5 ms·

Unless there are more pandemics and wars that intervene. This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. I think we are

by rmk 5y ago

Unless there are more pandemics and wars that intervene. This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. I think we are perhaps 80% of the way to an endemic with successive mutations becoming less and less lethal, so perhaps the true death toll is in the 15-20 million range. Any large scale war between nation-states can have a pretty high death toll if things escalate out of control. How much could that be? And how would that affect future population growth? This is without taking into account decreasing sperm counts of men in developed countries and excess deaths due to air pollution in developing countries.

kspacewalk2 5y ago
>This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. Every time I see such claims, I still cringe at the thought of figuring out what it actually means. The details are gory, and can be summarized simplistically by saying "death with COVID ≠ death from COVID". In other words, figuring out true disease toll is a rather ambiguous problem, as stated. Can someone point me to a reference where this subject is rigorously treated, without skipping over the gore, but is still accessible to a non-expert (say, to someone who has undergrad-level understanding of health stats)? Could be a paper, a meta study, a blog post, whatever. Like with this estimate, for example, I'd want to know if it's 10-12 million people who died within X days of a positive PCR test for COVID, or something less naive.
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  I'm fairly certain they use excess deaths, not necessary "deaths with COVID".
- zuminator 5y ago
  It has nothing to do with PCR tests. The Economist based their estimate on a ML analysis based on excess mortality estimates. [0] https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-the-economist-global-excess-deaths-model https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-the-economist-globa... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
- munificent 5y ago
  The easy way to get a rough answer here is simply to compare the death rate from the same time of year a couple of years back. Assuming no other events that would cause a large swing in death rate, most of the variance can likely be explained by COVID.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Assuming no other events that would cause a large swing in death rate It's not obvious this is a tenable assumption, though. Depression and isolation can also increase mortality for things not directly related to depression and isolation, for example.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  > "death with COVID ≠ death from COVID" My favourite take on this: "I have Type 1 diabetes. I am healthy enough to run ultramarathons. If I get attacked by a bear & the ICU has trouble managing my blood sugar while caring for my bear attack wounds...and I die... the bear is the cause of my death. "[1] But it's irrelevant since these meta studies always use excess deaths over average because of reportings issues (both logistical and political). Start here https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid [1] https://twitter.com/cadiulus/status/1300408867717812231 https://twitter.com/cadiulus/status/1300408867717812231
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    > But it's irrelevant since these meta studies always use excess deaths over average because of reportings issues (both logistical and political). Exactly, deciding the cause of a single death is a messy complex task that doesn't have correct answers. Deciding the number of deaths due to a cause is much simpler and can be done most of the times.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rmk 5y ago
    Excess mortality is a rough proxy of death from COVID. In the bear attack example, the proximal cause of death is the Bear attack, and diabetes is a comorbidity. The death of the diabetic arose out of complications stemming from the bear attack, so it's reasonable to categorize it as a bear attack death. I'm assuming that you are arguing that from the excess deaths standpoint, death from x vs. death with x both count as death from x, to which I agree. I also think it's a reasonable characterization.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    This could be solved if we used tagging in the data. E.g. everything should be tagged that played a role. Bear, ICU skill, T1D, etc.
foolinaround 5y ago
> This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. A more accurate way to state would be "This pandemic and the varying response to it by different nations has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist."
- rmk 5y ago
  That's pedantic, and useless accuracy. Excess deaths stem primarily from the pandemic. It would be even more accurate to say that "The obfuscation of the true nature of what was a deadly pandemic by a corrupt totalitarian state killed 10-12 million people", but that's totally irrelevant and distracting in this context.

by rmk 5y ago

kspacewalk2 5y ago

>This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. Every time I see such claims, I still cringe at the thought of figuring out what it actually means. The details are gory, and can be summarized simplistically by saying "death with COVID ≠ death from COVID". In other words, figuring out true disease toll is a rather ambiguous problem, as stated. Can someone point me to a reference where this subject is rigorously treated, without skipping over the gore, but is still accessible to a non-expert (say, to someone who has undergrad-level understanding of health stats)? Could be a paper, a meta study, a blog post, whatever. Like with this estimate, for example, I'd want to know if it's 10-12 million people who died within X days of a positive PCR test for COVID, or something less naive.

bart_spoon 5y ago
I'm fairly certain they use excess deaths, not necessary "deaths with COVID".
zuminator 5y ago
It has nothing to do with PCR tests. The Economist based their estimate on a ML analysis based on excess mortality estimates. [0] https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-the-economist-global-excess-deaths-model https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-the-economist-globa... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
munificent 5y ago
The easy way to get a rough answer here is simply to compare the death rate from the same time of year a couple of years back. Assuming no other events that would cause a large swing in death rate, most of the variance can likely be explained by COVID.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Assuming no other events that would cause a large swing in death rate It's not obvious this is a tenable assumption, though. Depression and isolation can also increase mortality for things not directly related to depression and isolation, for example.
Ensorceled 5y ago
> "death with COVID ≠ death from COVID" My favourite take on this: "I have Type 1 diabetes. I am healthy enough to run ultramarathons. If I get attacked by a bear & the ICU has trouble managing my blood sugar while caring for my bear attack wounds...and I die... the bear is the cause of my death. "[1] But it's irrelevant since these meta studies always use excess deaths over average because of reportings issues (both logistical and political). Start here https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid [1] https://twitter.com/cadiulus/status/1300408867717812231 https://twitter.com/cadiulus/status/1300408867717812231
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  > But it's irrelevant since these meta studies always use excess deaths over average because of reportings issues (both logistical and political). Exactly, deciding the cause of a single death is a messy complex task that doesn't have correct answers. Deciding the number of deaths due to a cause is much simpler and can be done most of the times.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rmk 5y ago
  Excess mortality is a rough proxy of death from COVID. In the bear attack example, the proximal cause of death is the Bear attack, and diabetes is a comorbidity. The death of the diabetic arose out of complications stemming from the bear attack, so it's reasonable to categorize it as a bear attack death. I'm assuming that you are arguing that from the excess deaths standpoint, death from x vs. death with x both count as death from x, to which I agree. I also think it's a reasonable characterization.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  This could be solved if we used tagging in the data. E.g. everything should be tagged that played a role. Bear, ICU skill, T1D, etc.

foolinaround 5y ago

> This pandemic has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist. A more accurate way to state would be "This pandemic and the varying response to it by different nations has killed an estimated 10-12 million people, according to the Economist."

rmk 5y ago
That's pedantic, and useless accuracy. Excess deaths stem primarily from the pandemic. It would be even more accurate to say that "The obfuscation of the true nature of what was a deadly pandemic by a corrupt totalitarian state killed 10-12 million people", but that's totally irrelevant and distracting in this context.