[HN Gopher] The Economist tracks excess deaths
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The Economist tracks excess deaths
Author : Zigurd
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-12-27 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| magneticnorth wrote:
| I was surprised how many eastern European countries seem to top
| the list of excess death counts per capita, and have much higher
| excess deaths than official covid deaths.
|
| Does anyone know what the causes are? Are they dealing with much
| worse epidemics of addiction, alcohol, poverty, or something else
| than most of the world? Or did they have an older population? Or
| is it mostly from covid but under-reported, and somehow eastern
| Europe was especially hard-hit?
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I believe many of them are directly correlated because of
| influence of Russia. Those countries have more anti-vaxxers
| too.
|
| Some of them have bought the Russian vaccine and well... That's
| not working out for them.
|
| Similar to other countries that bought the Russian vaccine fyi.
| So you could check out Brasil and Mexico as a reference for my
| statement.
|
| I can't think of another cause/correlation.
| usaphp wrote:
| it's not like Pfizer or Moderna vaccine are working any
| better, we are still under lockdown, even tho 80% of
| population is vaccinated
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Yes it does. Just check excess deaths, that's what this
| article is about...
|
| They both already reduce severe illness.
|
| Additionally, it's not just about the efficiency of the
| vaccine. But the Russian vaccine is overpromised and
| underdelivered regarding to sales/deliveries to the
| countries that agreed to buy it.
|
| They are severely failing to deliver the 2nd dose as
| promised. Let's not go into detail about the corruption
| associated with it too...
|
| Plenty of resources to verify if you did a little bit of
| effort ;)
|
| https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/09/a-royal-mark-up-
| ho...
|
| https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/15/what-went-wrong-
| wit...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/world-news-mexico-russia-
| europe-c...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58003893.amp
|
| https://www.news18.com/amp/news/india/what-went-wrong-
| with-f...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-
| pharmaceuticals/...
|
| https://amp.theguardian.com/global-
| development/2021/jul/22/a...
|
| They didn't even do phase 3 trials and refuse to give
| sufficient information to the WHO. That's what you get for
| rushing things just to call dibs.
|
| What a mess.
| usaphp wrote:
| Not sure where do you see that, looking at United States
| from the chart: - October 2020, +15%
| deviation from expected deaths - October 2021, +25%
| deviation from expected deaths
| adventured wrote:
| The US is under-vaccinated versus its affluent peers and
| is also just about the heavy weight champ of the world
| (ie loaded with comorbidities that amp up the Covid
| mortality rate, such as diabetes). What's confusing about
| it?
| jjeaff wrote:
| Ya, and it just so happens that there is a big overlap in
| obesity, low income, and those that won't get vaccinated.
| Which has created a double whammy when it comes to US
| deaths.
| tiahura wrote:
| Vaccines made a negligible difference to the case
| fatality rate.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Vaccines made a negligible difference to the case
| fatality rate.
|
| Source?
|
| Because everywhere I look, vaccines seem to reduce the
| risk of hospitalization and death.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| No state or city in the US has any "lockdowns" in effect.
| Unless you've been living in complete isolation off the
| grid and re-emerged today, your comment is a classic
| internet strawman.
| baxtr wrote:
| Where are you located?
| genewitch wrote:
| Off the cuff, The Netherlands is currently in lockdown,
| and I can't remember the other ones.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| It's a partial lockdown in the Netherlands, mostly
| because countries/they were afraid if the infection rate
| of omicron.
|
| I suppose they will lift it soon now more studies are
| getting released about it's severity.
|
| A new variant doesn't mean that there's no danger because
| you are vaccinated. Studies need to happen for
| efficiency/severity.
|
| Edit for below ( can't reply, sorry):
|
| New cases != Severe cases
| the-dude wrote:
| Not mentioned : infections were at record highs just
| before this lockdown. With a vacrate of 80%+ ( ~ 83%
| couple of weeks ago ).
|
| > New cases != Severe cases
|
| ICU were nearing capacity, there was talk about black
| scenario's.
|
| If you can't reply, click the timestamp of the post
| pashamur wrote:
| Most likely under-reported COVID deaths. Having looked at the
| Russia data at least, many deaths (earlier on) were marked with
| "pneumonia" and they didn't even bother testing for COVID.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I have found that pneumonia is apparently broadly
| misunderstood by a lot of people. (It's an inflammatory issue
| in the lungs, usually caused by a viral or bacterial
| infection. It is not it's own type of virus.)
|
| We had some family friends that refused to get vaccinated.
| The wife contracted COVID and then died a few weeks later.
| When we asked the husband if he was going to get vaccinated,
| he said no. Because COVID is no worse than a cold. He
| explained that his wife died from pneumonia, not COVID.
|
| I have seen this repeated a lot when it comes to cause of
| death. Reports can show things like cardio pulmonary arrest
| (which means your heart and lungs stopped) complicated by
| COVID and heart disease or whatever. And then people go away
| saying well, COVID didn't kill them, it was a cardio
| pulmonary arrest ... and they had heart disease...
|
| It's amazing how much you can convince yourself of if you
| want to.
| josephg wrote:
| Yep. It's like saying someone who's been shot didn't die
| from a bullet. They died of internal hemorrhaging. It's a
| distinction without a difference.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Russia appears to be in deep denial. Some of that influence
| will spread through the ethnic Russian population in other
| Eastern European countries.
|
| Follow the link in the article to the overall likely
| undercount, based on excess deaths. It is pretty horrifying.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Right-authoritarian governments with populists strongman
| executives like Russia and Hungary are completely unequipped to
| handle anything like this disease.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Tangential to that topic, one thing that puzzles me. When I look
| at the UK vaccination report [1]:
|
| Table p31 shows the % of vaccinated among covid cases for the
| month of November. If you look at the population >18yo (had
| access to a vaccine), you get about 80% of new covid cases are
| vaccinated, which roughly makes sense, the vaccine doesn't really
| stop the infections, it mostly stops hospitalisations and deaths.
|
| But p33 and 34 you have the same breakdown for covid deaths, and
| here again vaccinated are about 80% of covid deaths, I expected
| unvaccinated to be a much larger fraction. We know the vaccine
| has an impact on deaths as clearly the overall number of covid
| deaths are a fraction of what they were last year [2] for a
| similar number of covid cases.
|
| The way I interpreted it is that the UK was probably capturing as
| covid deaths, elderly people who simply tested positive but died
| of some other reasons. But the economist numbers seem to show
| that excess deaths in the UK are in line with reported covid
| deaths. So I am not sure how to interpret the fact that 80% of
| deaths are vaccinated.
|
| The French numbers are more in line with what I would expect [3].
| The bar chart page 4 shows that 90% of the population is
| vaccinated, 85% of covid tests, 75% of positive covid tests, and
| only 60% of deaths are vaccinated, hence significant reduction.
|
| [1]
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
|
| [2] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths
|
| [3] https://drees.solidarites-
| sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/...
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| eltados wrote:
| From reading the report I think this is addressed p36 that
| might be because the vaccinated and unvaccinated population are
| different in other ways :
|
| > 1Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated
| populations should not be used to estimate vaccine
| effectiveness against COVID-19 infection. Vaccine effectiveness
| has been formally estimated from a number of different sources
| and is summarised on pages 5 to 11 in this report. The case
| rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are
| unadjusted crude rates that do not take into account underlying
| statistical biases in the data and there are likely to be
| systematic differences between these 2 population groups. For
| example: * people who are fully vaccinated may be more health
| conscious and therefore more likely to get tested for COVID-19
| and so more likely to be identified as a case (based on the
| data provided by the NHS Test and Trace) * many of those who
| were at the head of the queue for vaccination are those at
| higher risk from COVID-19 due to their age, their occupation,
| their family circumstances or because of underlying health
| issues * people who are fully vaccinated and people who are
| unvaccinated may behave differently, particularly with regard
| to social interactions and therefore may have differing levels
| of exposure to COVID-19 * people who have never been vaccinated
| are more likely to have caught COVID-19 in the weeks or months
| before the period of the cases covered in the report. This
| gives them some natural immunity to the virus for a few months
| which may have contributed to a lower case rate in the past few
| weeks
| KoftaBob wrote:
| How interesting that they don't include China in this list, as
| they are notorious for outright lying about basically every
| metric ever.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It is very interesting. There is a link in this article to
| another article that contains a pretty shocking global estimate
| based on excess deaths: https://www.economist.com/graphic-
| detail/coronavirus-excess-...
|
| It is more than 4X the official count. Some of that is probably
| in places with no official numbers. But one wonders how many
| are in China.
| [deleted]
| usaphp wrote:
| I don't quite understand, how come "expected deaths" are almost
| the same across the whole year. Winter flu season is known to
| have a much higher death toll than summers, I remember reading
| news of triage tents were set up during winter flu season in new
| york.
| bena wrote:
| These are tracking deviations from the norm. It's not that
| expected deaths are flat across the year, it's that they're
| just showing the difference. If we expect 50 and see 55, we
| have 5 excess deaths. If we expect 10 and see 15, we still only
| have 5 excess.
| usaphp wrote:
| No, chart has "Total Deaths" and "Expected Deaths" numbers
| per month. Just hover over the tiles and you will see these
| values.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| How much should it swing? ~+20% for US from Jan to June
| 2020 for example, is that not the difference you're looking
| for?
| woodruffw wrote:
| They aren't. The article's data shows a clear trend towards
| higher excess deaths in winter months in the United States.
|
| But even if the trend wasn't present: a large portion of the
| US's population lives in regions without 4 "true" seasons or
| where the flu season is dramatically shorter than in the
| Northeast. Analyzing individual climate regions within the US
| and accounting for varying degrees of public health compliance
| would provide a clearer picture.
| kurthr wrote:
| They have subtracted out the average number of deaths on each
| day from 2015-2019 so that it is flat. If you roll over the
| orange/red rectangles for each country you can see expected
| deaths, excess deaths, and % of excess deaths. Long term the US
| is seeing about 10% excess deaths (mostly in the 40% of
| unvaccinated) since COVID was introduced.
|
| That is why you can also see a negative number of excess deaths
| lower down the page.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's not almost the same though. It's showing a 20% increase
| during flu season.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| This was the number thay should have been used all along in the
| western world. The excessive deaths were very high in Q2/Q3 2020
| that warranted stringent lockdown. However starting Q4, the
| excess deaths have started to reduce and has significantly
| minimzed across the world in second half of 2021. Its most likely
| because of vaccines but the acquired immunity due to infections
| are also likely a cause. There is no need for any restrictions
| from a public health standpoint as excess deaths are now
| significantly lower likely with the expected error.
|
| EDIT: the post was primarily about western countries with
| reliable data and vaccination records
| jeffbee wrote:
| Are you referring to any particular jurisdiction? In the U.S.A.
| for example Q3 2021 excess deaths were as bad as Q2-Q3 2020.
| 40% excess deaths is something like 3000 people every day.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| Most countries in western Europe and many states seem to have
| less than 10 excess deaths in 2021. There is also likely to
| be an error that is not quoted here. Typically such
| comparisons must be made on 10 year average data and the
| changes within those years will provide the error which is
| likely to have variation of 5-10
| axutio wrote:
| One interesting contributor to is a spike in deaths attributed to
| Alzheimer's and other dementias - there were about 42,000 more of
| these deaths in the U.S. in 2020 than would be expected from the
| previous five-year average [1,2]. These deaths are primarily
| attributed to the negative effects of lockdowns on dementia
| patients - loss of access to family and caregivers as well as
| social isolation generally have a substantially more negative
| impact on this subset of individuals than on the general
| population.
|
| Using a total 2020 U.S. excess death count of ~415,000 [3], this
| means that just above one in ten excess deaths can be attributed
| to the negative effects of lockdown rather than to COVID itself.
| On the other hand, the alternative would likely have been letting
| COVID ravage senior care facilities, which could have been much
| worse.
|
| [1] https://www.aarp.org/health/brain-
| health/info-2021/alzheimer...
|
| [2] https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-
| fig...
|
| [3] https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101386118
| teruakohatu wrote:
| In NZ we just about eliminated flu (and COVID until recently),
| with resulted in the negative excess deaths reported in the
| article.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's slightly jarring to see a negative number, and even more
| jarring how much airtime those championing unlocking, unmasking
| and being antivax are getting here.
| disambiguation wrote:
| NZ is an island at the edge of the world, and their
| population is a fraction of most major cities, let alone
| states, provinces, and countries. Policies that work for them
| might not work for others.
|
| Further, its a bit early to call victory if perpetual
| lockdowns are the only thing holding back the disease. What
| happens once they open the flood gates and covid is still
| active?
| throwaway788 wrote:
| The 95%+ vaccinations rates (12+) in the three major cities
| and 92% overall (also 12+) would somewhat help. Along with
| the fact community spread is already present and has been
| for a few months, the measures in place have kept
| uncontrolled spread in check.
|
| NZ keeps new introductions to a minimum to ensure that
| contact tracing is not overwhelmed and this adds to the
| effective decrease in reproduction offered by vaccinations.
| New Zealand being a season behind also allows the Northern
| hemisphere to burn through a wave and NZ can then decide
| when to lift international arrival restrictions to a time
| when the incidence levels are low from common arrival
| locales (UK, US etc).
| umvi wrote:
| > and even more jarring how much airtime those championing
| unlocking, unmasking and being antivax are getting here
|
| Not everyone agrees "excess deaths" is the ultimate variable
| society should optimize for at the expense of all other
| variables.
| meepmorp wrote:
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Wearing a mask and getting a vaccine are not even
| tradeoffs. The choice is between being willfully obstinate
| and participating in measures that save lives.
| lostlogin wrote:
| If election results are to be believed, New Zealanders like
| the results achieved.
| [deleted]
| aronpye wrote:
| darthrupert wrote:
| Jesus, honestly? This isn't even funny as a joke. You
| need to be very ashamed for typing that.
| aronpye wrote:
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Legality doesn't imply morality" is a trite observation
| that doesn't on its own justify a comment, much less a
| tasteless comparison between the Holocaust and a global
| medical emergency.
| aronpye wrote:
| woodruffw wrote:
| As we've amply experienced over the last 18 months, a
| disease can simultaneously be mild (in perceived short-
| term illness) for most people _and_ kill and incapacitate
| millions of people. These are not disjoint conditions for
| a global pandemic, and mild illness in many is not
| _itself_ a sufficient condition for ignoring the harm
| done to millions.
|
| And, to be blunt: "I didn't say the word 'Holocaust' when
| I compared COVID to the efficient cause of the Holocaust"
| is not a plausible excuse.
| aronpye wrote:
| woodruffw wrote:
| You replied to the wrong comment. You're also going to
| need to provide a citation that demonstrates that any
| harms from quarantines and lockdowns exceed the millions
| of additional deaths that they've likely prevented.
|
| Most reasonable people understand the difference between
| "sustainability" as a systemic goal (e.g., ensuring that
| a pension plan is self-supporting and disbursible in
| perpetuity) and reactive policymaking (e.g., asking
| people to self-isolate and wear masks until our best
| science and net outcomes support a change). The latter
| doesn't need to be "sustainable," because it isn't
| supposed to be a permanent fixture. It's something we do
| to "stop the bleeding."
| aronpye wrote:
| > You're also going to need to provide a citation that
| demonstrates that any harms from quarantines and
| lockdowns exceed the millions of additional deaths that
| they've likely prevented.
|
| The harm of locking people down and preventing people
| from working is self-evident. Even if it was effective in
| dealing with COVID, clearly it isn't as it is still here,
| it still violates individual sovereignty and the
| principle of consent of the governed.
|
| Also 2 years on, these policies are no longer a reaction
| or short-term action. So the issue of sustainability is
| relevant. We're in a situation where we either accept
| cyclical oppressive lockdowns, or just learn to live with
| it. Vaccination doesn't really come into it as we don't
| have a vaccine, just temporary protections which aren't
| even fully effective.
| aronpye wrote:
| sofixa wrote:
| Godwin's law in action.
|
| FYI, the Nazis didn't win in 1933, they got in power via
| a stalemate in parliament, connections, people who
| thought they can control them, hope and a bad
| constitution.
|
| And comparing Nazi Germany to New Zealand is
| _outrageously_ ridiculous.
| aronpye wrote:
| Wasn't a stalemate at all, the turn out was 88.7% and the
| Nazis won by over 10 million votes
| sofixa wrote:
| And they only had 33% of the votes. They were finest, but
| in a parliamentary democracy ( which Weimar Germany was
| to an extent), you need a majority. Because no credible
| coalition could be forms, it was a stalemate.
| aronpye wrote:
| sofixa wrote:
| Because you are, and no offense intended, a very special
| person if you think that being sent to a concentration
| camp to work in terrible conditions until you die of
| starvation, or being sent to a gas chamber, is _in any
| way comparable_ to having a quarantine, lockdown, having
| to wear a mask or take a vaccine.
| aronpye wrote:
| usaphp wrote:
| If you ban people from driving cars and make them walk
| everywhere - you could also eliminate car accident deaths,
| it's not sustainable though...
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I mean maybe you're onto something and don't realize it.
|
| Banning cars would be more akin to totally locking down
| rather than incentivizing vaccination, masks and other
| public health measures that aren't as invasive. Maybe,
| similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is
| a good thing.
| aronpye wrote:
| So basically destroy rural populations which are also the
| source of all our food? Unless I'm mistaken in that
| cities are actually the source of all life sustaining
| industries.
| pm90 wrote:
| Enough with the hyperbole. Discouraging car use won't
| destroy rural populations; it would improve the QoL of
| urban ones.
| aronpye wrote:
| You can't survive in a rural area without a car
| pm90 wrote:
| The parent said:
|
| > Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging
| walking is a good thing.
|
| That policy won't take cars away from the rural populace.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Is discouraging synonymous with destroying in your
| lexicon?
|
| Most people don't live in rural areas and most deadly
| accidents don't occur in rural areas either. Discouraging
| car use in cities has next to no effect on rural
| populations.
| quadrangle wrote:
| What do you mean not sustainable???
|
| If we limited and regulated car use pretty extremely and
| stuck with trains, bikes, and walking, we would be half the
| way there toward a completely sustainable society.
|
| Cars are a major source of the least sustainable aspects of
| humanity on earth today.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Most of America needs cars. Society would collapse if you
| just "limited and regulated car use pretty extremely". If
| there's a solution to that, then let's just do that, and
| skip the authoritarian part afterward.
| quadrangle wrote:
| You mean most of America is _designed_ to be car-
| dependent. So, yes, in the current design it needs cars.
|
| I wasn't saying we could just suddenly ban them tomorrow.
|
| The solution is hard because of how bad we've gotten
| things. But the solution has little authoritarian about
| it. We just change our priorities for the design of
| public infrastructure. We don't even need to actually ban
| cars at all. Make it practical and _enjoyable_ to do
| everything by train, bike, or walking whenever possible
| and most people will happily do it. The result is a huge
| decrease in deaths both through healthier living and less
| cars.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/videos describes
| things pretty well and accessibly. In short: the
| Netherlands was on track 40 years ago to be nearly as
| car-dependent as the U.S. and yet protesters blocked some
| highway proposals and the country went in a different
| direction. Today, it's the best designed place in the
| world, and its even better for drivers too.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > But the solution has little authoritarian about it.
|
| The authoritarian part was limiting/regulating car use
| pretty extremely. I'm perfectly fine with making
| alternatives to cars more practical, just not with making
| cars less practical.
| pm90 wrote:
| Nothing authoritarian about that if the majority of the
| population agrees that's the best way to move forward.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I can't wait to bike 12 miles to the nearest town in -20
| degree weather to catch a train that doesn't exist so I
| can get groceries.
|
| You might as well say, "Well, if we just invented
| teleporters..."
| pm90 wrote:
| I would suggest you try and see how countries that aren't
| as car centered as the US operate. Trains, buses, trams
| all can make it very easy to lose the car addiction. And
| it can be done today, no teleportation required.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Those countries are usually heavily urbanized, though so
| is the USA. Those not living in urban areas generally
| have more dependence on cars (eg in Australia or New
| Zealand).
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Then you would know what it looks like to live in the
| Alaskan bush (not many roads, so cars aren't that
| useful).
|
| Of course, where Alaska does have roads, they have a
| super high death rate. An uncle who I never knew being
| one of them (though in this case, and as usual, alcohol
| was also involved).
| Zigurd wrote:
| A larger percentage of the population lived in rural
| areas before mass production of cars.
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| It's pretty sustainable on cities witth proper public
| transport. And I say that living on a city with pretty much
| subpar public transport, but on which I manage to go
| everyday just walking, save for a few trips from time to
| time where I definitely need to move by car (it's a bit
| under once per week, think 30-40 times a year).
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| If you banned cigarettes, you'd save many lives, and it's
| also pretty much sustainable for everybody except the
| tobacco industry.
|
| I'm not sure which country (NZ?) implemented a law, that
| everyone born after some year, will not be able to buy
| cigarettes anymore, so old smokers can still buy them, but
| kids just turning 18 can't anymore, and never will be able
| to.
| lostlogin wrote:
| ... that's us here in New Zealand too.
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Yes, NZ is in the process of changing the tobacco retail
| laws to slowly increment the age at which is it legal to
| sell a buyer any tobacco product.
|
| The net effect if which is that it will never be legal to
| sell someone born after ~2006 any tobacco products.
| usaphp wrote:
| Banning cigarettes is not something that is comparable to
| banning people from traveling and gathering with their
| friends...
| sofixa wrote:
| People can travel without cars just fine. Feet, bicycles,
| public transit, there are tons of options for every
| scenario.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Not in most places. If you don't live in a big city, it's
| probably too far to walk or bike, and there is no public
| transit.
| sofixa wrote:
| That only goes for countries that consider public transit
| to be for the poor or extremely dense urban environments
| where cars couldn't work. It's far from the case
| worldwide. ( Of course I'm not talking about small
| villages with a population in the hundreds, but towns in
| the thousands should have public transit connections).
| josephcsible wrote:
| It goes for most of the US, and the US is too big to just
| ignore.
| lostlogin wrote:
| We can travel and see friends. It's harder, but we can.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But it saves lives.
|
| In my country (Slovenia), cigarettes kill more people
| than covid did (in the last 2 years)... we had huge
| lockdowns, and pointed the fingers at anyone who ignored
| some of the rules (even though our constitutional court
| ruled afterwards that most of the lockdowns were
| unconstitutional), but just banning smoking would save
| more lives than covid took away.
| AQuantized wrote:
| Uncertain if that's true. Prohibition of substances
| hasn't worked for alcohol or illicit drugs in general.
| Unlikely to work for tobacco specifically, especially
| given how easy it is to grow.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| How long do you want the country to isolate itself from the
| rest of the world? Your view of managing COVID seems
| extremely conservative.
| space_rock wrote:
| Well it resulted in one of the lowest restrictions on
| people in any country besides international travel. Giving
| people freedom to meet people and work is good
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| We have strong restrictions relative to our COVID cases.
| Majority of the country has practically no cases, yet
| they are at the middle alert level rather than the lowest
| one.
|
| Auckland previously had a very strict lockdown based on
| very low case numbers relative to the rest of the world.
|
| Of course there is the argument that if we didn't have
| such restrictions we wouldn't have dealt with COVID as
| well, but even taking that into account I think the
| government has been very conservative.
| space_rock wrote:
| One perspective to consider is the length of these
| restrictions. Other countries have had years of lockdowns
| and restrictions. New Zealanders were going to concerts
| while the world was in lockdown. Even if New Zealand's
| restrictions have been strict the restrictions have been
| intermittent and only in some regions
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| This is true, but again I would compare restrictions
| relative to the severity of COVID outbreak.
|
| Other countries have much longer/stronger restrictions,
| but they have also had much more severe outbreaks.
|
| The government seems to be very slow to come around on
| changing their COVID strategy, especially given that the
| stakes are pretty low in NZ relative to other countries.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I can travel if I want. I don't want to.
|
| Others not coming in needs to change at some point, but I
| don't see that it is serving us badly.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| We can't really travel because getting a quarantine spot
| for your return is very difficult.
|
| Opening up the floodgates seems unwise, but our
| restrictions seem quite strict given how few cases we
| have had.
| Zigurd wrote:
| If anything, the story will be that those who have the choice
| are happy not being in the office all the time, and that road
| deaths and deaths from other infectious diseases will be down
| due to anti-COVID measures.
| StephenJGL wrote:
| It might be even more jarring when a population two years
| from now is hit by a flu they didn't get almost any exposure
| to this year. There is a complexity here that is hard to wrap
| your head fully around.
| qybaz wrote:
| Imagine the amount of disease, death and suffering we could
| prevent if we lived in pods like in The Matrix.
| usaphp wrote:
| Welcome to Metaverse
| aronpye wrote:
| Nationwide mandates are oppressive and don't allow people
| freedom to choose their own level of acceptable risk.
| Regional level variations are probably more tolerable
| allowing people to choose what type of society they want to
| live in.
| sofixa wrote:
| I think you might be missing the fact that it's an airborne
| virus at pandemic levels. Regional restrictions can't work
| because people can just move and spread it everywhere,
| including places where local inhabitants don't want to
| "accept the risk".
| aronpye wrote:
| Why would anyone who wants freedom move into an area
| where people are forced into isolation?
| sofixa wrote:
| Because their family is there, or because there's better
| work there, or they like the weather better or any number
| of reasons.
| prawn wrote:
| They don't need to move there to spread risk, just move
| through, and as such tourism is one factor.
|
| Early in the pandemic, I had an assignment to photograph
| in a particular area that was actively dissuading
| visitors, had signage up as such, etc. I had to stop to
| refuel the car, but that was the extent of my contact
| with people and interiors otherwise.
|
| I live in a state that had closed borders for most of the
| pandemic until recently (when our adult vax rate hit
| 80%). They're now open and cases are predictably rising.
| Opening the borders seems to have had a political
| backlash because while families can move in/out of the
| state, the rising cases has brought about business
| lockdowns but without the support/stimulus from last
| year.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >In NZ we just about eliminated flu (and COVID until recently)
|
| along with your civil liberties
| throwaway788 wrote:
| Over the entire pandemic to date, NZ has had lower levels of
| restrictions than all other OECD countries. For the majority
| of the pandemic there were zero restrictions and businesses
| and people were operating as normal.
|
| NZ had a election mid-way through the pandemic and
| overwhelmingly re-elected the current government based on the
| approach being taken. Under the MMP system the current single
| party government is unique (governments are normally
| coalitions of multiple parties - like Germany).
|
| These talking points from right-wing media about Australia
| and NZ suffering and having civil liberties destroyed is so
| far from the truth that when seeing news items covering it
| from the USA, it is so absurd to be comical.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > along with your civil liberties
|
| This is untrue, and part of a dangerous narrative that puts
| the wants of individuals as more important than the needs of
| a society.
| gwright wrote:
| > wants of individuals as more important than the needs of
| a society
|
| You're just introducing your own dangerous narrative into
| the conversation.
|
| Making individuals subservient to the "needs of society"
| and disregarding individual rights has been the source of
| much misery and death.
|
| A balance is needed between individual rights and
| government power.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Making individuals subservient to the "needs of
| society" and disregarding individual rights has been the
| source of much misery and death.
|
| Same could be said about disregarding societal needs in
| favour of individual rights.
|
| But the main issue here is that there hasn't been any
| regression in individual rights in New Zealand, or
| Australia, for that matter. We are talking about people
| who couldn't temporarily go outside to prevent the spread
| of a global pandemic. It just seems that the necessary
| trumps the individual accommodations in this case.
| claytongulick wrote:
| > part of a dangerous narrative that puts the wants of
| individuals as more important than the needs of a society.
|
| This is part of a dangerous narrative that grants ownership
| of self to the state, rather than the individual.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Right, because killing your neighbour is worth being able
| to go to your favourite restaurant.
|
| I mean, if we are to accept the _absurd_ take that civil
| liberties were under attack because of the response to a
| global pandemic, something that didn 't happened, then
| it's equally possible that the people against lockdowns
| and other measures are just whining, because they are
| slightly inconvenienced by rules that may prevent their
| fellow humans' deaths.
| space_rock wrote:
| Actually the domestic restrictions on people in NZ have been
| much less than other countries. They got negative press for
| proactive restrictions on an exponentially spreading virus.
| Lockdown after 1 detection
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16406406...
|
| https://i.postimg.cc/QM0ckk2C/Screenshot-2021-12-27-163738.p...
| pelasaco wrote:
| how should i interpret this chart?
|
| - Australia and Germany did well, Peru not so much?
|
| - The Swedish COVID-19 Response wasn't a disaster[1]
|
| - Brazil didn't make so bad as widely reported by the media?
|
| References:
|
| [1]: https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Much of it is likely due to strength or weaknesses of various
| medical systems, as well as density/distribution of population.
| Remember this tracks deaths only, not case rates or
| hospitalization generally. I tend to think if you went into a
| hospital in Sweden, you got good care.
|
| The US did fairly well, but you also have to consider there are
| large areas that are very spread out geographically, large
| suburbs, etc.
|
| Seems like places that did the worst -- outside of the first
| wave when nobody was prepared -- are what you'd expect: places
| with poor, dense populations, and worse infrastructure.
| lettergram wrote:
| rectang wrote:
| Well, we mightn't have to resort to "excess death" statistics,
| were there not such aggressive campaigns to ensure that COVID
| deaths are not reported as such.
|
| But here we are, and now that we have imperfect statistics
| people can discount them as useless.
| lostlogin wrote:
| New Zealand had harsher lockdowns than many places, and our
| abysmal suicide rate decreased.
|
| The excess deaths is a negative, so policies saved lives.
| Possibly the crudest measure of good governance that exists.
|
| https://coronialservices.justice.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Chie...
|
| https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/04/coronavir...
| dehrmann wrote:
| Don't forget people that delayed treatment for things like
| semi-urgent heart issues out of fear of covid (or who couldn't
| get treatment because hospitals were filled with covid
| patients).
|
| > Also in terms of human years lost, the lockdowns are far more
| damaging at this point
|
| It's hard to calculate because of long covid, but there is a
| point where in aggregate, restrictions have cost more time than
| lost time from premature deaths.
| yosito wrote:
| > I'll be honest, having spent time reviewing the data for the
| better part of two years
|
| I'll be honest, having spent time reviewing your comment for
| the better part of two minutes, I'm very skeptical of your
| conclusions. You seem to have started with the assumptions that
| lockdowns are more damaging than COVID, and then cherry picked
| the data you've reviewed to fit that.
|
| My personal opinion is that lockdowns were a reasonable public
| health measure to deploy in 2020 when other public health
| measures were unavailable, and not enough was known about the
| risk and dynamics of the virus. The evidence of their
| effectiveness seems to be mixed. And (my personal opinion
| again), they aren't the right public health measure for
| 2021/2022. But to say lockdowns were "far more damaging" than
| COVID, or even came close to the direct harm from COVID simply
| isn't supported by the data.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It's not suicides: https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-
| pandemic-didnt-incre...
| lettergram wrote:
| I'll wait until the full report. Preliminary reports are
| often inaccurate.
|
| For what it's worth:
|
| > Emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts among
| girls between the ages of 12 and 17 increased by 26% during
| summer 2020 and by 50% during winter 2021, compared with the
| same periods in 2019, researchers from the U.S. Centers for
| Disease Control and Prevention found. However, ER trips
| related to suspected suicide attempts among boys that same
| age and young adults aged 18 to 25 remained stable during the
| pandemic.
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/health-
| news/articles/2021-06-11/...
| Zigurd wrote:
| Actually, you did not wait.
| [deleted]
| cortesoft wrote:
| So you say you will wait for the full report, because
| preliminary reports are often inaccurate, but then post a
| different preliminary report?
| Kranar wrote:
| So preliminary reports are inaccurate when they disagree
| with your viewpoint, but you had no problem claiming that
| actual suicides went up by 50% because over the course of 4
| months, a preliminary report showed that suspected suicide
| attempts among girls aged 12 to 17 increased by 50%...
| civilized wrote:
| I've never seen such extreme bias and extreme confidence
| in one place on HN.
| civilized wrote:
| You seem to be citing reports vaguely related to the
| possibility of increased suicides as "50% increase in
| suicide" while downplaying reports suggesting the opposite
| as unreliable. Is this extreme bias intentional or
| something you stand by?
| Animats wrote:
| Suicide _attempts_ by teenage girls are up. Successful
| suicides are not.[1] Actual suicide rate is about 5.5 per
| 100,000 population per year. US COVID deaths are around 250
| per 100,000 population per year. Overall US suicide rate is
| about 16 per 100,000 population per year.
|
| [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/health-
| news/articles/2021-06-11/...
| kozd wrote:
| Citation on suicide rates increasing 50%?
| lettergram wrote:
| > Emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts among
| girls between the ages of 12 and 17 increased by 26% during
| summer 2020 and by 50% during winter 2021, compared with the
| same periods in 2019, researchers from the U.S. Centers for
| Disease Control and Prevention found. However, ER trips
| related to suspected suicide attempts among boys that same
| age and young adults aged 18 to 25 remained stable during the
| pandemic.
|
| > The researchers noted a 31% increase in the proportion of
| mental health-related emergency department visits that
| occurred among teenagers in 2020, compared with the year
| before.
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/health-
| news/articles/2021-06-11/...
|
| Now, is it accurate? I'm not sure. Do those result in deaths?
| I'm also not sure, it might be reduced deaths due to more
| people home. I honestly have no idea.
| Kranar wrote:
| If you have no idea then don't make such a bold and
| unqualified claim.
| xenocratus wrote:
| .... So you just stated the highest number you saw, that
| applied to a small chunk of the population, for a limited
| timeframe, only for ER visits, as "the increase in
| suicides" (with no extra qualifiers)?
| woodruffw wrote:
| It's worth noting that both adolescent boys and girls make
| up a minority of overall suicide attempts (and actual
| deaths by suicide)[1]. Most actual suicides are by middle-
| aged men.
|
| Rises in adolescent harm are deeply concerning, and are
| undoubtedly partially attributable to the stresses of the
| last 18 months. But they aren't a statistical driver, and
| CDC statistics actually show a _decrease_ in the number of
| suicides in 2020[2]. And that 's probably for the reason
| you mentioned: more bodies under the same roof means that
| it's harder for people to take their lives.
|
| So to summarize: fewer people died by suicide in 2020 than
| did in 2019, and we can't extrapolate overall suicide
| trends from just adolescents.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_St
| ates#/...
|
| [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf
| 542458 wrote:
| > increased the rates of suicides (50%)
|
| Do you have a source for this? I just looked this up, and
| evidence for any sort of lockdown->suicide link seems very
| mixed (many places saw a decrease in suicides). The only places
| I'm seeing +50% is among specific populations in specific
| locations.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n834
| jeffbee wrote:
| There's no data for that because it's a completely fabricated
| lie. Suicides in 2020 were lower than in 2019 in the U.S.A.
|
| """The provisional number of suicides in 2020 (45,855) was 3%
| lower than in 2019 (47,511). The provisional age-adjusted
| suicide rate was also 3% lower in 2020 (13.5 per 100,000)
| than in 2019 (13.9)"""
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf
| Brakenshire wrote:
| I doubt most of the countries with much higher excess deaths
| had strict lockdowns which extended for long periods of time.
| Russia for example had one six week lockdown in March 2020 and
| then held the economy open for the next 18 months, but you can
| see through that period consistent high levels of excess
| mortality.
|
| This idea that lockdowns caused spikes in non-Covid deaths
| seems highly dubious to me. From what I've seen it's actually
| the other way round, for instance deaths from influenza, or
| from accidents, are reduced during those periods.
| ggrrhh_ta wrote:
| Almost every country keeps a record of the actual cause of
| death - the data for month X is usually delayed 2-3 months.
| Excess deaths are just a summary of the official statistics.
|
| The reason excess deaths are important because they are
| computed from the total number of deaths in a period (again, if
| you look at month X, the consolidated numbers are usually
| stable at month X + 2/3 months) which in turn just match with
| the number of death certificates issued by an enormous number
| small independent administrative authorities, so they cannot be
| easily manipulated by state actors, so they can shut up
| FUD'ers.
| lettergram wrote:
| I have a couple family members working / managing a hospital
| location for elective surgeries. On an anecdotal level they
| noticed it enough to make several pleas to the administration
| to open elective surgeries again.
|
| I think it's easy to misconstrue data and we should be
| cognizant of the fact there are multiple factors. I fully
| believe covid19 is contributing to deaths, but at the same
| time, it's by no means the only factor.
|
| Here's a simple exercise. It's believed COVID19 was on the
| loose in the US as early as 2019.
|
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/06/15/evidence-suggests-
| cov...
|
| Is it definitive no, but look at when the deaths start. It
| happens just after the lockdowns are announced -- April 4th
| is the first week with excess deaths.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
|
| That's two to four weeks after the lockdowns got into full
| swing. That also happens to coincide with stories of nursing
| homes being abandoned
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/09/california-.
| ..
| ggrrhh_ta wrote:
| You do know that there are more than 25 countries in Europe
| each implementing different lockdowns at different levels
| of severity at different stages of the COVID, with some
| countries practically doing no lockdown (like Sweden),
| whose statistics are collected and aggregated from many
| tens of thousands of administrative units. Also, deaths
| from COVID are at least 1 month delayed from infection. As
| every country wanted to avoid the political cost of an
| early lockdown, most were delayed until it was unavoidable,
| so, obviously, cases and deaths increased during the
| beginning of the lockdown periods.
|
| On top of that, lockdowns were not (except in some cities,
| at the very beginning) really strict. People could go out
| for grocery shopping, to walk out the dog, to go to and
| from the work place (even crossing country borders), and
| there were exceptions to people with certain medical
| conditions (disabled, kids with disabilities, etc.) and
| people accompanying them.
| csomar wrote:
| > I'll be honest, having spent time reviewing the data for the
| better part of two years ... I don't know if anything can be
| obtained from excess deaths.
|
| How come? Excess deaths doesn't point fingers to death from a
| coronavirus infection but rather to death from the COVID
| situation as a whole.
|
| The lock down also reduced deaths related to car and workplace
| accidents.
| [deleted]
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Everything negative about the Covid situation, apart from the
| virus itself, was self-inflicted.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Exactly. This map shows how countries managed the situation
| overall.
|
| Very good map.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| In 2019, the US had 47,511 deaths from suicide and 28,000 from
| flu. In 2020, the US had 377,883 deaths from COVID.
|
| You're looking at an order of magnitudes more deaths. And
| that's before you add in deaths from hospitals being overloaded
| from COVID.
|
| https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm
|
| According to the New York Times, we're up to 52,244,696
| reported cases and 814,970 deaths total so far.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
|
| In 2019: 2,854,838 people died in the United States.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
| lettergram wrote:
| I've already mentioned I don't buy those numbers explicitly.
| Deaths are almost always obese elderly with multiple
| conditions. Covid is definitely a factor, how much -- who
| knows!
|
| I was merely pointing out the fact the raw death figures are
| convoluted. It's hard to tell.
|
| Overdoses are up 50k
|
| > The new data documents that estimated overdose deaths from
| opioids increased to 75,673 in the 12-month period ending in
| April 2021, up from 56,064 the year before.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/.
| ..
|
| Car accidents are probably down, etc
|
| My point is a convoluted number doesn't tell you what to do.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Fatal overdoses are up 19k, not 50k[1]. And car fatalities
| are also up, not down, as discussed extensively in other
| threads.
|
| [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases
| /2021/...
| enchiridion wrote:
| I appreciate the sources, but the way you presented this is
| biased.
|
| To make it complete you should also post the total deaths and
| suicides for 2020.
| miketery wrote:
| Not a fair comparison. Years saved should be looked at.
| Elderly dying from covid is not the same as suicide at 25.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Indeed, it would be interesting to see an excess healthy
| years lost statistic.
| whatever1 wrote:
| deanCommie wrote:
| Do you believe - given all the available information and data -
| that the lockdowns have caused more harm than good in terms of
| total human life.
|
| That is - if we never had lockdowns, that the death toll from
| rampant COVID spreading through the population would have been
| lower than the hypothetical lockdown-triggered death toll
| (extra suicides, drug OD's, and elderly loneliness deaths).
| umvi wrote:
| Good luck coming up with a good way to measure "harm" caused
| by lockdowns.
|
| As a thought experiment:
|
| Say you have a button. If you push it then it saves the lives
| of 100 people that would have had a heart attack. However, it
| gives 1000 people random mental health problems from
| depression to anxiety to addictions. Do you push the button?
|
| Or say you have another button. If you push it then it saves
| the lives of 100 people that would have had a heart attack.
| However, it financially cripples 1000 people (causes people
| to lose jobs, businesses, etc.). Do you push the button?
|
| How to you balance "death" against other kinds of harms?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I spent most of 2020 working on reporting systems for this
| topic.
|
| Alot of other problems got worse because COVID as you had
| "supply chain" problems with everything from health
| practitioner availability to hospital availability to actual
| product availability.
|
| If you were in a place where the hospital is full and you have
| a stroke or a heart attack, there's an elevated risk that
| you're going to die in the ER. If you are stabilized in the ER
| and need ICU or other specialty care... there's an elevated
| risk that you're gonna die because you're stuck in a triage
| cart in the ER without adequate medical attention.
|
| It's a hard policy problem. Everything is fine, until it isn't.
| Hitting various resource constraints create cascading
| situations that kill people.
| setgree wrote:
| Code and data here
| https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-excess-deaths-track...
|
| Really nice to see a 'legacy' publication embrace open source
| alisonatwork wrote:
| It's not so unusual. See...
|
| https://github.com/abcnews
|
| https://github.com/BBC
|
| https://github.com/guardian
|
| https://github.com/nytimes
|
| And so on...
| jedberg wrote:
| What's interesting about this is that it doesn't look like it
| accounts for the expected reduction in deaths due to lockdown --
| a lot of people die in car accidents every year, and at least
| early on in the pandemic, miles traveled was reduced by nearly
| 90%, and car accidents went way down, and even further down when
| you consider it was impossible to drive home drunk from a bar.
|
| Which means the excess deaths would be even higher than shown
| here, at least early on.
|
| EDIT: Looks like I am wrong. Below someone links to a report
| showing that traffic fatalities actually went up because the
| people still on the road were more risky. I was basing my
| statement on estimates made in early 2020.
| StephenJGL wrote:
| It's possible that lockdown didn't reduce deaths. Excess deaths
| is a tricky stat because it contains so much underlying
| confounding inputs that all you know is that more people died
| than what you expected based on historical averages and that is
| --all-- you can get from it reliably.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Yeah I would look for "medical" deaths (as opposed to crime,
| suicides and accidents) as the metric to compare to covid
| deaths. Not sure if that data is widely available.
|
| The other thing to add to the mix of ups and downs is that
| the demographic of covid deaths is overly people with a short
| life expectancy so I would expect 2021 excess deaths to be
| reduced by the 2020 covid deaths that would have died in 2021
| otherwise.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I agree with this. I think that would be a measure of the
| direct impact and as long as it also factors in all types
| of medical deaths. I personally know people who died
| waiting for a hospital bed for completely unrelated stuff.
| lostlogin wrote:
| But what about places where less people died than normal?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I'm sure there were more overdoses and suicides due to the
| lockdowns too.
| samspenc wrote:
| And there were indeed more of both:
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/11/17/overdo.
| ..
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-11/teen-
| suic...
| woodruffw wrote:
| There were more overdoses, but fewer suicides. Your second
| link references _teen suicide attempts_ , which are neither
| representative of the overall suicidal demographic nor
| reflect _actual_ suicide rates.
| priansh wrote:
| Suicide rates are tricky since mental health can have
| long lasting issues and the societal changes from
| lockdown will have even longer term effects. How do you
| attribute a suicide 2 years from now to depression that
| started during COVID? It's going to be interesting seeing
| how the psychology field approaches this.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| While that's true, a solid chunk (1/3) of suicides are
| based on pretty short cycles. That's why preventing a
| suicide is so valuable - 1/3 people you prevent are no
| more likely to attempt suicide again than a random person
| on the street. And that's without any psychological
| intervention. With therapy, that number gets even higher.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is indeed an open question, and it's one we're going
| to need to address over the expected lifetimes of every
| single person who's living through COVID. We'll also need
| to address it for COVID "long-haulers," given that
| individuals with severely diminished qualities of life
| are a high-risk suicide group.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Not in New Zealand - our suicide rate went down.
|
| https://coronialservices.justice.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Chi
| e...
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| You're getting downvoted because you appear to be guessing,
| even though you're right...suicides and overdoses did indeed
| go up.
| woodruffw wrote:
| As I cited elsewhere in the thread: suicides went down in
| 2020, not up[1].
|
| Drug overdose deaths are indeed up[2]. But they're an order
| of magnitude below COVID deaths, even before adjusting for
| undercounting.
|
| [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf
|
| [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases
| /2021/...
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| ending it with an overdose does sound like a very
| accessible and "clean" method to end life if you're
| either an addict or even for non addicts who have access
| to hard drugs. And how many of those who are addicts
| engage in _" suicidal ideation"_. Is a an addict that
| ends themselves statistically counted as a drug casualty
| and at what point do we see them as just another human
| being that decided to end their life. For all we know the
| drug might have been the only reason that kept them from
| not committing suicide much sooner (and while sober).
|
| it seems an odd line to draw IMO
| disambiguation wrote:
| I wonder what the median age for overdose deaths are
| compared to covid deaths.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't know how recent these numbers are, but the 25-44
| and 45-54 male demographics are apparently over-
| represented in overdose deaths[1].
|
| It's similarly hard to find up-to-date median age
| statistics for COVID deaths (and this is particularly
| troublesome, since the median age for COVID deaths should
| intuitively decrease over time), but the primary
| demographic seems to be >65 in most developed
| countries[2]. Interestingly, from that same source, it's
| lower in developing and undeveloped countries.
|
| [1]: https://www.projectknow.com/discover/the-age-of-
| overdose/
|
| [2]: https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/too-
| young-die-ag...
| woodruffw wrote:
| That's a scary compounding factor that I hadn't even
| considered. Thanks for bringing that up.
| tbihl wrote:
| In the US, traffic fatalities went up in 2020. The typical
| congestion of dangerous stroads has a calming effect on
| speeds, and that was absent with the enormous drop in
| traffic.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Thanks for correcting me. That's certainly counterintuitive
| on first blush, but does make sense and is consistent with
| my and others' experiences cycling in NYC in 2020/1: more
| aggressive driving became the norm, and cyclist and
| pedestrian deaths increased[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.transalt.org/press-releases/vision-zero-
| in-crisi...
| [deleted]
| pugworthy wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "accidents" going way
| down, but at least in the US, fatalities have gone up. In the
| US, there were more traffic fatalities in 2020 since 2007.
|
| See https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-
| show... for example.
| jedberg wrote:
| Fascinating, I hadn't seen that report. What I said was based
| on estimates made in 2020 and I never went back to check
| otherwise. Thanks, editing my comment now.
| jrwoodruff wrote:
| That's kinda wild and really counter-intuitive. From the
| article:
|
| _NHTSA's research suggests that throughout the national
| public health emergency and associated lockdowns, driving
| patterns and behaviors changed significantly, and that
| drivers who remained on the roads engaged in more risky
| behavior, including speeding, failing to wear seat belts, and
| driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol._
| birdyrooster wrote:
| It was a wonderful time when you could just drive as fast
| as you wanted without any significant repercussions. I'll
| never forget.
| AQuantized wrote:
| Evidently that attitude is what lead to greater
| likelihood of 'repercussions' that average.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| People were frustrated and arguably so. I agree with
| targeted lockdowns or even draconian lockdowns (if it
| would stop the pandemic on its heels). But it's going to
| frustrate people. Social psychology would say such pent
| up frustration has to be released somewhere and we saw
| that in the rise in domestic violence, car accidents and
| crime. (I'm not trying to justify it. It's the way it is.
| Next time we have a pandemic may be we'll also factor in
| these indirect variables in decide the scope and
| duration).
| temp0826 wrote:
| Great time to set some records too apparently!
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cannonball-coast-
| coast-...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Early on in the pandemic when roads were fairly empty,
| the local cops operating the speed traps wouldn't pull
| anyone over -- they'd just stand on the side of the road
| waving at you and making 'slow down' hand signals.
| Glorious indeed...
| klyrs wrote:
| I can see a few things driving this. First, I think that
| pretty much everybody was under more stress in that period
| -- anybody on the road would be less patient and less
| generous / more aggressive. Second, there's some sampling
| bias -- the people on the road would be either essential
| workers (underpaid, overworked, even more stressed) or
| oversampled from a risk-tolerant subset of the population
| (more inclined to see an open road as an opportunity to
| drive recklessly). The risk calculation of driving drunk
| would go down with emptier roads, too.
|
| I think it's counterintuitive unless you account for the
| fact that it's intuitive to think that the roads will be
| empty, which should impact people's behavior. I don't think
| I would have bet either way, but post-facto justification
| seems pretty tidy.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| A recent article and HN discussion on that topic:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29492129
| dharmatva wrote:
| I like how this tracker doesn't talk much about India or China at
| all (even though there were 2.3m deaths due to COVID there
| according to the Economist).
|
| Interestingly, they do talk about Japan, South Korea, etc.
| mcculley wrote:
| I built some tooling around the U.S. CDC data to better
| understand this at a state level:
| https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/
| dkn775 wrote:
| What did you use to make this website? I like it a lot.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Why are the negative numbers not colored on a scale too?
|
| Do many deaths in the winter mean less deaths during the summer?
| I don't know, i have to hover the mouse over the months and
| guesstimate.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2560/
| opless wrote:
| Paywall
| [deleted]
| acqbu wrote:
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...
| Zigurd wrote:
| I'm not seeing a paywall for the main article link. There is a
| link in the article that goes to another paywalled article. But
| I can see the posted article just fine, though I am not a
| subscriber.
| olivermarks wrote:
| This tells you everything you need to know, same thing
| happens with the FT & wsj if it's an article they want
| everyone to read....
| kesor wrote:
| Can someone explain how they come up with the "expected deaths"
| number? The article doesn't explain how this number is calculated
| or which assumptions were made to come up with the number. Is
| this a moving average of earlier years? Does it compensate for
| the increase or decrease in demographics? What other aspects go
| into this "expectation" that might be relevant?
| mcculley wrote:
| I wondered the same thing. This is why I built some tooling
| around visualizing the body count:
| https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/
|
| It turns out that in many places there is a very clear
| difference between 2017-2019 versus 2020-2021. There is no way
| the population increased enough to account for the extra
| deaths.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Can I explain what _they_ did? No. Can I give an idea of how to
| do it? I think so.
|
| Way back in the day, one of the tables in the CRC Handbook was
| the "American Experience Actuarial Table". It said, for every
| age from 1 (or 0?) to 100, what fraction of people of that age
| one would statistically expect to die in America. You take a
| modern version of that data for the country in question,
| (perhaps per gender, which IIRC the CRC table did not account
| for) and throw it at the age distribution in that country. That
| gives you a fair idea what to expect.
|
| In doing so, you assume that the racial profile of the
| population didn't change much in that two-year span (or if it
| did, that it did so according to previous trends), unless you
| have actual data saying otherwise.
|
| Is it perfect? No. But it's fairly reasonable.
|
| Again, note my opening disclaimer: I don't know that this is
| how _this_ study did it.
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Its there at the bottom:
|
| >A previous version of this page used a five-year average of
| deaths in a given region to calculate a baseline for excess
| deaths. The page now uses a statistical model for each region,
| which predicts the number of deaths we might normally have
| expected in 2020. The model fits a linear trend to years, to
| adjust from long-term increases or decreases in deaths, and a
| fixed effect for each week or month.
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(page generated 2021-12-27 23:01 UTC)