3 ms·

Wouldn't you end up confounding a lot of different issues with that? Lifestyles and medicine has radically changed a fair bit in the last century, and so you'd

Wouldn't you end up confounding a lot of different issues with that? Lifestyles and medicine has radically changed a fair bit in the last century, and so you'd end up with a bunch of confounding factors.

mensetmanusman 6y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/23/us/covid-19-death-toll.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/23/us/covid-19-d... This is close to the analysis of interest. It’s true there are so many confounding issues, e.g. obesity rates have never been higher and are a huge cofactors, population inversion, etc.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Interesting that way fewer people died after the 1918 pandemic. I assume it "weeded out" all the people who were likely to die soon anyway, but what's more interesting is that the negative bar seems to be longer than the positive one, which would somehow mean that the pandemic saved lives? Very odd.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    1918 was also during WWI. While they mark that with the pandemic, are they including US service member deaths during the war in death totals? I'm trying to find a breakdown by year, but the total US deaths from the war was around 100k. Even taking them as evenly distributed over 1914-1918 (inaccurate) that's 20k extra deaths in each of those years.
  - caddemon 6y ago
    Assuming it's not just noise, could be that technology developed or cultural norms changed because of the pandemic saved some lives down the line. Also, weren't deaths in the first year of life much more common back then? Maybe there were just significantly less people having kids right after the pandemic.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Antibiotics became widely used in the last 100 years. We’ve learned a lot as a species in that time.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Exactly. And we've gotten better with cancer, but we've gotten worse with obesity. There's a bunch of layers to apply, so I don't know how factoring in the excess mortality from 1957 or 1942 is particularly useful if you're looking at how much upset COVID causes society.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/23/us/covid-19-death-toll.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/23/us/covid-19-d... This is close to the analysis of interest. It’s true there are so many confounding issues, e.g. obesity rates have never been higher and are a huge cofactors, population inversion, etc.

StavrosK 6y ago
Interesting that way fewer people died after the 1918 pandemic. I assume it "weeded out" all the people who were likely to die soon anyway, but what's more interesting is that the negative bar seems to be longer than the positive one, which would somehow mean that the pandemic saved lives? Very odd.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  1918 was also during WWI. While they mark that with the pandemic, are they including US service member deaths during the war in death totals? I'm trying to find a breakdown by year, but the total US deaths from the war was around 100k. Even taking them as evenly distributed over 1914-1918 (inaccurate) that's 20k extra deaths in each of those years.
- caddemon 6y ago
  Assuming it's not just noise, could be that technology developed or cultural norms changed because of the pandemic saved some lives down the line. Also, weren't deaths in the first year of life much more common back then? Maybe there were just significantly less people having kids right after the pandemic.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Antibiotics became widely used in the last 100 years. We’ve learned a lot as a species in that time.

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
Exactly. And we've gotten better with cancer, but we've gotten worse with obesity. There's a bunch of layers to apply, so I don't know how factoring in the excess mortality from 1957 or 1942 is particularly useful if you're looking at how much upset COVID causes society.