3 ms·
17% excess mortality (and that’s assuming this 1% baseline we pulled out of the air, remember) doesn’t mean that the pandemic is only responsible for those exce
by msbarnett 5y ago
17% excess mortality (and that’s assuming this 1% baseline we pulled out of the air, remember) doesn’t mean that the pandemic is only responsible for those excess deaths – a bunch of people who might have otherwise been expected to get hit by a car worked from home all year, or died from COVID instead, etc.
So the pandemic is responsible for the 17% (in this scenario) uplift above baseline plus an unknown portion of that baseline itself.
To be honest one cause, which changed a lot of behaviour that rolls into the baseline, pushing the global baseline up that much seems pretty impressive to me.
Would be also interesting to consider distribution of that excess and how China fared in the excess mortality department. After the early days they seemed to keep it tightly under control, and they contain an enormous portion of the world’s population. That might suggest that excess mortality elsewhere was even further above baseline and the excess mortality only looks this good because 1.2 billion people mostly stuck to baseline?
- claytongulick 5y agoApparently suicides and deaths from starvation were also up significantly. It will indeed be interesting to see how the distribution of deaths plays out.
- msbarnett 5y ago> Apparently suicides and deaths from starvation were also up significantly Out of curiosity, do you have any sources on that? I’ve been interested in this topic after observing, locally, a number of politicians who had previously pushed hard to cut funding for mental health and who were ideologically opposed to the concept of lockdowns suddenly and vocally expressing a great deal of concern about mental health & a supposed uptick in suicides that was (they claimed) going to be worse than COVID itself. When all was said and done, though, suicide rates in my locality were significantly lower than average: https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/suicide-deaths-in-alberta-in-2020-fewer-than-what-was-recorded-last-year-1.5228242 https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/suicide-deaths-in-alberta-in-2020...
- licyeus 5y agoSuicides were down (in USA) for 2020: https://www.axios.com/suicide-decreased-in-2020-pandemmic-mental-health-26196eaf-a245-4d21-85eb-eeb864a24449.html https://www.axios.com/suicide-decreased-in-2020-pandemmic-me...
- sellyme 5y agoWhoever told you that was almost certainly lying. This was a very common claim amongst anti-lockdown protestors where I live, turns out when the yearly national suicide prevention report was published suicides had gone down significantly.
- belltaco 5y agoHow is it "apparent"? Suicides have been down https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-suicides-have-decreased-during-the-covid-19-pandemic https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-suicides-have-dec... Where are you getting your information from.