You say that with such certainy but the official number I've
| seen is a 10% increase. Also there is no measure for misery.
| shlant wrote:
| it would be helpful if you provided your sources
| lettergram wrote:
| The government has an incentive to report deaths as covid
| deaths. I'm simply stating it is not 100% clear what causes
| the deaths. The reason I suspect a higher suicide rate than
| otherwise _estimated_ is that the number of people with
| suicidal ideation has doubled.
|
| NOTE, I was also considering unintentional suicide
| (overdoses), which were dramatically up (38%).
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-
| death...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm
|
| https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/16/suicides-fell-
| in-2020-w...
| klahnakoski2 wrote:
| I see the 2020 mortality no different from other years:
| https://github.com/klahnakoski/mo-statcan#example---covid-19
| SpaceNinja wrote:
| The true covid death rate has been tricky to record in the UK, a
| positive test result within 28 days prior to death is recorded as
| a covid death, even if the death was caused by something else. We
| obviously don't know enough about COVID to know if it is
| contributing all the COVID registered deaths.
| JoeData wrote:
| The UK government publishes other ways to measure COVID deaths.
| the "positive test result with 28 days of death" results in the
| lowest count:
|
| Deaths in England and Wales in 2020 80,830
| Covid-19 as underlying cause of death or contributing factor
| 77,161 Increase in deaths (from all causes) from 2019 to 2020
| 73,444 Covid-19 as underlying cause of death on death
| certificate 70,013 Any death within 28 days of a
| positive Covid test
|
| Sources:
|
| https://fullfact.org/health/liam-fox-death-figures/
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/uk-official-co...
|
| https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| For international data, The Economist has the charts of excess
| mortality through 2020 for different countries:
|
| https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
| StavrosK wrote:
| That's a great visualization, thank you.
| kijin wrote:
| The negative number of excess deaths in some Asian countries
| like Japan, Korea and Taiwan is interesting. I wonder if it's
| because of the very high rate of mask wearing that these
| countries have been known for since early in the pandemic. This
| might have helped reduce the number of deaths from influenza
| and other respiratory infections so much that they outweigh the
| deaths from Covid.
| euroclydon wrote:
| In a year when Geico is giving their customers an across the
| board rebate on their premiums because driving miles are down so
| much, and driving accidents are the third or fourth leading cause
| of death in a non-pandemic year, I think we'd need to adjust
| downward the baseline. I wonder if these calculations take that
| into account?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Driving deaths are up:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974006735/tragic-driving-was-...
| euroclydon wrote:
| Thanks! That's wild!
| tiahura wrote:
| 'Tragic': Driving Was Down In 2020, But Traffic Fatality Rates
| Surged
|
| The National Safety Council (NSC) says deaths from motor
| vehicles rose 8% last year, with as many as 42,060 people dying
| in vehicle crashes.
|
| When comparing traffic deaths to the number of miles driven,
| the rate of fatalities rose 24% -- the highest spike in nearly
| a century, NSC says.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974006735/tragic-driving-was-...
| petertodd wrote:
| Remember that kinetic energy is proportional to velocity
| squared. So if less traffic is letting people drive faster,
| that could easily result in more deaths. I live in a city,
| and average speeds certainly seem faster than pre-pandemic
| traffic.
|
| Also, working at home may be allowing people to avoid traffic
| because hours are less strict. Again, that would allow
| traffic to move faster on average.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Enforcement went down to basically zero in my area. Now that
| the officers are vaccinated, they have started aggressively
| enforcing moving violations.
| [deleted]
| fortran77 wrote:
| It's interesting that in "normal" years, deaths go up in the
| middle of the winter and down in the middle of the summer.
| xxxxxxx12 wrote:
| Look up Hope-Simpson's work on influenza epidemiology, he
| observed seasonality like you say, but there are certain
| regimes that correspond to latitudes.
| [deleted]
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