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> COVID is the only remotely plausible explanation for those excess deaths. I personally know someone whose father likely died due to being unable to access he

> COVID is the only remotely plausible explanation for those excess deaths. I personally know someone whose father likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion, as well as someone else who died of cancer after their chemotherapy was postponed. And I also know of two suicides in my extended social group in the past few months. It's tough to pin specific blame on lockdown for things like that. But it's certainly plausible that deaths like that would lead to excess deaths. In the UK specifically the health authorities were estimating in late July that around 21,000 people had died due to lack of access to health care during lockdown: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/29/lockdown-has-killed-21000-people-say-experts/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/29/lockdown-has-kil... In the US there are a lot of concerns that dementia patients in particular are dying due to the isolation caused by lockdown measures: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/09/16/coronavirus-dementia-alzheimers-deaths/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/09/16/coronavirus...

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
I believe what you're talking about ("...likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion" etc). is is exactly what contributes to an excess death. That's why excess deaths are important, they take into account exactly those deaths caused indirectly. (a bit unclear, but you get me I hope).
- petertodd 6y ago
  But it's quite critical to know what % of excess deaths were caused by unreported COVID-19 infections, vs lockdown. The fact is, lockdown will kill people. It's really important to figure out how many it will kill, so we can balance that against lives saved, especially with COVID-19 proving to be much less deadly than originally feared. As an extreme example, for some poorer countries without much healthcare infrastructure, you can definitely make the case that given the inevitability of the virus spreading, in some situations the right thing to do is give up early, accept that you'll have a wave of deaths, and move on. The alternative is a slow motion disaster with about as many direct COVID deaths, and additional deaths due to lockdown. If you don't have healthcare infrastructure to begin with, overloading it doesn't change much.
notahacker 6y ago
> I personally know someone whose father likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion, as well as someone else who died of cancer after their chemotherapy was postponed. And I also know of two suicides in my extended social group in the past few months. It's tough to pin specific blame on lockdown for things like that. But it's certainly plausible that deaths like that would lead to excess deaths. Sure, but we can look at when the excess deaths happened. Instead of being evenly distributed across the lockdown period, or peaking towards the end when people had longer without access to support, they came exactly when you'd expect deaths from an epidemic wave to peak before plummeting to normal levels towards the end of the lockdown period. Undoubtedly, individual deaths have resulted from lockdown, but the pattern of excess deaths matches COVID rather than lockdown being behind the aggregate increase.
- petertodd 6y ago
  ...but why would excess lockdown deaths happen in a uniformly distributed way? Lockdown itself wasn't applied in a uniform fashion: hospitals figured out pretty quickly that lack of care was killing people and modified policies to mitigate that damage. My own advice to friends and family was "probably best not to go to the hospital for that" in March, and back to normal in April when I realized that the numbers weren't as bad as portrayed. Anecdotally, all of the deaths I mentioned happened close to the beginning of lockdown in their respective countries. Again, this isn't idle speculation: genuine mainstream health authorities believe lockdown has killed significant numbers of people. This is not a controversial position.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    > ...but why would excess lockdown deaths happen in a uniformly distributed way? No, the question is why does the excess deaths distribution perfectly align with the expected and recorded COVID death spike and drop so sharply afterwards when lockdown was still in place. It's uncontroversial that lockdown has killed and saved significant numbers of people for reasons other than COVID, but similarly it is entirely uncontroversial that the aggregate increase in excess deaths was caused by COVID. The idea that the inflection point COVID-time-to-death days after the start of lockdown is better explained by unannounced changes in policy or your personal advice to friends and family, on the other hand is about as scientifically credible as blaming 5G.
lemming 6y ago
Here in New Zealand where very few people died of COVID, overall mortality dropped significantly during lockdown. This seems to have mostly been due to a lack of traffic deaths, air pollution improvements, as well as a massive reduction in non-COVID respiratory illnesses. This article actually posits a reduced number of complications from elective surgeries as a factor in the reduced death rate: https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/pubhealthexpert/2020/07/10/weekly-deaths-declined-in-nzs-lockdown-but-we-still-dont-know-exactly-why/ https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/pubhealthexpert/2020/07/10/weekly-...: For example, around 40% of Wellington ICU patients are typically from elective procedures and around 10% of all Wellington ICU patients die.
mrb 6y ago
«I personally know someone whose father likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion, as well as someone else who died of cancer after their chemotherapy was postponed» Without lockdowns these people would probably not have been able to access health care either, because of, well, the pandemic.
- thu2111 6y ago
  That's not correct. Sweden, which did not restrict healthcare access, and has one of the lowest ICU capacities in Europe, did not see hospital overload or healthcare rationing at any point. Lockdowns have certainly created a death toll, that is by now mainstream consensus. The debate is about whether it's most of the excess death or only a large chunk of it. But it's worth remembering that even then excess death numbers are low in absolute terms. A lot of people can't see that because for some reason it's standard for statistical agencies to only give a few years of data in convenient graphs on their websites, but older data is there, and it puts things in proportion. In the UK for example, which has one of the worst excess death rates in Europe, 2020 is so far a bit less deadly than 1999/2000 and the gap is widening [1]. But nothing remarkable happened in the UK in 1999/2000, nobody talks with sadness about those who were lost at the millennium. Nobody noticed anything at all. The idea that we've had some sort of terribly high or remarkable levels of excess death isn't the case: it's being noticed because people were told to expect enormous levels so started tracking the data with a microscope, and then it went up partly due to lockdowns. In many other countries excess death is even less remarkable than that. Germany and Switzerland have seen years no different to the previous years for example. Cumulative death in Switzerland for 2020 is by now completely average, for example. There was no plague in Switzerland at any point. [1] http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/ http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
  - mrb 6y ago
    «did not see hospital overload or healthcare rationing at any point.» They did ration healthcare. This was the object of multiple news articles last week: https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/ https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/ «the country’s hospitals were implementing a triage system» The triaging was so severe that «Only 13% of the elderly residents who died with COVID-19 during the spring received hospital care» Get your facts right. «Lockdowns have certainly created a death toll, that is by now mainstream consensus. The debate is about whether it's most of the excess death or only a large chunk of it.» This is laughably inaccurate. On the contrary, lockdowns are largely credited for overall having averted cases and deaths. I maintain a list of peer-reviewed studies (and some preprints) on the subject, and the vast majority agree: https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1307723024523616257 https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1307723024523616257 There isn't a single peer-reviewed study that suggests lockdowns are responsible for a "large chunk" of excess deaths. You are victim of misinformation. Your comparison to 1999/2000 flu death is invalid: there were delays in reporting deaths that caused many deaths to be reported on the week after Xmas, hence the artificially high peak of that week of 2000. If you compare monthly excess deaths (to smooth artificial peaks) you will see covid excess deaths in April 2020 surpass flu excess deaths of January 2000. And yet, this comparison would still miss the point: covid is such a serious disease that despite (effective) lockdowns, it still managed to kill more than he most severe flu seasons of the last 20+ years. That alone should make you stop and think... There is in fact a government report that found «in comparison with the deaths due to influenza and pneumonia occurring in the year to 31 August 2020, deaths due to COVID-19 have been higher than every year monthly data are available (1959 to 2020).» https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsduetocoronaviruscovid19comparedwithdeathsfrominfluenzaandpneumoniaenglandandwales/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... Germany and Switzerland have implemented particularly effective lockdowns, hence little to no excess deaths.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

I believe what you're talking about ("...likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion" etc). is is exactly what contributes to an excess death. That's why excess deaths are important, they take into account exactly those deaths caused indirectly. (a bit unclear, but you get me I hope).

petertodd 6y ago
But it's quite critical to know what % of excess deaths were caused by unreported COVID-19 infections, vs lockdown. The fact is, lockdown will kill people. It's really important to figure out how many it will kill, so we can balance that against lives saved, especially with COVID-19 proving to be much less deadly than originally feared. As an extreme example, for some poorer countries without much healthcare infrastructure, you can definitely make the case that given the inevitability of the virus spreading, in some situations the right thing to do is give up early, accept that you'll have a wave of deaths, and move on. The alternative is a slow motion disaster with about as many direct COVID deaths, and additional deaths due to lockdown. If you don't have healthcare infrastructure to begin with, overloading it doesn't change much.

notahacker 6y ago

> I personally know someone whose father likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion, as well as someone else who died of cancer after their chemotherapy was postponed. And I also know of two suicides in my extended social group in the past few months. It's tough to pin specific blame on lockdown for things like that. But it's certainly plausible that deaths like that would lead to excess deaths. Sure, but we can look at when the excess deaths happened. Instead of being evenly distributed across the lockdown period, or peaking towards the end when people had longer without access to support, they came exactly when you'd expect deaths from an epidemic wave to peak before plummeting to normal levels towards the end of the lockdown period. Undoubtedly, individual deaths have resulted from lockdown, but the pattern of excess deaths matches COVID rather than lockdown being behind the aggregate increase.

petertodd 6y ago
...but why would excess lockdown deaths happen in a uniformly distributed way? Lockdown itself wasn't applied in a uniform fashion: hospitals figured out pretty quickly that lack of care was killing people and modified policies to mitigate that damage. My own advice to friends and family was "probably best not to go to the hospital for that" in March, and back to normal in April when I realized that the numbers weren't as bad as portrayed. Anecdotally, all of the deaths I mentioned happened close to the beginning of lockdown in their respective countries. Again, this isn't idle speculation: genuine mainstream health authorities believe lockdown has killed significant numbers of people. This is not a controversial position.
- notahacker 6y ago
  > ...but why would excess lockdown deaths happen in a uniformly distributed way? No, the question is why does the excess deaths distribution perfectly align with the expected and recorded COVID death spike and drop so sharply afterwards when lockdown was still in place. It's uncontroversial that lockdown has killed and saved significant numbers of people for reasons other than COVID, but similarly it is entirely uncontroversial that the aggregate increase in excess deaths was caused by COVID. The idea that the inflection point COVID-time-to-death days after the start of lockdown is better explained by unannounced changes in policy or your personal advice to friends and family, on the other hand is about as scientifically credible as blaming 5G.

lemming 6y ago

Here in New Zealand where very few people died of COVID, overall mortality dropped significantly during lockdown. This seems to have mostly been due to a lack of traffic deaths, air pollution improvements, as well as a massive reduction in non-COVID respiratory illnesses. This article actually posits a reduced number of complications from elective surgeries as a factor in the reduced death rate: https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/pubhealthexpert/2020/07/10/weekly-deaths-declined-in-nzs-lockdown-but-we-still-dont-know-exactly-why/ https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/pubhealthexpert/2020/07/10/weekly-...: For example, around 40% of Wellington ICU patients are typically from elective procedures and around 10% of all Wellington ICU patients die.

mrb 6y ago

«I personally know someone whose father likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion, as well as someone else who died of cancer after their chemotherapy was postponed» Without lockdowns these people would probably not have been able to access health care either, because of, well, the pandemic.

thu2111 6y ago
That's not correct. Sweden, which did not restrict healthcare access, and has one of the lowest ICU capacities in Europe, did not see hospital overload or healthcare rationing at any point. Lockdowns have certainly created a death toll, that is by now mainstream consensus. The debate is about whether it's most of the excess death or only a large chunk of it. But it's worth remembering that even then excess death numbers are low in absolute terms. A lot of people can't see that because for some reason it's standard for statistical agencies to only give a few years of data in convenient graphs on their websites, but older data is there, and it puts things in proportion. In the UK for example, which has one of the worst excess death rates in Europe, 2020 is so far a bit less deadly than 1999/2000 and the gap is widening [1]. But nothing remarkable happened in the UK in 1999/2000, nobody talks with sadness about those who were lost at the millennium. Nobody noticed anything at all. The idea that we've had some sort of terribly high or remarkable levels of excess death isn't the case: it's being noticed because people were told to expect enormous levels so started tracking the data with a microscope, and then it went up partly due to lockdowns. In many other countries excess death is even less remarkable than that. Germany and Switzerland have seen years no different to the previous years for example. Cumulative death in Switzerland for 2020 is by now completely average, for example. There was no plague in Switzerland at any point. [1] http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/ http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
- mrb 6y ago
  «did not see hospital overload or healthcare rationing at any point.» They did ration healthcare. This was the object of multiple news articles last week: https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/ https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/ «the country’s hospitals were implementing a triage system» The triaging was so severe that «Only 13% of the elderly residents who died with COVID-19 during the spring received hospital care» Get your facts right. «Lockdowns have certainly created a death toll, that is by now mainstream consensus. The debate is about whether it's most of the excess death or only a large chunk of it.» This is laughably inaccurate. On the contrary, lockdowns are largely credited for overall having averted cases and deaths. I maintain a list of peer-reviewed studies (and some preprints) on the subject, and the vast majority agree: https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1307723024523616257 https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1307723024523616257 There isn't a single peer-reviewed study that suggests lockdowns are responsible for a "large chunk" of excess deaths. You are victim of misinformation. Your comparison to 1999/2000 flu death is invalid: there were delays in reporting deaths that caused many deaths to be reported on the week after Xmas, hence the artificially high peak of that week of 2000. If you compare monthly excess deaths (to smooth artificial peaks) you will see covid excess deaths in April 2020 surpass flu excess deaths of January 2000. And yet, this comparison would still miss the point: covid is such a serious disease that despite (effective) lockdowns, it still managed to kill more than he most severe flu seasons of the last 20+ years. That alone should make you stop and think... There is in fact a government report that found «in comparison with the deaths due to influenza and pneumonia occurring in the year to 31 August 2020, deaths due to COVID-19 have been higher than every year monthly data are available (1959 to 2020).» https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsduetocoronaviruscovid19comparedwithdeathsfrominfluenzaandpneumoniaenglandandwales/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... Germany and Switzerland have implemented particularly effective lockdowns, hence little to no excess deaths.