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You can compare normal death rates from previous years to determine if you are having excess deaths. Here is data from a town in Italy for example: https://www

You can compare normal death rates from previous years to determine if you are having excess deaths. Here is data from a town in Italy for example: https://www.corriere.it/politica/20_marzo_26/the-real-death-toll-for-covid-19-is-at-least-4-times-the-official-numbers-b5af0edc-6eeb-11ea-925b-a0c3cdbe1130.shtml https://www.corriere.it/politica/20_marzo_26/the-real-death-... “Nembro, one of the municipalities most affected by Covid-19, should have had - under normal conditions - about 35 deaths. 158 people were registered dead this year by the municipal offices. But the number of deaths officially attributed to Covid-19 is 31” There are some caveats with the data of course - I.e. the town might not have any more deaths for the rest of the year since it’s burned through all the people that would have expired anyway, but it’s interesting reading.

thu2111 7y ago
The Corriere article has a major flaw that it's looking at deaths from Jan onwards only. This year is unusual in that there was no flu season, really. Deaths up until the start of COVID-19 were way lower than normal all winter. https://swprs.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/italia-mortalita-marzo-14.png?w=1200&h=686 https://swprs.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/italia-mortalita-m... So even a disease no worse than flu, you'd expect would cause a much higher death rate than normal for this time of year, simply by shifting the curve forward six months. And COVID-19 is likely to be worse than flu. (I say likely because the data quality here is so poor we really have no idea how dangerous it is)
- thebruce87m 7y ago
  Can you tell me what your graph is supposed to show? Bear in mind that Nembro has a population of 11,616 according to google. That would mean an excess death rate of approx 1000 out of 100,000 if we use the 123 excess deaths from the article. Compare that to 40.2 from here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31401203/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31401203/ Now I’m not saying that Nembro is typical or even that all my data is apples to apples, it’s just the only data I’ve found where we can compare death rates in any way. The crude death rate for the whole of Italy here: https://knoema.com/atlas/Italy/Death-rate https://knoema.com/atlas/Italy/Death-rate It’s interesting that you call the data poor - this is exactly the data we should be looking for. I’d love to see this kind of data for the whole of Italy for the last 10 years to compare to the last few months. The other data coming in is the dangerous stuff to me. We can’t tell if someone died of covid, or simply had it when they died. Every country has different testing regimes. Ultimately the death stats will give us the full picture. Differing perspectives welcome.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    The graph is supposed to show mortality vs the 'baseline' (good question how exactly that's calculated, looks like it's probably this one: https://www.euromomo.eu/methods/methods.html https://www.euromomo.eu/methods/methods.html). It shows the impact of prior flu seasons. Winter of 2016 was very bad. 2017 not quite as bad. 2018 about the same. 2019 .... gone. Trend line is below baseline and very significantly so up until the start of COVID-19. There was practically no flu season this year, which means a LOT of people survived the winter who in prior years wouldn't have done. The problem is Corriere is ignoring that in their analysis. Deaths may be higher than expected now, but how much of that is because it was much lower than expected before? I suspect in the next week or so you'll start seeing people doing integration on the graphs to try and figure out what the excess 'vulnerable population' was at the start of the epidemic; i.e. people who would in other years have been taken out by flu but survived this year. The red trend line will shoot up of course. You can see the latest data point all the way at the top right, it's nearly falling off the image.
    - thebruce87m 7y ago
      Lol, I didn’t even see that last point until you mentioned it. It’s interesting data - where did it come from? I’d like to monitor it too.
      - thu2111 7y ago
        Italian Ministry of Health http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/caldo/SISMG_sintesi_ULTIMO.pdf http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/caldo/SISMG_sintesi_ULTIMO.... via https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ which has many links
        thu2111 7y ago
        NB: They've since updated the graph in the PDF with a slightly different one. Oddly, the wildly high data point at the end is now gone (wtf) and the COVID-19 period is shaded blue. Italian death statistics show nothing out of the ordinary at this time. If it's true their infection levels are now stable I don't see how these figures can take the absolutely massive acceleration required to justify current measures. It's still less bad than the flu of 2017.

thu2111 7y ago

The Corriere article has a major flaw that it's looking at deaths from Jan onwards only. This year is unusual in that there was no flu season, really. Deaths up until the start of COVID-19 were way lower than normal all winter. https://swprs.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/italia-mortalita-marzo-14.png?w=1200&h=686 https://swprs.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/italia-mortalita-m... So even a disease no worse than flu, you'd expect would cause a much higher death rate than normal for this time of year, simply by shifting the curve forward six months. And COVID-19 is likely to be worse than flu. (I say likely because the data quality here is so poor we really have no idea how dangerous it is)

thebruce87m 7y ago
Can you tell me what your graph is supposed to show? Bear in mind that Nembro has a population of 11,616 according to google. That would mean an excess death rate of approx 1000 out of 100,000 if we use the 123 excess deaths from the article. Compare that to 40.2 from here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31401203/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31401203/ Now I’m not saying that Nembro is typical or even that all my data is apples to apples, it’s just the only data I’ve found where we can compare death rates in any way. The crude death rate for the whole of Italy here: https://knoema.com/atlas/Italy/Death-rate https://knoema.com/atlas/Italy/Death-rate It’s interesting that you call the data poor - this is exactly the data we should be looking for. I’d love to see this kind of data for the whole of Italy for the last 10 years to compare to the last few months. The other data coming in is the dangerous stuff to me. We can’t tell if someone died of covid, or simply had it when they died. Every country has different testing regimes. Ultimately the death stats will give us the full picture. Differing perspectives welcome.
- thu2111 7y ago
  The graph is supposed to show mortality vs the 'baseline' (good question how exactly that's calculated, looks like it's probably this one: https://www.euromomo.eu/methods/methods.html https://www.euromomo.eu/methods/methods.html). It shows the impact of prior flu seasons. Winter of 2016 was very bad. 2017 not quite as bad. 2018 about the same. 2019 .... gone. Trend line is below baseline and very significantly so up until the start of COVID-19. There was practically no flu season this year, which means a LOT of people survived the winter who in prior years wouldn't have done. The problem is Corriere is ignoring that in their analysis. Deaths may be higher than expected now, but how much of that is because it was much lower than expected before? I suspect in the next week or so you'll start seeing people doing integration on the graphs to try and figure out what the excess 'vulnerable population' was at the start of the epidemic; i.e. people who would in other years have been taken out by flu but survived this year. The red trend line will shoot up of course. You can see the latest data point all the way at the top right, it's nearly falling off the image.
  - thebruce87m 7y ago
    Lol, I didn’t even see that last point until you mentioned it. It’s interesting data - where did it come from? I’d like to monitor it too.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      Italian Ministry of Health http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/caldo/SISMG_sintesi_ULTIMO.pdf http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/caldo/SISMG_sintesi_ULTIMO.... via https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ which has many links
      - thu2111 7y ago
        NB: They've since updated the graph in the PDF with a slightly different one. Oddly, the wildly high data point at the end is now gone (wtf) and the COVID-19 period is shaded blue. Italian death statistics show nothing out of the ordinary at this time. If it's true their infection levels are now stable I don't see how these figures can take the absolutely massive acceleration required to justify current measures. It's still less bad than the flu of 2017.