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You have to ask what phenomenon causes an exponential increase in deaths/day and does not increase ICU utilization. The answer I’ve seen seems to be “yes, the d

You have to ask what phenomenon causes an exponential increase in deaths/day and does not increase ICU utilization. The answer I’ve seen seems to be “yes, the disease is killing a steadily growing number of people but they’re older and aren’t going to the ICU before they die.” This is where Italy was at one point; they just got there much later.

riffraff 7y ago
As someone pointed out to me, the euromomo website is useful for this, it tracks the total mortality rate across Europe and compares it with the historical data. By ignoring the hospitalized/homestuck difference one can have a clearer idea of what is happening. Sadly I don't know of a way to get the data for the whole world.
- innomatics 7y ago
  Euromomo data is really interesting to me because of these two points: 1) the spike in death rate caused by Covid-19 this year is of the same magnitude as the normal flu season spike in 2016 2) this year's flue season spike was low compared to recent years. Maybe due to a warmer summer? One interpretation could be that a large number of vulnerable people escaped death from regular ILIs this European season, only to sadly succome to this pandemic.
  - acqq 7y ago
    But all the countries did introduce various measures to slow down the spread. Otherwise nobody could claim that the numbers remained compatable.
    - innomatics 7y ago
      Yes, which is wonderful. I am wondering what caused the large 2016 spike. Another interesting thing is the effect any behaviour changes are going to have on regular flu numbers. It's already looking to have a big effect in then southern hemisphere.
  - robocat 7y ago
    When looking at a single region like Bergamo, the death toll is four times higher than normal... Absolutely nothing like a normal flu season spike. See graph in http://archive.is/AaJ76 http://archive.is/AaJ76 If you look at the euromomo information for a country it is averaged across all regions, that includes those regions that started lockdown before severe outbreak, so the spike averages down to be small. I.e. you can’t look at the country info and make conclusions about the severity of the disease.
    - innomatics 7y ago
      Agree with your points although the link was blocked for me. Do you think that a very mild flu season could possibly have made this outbreak worse?
      - gpderetta 7y ago
        > Agree with your points although the link was blocked for me. Euromomo [1] has per country breakdown. While some countries are relatively unaffected (yet?), bringing the average down, some, like Italy, Uk, Spain are way beyond the 2017 peak. As pointed elsethread, possibly because of lockdown, at least in Italy, the worst has been confined to the northen regions (about one fourth of the population but more than half the confirmed cases). If allowed to spread equally everywhere, the numbers would presumably be higher. [1] https://www.euromomo.eu/outputs/zscore_country_total.html https://www.euromomo.eu/outputs/zscore_country_total.html
      - robocat 7y ago
        > link was blocked for me That will be because you are using 1.1.1.1 for your DNS: archive.org has decided to give a bung IP to CloudFlare just because... (personally I think CloudFlare are doing the right thing here - protecting your privacy - unfortunately archive disagree. I think archive are wrong since DNS is often cached which is much the same).
  - riffraff 7y ago
    > 1) the spike in death rate caused by Covid-19 this year is of the same magnitude as the normal flu season spike in 2016 the current number depends on lockdown measures. We didn't have lockdowns in 2016, and it is likely if we didn't have them now we'd be much worse. You can look at the graph for Sweden which decided to only apply mild measures for a comparison which shows this is much worse than the 16/17 flu. The rest of the reasoning is still correct, and I have heard it pointed out before, though I believe you meant warmer _winter_ :)
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  Another note on mortality tracking is that everyone is staring themselves blind on corona-related deaths, and comparing between countries, and exclaiming that the higher the death rate per capita is, the more of a failure the country's policies are. But this isn't necessarily true. You have to look at the total mortality, and the excess mortality. If a country has high corona mortality, but no excess mortality, it means that most people dying from coronavirus are people who normally would have died from something else anyway. And whatever policies that country has have to be good enough. If a country has high corona mortality and excess mortality, then it's fair to say that that country's policies aren't enough, and it's fair to have the discussion whether you could do more or should do more.

riffraff 7y ago

As someone pointed out to me, the euromomo website is useful for this, it tracks the total mortality rate across Europe and compares it with the historical data. By ignoring the hospitalized/homestuck difference one can have a clearer idea of what is happening. Sadly I don't know of a way to get the data for the whole world.

innomatics 7y ago
Euromomo data is really interesting to me because of these two points: 1) the spike in death rate caused by Covid-19 this year is of the same magnitude as the normal flu season spike in 2016 2) this year's flue season spike was low compared to recent years. Maybe due to a warmer summer? One interpretation could be that a large number of vulnerable people escaped death from regular ILIs this European season, only to sadly succome to this pandemic.
- acqq 7y ago
  But all the countries did introduce various measures to slow down the spread. Otherwise nobody could claim that the numbers remained compatable.
  - innomatics 7y ago
    Yes, which is wonderful. I am wondering what caused the large 2016 spike. Another interesting thing is the effect any behaviour changes are going to have on regular flu numbers. It's already looking to have a big effect in then southern hemisphere.
- robocat 7y ago
  When looking at a single region like Bergamo, the death toll is four times higher than normal... Absolutely nothing like a normal flu season spike. See graph in http://archive.is/AaJ76 http://archive.is/AaJ76 If you look at the euromomo information for a country it is averaged across all regions, that includes those regions that started lockdown before severe outbreak, so the spike averages down to be small. I.e. you can’t look at the country info and make conclusions about the severity of the disease.
  - innomatics 7y ago
    Agree with your points although the link was blocked for me. Do you think that a very mild flu season could possibly have made this outbreak worse?
    - gpderetta 7y ago
      > Agree with your points although the link was blocked for me. Euromomo [1] has per country breakdown. While some countries are relatively unaffected (yet?), bringing the average down, some, like Italy, Uk, Spain are way beyond the 2017 peak. As pointed elsethread, possibly because of lockdown, at least in Italy, the worst has been confined to the northen regions (about one fourth of the population but more than half the confirmed cases). If allowed to spread equally everywhere, the numbers would presumably be higher. [1] https://www.euromomo.eu/outputs/zscore_country_total.html https://www.euromomo.eu/outputs/zscore_country_total.html
    - robocat 7y ago
      > link was blocked for me That will be because you are using 1.1.1.1 for your DNS: archive.org has decided to give a bung IP to CloudFlare just because... (personally I think CloudFlare are doing the right thing here - protecting your privacy - unfortunately archive disagree. I think archive are wrong since DNS is often cached which is much the same).
- riffraff 7y ago
  > 1) the spike in death rate caused by Covid-19 this year is of the same magnitude as the normal flu season spike in 2016 the current number depends on lockdown measures. We didn't have lockdowns in 2016, and it is likely if we didn't have them now we'd be much worse. You can look at the graph for Sweden which decided to only apply mild measures for a comparison which shows this is much worse than the 16/17 flu. The rest of the reasoning is still correct, and I have heard it pointed out before, though I believe you meant warmer _winter_ :)
henrikschroder 7y ago
Another note on mortality tracking is that everyone is staring themselves blind on corona-related deaths, and comparing between countries, and exclaiming that the higher the death rate per capita is, the more of a failure the country's policies are. But this isn't necessarily true. You have to look at the total mortality, and the excess mortality. If a country has high corona mortality, but no excess mortality, it means that most people dying from coronavirus are people who normally would have died from something else anyway. And whatever policies that country has have to be good enough. If a country has high corona mortality and excess mortality, then it's fair to say that that country's policies aren't enough, and it's fair to have the discussion whether you could do more or should do more.