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For those downplaying the scope of this, the death counts / excess deaths data is most illuminating. This page has a number of good breakdowns, but here's the

For those downplaying the scope of this, the death counts / excess deaths data is most illuminating. This page has a number of good breakdowns, but here's the US chart comparing 2020 vs other years: https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#excess-mortality-using-raw-death-counts https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#excess-mor... Can you spot the anomaly?

CivBase 6y ago
Nice. I haven't been able to find anything like that up until now. I really wish the y-axis on that graph started at zero, though.
- vonmoltke 6y ago
  Agreed. If you go up two graphs to "Excess mortality for all ages"[1], though, you can see the same stat as a percentage delta from the average of the five preceding years. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#excess-mortality-for-all-ages https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#excess-mor...
  - timeeater 6y ago
    Better, but they should also adjust for increase in population sizes.
- lutorm 6y ago
  Why? For a roughly stable population like the US, the "baseline" is that something like 1/79/52 of the population dies every week, since life expectancy is 79 years. Zero deaths is nonsensical.
  - sp332 6y ago
    The difference between the peak of this year and previous years is about 50%. The graph makes it look much larger.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    That's not the point. It's very hard to appreciate the scale of a difference between two elements on a graph if the graph's scale does not start at zero.
    - phaemon 6y ago
      That's completely wrong. And by that I mean "you just failed your statistics class" wrong. Imagine you had a graph of earth's temperature and decided to set the y axis at absolute zero. What would that look like? Would it be in any way useful?
- jointpdf 6y ago
  Y-axis starting at zero is essential for bar charts, but not necessarily time series / line charts. Insisting on a zero axis can crunch the data and obscure the trends and is unnatural for some data sets (e.g. the mortality time series—if that trend line ever goes to 0...something has gone awry). Quote from Tufte on the subject: > ” In general, in a time-series, use a baseline that shows the data not the zero point. If the zero point reasonably occurs in plotting the data, fine. But don't spend a lot of empty vertical space trying to reach down to the zero point at the cost of hiding what is going on in the data line itself.” https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00003q https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...
  - CivBase 6y ago
    If you're looking for trends, sure. But this graph seems to be clearly designed to compare the overall US mortality rate across the last five years. It's hard to appreciate scale when comparing elements on an axis which does not begin with zero.
    - jointpdf 6y ago
      Imagine that this were a time series graph of your body temperature over the last week. With the Y-axis set at (min_temp, max_temp) or similar, the graph would clearly show a mean of about 98.6F and consistent trends based on the hour of the day. If you had a fever (>100F), it would be readily apparent in the graph. A zero baseline for this chat is meaningless and would render the plot useless, unless the purpose of the graph was to show what happens to your body temperature as you turn into a White Walker. Similarly, the axis chosen for the mortality chart is effective since it shows the typical range of values (and thus does convey the scale effectively), the consistent seasonal trends, and the anomaly (which is very significant in terms of standard deviations above the mean). Setting a zero y-axis would squeeze the graph into 1/3 of the vertical space, leaving 2/3 as useless white space for no benefit at all.
      - CivBase 6y ago
        You are comparing the Y values for multiple points with different X values in the same series. You are looking for trends and fine differences. I am comparing the Y values for multiple points with the same X values in different series. I'm only looking for course differences. For my purpose, it makes sense for the scale to start at zero. At a glance, the week of April 12, 2020 looks like it has four times as many deaths as any other year since 2015. In reality, it has roughly 1.5x as many. That's still a huge difference, but I had to check the scale and do some quick mental calculations to figure that out - which is more than I would have had to do if the graph's vertical scale started at zero. I'm not arguing that all graphs must start their scales with zero. I'm not even saying that this is a bad graph. It's just not as effective for the kind of analysis I want to use it for.
- cozzyd 6y ago
  The data is available for download so you can plot as you please.
- banana_giraffe 6y ago
  I was mildly curious what that'd look like: https://ibb.co/qnx2Y4H https://ibb.co/qnx2Y4H Or, another way, % change compared to the average: https://ibb.co/5T5dMZk https://ibb.co/5T5dMZk
Consultant32452 6y ago
This is both shocking and promising. Looks like the rate is normalizing relative to previous years. That means the steps we're taking, treatments, etc. are working.
- lutorm 6y ago
  Another interpretation is that the most vulnerable have already been culled, so now the virus has to work harder.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Another is that respiratory pandemics cause "waves" of mortality... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/three-waves.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoratio...
- dave5104 6y ago
  In a more morbid observation, the 2020 data in that chart ends on Nov 1, 2020. I would be surprised if the 2020 line doesn't jump right back up again once the rest of November and post-Thanksgiving numbers are added in given that we're seeing large numbers of reported deaths again in recent weeks.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  I think you're being misled here. The steps we're taking to prevent covid19 are also having a dramatic impact on the spread of other respiratory infections. It's not so much that covid19 is under control - it's that our attempts to control it are suppressing deaths from flu etc.
  - timeeater 6y ago
    Or they are all counted as Covid. If you go to the physician with a respiratory disease, they will test for Covid first. Will they still test for the flu? What about people who get to the hospital because of the flu and get infected with Covid there? How will they be counted? How come number of Covid infection rates is rising, while flu seems to be eradicated? If the measures help against the flu, why not against Covid?
umvi 6y ago
Won't it just get balanced out in following years though? A vulnerable/old person that died this year is one that can't die next year. Think of it like a forest fire. Once all the old/vulnerable wood is burned up, it's much more difficult for another forest fire of the same magnitude to happen in following years because the primary source of fuel is gone and it takes decades to build it up...
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  People aren't dry brush though. It's not a good thing that huge swaths of the population are dying. We won't be inherently more resilient to diseases in the short term just because all the vulnerable people are dead. For one, we don't even understand all the long term effects of having COVID as it is: there's heart damage, lung damage, brain damage, extended fatigue, and that's just what we're seeing evidence of now. [0] If another disease like COVID strikes in a couple years, it could still tear through the surviving population and cause similar long lasting effects. The thousands that're suffering a terrible death daily, separated from their families and straining our healthcare systems to the breaking point--their deaths are not somehow making our populaitons safer from another disease. EDIT: your analogy also supposes it's somehow the old/vulnerable populations that're the reservoir for the virus in our populations, when data indicates the opposite: it's far more likely younger populations are the carriers/vectors for COVID, especially since they are more often asymptomatic (w.r.t. acute effects) than more vulnerable chunks of the population. Future bugs will have plenty of population to travel through. [0]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
  - umvi 6y ago
    > People aren't dry brush though In the analogy the dry brush are the vulnerable that die. Once the dry brush is gone, it can't burn a second time. Just like small pox wiped out all the vulnerable native americans, but then the offspring of the survivors were increasingly more resilient. Except in this case the fatality rate is 1% (or less) instead of 90%. > For one, we don't even understand all the long term effects of having COVID as it is: there's heart damage, lung damage, brain damage, extended fatigue, and that's just what we're seeing evidence of now. This just seems like fear of the unknown. On the contrary, for the vast majority of healthy humans, it seems like the immune-system is well equipped to deal with the virus so there isn't much reason to fear IMO (i.e. most people recover at home with no modern medicine needed). I have several family members that had it and recovered with seemingly no other long term effects, so there is no reason to believe they are going to be screwed later in life. > If another disease like COVID strikes in a couple years, it could still tear through the surviving population and cause similar long lasting effects. More fear of the unknown. Novel viruses don't come along very often. Getting sick is not a bad thing, natural selection is not a bad thing, it's the very mechanism that has allowed humans to survive this long on planet earth.
timeeater 6y ago
Classic to have the y-axis not start at 0 to make a curve look more dramatic. According to the CDC, there seem to be about 12% more deaths than the average of the last three years, or about 300K. Number of deaths has been rising every year, though, sometimes increasing by up to 90k from one year to the next.
- tenacious_tuna 6y ago
  From the linked article: "The raw death counts help give us a rough sense of scale: for example, the US suffered some 275,000 more deaths than the five-year average between 1 March and 16 August, compared to 169,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths during that period." So that's 275k-169k=106k extra deaths, which is a napkinmath'd 17% increase over the baseline (assuming that's 106k deaths over a 12wk period, and baseline is ~50k/week). A 17% rise in extra deaths seems pretty dramatic to me, regardless of the graphs. Granted, I'd love to see error bars on this stuff, but I don't think the axis starting at 0 is some nefarious plot to dramatize the data.
  - timeeater 6y ago
    CDC at the moment says 12% increase compared to the average of the last three years. Absolute number of deaths have been rising from year to year, sometimes with jumps of 90k. Sure Covid has an impact, but whether it is dramatic is another question.
    - tenacious_tuna 6y ago
      > whether it is dramatic is another question. I thought that _was_ the quesiton: you seemed to imply the graph not starting at 0 was the article editorializing in some drama. My point was the situation is indeed dramatic (perhaps "significant" is a better phrase?) on its own, and they weren't unfairly exaggerating it for clicks/attention/fearmongering/whatever. It makes sense that 'absolute deaths' would rise as a function of absolute population size, but that's why this data is important to pay attention to: if our death rate is climbing more than expected, there's problems we should probably pay attention to.

CivBase 6y ago

Nice. I haven't been able to find anything like that up until now. I really wish the y-axis on that graph started at zero, though.

vonmoltke 6y ago
Agreed. If you go up two graphs to "Excess mortality for all ages"[1], though, you can see the same stat as a percentage delta from the average of the five preceding years. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#excess-mortality-for-all-ages https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#excess-mor...
- timeeater 6y ago
  Better, but they should also adjust for increase in population sizes.
lutorm 6y ago
Why? For a roughly stable population like the US, the "baseline" is that something like 1/79/52 of the population dies every week, since life expectancy is 79 years. Zero deaths is nonsensical.
- sp332 6y ago
  The difference between the peak of this year and previous years is about 50%. The graph makes it look much larger.
- CivBase 6y ago
  That's not the point. It's very hard to appreciate the scale of a difference between two elements on a graph if the graph's scale does not start at zero.
  - phaemon 6y ago
    That's completely wrong. And by that I mean "you just failed your statistics class" wrong. Imagine you had a graph of earth's temperature and decided to set the y axis at absolute zero. What would that look like? Would it be in any way useful?
jointpdf 6y ago
Y-axis starting at zero is essential for bar charts, but not necessarily time series / line charts. Insisting on a zero axis can crunch the data and obscure the trends and is unnatural for some data sets (e.g. the mortality time series—if that trend line ever goes to 0...something has gone awry). Quote from Tufte on the subject: > ” In general, in a time-series, use a baseline that shows the data not the zero point. If the zero point reasonably occurs in plotting the data, fine. But don't spend a lot of empty vertical space trying to reach down to the zero point at the cost of hiding what is going on in the data line itself.” https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00003q https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...
- CivBase 6y ago
  If you're looking for trends, sure. But this graph seems to be clearly designed to compare the overall US mortality rate across the last five years. It's hard to appreciate scale when comparing elements on an axis which does not begin with zero.
  - jointpdf 6y ago
    Imagine that this were a time series graph of your body temperature over the last week. With the Y-axis set at (min_temp, max_temp) or similar, the graph would clearly show a mean of about 98.6F and consistent trends based on the hour of the day. If you had a fever (>100F), it would be readily apparent in the graph. A zero baseline for this chat is meaningless and would render the plot useless, unless the purpose of the graph was to show what happens to your body temperature as you turn into a White Walker. Similarly, the axis chosen for the mortality chart is effective since it shows the typical range of values (and thus does convey the scale effectively), the consistent seasonal trends, and the anomaly (which is very significant in terms of standard deviations above the mean). Setting a zero y-axis would squeeze the graph into 1/3 of the vertical space, leaving 2/3 as useless white space for no benefit at all.
    - CivBase 6y ago
      You are comparing the Y values for multiple points with different X values in the same series. You are looking for trends and fine differences. I am comparing the Y values for multiple points with the same X values in different series. I'm only looking for course differences. For my purpose, it makes sense for the scale to start at zero. At a glance, the week of April 12, 2020 looks like it has four times as many deaths as any other year since 2015. In reality, it has roughly 1.5x as many. That's still a huge difference, but I had to check the scale and do some quick mental calculations to figure that out - which is more than I would have had to do if the graph's vertical scale started at zero. I'm not arguing that all graphs must start their scales with zero. I'm not even saying that this is a bad graph. It's just not as effective for the kind of analysis I want to use it for.
cozzyd 6y ago
The data is available for download so you can plot as you please.
banana_giraffe 6y ago
I was mildly curious what that'd look like: https://ibb.co/qnx2Y4H https://ibb.co/qnx2Y4H Or, another way, % change compared to the average: https://ibb.co/5T5dMZk https://ibb.co/5T5dMZk

Consultant32452 6y ago

This is both shocking and promising. Looks like the rate is normalizing relative to previous years. That means the steps we're taking, treatments, etc. are working.

lutorm 6y ago
Another interpretation is that the most vulnerable have already been culled, so now the virus has to work harder.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Another is that respiratory pandemics cause "waves" of mortality... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/three-waves.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoratio...
dave5104 6y ago
In a more morbid observation, the 2020 data in that chart ends on Nov 1, 2020. I would be surprised if the 2020 line doesn't jump right back up again once the rest of November and post-Thanksgiving numbers are added in given that we're seeing large numbers of reported deaths again in recent weeks.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
I think you're being misled here. The steps we're taking to prevent covid19 are also having a dramatic impact on the spread of other respiratory infections. It's not so much that covid19 is under control - it's that our attempts to control it are suppressing deaths from flu etc.
- timeeater 6y ago
  Or they are all counted as Covid. If you go to the physician with a respiratory disease, they will test for Covid first. Will they still test for the flu? What about people who get to the hospital because of the flu and get infected with Covid there? How will they be counted? How come number of Covid infection rates is rising, while flu seems to be eradicated? If the measures help against the flu, why not against Covid?

umvi 6y ago

Won't it just get balanced out in following years though? A vulnerable/old person that died this year is one that can't die next year. Think of it like a forest fire. Once all the old/vulnerable wood is burned up, it's much more difficult for another forest fire of the same magnitude to happen in following years because the primary source of fuel is gone and it takes decades to build it up...

tenacious_tuna 6y ago
People aren't dry brush though. It's not a good thing that huge swaths of the population are dying. We won't be inherently more resilient to diseases in the short term just because all the vulnerable people are dead. For one, we don't even understand all the long term effects of having COVID as it is: there's heart damage, lung damage, brain damage, extended fatigue, and that's just what we're seeing evidence of now. [0] If another disease like COVID strikes in a couple years, it could still tear through the surviving population and cause similar long lasting effects. The thousands that're suffering a terrible death daily, separated from their families and straining our healthcare systems to the breaking point--their deaths are not somehow making our populaitons safer from another disease. EDIT: your analogy also supposes it's somehow the old/vulnerable populations that're the reservoir for the virus in our populations, when data indicates the opposite: it's far more likely younger populations are the carriers/vectors for COVID, especially since they are more often asymptomatic (w.r.t. acute effects) than more vulnerable chunks of the population. Future bugs will have plenty of population to travel through. [0]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
- umvi 6y ago
  > People aren't dry brush though In the analogy the dry brush are the vulnerable that die. Once the dry brush is gone, it can't burn a second time. Just like small pox wiped out all the vulnerable native americans, but then the offspring of the survivors were increasingly more resilient. Except in this case the fatality rate is 1% (or less) instead of 90%. > For one, we don't even understand all the long term effects of having COVID as it is: there's heart damage, lung damage, brain damage, extended fatigue, and that's just what we're seeing evidence of now. This just seems like fear of the unknown. On the contrary, for the vast majority of healthy humans, it seems like the immune-system is well equipped to deal with the virus so there isn't much reason to fear IMO (i.e. most people recover at home with no modern medicine needed). I have several family members that had it and recovered with seemingly no other long term effects, so there is no reason to believe they are going to be screwed later in life. > If another disease like COVID strikes in a couple years, it could still tear through the surviving population and cause similar long lasting effects. More fear of the unknown. Novel viruses don't come along very often. Getting sick is not a bad thing, natural selection is not a bad thing, it's the very mechanism that has allowed humans to survive this long on planet earth.

timeeater 6y ago

Classic to have the y-axis not start at 0 to make a curve look more dramatic. According to the CDC, there seem to be about 12% more deaths than the average of the last three years, or about 300K. Number of deaths has been rising every year, though, sometimes increasing by up to 90k from one year to the next.

tenacious_tuna 6y ago
From the linked article: "The raw death counts help give us a rough sense of scale: for example, the US suffered some 275,000 more deaths than the five-year average between 1 March and 16 August, compared to 169,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths during that period." So that's 275k-169k=106k extra deaths, which is a napkinmath'd 17% increase over the baseline (assuming that's 106k deaths over a 12wk period, and baseline is ~50k/week). A 17% rise in extra deaths seems pretty dramatic to me, regardless of the graphs. Granted, I'd love to see error bars on this stuff, but I don't think the axis starting at 0 is some nefarious plot to dramatize the data.
- timeeater 6y ago
  CDC at the moment says 12% increase compared to the average of the last three years. Absolute number of deaths have been rising from year to year, sometimes with jumps of 90k. Sure Covid has an impact, but whether it is dramatic is another question.
  - tenacious_tuna 6y ago
    > whether it is dramatic is another question. I thought that _was_ the quesiton: you seemed to imply the graph not starting at 0 was the article editorializing in some drama. My point was the situation is indeed dramatic (perhaps "significant" is a better phrase?) on its own, and they weren't unfairly exaggerating it for clicks/attention/fearmongering/whatever. It makes sense that 'absolute deaths' would rise as a function of absolute population size, but that's why this data is important to pay attention to: if our death rate is climbing more than expected, there's problems we should probably pay attention to.