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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

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 7y 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 7y ago
  (No, I wasn't referring to you, I went back and checked https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22945974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22945974) And I agree with you, I can trivially think of death causes that could go up because of covid-19 + lockdown (heart attacks, suicide, medical neglect), down (influenza, traffic accidents, workplace accidents), and be unchanged (cancer, strokes). So claims of non-covid-19 excess mortality have to be carefully examined. If the official covid-19 death count diverges sharply from the excess mortality of a country, the most rational explanation has to be that that country is underreporting covid-19 deaths.
- thu2111 7y ago
  so I'm even more sure the 'they died because they were afraid to go to the hospital' is bullshit Do these graphs change your mind? https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/880759/EDSSSBulletin2020wk16.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... This is attendances at emergency rooms in the UK. Admissions to ER have halved. It breaks it down by reason for admittence to quite a granular level. Especially worrying: cardiac admissions halved at the lowest point. Fortunately it seems the messaging about how hospitals aren't overwhelmed and never were is getting through and they've started going up again. They're still far below normal for this time of year. Unless you think people routinely go to ER with cardiac problems unnecessarily, it's hard to see how this won't translate into excess deaths that aren't COVID related. The UK sees about half of all excess death certificates right now not mention COVID, which makes sense. Other crazy things about those graphs: pneumonia and other breathing related problems have also all collapsed. Not only are hospitals not overwhelmed but you can't even really see an uptick in admissions for COVID related problems, unless there's some odd data collection error like those cases not showing up in any of the graphs at all.
  - odshoifsdhfs 7y ago
    The numbers in Portugal (the one I am more familiar with) say otherwise. First health officials when they saw the numbers decreasing said : 'This only proves that indeed what we have been saying for years, people visit the ER for non serious cases' (which to be fair, having an ex-wife that was a paramedic, 1/2 of her calls were non-urgent). Then after the numbers of deaths increased, they changed they words to 'People need to go to the hospital, we can't be afraid of the virus' and now latest thing is 'We will be resuming to normal in hospitals/clinics and people should come for non-urgent related issues'. But interesting Belgium and Sweden didn't have this discrepancy in number of deaths (COVID vs non COVID). So either our numbers are wrong and more people are dying of COVID than what they tell us, or the lockdown + stoping pretty much every non urgent procedures + telling people to stay at home actually caused more excess deaths than covid itself. But whatever is right, we need to pick one and not keep letting politicians not even admit they may not know/be wrong and keep changing the goal posts when confronted with new information.

odshoifsdhfs 7y 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 7y ago
(No, I wasn't referring to you, I went back and checked https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22945974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22945974) And I agree with you, I can trivially think of death causes that could go up because of covid-19 + lockdown (heart attacks, suicide, medical neglect), down (influenza, traffic accidents, workplace accidents), and be unchanged (cancer, strokes). So claims of non-covid-19 excess mortality have to be carefully examined. If the official covid-19 death count diverges sharply from the excess mortality of a country, the most rational explanation has to be that that country is underreporting covid-19 deaths.
thu2111 7y ago
so I'm even more sure the 'they died because they were afraid to go to the hospital' is bullshit Do these graphs change your mind? https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/880759/EDSSSBulletin2020wk16.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... This is attendances at emergency rooms in the UK. Admissions to ER have halved. It breaks it down by reason for admittence to quite a granular level. Especially worrying: cardiac admissions halved at the lowest point. Fortunately it seems the messaging about how hospitals aren't overwhelmed and never were is getting through and they've started going up again. They're still far below normal for this time of year. Unless you think people routinely go to ER with cardiac problems unnecessarily, it's hard to see how this won't translate into excess deaths that aren't COVID related. The UK sees about half of all excess death certificates right now not mention COVID, which makes sense. Other crazy things about those graphs: pneumonia and other breathing related problems have also all collapsed. Not only are hospitals not overwhelmed but you can't even really see an uptick in admissions for COVID related problems, unless there's some odd data collection error like those cases not showing up in any of the graphs at all.
- odshoifsdhfs 7y ago
  The numbers in Portugal (the one I am more familiar with) say otherwise. First health officials when they saw the numbers decreasing said : 'This only proves that indeed what we have been saying for years, people visit the ER for non serious cases' (which to be fair, having an ex-wife that was a paramedic, 1/2 of her calls were non-urgent). Then after the numbers of deaths increased, they changed they words to 'People need to go to the hospital, we can't be afraid of the virus' and now latest thing is 'We will be resuming to normal in hospitals/clinics and people should come for non-urgent related issues'. But interesting Belgium and Sweden didn't have this discrepancy in number of deaths (COVID vs non COVID). So either our numbers are wrong and more people are dying of COVID than what they tell us, or the lockdown + stoping pretty much every non urgent procedures + telling people to stay at home actually caused more excess deaths than covid itself. But whatever is right, we need to pick one and not keep letting politicians not even admit they may not know/be wrong and keep changing the goal posts when confronted with new information.