11 ms·

European mortality monitoring shows increase in excess mortality

74 points by gstipi 6y ago

justinclift 6y ago
The Swedish "Very high excess" is a bit surprising. -- Extremely high excess: UK, France, Spain, Italy Very high excess: Sweden High excess: Switzerland Moderate excess: Portugal Low excess: Denmark
- fiblye 6y ago
  Sweden's current policy is basically to do nothing and let nature take its course.
  - Bombthecat 6y ago
    They have limitations. They also started with way lower numbers. So keeping open with limitations is way easier. Also, its probably the right approach. You cant lock down for one or two years at least..
    - CyanBird 6y ago
      Saying "you can't lock down for one to two years" is an absurd strawman as nobody would ever advocate for that Having a gradient of social distancing and having it be enforced by government officials is the only sane way to avoid mass needless death which is what is happening in Sweden right about now
      - noughtme 6y ago
        Sweden’s position is that deaths are not avoidable. At the end of the pandemic they expect the death rate across most countries (with the exception of some outliers, like Italy) to be broadly similar. As such they have decided it makes no sense to completely shutdown the economy with all the longterm implications that would entail. As long as moderate social distancing prevents their healthcare system from being overwhelmed, they believe that to be optimal.
    - tilolebo 6y ago
      According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing they don't test much, so the numbers are far from accurate.
      - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
        They have around 10k tests per 1 million, that's not regarded as very little. US keeps saying it tests the most in the world and it's at 14k. Korea is known for massive testing, at 10k. Rich and well-struck countries like UK/France tests fewer cases. They're not top testers but definitely significant testers. In part it helps that they're one of the least dense countries in the world at around 20 people per square kilometer, compared to say 400/500 for the Netherlands and South Korea. The difference is less pronounced in cities of course but still there (when will we ever get population density figures for the median person who is weighted towards living in proximity, rather than a country-wide average)
        tilolebo 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing#Virus_testing_statistics_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing#Virus_testing... Sweden is n. 35 in "Tests / million people", that's not good enough IMO. 16% of the tests are positive! How else do you want to control how the virus spreads? On what data do they base their decisions?
  - styren 6y ago
    I'm Swedish and this is not true at all, please stop spreading misinformation
    - fiblye 6y ago
      Every media source I've come across says that Sweden is doing practically nothing compared to its neighbors.[1][2][3] They're also coincidentally suffering from far higher infection rates than their neighbors. I've seen nothing saying they're making strong efforts aside from comments posted here and there, but I'd be interested in seeing sources. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sweden-and-norway-handled-coronavirus-differently-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sweden-and-norway-handle... [2] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/9/21213472/coronavirus-sweden-herd-immunity-cases-death https://www.vox.com/2020/4/9/21213472/coronavirus-sweden-her... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielleigh/2020/04/10/sweden-continues-with-controversial-coronavirus-strategy-is-it-a-big-mistake/#2360d4b228a2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielleigh/2020/04/10/sweden-...
      - henrikschroder 6y ago
        Try this article: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/can-you-beat-covid-19-without-a-lockdown-sweden-is-trying https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/can-you-beat-covid-1... "To start with, it’s a myth that Sweden is doing nothing about the virus. Most Swedes have changed their habits a lot. Schools for older kids are closed, as are universities. People are working from home, when they can, and the elderly are being urged to keep to themselves. Gatherings of over 50 people are prohibited, and ski resorts are closed. Restaurants and bars are allowing table service only, and grocery stores are installing glass dividers between customers and cashiers." "Second, contrary to the claims of John Fund and Joel Hay and many others, Sweden isn’t trying to develop “herd immunity,” meaning a state of affairs in which so many people get the virus that the virus runs out of kindling. (At least, Swedish officials claim they aren’t doing this, and they would have a lot to lose by lying about it.) Instead, Sweden intends to take as loose an approach as possible that still keeps case growth down to nonexponential numbers." "With these premises in mind, Sweden has pumped the brakes instead of slamming on them. You close school for older kids, but you keep grade school going, because evidence so far suggests that younger children are not a major cause of transmission for the novel coronavirus."
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    You are 100% wrong, Sweden is doing a lot of things to minimize the coronavirus impact. But I'm curious why you are claiming something that is so completely wrong. Where did you get the idea from? Are you living in Sweden and strongly disagreeing with the official response, or are you living somewhere else, but "read it on the internet" ?
    - bnt 6y ago
      Not OP but: local media in Eastern Europe bash Sweden hard with TV news pieces showing open shops and restaurants, people in groups etc, while here in Serbia we’re in complete lockdown. This also makes me feel like Sweden doesn’t care, but again, I have no first hand info except what TV and Reddit tell me. This might be OPs “source”.
      - morsch 6y ago
        There's a lesson here...
      - henrikschroder 6y ago
        Ok. It is possible to cherry-pick exactly whatever view you want to show by sending a camera team to Stockholm. Some places are completely deserted that would normally be bustling with people. And some places appear to be bustling with people who seem to ignore official recommendations. And some places are bustling with people who are ignoring recommendations, because Sweden has its fair share of idiots like every other country. I suspect that there is a strong wish for Sweden to fail among people in countries with severe lockdowns, because that would validate their decisions to lock down in the first place. Sweden must be "punished" for not following the herd, because if it isn't, it means that the herd was wrong, it means that suffering through a lockdown was for nothing. It means your local politicians over-reacted, and destroyed parts of the economy needlessly. And then you get these hit pieces that says everyone in Sweden is out and about, hugging and licking each other, and everyone died of the zombie apocalypse Last Thursday. My best guess is that the truth is a lot more complicated than that, and that there absolutely isn't any kind of simple linear relationship between the severity of lockdown measures and excess deaths. There are so many variables, so much random noise, and so much cultural difference between countries. If every country is doing 20-30-40-50 different measures at once, how can we even start to figure out which ones do something, and which ones don't? Is washing your hands more important than wearing a mask while you're outside? Is closing workplaces more efficient than closing schools? There's appearing evidence that kids actually are very bad transmitters of this particular virus - contrary to "common sense", which dictates that kids are filthy petri dishes that are always sick and always spreading disease. We know so little right now. It's going to take years before we'll know which countries did the right thing and which countries did the wrong thing.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  Just yesterday there was a topic about how Sweden had low excess mortality and even in the negative, with all sorts of comments explaining the reason.
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    No, that was someone here on HN who couldn't read the data from the NYT article correctly. Sweden is absolutely experiencing excess deaths right now. What the article said is that a bunch of countries have fewer covid-19 deaths than excess deaths for a certain time period, while Sweden has more covid-19 deaths than excess deaths for the same time period. The conclusion of that article is that most countries are probably severely undercounting covid-19 deaths, while Sweden probably isn't. (This isn't necessarily true, another plausible explanation is that a lot more people than normal are dying of heart problems because they're too afraid to seek medical care since hospitals are pretty busy with all the covid-19 patients.)
    - odshoifsdhfs 6y ago
      I'm not sure if you are referring to me since I have commented on this topic a few times. But if it was (no biggie ;)) I never mentioned that sweden had negative difference. What I meant was that Sweden (and now Belgium) seems to be the only countries where the number of excess deaths match their COVID deaths, while most other countries have a big difference (excess deaths in Sweden: 1200, COVID deaths: 1150, other countries do excess deaths: 1200, COVID deaths: 450 (numbers are made up)). So I have difficulty to compare Sweden numbers to others because I don't believe the others (or in my case, Portugal's) numbers. When I first read the NYT article, Belgium wasn't included, they added it later. The interesting thing is other countries say the non COVID excess deaths are people 'afraid' to go to the hospital or something like that, and the numbers are right/lockdown is right. But now with Belgium, that did pretty much the same measures as other countries, doesn't show the same results, so I'm even more sure the 'they died because they were afraid to go to the hospital' is bullshit
      - henrikschroder 6y ago
- osobo 6y ago
  These analysis are based on data provided by the countries. While they all may provide mortality as a number at some point, some may not already do so in the interval needed to draw accurate comparisons over the last two months. For example: I find the difference between England/Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland to be strange. I'd expect these to be closer together.
  - wiredfool 6y ago
    There are different governments and health services in Northern Ireland and Ireland, and they've taken different paths in their actions and messaging.
  - derriz 6y ago
    Why would you expect them to be closer? The respective government responses were very different - the UK initially decided to to pursue a "herd immunity" strategy - i.e. do nothing to stop the spread of the virus. In contrast, the Irish government locked down early and hard - the UK lock down occurred later (once the significance of the threat became more obvious) and even then introduced lock-down measures more gradually.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    England has London, Scottish cities aren't on the same scale. There also appears to be a pretty huge immigrant/racial skew in ICU and death cases for unclear reasons, conjectured to be vitamin D related. This is likely also skewing Sweden vs their neighbours, given Sweden's enormous migrant intake.
Arrrlex 6y ago
Could someone help me understand the all ages excess mortality graph? Naively it looks like a) there were way more deaths in 2018 and 2019 than were expected, and b) despite Covid-19, the excess mortality still hasn't caught up with 2018 levels What am I missing here?
- soco 6y ago
  So much interesting data and no idea what it means... why the visible bumps for SOME countries in December 2016 or January 2018? Why Spain has that higher mortality in winter? Why why why...
  - rjtavares 6y ago
    Every European country has more deaths in the winter, mainly due to the flu season (which can happen from December to February).
- mrow84 6y ago
  IANAE but ... all three years show the pattern of what I presume is the flu season (broadly speaking), causing deaths (mostly in the elderly), and differing in severity/rate between the three years. 2020 is different because there is a clear step-change in death rate after week 11, and the implication/fact is that that is COVID-19. The conclusion is that those deaths are excess deaths on top of those that we would have had as a consequence of the 2020 flu season.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mkagenius 6y ago
    > clear step-change in death rate after week 11, and the implication/fact is that that is COVID-19 How does that compare with 2018 excess death graph, clearly some other novel virus would have caused that, it broke all previous highs quickly.
    - 6y ago
itronitron 6y ago
Does anyone know what was going on in 2017 (winter 2016/2017) that caused the spike in excess mortality?
- mshook 6y ago
  Flu most likely? https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/summary-influenza-2016-2017-season-europe https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/summary-infl...
- tilolebo 6y ago
  It's misleading because the 2017-2018 flu was actually much more lethal. The 2016-2017 goes a bit higher during 02/2017, but its span is also smaller.
martopix 6y ago
Sad post: a lot of work, a lot of nice data, zero explanation of what it means.
- rezeroed 6y ago
  Agreed. Newsflash: put people in cotton wool boxes they'll experience fewer accidents, but might suffer some other issues. Imagine that, more variables outside than inside.
gridlockd 6y ago
Numbers do not look that bad yet, but the trajectory is steeper. Is that sharp drop real or just lag?
- gpderetta 6y ago
  I have been following these reports for the last few weeks. There is often a sharp drop in the end, but it goes away the next week. I believe it is just an artefact of the modelling
john_miller 6y ago
A general question: Can someone explain to me, why the integral of the z-score chart is not zero but positive? Is the sum of the standard deviations not zero?
peter_retief 6y ago
Am I correct to assume from this data that the current flu season (Early onset) is not more severe than previous years?
- thepangolino 6y ago
  According to data, the last previous two flu seasons in Europe have been rather mild.
  - peter_retief 6y ago
    I wonder how the current data compares to severe flu seasons and what the deviation is?
    - samoa42 6y ago
      spoiler: the deviation is insignificant
flr03 6y ago
When comparing figures between previous years and 2020 one has to keep in mind that the current excess mortality is despite people adopting unprecedented behaviours like strict social distancing, regular hands cleaning etc. That put things into perspective.
- bayesian_horse 6y ago
  Some excess mortality might even be caused by such measures. I feel like I would have a much higher threshold before looking for (Covid-unrelated) medical help. Suicides should be on the uptick. Other things like accidents should go down. I'm not saying the measures and restrictions aren't necessary, just that there are some costs associated. Those deaths aren't really "Covid-19" fatalities even though they are indirectly caused by the pandemic.
  - icebraining 6y ago
    > I feel like I would have a much higher threshold before looking for (Covid-unrelated) medical help. In fact, our health authorities have insisted for people to come to the ER, because apparently the number of non-covid emergencies (like strokes) is unreasonably low.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      To put that in context, in the UK it appears about half the excess mortality doesn't mention COVID-19 on the death certificate at all. Of the half that does, this is basically a grep over the contents, so "not COVID-19 related" would fall into that bucket. Of the certificates where the disease is definitely implicated, that still doesn't mean someone died because of the virus, only that the person might have been infected at the time of death. Might, because no test is required to merely mention it on a death certificate. At time of death, because this disease targets the old and weak so much, that very often it's unclear how a cause of death should be classified - in a way it was just someone's time to go. However, the UK made COVID-19 a notifiable disease, so it gets reported to the government in every case over and above other causes of death. Thus for the UK we can safely say that more people are being killed because of the lockdown than because of COVID, which is pretty shocking. This can be hard to see because UK excess mortality has gone far above the flu seasons of the past 5 years. But this is a bit misleading. It appears that the UK basically didn't have a flu season in 2017: excess mortality didn't go outside normal variance. Whereas in the rest of Europe 2017 saw a bad-ish flu season, which COVID so far has merely matched in terms of deaths.
aarroyoc 6y ago
These kind of graphs, while useful, still miss a point. My experience in Spain is that there are a some hotspots like Madrid where hospitals and morgues are collapsed but other cities/villages, which have the same lockdown didn't have so many infected people per capita, so they will actually have probably the same or less mortality rates. The country on itself looks bad, but in the hotspots is terrible
- cjfd 6y ago
  In my country in places where there are fewer corona patients the hospitals used to be taking over IC patients from places where there are more. And now the total number of corona patients admitted to the hospital has been declining for about a month so that looks pretty good.
- pjcv 6y ago
  The data here seems to corroborate this: https://www.isciii.es/QueHacemos/Servicios/VigilanciaSaludPublicaRENAVE/EnfermedadesTransmisibles/MoMo/Paginas/Informes-MoMo-2020.aspx https://www.isciii.es/QueHacemos/Servicios/VigilanciaSaludPu... It would be interesting to see if previous years exhibited similar hotspots.
- thu2111 6y ago
  But these graphs don't tell a story of collapse. Or perhaps they do but no worse than Spain normally experiences? Spanish excess mortality has peaked already at only slightly above what it peaked at in 2017. Remember that everything we think we know about collapsed hotspots comes via the media. For every anecdote there are other anecdotes telling the opposite. The new EuroMOMO site is really much, much better than before (kudos to whoever did that upgrade if you're reading this!). Usefully it now shows cumulative deaths. Compared to 2018 we still have had fewer deaths so far this year even with COVID included. That's staggering. It'll probably change soon given the slope of the graph, but that's really worth thinking about. So far fewer people have died than normal in 2020 than by this time in 2018.
  - aarroyoc 6y ago
    That's what I'm saying. These graphs are too broad for a country because the numbers change a lot between cities. I'm expecting that some cities even report less deaths because of the lockdown (less risky activities, less traffic accidents, less labour accidents,...). So even if the numbers look similar to the ones of previous years, it is not distributed as other years.
Endlessly 6y ago
Anyone know why data only goes back to 2016. This organization was started in 2008, did it really take them 8 years to be able to start collecting data?
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  A common reason for this is some bureaucratic change in the collection procedure that breaks comparability with older data. Another reason could be that it indeed took 8 years to get 26 countries to agree on, and implement correctly, common enough data reporting standards before the final analysis could be performed.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- DanBC 6y ago
  I think they have a 5 year limit on data. https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods > Mortality baseline is modelled using a glm poisson corrected for over dispersion. The model is fitted on valid historical period as defined by the user, with a maximum of 5 years, I don't know why they impose this limit. I'm guessing there's something about population drift over time in there. They also changed the way they work in 2016: https://www.euromomo.eu/about-us/history https://www.euromomo.eu/about-us/history > From 2016 onwards, the EuroMOMO network has been supported by and worked closely with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe.
rezeroed 6y ago
I, Robot: stay in your homes, it is for your own protection.
Faaak 6y ago
Unrelated, but this new website is way better than the old one which was online just weeks ago (https://web.archive.org/web/20200323070430/https://www.euromomo.eu/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200323070430/https://www.eurom...). Graphs are client-side rendered now ! And we can have the raw data too ! Great :-)
Aissen 6y ago
For those interested, there's a breakdown by sub-region by French National Institute of Statistics: https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/4470857 https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/4470857 Needless to say, it matches closely the COVID-19 clusters. Kudos to this institution used to release yearly studies for the quick turnaround. (and all the data is available to download).
- Aissen 6y ago
  Also of note for HN readers: in "Bouches-du-Rhone", a high-density population area, a ransomware attack has rendered the local cities unable to send the statistics for the second part of March, which they sent manually. I'm not sure how resolved this is, but it shows (yet again) how cyberattacks can have real-life impact (and this isn't a hospital…)
yummybear 6y ago
15-64 is a pretty wide age group covering everything from kids to senior citizens. I wonder why they havent divided it further into at least adolescent/adult and possibly +50
hrgiger 6y ago
Czechia is missing
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tgflynn 6y ago
I think it's important to note that while the cumulative excess mortality is indeed increasing (it could hardly do otherwise since it's defined as a monotonically non-decreasing function) the weekly excess mortality count sharply decreased in the most recent week (week 16). That said the decline is so large from the previous week (9289 vs 20975) that I suspect there may be some error in the graph or the data. EDIT: My claim that cumulative excess mortality is defined to be monotonically non-decreasing is not correct, as the below comment points out.
- isoprophlex 6y ago
  Is that true? Excess mortality in the 0-4 yr cohort for example shows some negative number of excess deaths...
  - tgflynn 6y ago
    I was only looking at the graphs for all ages. EDIT: Ah OK, I see what you're saying. Yes, my statement that the cumulative graph is defined to be monotonically non-decreasing was indeed incorrect because it assumes that excess mortality itself is non-negative, which is not the case (total mortality would be non-negative though). Still for the cumulative graph to decrease the weekly excess mortality would have to go into negative territory, which is far from the case for the "all ages" group.
- gpderetta 6y ago
  as I reported else thread, I have been following these reports for a few weeks now, and there is often a sharp drop at the end which goes away on the next report. I think it is an artifact of their modelling for delayed registration that forces a regression to the mean.
  - tgflynn 6y ago
    Thanks, I suspected it was some sort of artifact.

74 points by gstipi 6y ago

The Swedish "Very high excess" is a bit surprising. -- Extremely high excess: UK, France, Spain, Italy Very high excess: Sweden High excess: Switzerland Moderate excess: Portugal Low excess: Denmark

fiblye 6y ago
Sweden's current policy is basically to do nothing and let nature take its course.
- Bombthecat 6y ago
  They have limitations. They also started with way lower numbers. So keeping open with limitations is way easier. Also, its probably the right approach. You cant lock down for one or two years at least..
  - CyanBird 6y ago
    Saying "you can't lock down for one to two years" is an absurd strawman as nobody would ever advocate for that Having a gradient of social distancing and having it be enforced by government officials is the only sane way to avoid mass needless death which is what is happening in Sweden right about now
    - noughtme 6y ago
      Sweden’s position is that deaths are not avoidable. At the end of the pandemic they expect the death rate across most countries (with the exception of some outliers, like Italy) to be broadly similar. As such they have decided it makes no sense to completely shutdown the economy with all the longterm implications that would entail. As long as moderate social distancing prevents their healthcare system from being overwhelmed, they believe that to be optimal.
  - tilolebo 6y ago
    According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing they don't test much, so the numbers are far from accurate.
    - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
      They have around 10k tests per 1 million, that's not regarded as very little. US keeps saying it tests the most in the world and it's at 14k. Korea is known for massive testing, at 10k. Rich and well-struck countries like UK/France tests fewer cases. They're not top testers but definitely significant testers. In part it helps that they're one of the least dense countries in the world at around 20 people per square kilometer, compared to say 400/500 for the Netherlands and South Korea. The difference is less pronounced in cities of course but still there (when will we ever get population density figures for the median person who is weighted towards living in proximity, rather than a country-wide average)
      - tilolebo 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing#Virus_testing_statistics_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing#Virus_testing... Sweden is n. 35 in "Tests / million people", that's not good enough IMO. 16% of the tests are positive! How else do you want to control how the virus spreads? On what data do they base their decisions?
- styren 6y ago
  I'm Swedish and this is not true at all, please stop spreading misinformation
  - fiblye 6y ago
    Every media source I've come across says that Sweden is doing practically nothing compared to its neighbors.[1][2][3] They're also coincidentally suffering from far higher infection rates than their neighbors. I've seen nothing saying they're making strong efforts aside from comments posted here and there, but I'd be interested in seeing sources. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sweden-and-norway-handled-coronavirus-differently-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sweden-and-norway-handle... [2] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/9/21213472/coronavirus-sweden-herd-immunity-cases-death https://www.vox.com/2020/4/9/21213472/coronavirus-sweden-her... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielleigh/2020/04/10/sweden-continues-with-controversial-coronavirus-strategy-is-it-a-big-mistake/#2360d4b228a2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielleigh/2020/04/10/sweden-...
    - henrikschroder 6y ago
      Try this article: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/can-you-beat-covid-19-without-a-lockdown-sweden-is-trying https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/can-you-beat-covid-1... "To start with, it’s a myth that Sweden is doing nothing about the virus. Most Swedes have changed their habits a lot. Schools for older kids are closed, as are universities. People are working from home, when they can, and the elderly are being urged to keep to themselves. Gatherings of over 50 people are prohibited, and ski resorts are closed. Restaurants and bars are allowing table service only, and grocery stores are installing glass dividers between customers and cashiers." "Second, contrary to the claims of John Fund and Joel Hay and many others, Sweden isn’t trying to develop “herd immunity,” meaning a state of affairs in which so many people get the virus that the virus runs out of kindling. (At least, Swedish officials claim they aren’t doing this, and they would have a lot to lose by lying about it.) Instead, Sweden intends to take as loose an approach as possible that still keeps case growth down to nonexponential numbers." "With these premises in mind, Sweden has pumped the brakes instead of slamming on them. You close school for older kids, but you keep grade school going, because evidence so far suggests that younger children are not a major cause of transmission for the novel coronavirus."
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  You are 100% wrong, Sweden is doing a lot of things to minimize the coronavirus impact. But I'm curious why you are claiming something that is so completely wrong. Where did you get the idea from? Are you living in Sweden and strongly disagreeing with the official response, or are you living somewhere else, but "read it on the internet" ?
  - bnt 6y ago
    Not OP but: local media in Eastern Europe bash Sweden hard with TV news pieces showing open shops and restaurants, people in groups etc, while here in Serbia we’re in complete lockdown. This also makes me feel like Sweden doesn’t care, but again, I have no first hand info except what TV and Reddit tell me. This might be OPs “source”.
    - morsch 6y ago
      There's a lesson here...
    - henrikschroder 6y ago
      Ok. It is possible to cherry-pick exactly whatever view you want to show by sending a camera team to Stockholm. Some places are completely deserted that would normally be bustling with people. And some places appear to be bustling with people who seem to ignore official recommendations. And some places are bustling with people who are ignoring recommendations, because Sweden has its fair share of idiots like every other country. I suspect that there is a strong wish for Sweden to fail among people in countries with severe lockdowns, because that would validate their decisions to lock down in the first place. Sweden must be "punished" for not following the herd, because if it isn't, it means that the herd was wrong, it means that suffering through a lockdown was for nothing. It means your local politicians over-reacted, and destroyed parts of the economy needlessly. And then you get these hit pieces that says everyone in Sweden is out and about, hugging and licking each other, and everyone died of the zombie apocalypse Last Thursday. My best guess is that the truth is a lot more complicated than that, and that there absolutely isn't any kind of simple linear relationship between the severity of lockdown measures and excess deaths. There are so many variables, so much random noise, and so much cultural difference between countries. If every country is doing 20-30-40-50 different measures at once, how can we even start to figure out which ones do something, and which ones don't? Is washing your hands more important than wearing a mask while you're outside? Is closing workplaces more efficient than closing schools? There's appearing evidence that kids actually are very bad transmitters of this particular virus - contrary to "common sense", which dictates that kids are filthy petri dishes that are always sick and always spreading disease. We know so little right now. It's going to take years before we'll know which countries did the right thing and which countries did the wrong thing.
jobigoud 6y ago
Just yesterday there was a topic about how Sweden had low excess mortality and even in the negative, with all sorts of comments explaining the reason.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  No, that was someone here on HN who couldn't read the data from the NYT article correctly. Sweden is absolutely experiencing excess deaths right now. What the article said is that a bunch of countries have fewer covid-19 deaths than excess deaths for a certain time period, while Sweden has more covid-19 deaths than excess deaths for the same time period. The conclusion of that article is that most countries are probably severely undercounting covid-19 deaths, while Sweden probably isn't. (This isn't necessarily true, another plausible explanation is that a lot more people than normal are dying of heart problems because they're too afraid to seek medical care since hospitals are pretty busy with all the covid-19 patients.)
  - odshoifsdhfs 6y ago
    I'm not sure if you are referring to me since I have commented on this topic a few times. But if it was (no biggie ;)) I never mentioned that sweden had negative difference. What I meant was that Sweden (and now Belgium) seems to be the only countries where the number of excess deaths match their COVID deaths, while most other countries have a big difference (excess deaths in Sweden: 1200, COVID deaths: 1150, other countries do excess deaths: 1200, COVID deaths: 450 (numbers are made up)). So I have difficulty to compare Sweden numbers to others because I don't believe the others (or in my case, Portugal's) numbers. When I first read the NYT article, Belgium wasn't included, they added it later. The interesting thing is other countries say the non COVID excess deaths are people 'afraid' to go to the hospital or something like that, and the numbers are right/lockdown is right. But now with Belgium, that did pretty much the same measures as other countries, doesn't show the same results, so I'm even more sure the 'they died because they were afraid to go to the hospital' is bullshit
    - henrikschroder 6y ago
osobo 6y ago
These analysis are based on data provided by the countries. While they all may provide mortality as a number at some point, some may not already do so in the interval needed to draw accurate comparisons over the last two months. For example: I find the difference between England/Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland to be strange. I'd expect these to be closer together.
- wiredfool 6y ago
  There are different governments and health services in Northern Ireland and Ireland, and they've taken different paths in their actions and messaging.
- derriz 6y ago
  Why would you expect them to be closer? The respective government responses were very different - the UK initially decided to to pursue a "herd immunity" strategy - i.e. do nothing to stop the spread of the virus. In contrast, the Irish government locked down early and hard - the UK lock down occurred later (once the significance of the threat became more obvious) and even then introduced lock-down measures more gradually.
- thu2111 6y ago
  England has London, Scottish cities aren't on the same scale. There also appears to be a pretty huge immigrant/racial skew in ICU and death cases for unclear reasons, conjectured to be vitamin D related. This is likely also skewing Sweden vs their neighbours, given Sweden's enormous migrant intake.

Arrrlex 6y ago

Could someone help me understand the all ages excess mortality graph? Naively it looks like a) there were way more deaths in 2018 and 2019 than were expected, and b) despite Covid-19, the excess mortality still hasn't caught up with 2018 levels What am I missing here?

soco 6y ago
So much interesting data and no idea what it means... why the visible bumps for SOME countries in December 2016 or January 2018? Why Spain has that higher mortality in winter? Why why why...
- rjtavares 6y ago
  Every European country has more deaths in the winter, mainly due to the flu season (which can happen from December to February).
mrow84 6y ago
IANAE but ... all three years show the pattern of what I presume is the flu season (broadly speaking), causing deaths (mostly in the elderly), and differing in severity/rate between the three years. 2020 is different because there is a clear step-change in death rate after week 11, and the implication/fact is that that is COVID-19. The conclusion is that those deaths are excess deaths on top of those that we would have had as a consequence of the 2020 flu season.
- deleted 6y ago
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- mkagenius 6y ago
  > clear step-change in death rate after week 11, and the implication/fact is that that is COVID-19 How does that compare with 2018 excess death graph, clearly some other novel virus would have caused that, it broke all previous highs quickly.
  - 6y ago

itronitron 6y ago

Does anyone know what was going on in 2017 (winter 2016/2017) that caused the spike in excess mortality?

mshook 6y ago
Flu most likely? https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/summary-influenza-2016-2017-season-europe https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/summary-infl...
tilolebo 6y ago
It's misleading because the 2017-2018 flu was actually much more lethal. The 2016-2017 goes a bit higher during 02/2017, but its span is also smaller.

martopix 6y ago

Sad post: a lot of work, a lot of nice data, zero explanation of what it means.

rezeroed 6y ago
Agreed. Newsflash: put people in cotton wool boxes they'll experience fewer accidents, but might suffer some other issues. Imagine that, more variables outside than inside.

gridlockd 6y ago

Numbers do not look that bad yet, but the trajectory is steeper. Is that sharp drop real or just lag?

gpderetta 6y ago
I have been following these reports for the last few weeks. There is often a sharp drop in the end, but it goes away the next week. I believe it is just an artefact of the modelling

john_miller 6y ago

A general question: Can someone explain to me, why the integral of the z-score chart is not zero but positive? Is the sum of the standard deviations not zero?

peter_retief 6y ago

Am I correct to assume from this data that the current flu season (Early onset) is not more severe than previous years?

thepangolino 6y ago
According to data, the last previous two flu seasons in Europe have been rather mild.
- peter_retief 6y ago
  I wonder how the current data compares to severe flu seasons and what the deviation is?
  - samoa42 6y ago
    spoiler: the deviation is insignificant

flr03 6y ago

When comparing figures between previous years and 2020 one has to keep in mind that the current excess mortality is despite people adopting unprecedented behaviours like strict social distancing, regular hands cleaning etc. That put things into perspective.

bayesian_horse 6y ago
Some excess mortality might even be caused by such measures. I feel like I would have a much higher threshold before looking for (Covid-unrelated) medical help. Suicides should be on the uptick. Other things like accidents should go down. I'm not saying the measures and restrictions aren't necessary, just that there are some costs associated. Those deaths aren't really "Covid-19" fatalities even though they are indirectly caused by the pandemic.
- icebraining 6y ago
  > I feel like I would have a much higher threshold before looking for (Covid-unrelated) medical help. In fact, our health authorities have insisted for people to come to the ER, because apparently the number of non-covid emergencies (like strokes) is unreasonably low.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    To put that in context, in the UK it appears about half the excess mortality doesn't mention COVID-19 on the death certificate at all. Of the half that does, this is basically a grep over the contents, so "not COVID-19 related" would fall into that bucket. Of the certificates where the disease is definitely implicated, that still doesn't mean someone died because of the virus, only that the person might have been infected at the time of death. Might, because no test is required to merely mention it on a death certificate. At time of death, because this disease targets the old and weak so much, that very often it's unclear how a cause of death should be classified - in a way it was just someone's time to go. However, the UK made COVID-19 a notifiable disease, so it gets reported to the government in every case over and above other causes of death. Thus for the UK we can safely say that more people are being killed because of the lockdown than because of COVID, which is pretty shocking. This can be hard to see because UK excess mortality has gone far above the flu seasons of the past 5 years. But this is a bit misleading. It appears that the UK basically didn't have a flu season in 2017: excess mortality didn't go outside normal variance. Whereas in the rest of Europe 2017 saw a bad-ish flu season, which COVID so far has merely matched in terms of deaths.

aarroyoc 6y ago

These kind of graphs, while useful, still miss a point. My experience in Spain is that there are a some hotspots like Madrid where hospitals and morgues are collapsed but other cities/villages, which have the same lockdown didn't have so many infected people per capita, so they will actually have probably the same or less mortality rates. The country on itself looks bad, but in the hotspots is terrible

cjfd 6y ago
In my country in places where there are fewer corona patients the hospitals used to be taking over IC patients from places where there are more. And now the total number of corona patients admitted to the hospital has been declining for about a month so that looks pretty good.
pjcv 6y ago
The data here seems to corroborate this: https://www.isciii.es/QueHacemos/Servicios/VigilanciaSaludPublicaRENAVE/EnfermedadesTransmisibles/MoMo/Paginas/Informes-MoMo-2020.aspx https://www.isciii.es/QueHacemos/Servicios/VigilanciaSaludPu... It would be interesting to see if previous years exhibited similar hotspots.
thu2111 6y ago
But these graphs don't tell a story of collapse. Or perhaps they do but no worse than Spain normally experiences? Spanish excess mortality has peaked already at only slightly above what it peaked at in 2017. Remember that everything we think we know about collapsed hotspots comes via the media. For every anecdote there are other anecdotes telling the opposite. The new EuroMOMO site is really much, much better than before (kudos to whoever did that upgrade if you're reading this!). Usefully it now shows cumulative deaths. Compared to 2018 we still have had fewer deaths so far this year even with COVID included. That's staggering. It'll probably change soon given the slope of the graph, but that's really worth thinking about. So far fewer people have died than normal in 2020 than by this time in 2018.
- aarroyoc 6y ago
  That's what I'm saying. These graphs are too broad for a country because the numbers change a lot between cities. I'm expecting that some cities even report less deaths because of the lockdown (less risky activities, less traffic accidents, less labour accidents,...). So even if the numbers look similar to the ones of previous years, it is not distributed as other years.

Endlessly 6y ago

Anyone know why data only goes back to 2016. This organization was started in 2008, did it really take them 8 years to be able to start collecting data?

SiempreViernes 6y ago
A common reason for this is some bureaucratic change in the collection procedure that breaks comparability with older data. Another reason could be that it indeed took 8 years to get 26 countries to agree on, and implement correctly, common enough data reporting standards before the final analysis could be performed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
DanBC 6y ago
I think they have a 5 year limit on data. https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods > Mortality baseline is modelled using a glm poisson corrected for over dispersion. The model is fitted on valid historical period as defined by the user, with a maximum of 5 years, I don't know why they impose this limit. I'm guessing there's something about population drift over time in there. They also changed the way they work in 2016: https://www.euromomo.eu/about-us/history https://www.euromomo.eu/about-us/history > From 2016 onwards, the EuroMOMO network has been supported by and worked closely with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe.

rezeroed 6y ago

I, Robot: stay in your homes, it is for your own protection.

Faaak 6y ago

Unrelated, but this new website is way better than the old one which was online just weeks ago (https://web.archive.org/web/20200323070430/https://www.euromomo.eu/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200323070430/https://www.eurom...). Graphs are client-side rendered now ! And we can have the raw data too ! Great :-)

Aissen 6y ago

For those interested, there's a breakdown by sub-region by French National Institute of Statistics: https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/4470857 https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/4470857 Needless to say, it matches closely the COVID-19 clusters. Kudos to this institution used to release yearly studies for the quick turnaround. (and all the data is available to download).

Aissen 6y ago
Also of note for HN readers: in "Bouches-du-Rhone", a high-density population area, a ransomware attack has rendered the local cities unable to send the statistics for the second part of March, which they sent manually. I'm not sure how resolved this is, but it shows (yet again) how cyberattacks can have real-life impact (and this isn't a hospital…)

yummybear 6y ago

15-64 is a pretty wide age group covering everything from kids to senior citizens. I wonder why they havent divided it further into at least adolescent/adult and possibly +50

hrgiger 6y ago

Czechia is missing

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tgflynn 6y ago

I think it's important to note that while the cumulative excess mortality is indeed increasing (it could hardly do otherwise since it's defined as a monotonically non-decreasing function) the weekly excess mortality count sharply decreased in the most recent week (week 16). That said the decline is so large from the previous week (9289 vs 20975) that I suspect there may be some error in the graph or the data. EDIT: My claim that cumulative excess mortality is defined to be monotonically non-decreasing is not correct, as the below comment points out.

isoprophlex 6y ago
Is that true? Excess mortality in the 0-4 yr cohort for example shows some negative number of excess deaths...
- tgflynn 6y ago
  I was only looking at the graphs for all ages. EDIT: Ah OK, I see what you're saying. Yes, my statement that the cumulative graph is defined to be monotonically non-decreasing was indeed incorrect because it assumes that excess mortality itself is non-negative, which is not the case (total mortality would be non-negative though). Still for the cumulative graph to decrease the weekly excess mortality would have to go into negative territory, which is far from the case for the "all ages" group.
gpderetta 6y ago
as I reported else thread, I have been following these reports for a few weeks now, and there is often a sharp drop at the end which goes away on the next report. I think it is an artifact of their modelling for delayed registration that forces a regression to the mean.
- tgflynn 6y ago
  Thanks, I suspected it was some sort of artifact.