6 ms·

I'd like to see a version of this analysis that incorporates all-cause mortality from a much larger time period; say the past fifty years rather than the past f

I'd like to see a version of this analysis that incorporates all-cause mortality from a much larger time period; say the past fifty years rather than the past five.

StavrosK 5y ago
Why?
- 015UUZn8aEvW 5y ago
  Because it would give people a better intuitive sense of how bad COVID is in a larger civilizational/historical context. Over the past 12+ months, people have accepted enormous infringements on freedoms in their everyday lives. Many of the public health measures that we take as a matter of course in the "new normal" - lockdowns, social distancing, extended closing of churches, etc.- are things that would have been almost unthinkable as recently as January of 2020. If you look far enough back, to some point in the twentieth century, you'll find a time at which the baseline infectious disease risk in everyday life was higher than it has been in the COVID-era US. But people at that time went to crowded theaters, ate in restaurants, packed together in churches and schools, and so on. Restricting these things could have decreased their all-cause mortality, but they clearly found that option unacceptable. Note that this isn't an issue of whether people "believe in science" or "believe in data". It's an issue of risk tolerance. People a few generations ago understood the Germ Theory of Disease perfectly well, and they knew that they could reduce the spread of infectious disease by implementing the kinds of measures we've implemented for COVID. And yet they didn't implement these measures, except in very minor and temporary ways. We've become far more risk-averse than they were. And the question of whether that's a good thing is not an empirical question.
  - StavrosK 5y ago
    I don't understand your argument. You're saying that because people didn't mind dying from infectous diseases at a time where scraping your hand could prove deadly, we shouldn't mind it today either?
    - 015UUZn8aEvW 5y ago
      It's not a question of what people "mind" or "don't mind", it's a question of what level of risk people will accept in order to live a normal life. Hiding away from people may reduce risk in a lot of ways, but most people find it unacceptable. Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken about that.
      - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        > Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. Are you under the impression that you were experiencing pure liberty before COVID? Because it's pretty obvious to me that there was an acceptable level of restraints that society generally agreed to, and those levels changed due to the pandemic. It's a fun saying, but it's in no way, shape, or form realistic.
        CountDrewku 5y ago
        Are you suggesting that since we didn't have full liberty before the pandemic we should be ok with less liberty during the pandemic and into the future? Because by accepting these measures now I can guarantee they'll become the new norm just like the changes after 9/11.
        SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        > Because by accepting these measures now I can guarantee they'll become the new norm just like the changes after 9/11. What measures are you referring to with this? Masks clearly aren't going to stay around, and there's a push to reopen everything and get life back to normal as soon as possible.
      - watwut 5y ago
        > Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken about that. America is country with most strict safety standards in pretty much anything I ever heard of. Including kids playground structures.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    That doesn’t seem like an empirical question at all. Whether it’s a good thing depends on what you value.
- caddemon 5y ago
  In a vacuum it would give you more of a sense about how much of an outlier this year was. But obviously enough other things have changed over the last 50 years that the numbers would stop being comparable. Perhaps looking at a 5 year sliding window to see how big the peaks usually are relative to their surrounding years could get at this with a bit less confounding.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    Which is exactly what the article did in its first graph.
    - caddemon 5y ago
      Unless I'm missing something they only use a single 5 year window to look at the 2020 peak. I meant if you slide the window back over the past 50 years, what other peaks show up and how much larger are they then the other years in their window?
      - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        Ah, I misunderstood your point. You're missing nothing.
happytoexplain 5y ago
While that would be interesting, it would be a less direct measure of COVID's impact, as other variables are introduced.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  The tricky thing about discussing covid-19 mortality is that there are always confounding variables. The disease is deadlier for people with pre-existing conditions, particularly cardiovascular. A common line of argument online is "it's just the flu, and we don't panic like this for flu season every year." Observing a spike in total deaths puts that line of thought to the test.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
dennis_jeeves 5y ago
Lies, damn lies and statistics.

I'd like to see a version of this analysis that incorporates all-cause mortality from a much larger time period; say the past fifty years rather than the past five.

StavrosK 5y ago

Why?

015UUZn8aEvW 5y ago
Because it would give people a better intuitive sense of how bad COVID is in a larger civilizational/historical context. Over the past 12+ months, people have accepted enormous infringements on freedoms in their everyday lives. Many of the public health measures that we take as a matter of course in the "new normal" - lockdowns, social distancing, extended closing of churches, etc.- are things that would have been almost unthinkable as recently as January of 2020. If you look far enough back, to some point in the twentieth century, you'll find a time at which the baseline infectious disease risk in everyday life was higher than it has been in the COVID-era US. But people at that time went to crowded theaters, ate in restaurants, packed together in churches and schools, and so on. Restricting these things could have decreased their all-cause mortality, but they clearly found that option unacceptable. Note that this isn't an issue of whether people "believe in science" or "believe in data". It's an issue of risk tolerance. People a few generations ago understood the Germ Theory of Disease perfectly well, and they knew that they could reduce the spread of infectious disease by implementing the kinds of measures we've implemented for COVID. And yet they didn't implement these measures, except in very minor and temporary ways. We've become far more risk-averse than they were. And the question of whether that's a good thing is not an empirical question.
- StavrosK 5y ago
  I don't understand your argument. You're saying that because people didn't mind dying from infectous diseases at a time where scraping your hand could prove deadly, we shouldn't mind it today either?
  - 015UUZn8aEvW 5y ago
    It's not a question of what people "mind" or "don't mind", it's a question of what level of risk people will accept in order to live a normal life. Hiding away from people may reduce risk in a lot of ways, but most people find it unacceptable. Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken about that.
    - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      > Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. Are you under the impression that you were experiencing pure liberty before COVID? Because it's pretty obvious to me that there was an acceptable level of restraints that society generally agreed to, and those levels changed due to the pandemic. It's a fun saying, but it's in no way, shape, or form realistic.
      - CountDrewku 5y ago
        Are you suggesting that since we didn't have full liberty before the pandemic we should be ok with less liberty during the pandemic and into the future? Because by accepting these measures now I can guarantee they'll become the new norm just like the changes after 9/11.
        SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        > Because by accepting these measures now I can guarantee they'll become the new norm just like the changes after 9/11. What measures are you referring to with this? Masks clearly aren't going to stay around, and there's a push to reopen everything and get life back to normal as soon as possible.
    - watwut 5y ago
      > Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken about that. America is country with most strict safety standards in pretty much anything I ever heard of. Including kids playground structures.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  That doesn’t seem like an empirical question at all. Whether it’s a good thing depends on what you value.
caddemon 5y ago
In a vacuum it would give you more of a sense about how much of an outlier this year was. But obviously enough other things have changed over the last 50 years that the numbers would stop being comparable. Perhaps looking at a 5 year sliding window to see how big the peaks usually are relative to their surrounding years could get at this with a bit less confounding.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  Which is exactly what the article did in its first graph.
  - caddemon 5y ago
    Unless I'm missing something they only use a single 5 year window to look at the 2020 peak. I meant if you slide the window back over the past 50 years, what other peaks show up and how much larger are they then the other years in their window?
    - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      Ah, I misunderstood your point. You're missing nothing.

happytoexplain 5y ago

While that would be interesting, it would be a less direct measure of COVID's impact, as other variables are introduced.

shadowgovt 5y ago
The tricky thing about discussing covid-19 mortality is that there are always confounding variables. The disease is deadlier for people with pre-existing conditions, particularly cardiovascular. A common line of argument online is "it's just the flu, and we don't panic like this for flu season every year." Observing a spike in total deaths puts that line of thought to the test.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

dennis_jeeves 5y ago

Lies, damn lies and statistics.