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It should be trivial to calculate excess deaths compared to the same period averaged over last X years, so if countries cared about transparency they could just
by hnarn 6y ago
It should be trivial to calculate excess deaths compared to the same period averaged over last X years, so if countries cared about transparency they could just share that, and the issue of non tested deaths would be somewhat minimized.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThat statistic wouldn't be tremendously easy to interpret, since you'd have to account for the expected distribution of the differential and any secondary effects which the public health response might have caused. These effects aren't negligible and could easily produce errors similar in scale to what the BBC's calling a cover-up.
- hnarn 6y ago> secondary effects which the public health response might have caused You're correct, but this is still relevant. It all depends on how the statistic is presented. Excess deaths shouldn't be presented as "deaths due to Covid-19 infection", but it could be presented as "deaths related to the Covid-19 outbreak", and people who died from cardiovascular disease because they didn't seek help due to the pandemic are still very much relevant since they are just that: related to the Covid-19 outbreak. After all, if you save 100 people in ICUs after they contracted Covid-19 that's good, but if 1 000 people die of other causes because they were scared to go to hospital then that is still relevant to understanding how the pandemic affected deaths in general, and how the response could be improved in the future compared across countries.