12 ms·

The Economist tracks excess deaths

163 points by Zigurd 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
magneticnorth 5y ago
I was surprised how many eastern European countries seem to top the list of excess death counts per capita, and have much higher excess deaths than official covid deaths. Does anyone know what the causes are? Are they dealing with much worse epidemics of addiction, alcohol, poverty, or something else than most of the world? Or did they have an older population? Or is it mostly from covid but under-reported, and somehow eastern Europe was especially hard-hit?
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  I believe many of them are directly correlated because of influence of Russia. Those countries have more anti-vaxxers too. Some of them have bought the Russian vaccine and well... That's not working out for them. Similar to other countries that bought the Russian vaccine fyi. So you could check out Brasil and Mexico as a reference for my statement. I can't think of another cause/correlation.
  - usaphp 5y ago
    it's not like Pfizer or Moderna vaccine are working any better, we are still under lockdown, even tho 80% of population is vaccinated
    - NicoJuicy 5y ago
      Yes it does. Just check excess deaths, that's what this article is about... They both already reduce severe illness. Additionally, it's not just about the efficiency of the vaccine. But the Russian vaccine is overpromised and underdelivered regarding to sales/deliveries to the countries that agreed to buy it. They are severely failing to deliver the 2nd dose as promised. Let's not go into detail about the corruption associated with it too... Plenty of resources to verify if you did a little bit of effort ;) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/09/a-royal-mark-up-how-an-emirati-sheikh-resells-millions-of-russian-vaccines-to-the-developing-world-a74461 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/09/a-royal-mark-up-ho... https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/15/what-went-wrong-with-russia-s-sputnik-v-vaccine-rollout-pub-85783 https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/15/what-went-wrong-wit... https://apnews.com/article/world-news-mexico-russia-europe-coronavirus-vaccine-3f9b0455d1717c02e28fc710defee0ee https://apnews.com/article/world-news-mexico-russia-europe-c... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58003893.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58003893.amp https://www.news18.com/amp/news/india/what-went-wrong-with-full-rollout-of-russia-sputnik-v-vaccine-in-india-4469018.html https://www.news18.com/amp/news/india/what-went-wrong-with-f... https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/guatemala-asks-russia-return-money-over-failure-deliver-sputnik-covid-19-vaccine-2021-06-29/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/22/argentina-sputnik-vaccine-russia-fails-to-deliver https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/22/a... They didn't even do phase 3 trials and refuse to give sufficient information to the WHO. That's what you get for rushing things just to call dibs. What a mess.
      - usaphp 5y ago
        Not sure where do you see that, looking at United States from the chart: - October 2020, +15% deviation from expected deaths - October 2021, +25% deviation from expected deaths
        adventured 5y ago
        The US is under-vaccinated versus its affluent peers and is also just about the heavy weight champ of the world (ie loaded with comorbidities that amp up the Covid mortality rate, such as diabetes). What's confusing about it?
        jjeaff 5y ago
        Ya, and it just so happens that there is a big overlap in obesity, low income, and those that won't get vaccinated. Which has created a double whammy when it comes to US deaths.
      - tiahura 5y ago
        Vaccines made a negligible difference to the case fatality rate.
        manuelabeledo 5y ago
        > Vaccines made a negligible difference to the case fatality rate. Source? Because everywhere I look, vaccines seem to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.
    - baxtr 5y ago
      Where are you located?
      - genewitch 5y ago
        Off the cuff, The Netherlands is currently in lockdown, and I can't remember the other ones.
        NicoJuicy 5y ago
        It's a partial lockdown in the Netherlands, mostly because countries/they were afraid if the infection rate of omicron. I suppose they will lift it soon now more studies are getting released about it's severity. A new variant doesn't mean that there's no danger because you are vaccinated. Studies need to happen for efficiency/severity. Edit for below ( can't reply, sorry): New cases != Severe cases
        the-dude 5y ago
        Not mentioned : infections were at record highs just before this lockdown. With a vacrate of 80%+ ( ~ 83% couple of weeks ago ). > New cases != Severe cases ICU were nearing capacity, there was talk about black scenario's. If you can't reply, click the timestamp of the post
        NicoJuicy 5y ago
        If I look at the Netherlands, the spike of deaths was on 9 December: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherlands/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherland... For me, that means it is mostly delta and not omicron. Considering the delay on hospitalisation/death and the appearance of omicron in Europe. Just like the UK, the Netherlands was indeed close to severe issues in healthcare. Ps. Hi from Belgium
        the-dude 5y ago
        > For me, that means it is mostly delta and not omicron. For sure it was not omicron. But that is not what this subthread is about. We had ~83% vacrate and record high infections. And health care nearing capacity. And OP was doubting the effeciacy of the vaccines. Maybe he is right. High vacrates don't seem to do much.
    - KoftaBob 5y ago
      No state or city in the US has any "lockdowns" in effect. Unless you've been living in complete isolation off the grid and re-emerged today, your comment is a classic internet strawman.
- pashamur 5y ago
  Most likely under-reported COVID deaths. Having looked at the Russia data at least, many deaths (earlier on) were marked with "pneumonia" and they didn't even bother testing for COVID.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    I have found that pneumonia is apparently broadly misunderstood by a lot of people. (It's an inflammatory issue in the lungs, usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection. It is not it's own type of virus.) We had some family friends that refused to get vaccinated. The wife contracted COVID and then died a few weeks later. When we asked the husband if he was going to get vaccinated, he said no. Because COVID is no worse than a cold. He explained that his wife died from pneumonia, not COVID. I have seen this repeated a lot when it comes to cause of death. Reports can show things like cardio pulmonary arrest (which means your heart and lungs stopped) complicated by COVID and heart disease or whatever. And then people go away saying well, COVID didn't kill them, it was a cardio pulmonary arrest ... and they had heart disease... It's amazing how much you can convince yourself of if you want to.
    - josephg 5y ago
      Yep. It’s like saying someone who’s been shot didn’t die from a bullet. They died of internal hemorrhaging. It’s a distinction without a difference.
      - jjeaff 5y ago
        And the shooting victim was older, so, they probably would have died soon anyway. Or, the shooting victim had preexisting conditions. So it wasn't "just" the gun shot wound that killed them.
        drjasonharrison 5y ago
        No, they died because they didn't have enough oxygen transported to the brain and internal organs.
- Zigurd 5y ago
  Russia appears to be in deep denial. Some of that influence will spread through the ethnic Russian population in other Eastern European countries. Follow the link in the article to the overall likely undercount, based on excess deaths. It is pretty horrifying.
  - jwithington 5y ago
    Uh…did Russia about to lose about 1% of its population due to COVID?? Slightly over 1M excess deaths in a country with a population of 145M.
    - Zigurd 5y ago
      I recall seeing articles that the largest postwar drop in Russia's population was in 2021
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Right-authoritarian governments with populists strongman executives like Russia and Hungary are completely unequipped to handle anything like this disease.
- tim333 5y ago
  I think a lot is attitude, chatting to a couple of eastern European friends the people like there are like big deal and ignore it to a large extent.
usaphp 5y ago
I don't quite understand, how come "expected deaths" are almost the same across the whole year. Winter flu season is known to have a much higher death toll than summers, I remember reading news of triage tents were set up during winter flu season in new york.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  It's not almost the same though. It's showing a 20% increase during flu season.
- bena 5y ago
  These are tracking deviations from the norm. It's not that expected deaths are flat across the year, it's that they're just showing the difference. If we expect 50 and see 55, we have 5 excess deaths. If we expect 10 and see 15, we still only have 5 excess.
  - usaphp 5y ago
    No, chart has "Total Deaths" and "Expected Deaths" numbers per month. Just hover over the tiles and you will see these values.
    - lijogdfljk 5y ago
      How much should it swing? ~+20% for US from Jan to June 2020 for example, is that not the difference you're looking for?
    - bena 5y ago
      On the chart, "Weekly estimated excess deaths by age group", there's a swing of nearly 10,000 between the lowest and highest of expected deaths. And it seems to be week by week. So while week by week, the change isn't much (and it shouldn't be), overall there's a decent swing. Even in the lower age groups there's a decent swing and it follows the seasons. Even though the numbers across the board are lower. What are you looking for here? What would feel right to you?
- 5y ago
teruakohatu 5y ago
In NZ we just about eliminated flu (and COVID until recently), with resulted in the negative excess deaths reported in the article.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  It’s slightly jarring to see a negative number, and even more jarring how much airtime those championing unlocking, unmasking and being antivax are getting here.
  - usaphp 5y ago
    If you ban people from driving cars and make them walk everywhere - you could also eliminate car accident deaths, it's not sustainable though...
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      I mean maybe you’re onto something and don’t realize it. Banning cars would be more akin to totally locking down rather than incentivizing vaccination, masks and other public health measures that aren’t as invasive. Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is a good thing.
      - aronpye 5y ago
        So basically destroy rural populations which are also the source of all our food? Unless I’m mistaken in that cities are actually the source of all life sustaining industries.
        pm90 5y ago
        Enough with the hyperbole. Discouraging car use won’t destroy rural populations; it would improve the QoL of urban ones.
        5y ago
lettergram 5y ago
- Zigurd 5y ago
  It's not suicides: https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-increase-suicides-that-shouldnt-be-a-surprise/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-incre...
  - lettergram 5y ago
    - Zigurd 5y ago
      Actually, you did not wait.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      So you say you will wait for the full report, because preliminary reports are often inaccurate, but then post a different preliminary report?
    - Kranar 5y ago
      So preliminary reports are inaccurate when they disagree with your viewpoint, but you had no problem claiming that actual suicides went up by 50% because over the course of 4 months, a preliminary report showed that suspected suicide attempts among girls aged 12 to 17 increased by 50%...
      - civilized 5y ago
        I've never seen such extreme bias and extreme confidence in one place on HN.
    - civilized 5y ago
rufus_foreman 5y ago
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2560/ https://xkcd.com/2560/
opless 5y ago
Paywall
- acqbu 5y ago
  https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...
  - opless 5y ago
    Thanks for the link. The paywall I was meaning was this. https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgraphic-detail%2Fcoronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgr...
- Zigurd 5y ago
  I'm not seeing a paywall for the main article link. There is a link in the article that goes to another paywalled article. But I can see the posted article just fine, though I am not a subscriber.
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    This tells you everything you need to know, same thing happens with the FT & wsj if it's an article they want everyone to read....
  - opless 5y ago
    Yeah, thanks to the other poster (who helped rather than those who downvoted) the link to the unpaywalled meat of the article is below. https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgraphic-detail%2Fcoronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgr...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
KoftaBob 5y ago
How interesting that they don't include China in this list, as they are notorious for outright lying about basically every metric ever.
- Zigurd 5y ago
  It is very interesting. There is a link in this article to another article that contains a pretty shocking global estimate based on excess deaths: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-... It is more than 4X the official count. Some of that is probably in places with no official numbers. But one wonders how many are in China.
wanderingmind 5y ago
This was the number thay should have been used all along in the western world. The excessive deaths were very high in Q2/Q3 2020 that warranted stringent lockdown. However starting Q4, the excess deaths have started to reduce and has significantly minimzed across the world in second half of 2021. Its most likely because of vaccines but the acquired immunity due to infections are also likely a cause. There is no need for any restrictions from a public health standpoint as excess deaths are now significantly lower likely with the expected error. EDIT: the post was primarily about western countries with reliable data and vaccination records
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Are you referring to any particular jurisdiction? In the U.S.A. for example Q3 2021 excess deaths were as bad as Q2-Q3 2020. 40% excess deaths is something like 3000 people every day.
  - wanderingmind 5y ago
    Most countries in western Europe and many states seem to have less than 10 ℅ excess deaths in 2021. There is also likely to be an error that is not quoted here. Typically such comparisons must be made on 10 year average data and the changes within those years will provide the error which is likely to have variation of 5-10 ℅
    - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
      > Most countries in western Europe and many states seem to have less than 10 ℅ excess deaths in 2021 That may well be true, but it cannot in and of itself be a reason to decide to relax measures. It's like saying the number of traffic accidents are low, thus we can abolish drivers licenses, speed limits, age limits on driving, alcohol limits on driving, seatbelts etc. No: the measures (e.g. seatbelts) cause the good results (low traffic deaths). Simply looking at the good results can never in and of itself be a reason to remove the measures. You'd want to evidence that the desirable results will remain without the measures, before removing the measures. e.g. if there's evidence that removing speeding limits does not impact traffic accidents/deaths, then you can remove the limit.
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/1640640600?hl=en-US&tz=300&date=all&geo=US&q=died+suddenly&sni=3 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16406406... https://i.postimg.cc/QM0ckk2C/Screenshot-2021-12-27-163738.png https://i.postimg.cc/QM0ckk2C/Screenshot-2021-12-27-163738.p...
- clove 5y ago
  What happened in November?
pelasaco 5y ago
how should i interpret this chart? - Australia and Germany did well, Peru not so much? - The Swedish COVID-19 Response wasn't a disaster[1] - Brazil didn't make so bad as widely reported by the media? References: [1]: https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/ https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Much of it is likely due to strength or weaknesses of various medical systems, as well as density/distribution of population. Remember this tracks deaths only, not case rates or hospitalization generally. I tend to think if you went into a hospital in Sweden, you got good care. The US did fairly well, but you also have to consider there are large areas that are very spread out geographically, large suburbs, etc. Seems like places that did the worst -- outside of the first wave when nobody was prepared -- are what you'd expect: places with poor, dense populations, and worse infrastructure.
  - pelasaco 5y ago
    > Seems like places that did the worst -- outside of the first wave when nobody was prepared -- are what you'd expect: places with poor, dense populations, and worse infrastructure. Ok, that's make sense. I'm however more concerned in understand the "aftermath" from 2020 and 2021 regarding the Media narrative. Get all this data and correlate with what was being published live in in the media. I wish we could hold all the reporters, scientists and experts accountable for the amount of misinformation that was published mainly to generate clicks, support narrative and political stances.
- tim333 5y ago
  Sweden did quite well economically too https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-economies-have-done-best-and-worst-during-the-pandemic/21806917 https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-econom... although Denmark beat them in both economy and deaths. I guess if you've got a country of mostly responsible educated people you can say behave sensibly without the government legislating loads of rules.
setgree 5y ago
Code and data here https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-excess-deaths-tracker https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-excess-deaths-track... Really nice to see a 'legacy' publication embrace open source
- alisonatwork 5y ago
  It's not so unusual. See... https://github.com/abcnews https://github.com/abcnews https://github.com/BBC https://github.com/BBC https://github.com/guardian https://github.com/guardian https://github.com/nytimes https://github.com/nytimes And so on...
jedberg 5y ago
What's interesting about this is that it doesn't look like it accounts for the expected reduction in deaths due to lockdown -- a lot of people die in car accidents every year, and at least early on in the pandemic, miles traveled was reduced by nearly 90%, and car accidents went way down, and even further down when you consider it was impossible to drive home drunk from a bar. Which means the excess deaths would be even higher than shown here, at least early on. EDIT: Looks like I am wrong. Below someone links to a report showing that traffic fatalities actually went up because the people still on the road were more risky. I was basing my statement on estimates made in early 2020.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I'm sure there were more overdoses and suicides due to the lockdowns too.
  - samspenc 5y ago
    And there were indeed more of both: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/11/17/overdose-deaths-soar-record-level-amid-pandemic-rise-fentanyl/8629870002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/11/17/overdo... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-11/teen-suicide-attempts-surged-during-lockdowns-cdc-study-shows https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-11/teen-suic...
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      There were more overdoses, but fewer suicides. Your second link references teen suicide attempts, which are neither representative of the overall suicidal demographic nor reflect actual suicide rates.
      - priansh 5y ago
        Suicide rates are tricky since mental health can have long lasting issues and the societal changes from lockdown will have even longer term effects. How do you attribute a suicide 2 years from now to depression that started during COVID? It’s going to be interesting seeing how the psychology field approaches this.
mcculley 5y ago
I built some tooling around the U.S. CDC data to better understand this at a state level: https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/ https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/
- dkn775 5y ago
  What did you use to make this website? I like it a lot.
  - mcculley 5y ago
    Thank you. I did not imagine anyone would actually like the layout/UI. I have been looking for input on how to improve it. The site itself is just handcoded HTML: https://github.com/mcculley/mcculley.github.io/blob/master/VisualizingObservedDeaths/index.html https://github.com/mcculley/mcculley.github.io/blob/master/V... The polar area diagrams are generated by Java code I wrote for this purpose: https://github.com/mcculley/ObservedDeathVisualizer https://github.com/mcculley/ObservedDeathVisualizer The bar charts and the line graph are generated by Datawrapper (https://app.datawrapper.de https://app.datawrapper.de) using the CSVs exported by the aforementioned code.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Why are the negative numbers not colored on a scale too? Do many deaths in the winter mean less deaths during the summer? I don't know, i have to hover the mouse over the months and guesstimate.
aronpye 5y ago
- darthrupert 5y ago
  Jesus, honestly? This isn't even funny as a joke. You need to be very ashamed for typing that.
  - aronpye 5y ago
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      "Legality doesn't imply morality" is a trite observation that doesn't on its own justify a comment, much less a tasteless comparison between the Holocaust and a global medical emergency.
      - starfleet_bop 5y ago
        [flagged]
        woodruffw 5y ago
        As we've amply experienced over the last 18 months, a disease can simultaneously be mild (in perceived short-term illness) for most people and kill and incapacitate millions of people. These are not disjoint conditions for a global pandemic, and mild illness in many is not itself a sufficient condition for ignoring the harm done to millions. And, to be blunt: "I didn't say the word 'Holocaust' when I compared COVID to the efficient cause of the Holocaust" is not a plausible excuse.
        aronpye 5y ago
        5y ago
kesor 5y ago
Can someone explain how they come up with the "expected deaths" number? The article doesn't explain how this number is calculated or which assumptions were made to come up with the number. Is this a moving average of earlier years? Does it compensate for the increase or decrease in demographics? What other aspects go into this "expectation" that might be relevant?
- mcculley 5y ago
  I wondered the same thing. This is why I built some tooling around visualizing the body count: https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/ https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/ It turns out that in many places there is a very clear difference between 2017-2019 versus 2020-2021. There is no way the population increased enough to account for the extra deaths.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Can I explain what they did? No. Can I give an idea of how to do it? I think so. Way back in the day, one of the tables in the CRC Handbook was the "American Experience Actuarial Table". It said, for every age from 1 (or 0?) to 100, what fraction of people of that age one would statistically expect to die in America. You take a modern version of that data for the country in question, (perhaps per gender, which IIRC the CRC table did not account for) and throw it at the age distribution in that country. That gives you a fair idea what to expect. In doing so, you assume that the racial profile of the population didn't change much in that two-year span (or if it did, that it did so according to previous trends), unless you have actual data saying otherwise. Is it perfect? No. But it's fairly reasonable. Again, note my opening disclaimer: I don't know that this is how this study did it.
- NickNameNick 5y ago
  Its there at the bottom: >A previous version of this page used a five-year average of deaths in a given region to calculate a baseline for excess deaths. The page now uses a statistical model for each region, which predicts the number of deaths we might normally have expected in 2020. The model fits a linear trend to years, to adjust from long-term increases or decreases in deaths, and a fixed effect for each week or month.
cm2187 5y ago
Tangential to that topic, one thing that puzzles me. When I look at the UK vaccination report [1]: Table p31 shows the % of vaccinated among covid cases for the month of November. If you look at the population >18yo (had access to a vaccine), you get about 80% of new covid cases are vaccinated, which roughly makes sense, the vaccine doesn't really stop the infections, it mostly stops hospitalisations and deaths. But p33 and 34 you have the same breakdown for covid deaths, and here again vaccinated are about 80% of covid deaths, I expected unvaccinated to be a much larger fraction. We know the vaccine has an impact on deaths as clearly the overall number of covid deaths are a fraction of what they were last year [2] for a similar number of covid cases. The way I interpreted it is that the UK was probably capturing as covid deaths, elderly people who simply tested positive but died of some other reasons. But the economist numbers seem to show that excess deaths in the UK are in line with reported covid deaths. So I am not sure how to interpret the fact that 80% of deaths are vaccinated. The French numbers are more in line with what I would expect [3]. The bar chart page 4 shows that 90% of the population is vaccinated, 85% of covid tests, 75% of positive covid tests, and only 60% of deaths are vaccinated, hence significant reduction. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039677/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_49.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [2] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths [3] https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2021-12/Appariements%20sivic-sidep-vacsi%20Drees.pdf https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/...
- goodluckchuck 5y ago
  [dead]
- eltados 5y ago
  From reading the report I think this is addressed p36 that might be because the vaccinated and unvaccinated population are different in other ways : > 1Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection. Vaccine effectiveness has been formally estimated from a number of different sources and is summarised on pages 5 to 11 in this report. The case rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are unadjusted crude rates that do not take into account underlying statistical biases in the data and there are likely to be systematic differences between these 2 population groups. For example: • people who are fully vaccinated may be more health conscious and therefore more likely to get tested for COVID-19 and so more likely to be identified as a case (based on the data provided by the NHS Test and Trace) • many of those who were at the head of the queue for vaccination are those at higher risk from COVID-19 due to their age, their occupation, their family circumstances or because of underlying health issues • people who are fully vaccinated and people who are unvaccinated may behave differently, particularly with regard to social interactions and therefore may have differing levels of exposure to COVID-19 • people who have never been vaccinated are more likely to have caught COVID-19 in the weeks or months before the period of the cases covered in the report. This gives them some natural immunity to the virus for a few months which may have contributed to a lower case rate in the past few weeks
axutio 5y ago
One interesting contributor to excess deaths is a spike in deaths attributed to Alzheimer's and other dementias - there were about 42,000 more of these deaths in the U.S. in 2020 than would be expected from the previous five-year average [1,2]. These deaths are primarily attributed to the negative effects of lockdowns on dementia patients - loss of access to family and caregivers as well as social isolation generally have a substantially more negative impact on this subset of individuals than on the general population. Using a total 2020 U.S. excess death count of ~415,000 [3], this means that just above one in ten excess deaths can be attributed to the negative effects of lockdown rather than to COVID itself. On the other hand, the alternative would likely have been letting COVID ravage senior care facilities, which could have been much worse. [1] https://www.aarp.org/health/brain-health/info-2021/alzheimers-dementia-covid-deaths.html https://www.aarp.org/health/brain-health/info-2021/alzheimer... [2] https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-figures.pdf https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-fig... [3] https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101386118 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101386118
dharmatva 5y ago
I like how this tracker doesn't talk much about India or China at all (even though there were 2.3m deaths due to COVID there according to the Economist). Interestingly, they do talk about Japan, South Korea, etc.
- Bayart 5y ago
  My impression is that Chinese and Indian stats seems to be intractable for different reasons (China because they fake every number they can, India because they have a hard time collecting them).
  - dharmatva 5y ago
    I believe the Indian government has been meticulously (under-)reporting them. There are government websites that are updated daily with this information. That is likely not the reason. But I'd prefer to attribute this omission to foolishness/laziness rather than malice (once again).
- IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  Omission of China was very strange. I get that you may not have data. But to not mention that fact, when it's 1/5th of the world population, ostensibly the point of origin of Covid-19, and a country where most people are curious as to the effectiveness of its policies, is weird. Together with India it was one of the first countries I Ctrl+F'd out of interest. John Hopkins' sources do cover India, at 600k excess deaths (table at the bottom). Also covers China at just 4000 or so, clearly wrong. But it's not clear anymore which figures are right or wrong, as the table contains much of the exact same data as the Economist article on most other countries. Seems like there's a data consolidation happening in the background from many different sources, you'd have to review the methodologies of each yourself (or trust the news reporting to highlight doubts or margins of error, but if they report China without comment as having just 4000 excess death in ±2 years, you obviously can't do that). https://time.com/5800901/coronavirus-map/ https://time.com/5800901/coronavirus-map/
hiyer 5y ago
India doesn't feature in the table in their article. It is not represented in their sources, the World Mortality Database[0], or the Human Mortality Database[1]. Yet they somehow estimated that India had 2.3 million excess deaths. Based on what, exactly? 0. https://github.com/akarlinsky/world_mortality https://github.com/akarlinsky/world_mortality 1. https://www.mortality.org/ https://www.mortality.org/

163 points by Zigurd 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

I was surprised how many eastern European countries seem to top the list of excess death counts per capita, and have much higher excess deaths than official covid deaths. Does anyone know what the causes are? Are they dealing with much worse epidemics of addiction, alcohol, poverty, or something else than most of the world? Or did they have an older population? Or is it mostly from covid but under-reported, and somehow eastern Europe was especially hard-hit?

NicoJuicy 5y ago
I believe many of them are directly correlated because of influence of Russia. Those countries have more anti-vaxxers too. Some of them have bought the Russian vaccine and well... That's not working out for them. Similar to other countries that bought the Russian vaccine fyi. So you could check out Brasil and Mexico as a reference for my statement. I can't think of another cause/correlation.
- usaphp 5y ago
  it's not like Pfizer or Moderna vaccine are working any better, we are still under lockdown, even tho 80% of population is vaccinated
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    Yes it does. Just check excess deaths, that's what this article is about... They both already reduce severe illness. Additionally, it's not just about the efficiency of the vaccine. But the Russian vaccine is overpromised and underdelivered regarding to sales/deliveries to the countries that agreed to buy it. They are severely failing to deliver the 2nd dose as promised. Let's not go into detail about the corruption associated with it too... Plenty of resources to verify if you did a little bit of effort ;) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/09/a-royal-mark-up-how-an-emirati-sheikh-resells-millions-of-russian-vaccines-to-the-developing-world-a74461 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/09/a-royal-mark-up-ho... https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/15/what-went-wrong-with-russia-s-sputnik-v-vaccine-rollout-pub-85783 https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/15/what-went-wrong-wit... https://apnews.com/article/world-news-mexico-russia-europe-coronavirus-vaccine-3f9b0455d1717c02e28fc710defee0ee https://apnews.com/article/world-news-mexico-russia-europe-c... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58003893.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58003893.amp https://www.news18.com/amp/news/india/what-went-wrong-with-full-rollout-of-russia-sputnik-v-vaccine-in-india-4469018.html https://www.news18.com/amp/news/india/what-went-wrong-with-f... https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/guatemala-asks-russia-return-money-over-failure-deliver-sputnik-covid-19-vaccine-2021-06-29/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/22/argentina-sputnik-vaccine-russia-fails-to-deliver https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/22/a... They didn't even do phase 3 trials and refuse to give sufficient information to the WHO. That's what you get for rushing things just to call dibs. What a mess.
    - usaphp 5y ago
      Not sure where do you see that, looking at United States from the chart: - October 2020, +15% deviation from expected deaths - October 2021, +25% deviation from expected deaths
      - adventured 5y ago
        The US is under-vaccinated versus its affluent peers and is also just about the heavy weight champ of the world (ie loaded with comorbidities that amp up the Covid mortality rate, such as diabetes). What's confusing about it?
        jjeaff 5y ago
        Ya, and it just so happens that there is a big overlap in obesity, low income, and those that won't get vaccinated. Which has created a double whammy when it comes to US deaths.
    - tiahura 5y ago
      Vaccines made a negligible difference to the case fatality rate.
      - manuelabeledo 5y ago
        > Vaccines made a negligible difference to the case fatality rate. Source? Because everywhere I look, vaccines seem to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.
  - baxtr 5y ago
    Where are you located?
    - genewitch 5y ago
      Off the cuff, The Netherlands is currently in lockdown, and I can't remember the other ones.
      - NicoJuicy 5y ago
        It's a partial lockdown in the Netherlands, mostly because countries/they were afraid if the infection rate of omicron. I suppose they will lift it soon now more studies are getting released about it's severity. A new variant doesn't mean that there's no danger because you are vaccinated. Studies need to happen for efficiency/severity. Edit for below ( can't reply, sorry): New cases != Severe cases
        the-dude 5y ago
        Not mentioned : infections were at record highs just before this lockdown. With a vacrate of 80%+ ( ~ 83% couple of weeks ago ). > New cases != Severe cases ICU were nearing capacity, there was talk about black scenario's. If you can't reply, click the timestamp of the post
        NicoJuicy 5y ago
        If I look at the Netherlands, the spike of deaths was on 9 December: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherlands/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherland... For me, that means it is mostly delta and not omicron. Considering the delay on hospitalisation/death and the appearance of omicron in Europe. Just like the UK, the Netherlands was indeed close to severe issues in healthcare. Ps. Hi from Belgium
        the-dude 5y ago
        > For me, that means it is mostly delta and not omicron. For sure it was not omicron. But that is not what this subthread is about. We had ~83% vacrate and record high infections. And health care nearing capacity. And OP was doubting the effeciacy of the vaccines. Maybe he is right. High vacrates don't seem to do much.
  - KoftaBob 5y ago
    No state or city in the US has any "lockdowns" in effect. Unless you've been living in complete isolation off the grid and re-emerged today, your comment is a classic internet strawman.
pashamur 5y ago
Most likely under-reported COVID deaths. Having looked at the Russia data at least, many deaths (earlier on) were marked with "pneumonia" and they didn't even bother testing for COVID.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  I have found that pneumonia is apparently broadly misunderstood by a lot of people. (It's an inflammatory issue in the lungs, usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection. It is not it's own type of virus.) We had some family friends that refused to get vaccinated. The wife contracted COVID and then died a few weeks later. When we asked the husband if he was going to get vaccinated, he said no. Because COVID is no worse than a cold. He explained that his wife died from pneumonia, not COVID. I have seen this repeated a lot when it comes to cause of death. Reports can show things like cardio pulmonary arrest (which means your heart and lungs stopped) complicated by COVID and heart disease or whatever. And then people go away saying well, COVID didn't kill them, it was a cardio pulmonary arrest ... and they had heart disease... It's amazing how much you can convince yourself of if you want to.
  - josephg 5y ago
    Yep. It’s like saying someone who’s been shot didn’t die from a bullet. They died of internal hemorrhaging. It’s a distinction without a difference.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      And the shooting victim was older, so, they probably would have died soon anyway. Or, the shooting victim had preexisting conditions. So it wasn't "just" the gun shot wound that killed them.
      - drjasonharrison 5y ago
        No, they died because they didn't have enough oxygen transported to the brain and internal organs.
Zigurd 5y ago
Russia appears to be in deep denial. Some of that influence will spread through the ethnic Russian population in other Eastern European countries. Follow the link in the article to the overall likely undercount, based on excess deaths. It is pretty horrifying.
- jwithington 5y ago
  Uh…did Russia about to lose about 1% of its population due to COVID?? Slightly over 1M excess deaths in a country with a population of 145M.
  - Zigurd 5y ago
    I recall seeing articles that the largest postwar drop in Russia's population was in 2021
jeffbee 5y ago
Right-authoritarian governments with populists strongman executives like Russia and Hungary are completely unequipped to handle anything like this disease.
tim333 5y ago
I think a lot is attitude, chatting to a couple of eastern European friends the people like there are like big deal and ignore it to a large extent.

usaphp 5y ago

I don't quite understand, how come "expected deaths" are almost the same across the whole year. Winter flu season is known to have a much higher death toll than summers, I remember reading news of triage tents were set up during winter flu season in new york.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
It's not almost the same though. It's showing a 20% increase during flu season.
bena 5y ago
These are tracking deviations from the norm. It's not that expected deaths are flat across the year, it's that they're just showing the difference. If we expect 50 and see 55, we have 5 excess deaths. If we expect 10 and see 15, we still only have 5 excess.
- usaphp 5y ago
  No, chart has "Total Deaths" and "Expected Deaths" numbers per month. Just hover over the tiles and you will see these values.
  - lijogdfljk 5y ago
    How much should it swing? ~+20% for US from Jan to June 2020 for example, is that not the difference you're looking for?
  - bena 5y ago
    On the chart, "Weekly estimated excess deaths by age group", there's a swing of nearly 10,000 between the lowest and highest of expected deaths. And it seems to be week by week. So while week by week, the change isn't much (and it shouldn't be), overall there's a decent swing. Even in the lower age groups there's a decent swing and it follows the seasons. Even though the numbers across the board are lower. What are you looking for here? What would feel right to you?
5y ago

teruakohatu 5y ago

In NZ we just about eliminated flu (and COVID until recently), with resulted in the negative excess deaths reported in the article.

lostlogin 5y ago
It’s slightly jarring to see a negative number, and even more jarring how much airtime those championing unlocking, unmasking and being antivax are getting here.
- usaphp 5y ago
  If you ban people from driving cars and make them walk everywhere - you could also eliminate car accident deaths, it's not sustainable though...
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    I mean maybe you’re onto something and don’t realize it. Banning cars would be more akin to totally locking down rather than incentivizing vaccination, masks and other public health measures that aren’t as invasive. Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is a good thing.
    - aronpye 5y ago
      So basically destroy rural populations which are also the source of all our food? Unless I’m mistaken in that cities are actually the source of all life sustaining industries.
      - pm90 5y ago
        Enough with the hyperbole. Discouraging car use won’t destroy rural populations; it would improve the QoL of urban ones.
        5y ago

lettergram 5y ago

Zigurd 5y ago
It's not suicides: https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-increase-suicides-that-shouldnt-be-a-surprise/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-incre...
- lettergram 5y ago
  - Zigurd 5y ago
    Actually, you did not wait.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    So you say you will wait for the full report, because preliminary reports are often inaccurate, but then post a different preliminary report?
  - Kranar 5y ago
    So preliminary reports are inaccurate when they disagree with your viewpoint, but you had no problem claiming that actual suicides went up by 50% because over the course of 4 months, a preliminary report showed that suspected suicide attempts among girls aged 12 to 17 increased by 50%...
    - civilized 5y ago
      I've never seen such extreme bias and extreme confidence in one place on HN.
  - civilized 5y ago

rufus_foreman 5y ago

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2560/ https://xkcd.com/2560/

opless 5y ago

Paywall

acqbu 5y ago
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...
- opless 5y ago
  Thanks for the link. The paywall I was meaning was this. https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgraphic-detail%2Fcoronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgr...
Zigurd 5y ago
I'm not seeing a paywall for the main article link. There is a link in the article that goes to another paywalled article. But I can see the posted article just fine, though I am not a subscriber.
- olivermarks 5y ago
  This tells you everything you need to know, same thing happens with the FT & wsj if it's an article they want everyone to read....
- opless 5y ago
  Yeah, thanks to the other poster (who helped rather than those who downvoted) the link to the unpaywalled meat of the article is below. https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgraphic-detail%2Fcoronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgr...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

KoftaBob 5y ago

How interesting that they don't include China in this list, as they are notorious for outright lying about basically every metric ever.

Zigurd 5y ago
It is very interesting. There is a link in this article to another article that contains a pretty shocking global estimate based on excess deaths: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-... It is more than 4X the official count. Some of that is probably in places with no official numbers. But one wonders how many are in China.

wanderingmind 5y ago

This was the number thay should have been used all along in the western world. The excessive deaths were very high in Q2/Q3 2020 that warranted stringent lockdown. However starting Q4, the excess deaths have started to reduce and has significantly minimzed across the world in second half of 2021. Its most likely because of vaccines but the acquired immunity due to infections are also likely a cause. There is no need for any restrictions from a public health standpoint as excess deaths are now significantly lower likely with the expected error. EDIT: the post was primarily about western countries with reliable data and vaccination records

jeffbee 5y ago
Are you referring to any particular jurisdiction? In the U.S.A. for example Q3 2021 excess deaths were as bad as Q2-Q3 2020. 40% excess deaths is something like 3000 people every day.
- wanderingmind 5y ago
  Most countries in western Europe and many states seem to have less than 10 ℅ excess deaths in 2021. There is also likely to be an error that is not quoted here. Typically such comparisons must be made on 10 year average data and the changes within those years will provide the error which is likely to have variation of 5-10 ℅
  - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    > Most countries in western Europe and many states seem to have less than 10 ℅ excess deaths in 2021 That may well be true, but it cannot in and of itself be a reason to decide to relax measures. It's like saying the number of traffic accidents are low, thus we can abolish drivers licenses, speed limits, age limits on driving, alcohol limits on driving, seatbelts etc. No: the measures (e.g. seatbelts) cause the good results (low traffic deaths). Simply looking at the good results can never in and of itself be a reason to remove the measures. You'd want to evidence that the desirable results will remain without the measures, before removing the measures. e.g. if there's evidence that removing speeding limits does not impact traffic accidents/deaths, then you can remove the limit.

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/1640640600?hl=en-US&tz=300&date=all&geo=US&q=died+suddenly&sni=3 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16406406... https://i.postimg.cc/QM0ckk2C/Screenshot-2021-12-27-163738.png https://i.postimg.cc/QM0ckk2C/Screenshot-2021-12-27-163738.p...

clove 5y ago
What happened in November?

pelasaco 5y ago

how should i interpret this chart? - Australia and Germany did well, Peru not so much? - The Swedish COVID-19 Response wasn't a disaster[1] - Brazil didn't make so bad as widely reported by the media? References: [1]: https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/ https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Much of it is likely due to strength or weaknesses of various medical systems, as well as density/distribution of population. Remember this tracks deaths only, not case rates or hospitalization generally. I tend to think if you went into a hospital in Sweden, you got good care. The US did fairly well, but you also have to consider there are large areas that are very spread out geographically, large suburbs, etc. Seems like places that did the worst -- outside of the first wave when nobody was prepared -- are what you'd expect: places with poor, dense populations, and worse infrastructure.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  > Seems like places that did the worst -- outside of the first wave when nobody was prepared -- are what you'd expect: places with poor, dense populations, and worse infrastructure. Ok, that's make sense. I'm however more concerned in understand the "aftermath" from 2020 and 2021 regarding the Media narrative. Get all this data and correlate with what was being published live in in the media. I wish we could hold all the reporters, scientists and experts accountable for the amount of misinformation that was published mainly to generate clicks, support narrative and political stances.
tim333 5y ago
Sweden did quite well economically too https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-economies-have-done-best-and-worst-during-the-pandemic/21806917 https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-econom... although Denmark beat them in both economy and deaths. I guess if you've got a country of mostly responsible educated people you can say behave sensibly without the government legislating loads of rules.

setgree 5y ago

Code and data here https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-excess-deaths-tracker https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-excess-deaths-track... Really nice to see a 'legacy' publication embrace open source

alisonatwork 5y ago
It's not so unusual. See... https://github.com/abcnews https://github.com/abcnews https://github.com/BBC https://github.com/BBC https://github.com/guardian https://github.com/guardian https://github.com/nytimes https://github.com/nytimes And so on...

jedberg 5y ago

What's interesting about this is that it doesn't look like it accounts for the expected reduction in deaths due to lockdown -- a lot of people die in car accidents every year, and at least early on in the pandemic, miles traveled was reduced by nearly 90%, and car accidents went way down, and even further down when you consider it was impossible to drive home drunk from a bar. Which means the excess deaths would be even higher than shown here, at least early on. EDIT: Looks like I am wrong. Below someone links to a report showing that traffic fatalities actually went up because the people still on the road were more risky. I was basing my statement on estimates made in early 2020.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
I'm sure there were more overdoses and suicides due to the lockdowns too.
- samspenc 5y ago
  And there were indeed more of both: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/11/17/overdose-deaths-soar-record-level-amid-pandemic-rise-fentanyl/8629870002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/11/17/overdo... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-11/teen-suicide-attempts-surged-during-lockdowns-cdc-study-shows https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-11/teen-suic...
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    There were more overdoses, but fewer suicides. Your second link references teen suicide attempts, which are neither representative of the overall suicidal demographic nor reflect actual suicide rates.
    - priansh 5y ago
      Suicide rates are tricky since mental health can have long lasting issues and the societal changes from lockdown will have even longer term effects. How do you attribute a suicide 2 years from now to depression that started during COVID? It’s going to be interesting seeing how the psychology field approaches this.

mcculley 5y ago

I built some tooling around the U.S. CDC data to better understand this at a state level: https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/ https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/

dkn775 5y ago
What did you use to make this website? I like it a lot.
- mcculley 5y ago
  Thank you. I did not imagine anyone would actually like the layout/UI. I have been looking for input on how to improve it. The site itself is just handcoded HTML: https://github.com/mcculley/mcculley.github.io/blob/master/VisualizingObservedDeaths/index.html https://github.com/mcculley/mcculley.github.io/blob/master/V... The polar area diagrams are generated by Java code I wrote for this purpose: https://github.com/mcculley/ObservedDeathVisualizer https://github.com/mcculley/ObservedDeathVisualizer The bar charts and the line graph are generated by Datawrapper (https://app.datawrapper.de https://app.datawrapper.de) using the CSVs exported by the aforementioned code.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Why are the negative numbers not colored on a scale too? Do many deaths in the winter mean less deaths during the summer? I don't know, i have to hover the mouse over the months and guesstimate.

aronpye 5y ago

darthrupert 5y ago
Jesus, honestly? This isn't even funny as a joke. You need to be very ashamed for typing that.
- aronpye 5y ago
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    "Legality doesn't imply morality" is a trite observation that doesn't on its own justify a comment, much less a tasteless comparison between the Holocaust and a global medical emergency.
    - starfleet_bop 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        As we've amply experienced over the last 18 months, a disease can simultaneously be mild (in perceived short-term illness) for most people and kill and incapacitate millions of people. These are not disjoint conditions for a global pandemic, and mild illness in many is not itself a sufficient condition for ignoring the harm done to millions. And, to be blunt: "I didn't say the word 'Holocaust' when I compared COVID to the efficient cause of the Holocaust" is not a plausible excuse.
      - aronpye 5y ago
        5y ago

kesor 5y ago

Can someone explain how they come up with the "expected deaths" number? The article doesn't explain how this number is calculated or which assumptions were made to come up with the number. Is this a moving average of earlier years? Does it compensate for the increase or decrease in demographics? What other aspects go into this "expectation" that might be relevant?

mcculley 5y ago
I wondered the same thing. This is why I built some tooling around visualizing the body count: https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/ https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/ It turns out that in many places there is a very clear difference between 2017-2019 versus 2020-2021. There is no way the population increased enough to account for the extra deaths.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Can I explain what they did? No. Can I give an idea of how to do it? I think so. Way back in the day, one of the tables in the CRC Handbook was the "American Experience Actuarial Table". It said, for every age from 1 (or 0?) to 100, what fraction of people of that age one would statistically expect to die in America. You take a modern version of that data for the country in question, (perhaps per gender, which IIRC the CRC table did not account for) and throw it at the age distribution in that country. That gives you a fair idea what to expect. In doing so, you assume that the racial profile of the population didn't change much in that two-year span (or if it did, that it did so according to previous trends), unless you have actual data saying otherwise. Is it perfect? No. But it's fairly reasonable. Again, note my opening disclaimer: I don't know that this is how this study did it.
NickNameNick 5y ago
Its there at the bottom: >A previous version of this page used a five-year average of deaths in a given region to calculate a baseline for excess deaths. The page now uses a statistical model for each region, which predicts the number of deaths we might normally have expected in 2020. The model fits a linear trend to years, to adjust from long-term increases or decreases in deaths, and a fixed effect for each week or month.

cm2187 5y ago

Tangential to that topic, one thing that puzzles me. When I look at the UK vaccination report [1]: Table p31 shows the % of vaccinated among covid cases for the month of November. If you look at the population >18yo (had access to a vaccine), you get about 80% of new covid cases are vaccinated, which roughly makes sense, the vaccine doesn't really stop the infections, it mostly stops hospitalisations and deaths. But p33 and 34 you have the same breakdown for covid deaths, and here again vaccinated are about 80% of covid deaths, I expected unvaccinated to be a much larger fraction. We know the vaccine has an impact on deaths as clearly the overall number of covid deaths are a fraction of what they were last year [2] for a similar number of covid cases. The way I interpreted it is that the UK was probably capturing as covid deaths, elderly people who simply tested positive but died of some other reasons. But the economist numbers seem to show that excess deaths in the UK are in line with reported covid deaths. So I am not sure how to interpret the fact that 80% of deaths are vaccinated. The French numbers are more in line with what I would expect [3]. The bar chart page 4 shows that 90% of the population is vaccinated, 85% of covid tests, 75% of positive covid tests, and only 60% of deaths are vaccinated, hence significant reduction. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039677/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_49.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [2] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths [3] https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2021-12/Appariements%20sivic-sidep-vacsi%20Drees.pdf https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/...

goodluckchuck 5y ago
[dead]
eltados 5y ago
From reading the report I think this is addressed p36 that might be because the vaccinated and unvaccinated population are different in other ways : > 1Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection. Vaccine effectiveness has been formally estimated from a number of different sources and is summarised on pages 5 to 11 in this report. The case rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are unadjusted crude rates that do not take into account underlying statistical biases in the data and there are likely to be systematic differences between these 2 population groups. For example: • people who are fully vaccinated may be more health conscious and therefore more likely to get tested for COVID-19 and so more likely to be identified as a case (based on the data provided by the NHS Test and Trace) • many of those who were at the head of the queue for vaccination are those at higher risk from COVID-19 due to their age, their occupation, their family circumstances or because of underlying health issues • people who are fully vaccinated and people who are unvaccinated may behave differently, particularly with regard to social interactions and therefore may have differing levels of exposure to COVID-19 • people who have never been vaccinated are more likely to have caught COVID-19 in the weeks or months before the period of the cases covered in the report. This gives them some natural immunity to the virus for a few months which may have contributed to a lower case rate in the past few weeks

axutio 5y ago

One interesting contributor to excess deaths is a spike in deaths attributed to Alzheimer's and other dementias - there were about 42,000 more of these deaths in the U.S. in 2020 than would be expected from the previous five-year average [1,2]. These deaths are primarily attributed to the negative effects of lockdowns on dementia patients - loss of access to family and caregivers as well as social isolation generally have a substantially more negative impact on this subset of individuals than on the general population. Using a total 2020 U.S. excess death count of ~415,000 [3], this means that just above one in ten excess deaths can be attributed to the negative effects of lockdown rather than to COVID itself. On the other hand, the alternative would likely have been letting COVID ravage senior care facilities, which could have been much worse. [1] https://www.aarp.org/health/brain-health/info-2021/alzheimers-dementia-covid-deaths.html https://www.aarp.org/health/brain-health/info-2021/alzheimer... [2] https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-figures.pdf https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-fig... [3] https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101386118 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101386118

dharmatva 5y ago

I like how this tracker doesn't talk much about India or China at all (even though there were 2.3m deaths due to COVID there according to the Economist). Interestingly, they do talk about Japan, South Korea, etc.

Bayart 5y ago
My impression is that Chinese and Indian stats seems to be intractable for different reasons (China because they fake every number they can, India because they have a hard time collecting them).
- dharmatva 5y ago
  I believe the Indian government has been meticulously (under-)reporting them. There are government websites that are updated daily with this information. That is likely not the reason. But I'd prefer to attribute this omission to foolishness/laziness rather than malice (once again).
IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Omission of China was very strange. I get that you may not have data. But to not mention that fact, when it's 1/5th of the world population, ostensibly the point of origin of Covid-19, and a country where most people are curious as to the effectiveness of its policies, is weird. Together with India it was one of the first countries I Ctrl+F'd out of interest. John Hopkins' sources do cover India, at 600k excess deaths (table at the bottom). Also covers China at just 4000 or so, clearly wrong. But it's not clear anymore which figures are right or wrong, as the table contains much of the exact same data as the Economist article on most other countries. Seems like there's a data consolidation happening in the background from many different sources, you'd have to review the methodologies of each yourself (or trust the news reporting to highlight doubts or margins of error, but if they report China without comment as having just 4000 excess death in ±2 years, you obviously can't do that). https://time.com/5800901/coronavirus-map/ https://time.com/5800901/coronavirus-map/

hiyer 5y ago

India doesn't feature in the table in their article. It is not represented in their sources, the World Mortality Database[0], or the Human Mortality Database[1]. Yet they somehow estimated that India had 2.3 million excess deaths. Based on what, exactly? 0. https://github.com/akarlinsky/world_mortality https://github.com/akarlinsky/world_mortality 1. https://www.mortality.org/ https://www.mortality.org/