4 ms·

That chart is really hard to read. Am I supposed to take away that Sweden only has about 50 or 60 more COVID deaths than the official count? This seems hard t

That chart is really hard to read. Am I supposed to take away that Sweden only has about 50 or 60 more COVID deaths than the official count? This seems hard to believe. These types of numbers don't tend to have that level of quality at this stage of a disaster. I guess time will tell.

gok 7y ago
No it's even weirder; the gap implies that there are 50-60 fewer non-COVID deaths in Sweden than there would be otherwise since the pandemic began.
- omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
  I would chalk that up to people acting a little more conservatively because of COVID-19, even if there isn't a lockdown.
- michael-ax 7y ago
  Which isn't weird at all - if you trust that people avoiding crowds also lead to fewer having the accidents which would otherwise have gotten them dead.
  - ajross 7y ago
    Or prevents them from contracting any other disease that would have otherwise killed them. In fact even these numbers are undercounts of the "true" death total due to the pandemic, as we'd obviously expect baseline deaths to have dropped significantly over the short term. How much is for the next generation of epidemiologists to argue about. But FWIW: Sweden is absolutely an outlier here, and given the choice between "Swedish reporting is fundamentally better" and "Swedish death counts are wrong in some banal way", I'll choose the latter. Say it with me everyone: we don't make risk analysis decisions on the basis of outlier data.
    - henrikschroder 7y ago
      Mortality data and excess mortality data goes back decades, it's not like we suddenly started counting these things yesterday because of the coronavirus. For Sweden's death count to be wrong now, they would also have to have been wrong going back decades, without anyone noticing. Or, the total all-cause death count would have to start being wrong about now because of unspecified reasons. That doesn't make sense.
      - ajross 7y ago
        Doesn't the logic go the other way around though? For Sweden's numbers to be unimpeachible now, they would have had to have never been wrong going back decades. But in fact public numbers get reported incorrectly all the time, they just get corrected. This is happening everywhere right now, watch all the various numbers on Worldometer jump around like crazy. What you're doing is pointing to this one, single number, as collated by the New York Times in one story, which doesn't match any other numbers in the same data set. And you'redemanding that we treat it as proof of your particular policy views on this one country. And I'm saying: well, OK, that could be true. But it's probably just a mistake.
        henrikschroder 7y ago
        There's a huge difference between all-cause mortality numbers being wrong, and covid-19-attributed deaths being wrong. The only way the all-cause mortality numbers can be significantly wrong is if you suddenly find piles of corpses and skeletons around, and that they belong to people who magically weren't being missed or noticed by friends, family, neighbours, etc. And the only way for governments to hide these numbers would be by digging mass graves, shoveling them full of dead bodies, and hoping no-one notices. This simply does not happen, modern countries do not get this number wrong. If there's any public statistic you can count on going back centuries, it would be the number of births and the number of deaths. Excess mortality is simply graphing the number of deaths backwards through time, to find trend curves and spikes in the trend curves. Those numbers are as correct as the underlying numbers. In comparison, correctly attributing a death to covid-19 is very difficult right now. Tests are in short supply, so a lot of countries aren't testing already dead people, because those tests can be better used elsewhere, to save lives. There might be political pressure to downplay the severity of covid-19, so cause of death gets fudged here and there. Cause of death is also not always straight-forward, a lot of people are dying with covid-19, not from covid-19, how should they be counted? Different countries have different rules here. The NYTimes article is saying that a bunch of countries have unexplained excess mortality, quite a lot of it actually. And since the most likely cause of those deaths are in fact covid-19, it means that those countries are under-reporting, i.e. their numbers are garbage. In comparison to those countries, Sweden's covid-19 deaths align pretty well with Sweden's excess deaths. The official number is still probably wrong, but there's absolutely no way that Sweden's covid-19 numbers are more garbage than those other countries, and there's absolutely no way that Sweden is under-reporting to the same extent.
- mullingitover 7y ago
  Hospitals have seen a dramatic drop in visits that aren't coronavirus-related. You can bet that automobile accident deaths and injuries have dropped like a rock in the past month, for example.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    Well spotted. I bet that work accidents also sinked
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      And probably people are getting lost on mountains less and less flu deaths too...
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  A likely explanation is that some of the people who died of Covid-19 would have died anyway.
- subsubzero 7y ago
  For flu deaths, perhaps people are so cautious/being sanitary that they are dropping, I know Japan has seen record drops in Flu diagnosis due to extreme caution from the populace due to covid.
Ozzie_osman 7y ago
The opposite. Sweden has counted 50 or 60 extra cases as COVID than can be accounted for simply by excess mortality. That sounds impossible, but the difference can come from a few places: 1) Excess mortality is only an estimate. There could be other reasons why non-covid mortality is lower/higher than previous years (e.g. less serious flu season) 2) The tests can have some false positives. 3) If the way you count deaths is "anyone who died and tested positive for Covid", it's possible that the people you're counting didn't die from Covid but happened to have the virus in their system (or would've died even if they didn't catch Covid). All this is saying is: in past years, X people died in Sweden during this period on average. This year, Y people died. (Y - X) are the "extra deaths", so to speak, and so this is comparing extra deaths to reported Covid-19 deaths.
- kenneth 7y ago
  I think Covid is causing other causes of deaths to be reduced (less car accidents, flu etc. than usual), so the -50 on the chart implies that (1) all Covid deaths are being accurately counted) and (2) non-Covid mortality is slightly down.

gok 7y ago

No it's even weirder; the gap implies that there are 50-60 fewer non-COVID deaths in Sweden than there would be otherwise since the pandemic began.

omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
I would chalk that up to people acting a little more conservatively because of COVID-19, even if there isn't a lockdown.
michael-ax 7y ago
Which isn't weird at all - if you trust that people avoiding crowds also lead to fewer having the accidents which would otherwise have gotten them dead.
- ajross 7y ago
  Or prevents them from contracting any other disease that would have otherwise killed them. In fact even these numbers are undercounts of the "true" death total due to the pandemic, as we'd obviously expect baseline deaths to have dropped significantly over the short term. How much is for the next generation of epidemiologists to argue about. But FWIW: Sweden is absolutely an outlier here, and given the choice between "Swedish reporting is fundamentally better" and "Swedish death counts are wrong in some banal way", I'll choose the latter. Say it with me everyone: we don't make risk analysis decisions on the basis of outlier data.
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    Mortality data and excess mortality data goes back decades, it's not like we suddenly started counting these things yesterday because of the coronavirus. For Sweden's death count to be wrong now, they would also have to have been wrong going back decades, without anyone noticing. Or, the total all-cause death count would have to start being wrong about now because of unspecified reasons. That doesn't make sense.
    - ajross 7y ago
      Doesn't the logic go the other way around though? For Sweden's numbers to be unimpeachible now, they would have had to have never been wrong going back decades. But in fact public numbers get reported incorrectly all the time, they just get corrected. This is happening everywhere right now, watch all the various numbers on Worldometer jump around like crazy. What you're doing is pointing to this one, single number, as collated by the New York Times in one story, which doesn't match any other numbers in the same data set. And you'redemanding that we treat it as proof of your particular policy views on this one country. And I'm saying: well, OK, that could be true. But it's probably just a mistake.
      - henrikschroder 7y ago
        There's a huge difference between all-cause mortality numbers being wrong, and covid-19-attributed deaths being wrong. The only way the all-cause mortality numbers can be significantly wrong is if you suddenly find piles of corpses and skeletons around, and that they belong to people who magically weren't being missed or noticed by friends, family, neighbours, etc. And the only way for governments to hide these numbers would be by digging mass graves, shoveling them full of dead bodies, and hoping no-one notices. This simply does not happen, modern countries do not get this number wrong. If there's any public statistic you can count on going back centuries, it would be the number of births and the number of deaths. Excess mortality is simply graphing the number of deaths backwards through time, to find trend curves and spikes in the trend curves. Those numbers are as correct as the underlying numbers. In comparison, correctly attributing a death to covid-19 is very difficult right now. Tests are in short supply, so a lot of countries aren't testing already dead people, because those tests can be better used elsewhere, to save lives. There might be political pressure to downplay the severity of covid-19, so cause of death gets fudged here and there. Cause of death is also not always straight-forward, a lot of people are dying with covid-19, not from covid-19, how should they be counted? Different countries have different rules here. The NYTimes article is saying that a bunch of countries have unexplained excess mortality, quite a lot of it actually. And since the most likely cause of those deaths are in fact covid-19, it means that those countries are under-reporting, i.e. their numbers are garbage. In comparison to those countries, Sweden's covid-19 deaths align pretty well with Sweden's excess deaths. The official number is still probably wrong, but there's absolutely no way that Sweden's covid-19 numbers are more garbage than those other countries, and there's absolutely no way that Sweden is under-reporting to the same extent.
mullingitover 7y ago
Hospitals have seen a dramatic drop in visits that aren't coronavirus-related. You can bet that automobile accident deaths and injuries have dropped like a rock in the past month, for example.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  Well spotted. I bet that work accidents also sinked
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    And probably people are getting lost on mountains less and less flu deaths too...
tinus_hn 7y ago
A likely explanation is that some of the people who died of Covid-19 would have died anyway.
subsubzero 7y ago
For flu deaths, perhaps people are so cautious/being sanitary that they are dropping, I know Japan has seen record drops in Flu diagnosis due to extreme caution from the populace due to covid.

Ozzie_osman 7y ago

The opposite. Sweden has counted 50 or 60 extra cases as COVID than can be accounted for simply by excess mortality. That sounds impossible, but the difference can come from a few places: 1) Excess mortality is only an estimate. There could be other reasons why non-covid mortality is lower/higher than previous years (e.g. less serious flu season) 2) The tests can have some false positives. 3) If the way you count deaths is "anyone who died and tested positive for Covid", it's possible that the people you're counting didn't die from Covid but happened to have the virus in their system (or would've died even if they didn't catch Covid). All this is saying is: in past years, X people died in Sweden during this period on average. This year, Y people died. (Y - X) are the "extra deaths", so to speak, and so this is comparing extra deaths to reported Covid-19 deaths.

kenneth 7y ago
I think Covid is causing other causes of deaths to be reduced (less car accidents, flu etc. than usual), so the -50 on the chart implies that (1) all Covid deaths are being accurately counted) and (2) non-Covid mortality is slightly down.