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Every community has a baseline mortality rate during "normal" times. During abnormal times like pandemic, famine and war, more people die than usual, but often

Every community has a baseline mortality rate during "normal" times. During abnormal times like pandemic, famine and war, more people die than usual, but often the cause isn't known. If you subtract baseline mortality from actual mortality to get excess mortality, that's often a better estimate of the casualties from pandemic, famine and war than the death certificates for every person who died. Excess mortality in most countries shows that Covid deaths are significantly under-reported. And if there are fewer deaths from flu, and fewer from suicide [1], then excess mortality itself is under-reported and Covid killed even more than we thought. [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/04/08/defying-expectations-us-suicides-were-down-during-pandemic/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/04/08/defying-expectations-...

grumpyautist 6y ago
That article is drawing conclusions based on an incomplete data set. Suicide with covid is a covid death anyway.
- spinny 6y ago
  nope, having covid when getting run over by a bus counts as a covid death in many places
  - simion314 6y ago
    How many places? And how many places are trying to hide the real numbers(India the most recent one)
  - lame-robot-hoax 6y ago
    Source?
asiachick 6y ago
There would be fewer traffic accidents as well right. No idea if the balance of consequences are a net plus or a net minus. In any case there were a couple peaks in the USA where deaths from all causes were 25% higher than average. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
rajin444 6y ago
> And if there are fewer deaths from flu, and fewer from suicide [1], then excess mortality itself is under-reported and Covid killed even more than we thought. The majority of covid deaths are those that on average had very few months left to live. There is a likely a high chance these people were going to die to the next "flu" that came around. How do you account for this? It seems like adding flu deaths on top of covid is incorrect - both would only have a subset of people that are going to die from it, and while covid's is probably more than the flu (depending on the flu strain - we've had some pretty bad flu years), since they both share the same pool I don't think you can add flu deaths in. On top of that, we had a relatively light flu season preceding covid. This would also need to somehow be accounted for, but I'm not sure how. There was likely a "dry tinder" effect.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > The majority of covid deaths are those that on average had very few months left to live. In England we know covid is killing people on average at least 10 years early.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    10 years earlier from when they would have died from the flu? Or is a flu death also some # of years earlier than {median death age}?
    - widget1321 6y ago
      10 years earlier than they would have been expected to die without catching COVID. From anything, not just the flu. All-cause mortality includes flu deaths, yes, if that's what you're asking?
- thebruce87m 6y ago
  If they only had a few months left to live, we should see a spike in the opposite direction for excess mortality. You can monitor this yourself for some countries here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
CrazyPyroLinux 6y ago
Cleaned-up OCR'd data from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/leading-causes-of-death.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/leading-causes-of-death.htm in TSV format: Year/Cause of death 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Total deaths 2712630 2744248 2813503 2839205 2854838 3358814 Heart disease 633842 635260 647457 655381 659041 690882 Cancer 595930 598038 599108 599274 599601 598932 COVID-19 345323 Unintentional injuries 146571 161374 169936 167127 173040 192176 Stroke 140323 142142 146383 147810 150005 159050 Chronic lower respiratory diseases 155041 154596 160201 159486 156979 151637 Alzheimer disease 110561 116103 121404 122019 121499 133382 Diabetes 79535 80058 83564 84946 87647 101106 Influenza and pneumonia 57062 51537 55672 59120 49783 53495 Kidney disease 49959 50046 50633 51386 51565 52260 Suicide 44193 44965 47173 48344 47511 44834
- CrazyPyroLinux 6y ago
  Sorry for the awful formatting. Odd things in the prelim 2020 data that surprised me: All leading causes of death were statistically unchanged; COVID just shoehorned itself into the #3 spot below heart disease and cancer, above unintentional injuries. I was expecting a huge drop in the "Influenza and pneumonia" category, but there was not. I was also expecting a noticeable increase in the suicide category, but there was not.

grumpyautist 6y ago

That article is drawing conclusions based on an incomplete data set. Suicide with covid is a covid death anyway.

spinny 6y ago
nope, having covid when getting run over by a bus counts as a covid death in many places
- simion314 6y ago
  How many places? And how many places are trying to hide the real numbers(India the most recent one)
- lame-robot-hoax 6y ago
  Source?

asiachick 6y ago

There would be fewer traffic accidents as well right. No idea if the balance of consequences are a net plus or a net minus. In any case there were a couple peaks in the USA where deaths from all causes were 25% higher than average. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...

rajin444 6y ago

> And if there are fewer deaths from flu, and fewer from suicide [1], then excess mortality itself is under-reported and Covid killed even more than we thought. The majority of covid deaths are those that on average had very few months left to live. There is a likely a high chance these people were going to die to the next "flu" that came around. How do you account for this? It seems like adding flu deaths on top of covid is incorrect - both would only have a subset of people that are going to die from it, and while covid's is probably more than the flu (depending on the flu strain - we've had some pretty bad flu years), since they both share the same pool I don't think you can add flu deaths in. On top of that, we had a relatively light flu season preceding covid. This would also need to somehow be accounted for, but I'm not sure how. There was likely a "dry tinder" effect.

DanBC 6y ago
> The majority of covid deaths are those that on average had very few months left to live. In England we know covid is killing people on average at least 10 years early.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  10 years earlier from when they would have died from the flu? Or is a flu death also some # of years earlier than {median death age}?
  - widget1321 6y ago
    10 years earlier than they would have been expected to die without catching COVID. From anything, not just the flu. All-cause mortality includes flu deaths, yes, if that's what you're asking?
thebruce87m 6y ago
If they only had a few months left to live, we should see a spike in the opposite direction for excess mortality. You can monitor this yourself for some countries here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

CrazyPyroLinux 6y ago

Cleaned-up OCR'd data from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/leading-causes-of-death.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/leading-causes-of-death.htm in TSV format: Year/Cause of death 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Total deaths 2712630 2744248 2813503 2839205 2854838 3358814 Heart disease 633842 635260 647457 655381 659041 690882 Cancer 595930 598038 599108 599274 599601 598932 COVID-19 345323 Unintentional injuries 146571 161374 169936 167127 173040 192176 Stroke 140323 142142 146383 147810 150005 159050 Chronic lower respiratory diseases 155041 154596 160201 159486 156979 151637 Alzheimer disease 110561 116103 121404 122019 121499 133382 Diabetes 79535 80058 83564 84946 87647 101106 Influenza and pneumonia 57062 51537 55672 59120 49783 53495 Kidney disease 49959 50046 50633 51386 51565 52260 Suicide 44193 44965 47173 48344 47511 44834

CrazyPyroLinux 6y ago
Sorry for the awful formatting. Odd things in the prelim 2020 data that surprised me: All leading causes of death were statistically unchanged; COVID just shoehorned itself into the #3 spot below heart disease and cancer, above unintentional injuries. I was expecting a huge drop in the "Influenza and pneumonia" category, but there was not. I was also expecting a noticeable increase in the suicide category, but there was not.