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The assumption that excess deaths can be attributed to any single cause is simply not based on data and/or science. What is the age breakdown of these excess d

by JPKab 5y ago

The assumption that excess deaths can be attributed to any single cause is simply not based on data and/or science. What is the age breakdown of these excess deaths? If the distribution doesn't mirror the age distribution of known COVID deaths, that's an immediate indicator that it's factoring in multiple sources. Drug overdoses, attempted suicides and actual suicides are way up, for example. Drug abuse is way up. Child abuse is way up. I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm simply saying that you can't know that you are right without a careful analysis of the data. It should be noted that the "excess deaths are way up" is also used as a tool of people claiming that the vaccines are killing people as well. Again, I want to emphasize, I don't know the detailed data behind the excess deaths. COVID is certainly one factor, but what percentage does it constitute? I'm not claiming I know, but you are. That's the difference. You are also ignoring the studies out of Israel (sample size of 2.5 million people), Qatar (sample size of 400K people), the recent CDC study in other replies to your comment, etc. It's a long list of studies that show that prior infection is a superior, more durable form of immunity to Delta than vaccine-only populations. Additionally, it's rather absurd to use hospitalizations as a metric for the general population. I'm sure you are extremely aware that the bulk of unvaccinated people getting hospitalized are not young or healthy. "Some unvaccinated people" is also a statement ignoring the shocking prevalence of prior infection in seroprevalence studies, which isn't really shocking when considering a respiratory virus that has an R0 that has been at minimum 3 in the beginning with the original variant, and is now 6-7 with omicron. The data has changed, but many people's opinions have remained fixed. I don't understand what motivates this, but it's become tiresome as it continues to drive policies that are intuitively foolish and violate centuries of immunological knowledge.

MatteoFrigo 5y ago
In case you haven't seen it before, https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps has graphs of excess data for most of Europe (plus Israel) by age groups. I find it a great resource to cross-check the misinformation of the mainstream media. For example, I challenge anybody to look at the 0-14 and 14-44 graphs and tell me when covid actually occurred. Note that excess is not defined as a deviation from a typical year, but as a deviation from a typical year when no diseases are circulating. The goal of the euromomo website is to detect things like flu outbreaks, so the number of excess deaths is usually greater than 0, capturing the flu, heat waves, and presumably other disasters.
- bonzini 5y ago
  I am talking about the raw "deaths in 2020 - average deaths in 2015-2019" number. It is much higher than just the COVID deaths. > Note that excess is not defined as a deviation from a typical year, but as a deviation from a typical year when no diseases are circulating. Data is deseasonalized, which does not mean what you wrote.
  - MatteoFrigo 5y ago
    > Data is deseasonalized, which does not mean what you wrote. You are correct that I oversimplified a complex situation. https://euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods/ https://euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods/ describes their method, especially section "Hypothesis". Their model includes a sinusoidal seasonal component, as you noted. However, what I said is also true. From the Hypothesis section, third bullet: "Parts of Spring and Autumn are less likely to be influenced by additional processes leading to excess deaths and the main pattern of mortality can therefore be modelling using only those periods, resulting in a baseline being the number of deaths expected when no particular process increases mortality." As is clear from the bullet that precedes the text that I quoted, "processes leading to excess deaths" means winter infections and summer heat waves. So my description, while incomplete, is hopefully not too misleading. For completeness, I should mention that they also adjust for population growth. (You can't just do 2020-avg(2015-2019) because the total population is different.)
    - bonzini 5y ago
      But winter excess deaths will not be zero _in the absence_ of winter infections. Because they add that sinusoidal component, they will be zero in an average-strong flu year for example, and less than zero in weaker flu years.
      - MatteoFrigo 5y ago
        Your claim is empirically false. The total number of excess deaths was 81K in 2017, 158K in 2018, 101K in 2019. (You need to click a few buttons to enable data from past years.) The reason is that the sinusoidal amplitude is fairly small and is explicitly calibrated not to capture the flu. Look for example at the 2019-2020 winter graph: the empirical data matches the model until covid kicks in. For some reason, people die more in winter irrespective of the flu, and the sinusoidal component attempts to capture this effect. Stepping back from the details for a minute: this is a 15-year long joint effort of public health authorities in Europe, with the explicit goal "to design a routine public health mortality monitoring system aimed at detecting and measuring, on a real-time basis, excess number of deaths related to influenza and other possible public health threats across participating European Countries." In terms of data analysis, their model is very simple, comprising a constant, a linear trend term for population growth, and a sine-wave term for non-flu seasonality. Do you really think that they would be so incompetent as to use a model that explicitly removes the flu, which is the very effect that they are trying to capture? Give them some credit, they know what they are doing.
rcpt 5y ago
> Drug overdoses, attempted suicides and actual suicides are way up, for example. Drug abuse is way up. Child abuse is way up. Just to be clear, you're saying that the reason we've seen hundreds of thousands of excess deaths last year is because of drugs, suicides, and child abuse.
- throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
  https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-by-age-group/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm# https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm# If people want to explore some "crude" (CDC's word) data by age group. Cherry-picking some data, there were 10-15 times more drug overdoses then covid deaths in 2020 (Q2-3) for 25-34. Similar ratios for 15-24. And I'm sure it'll be the exact opposite for higher age groups or if you focused on people with comorbidities. Yet these demographics are grouped together without any nuance when it comes to mandates. Note this is pre-vaccine and pre-delta so not really representative of current state of things.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    There are 10-15 times more drug overdoses than COVID, but there arent significantly more overdoses than previous years. Some increase, but it looks like a steady increase. In other words, excess death counts would account for overdose deaths because they are expected. They wouldn't be considered "excess" deaths. The numbers I have seen for excess deaths pretty closely match COVID death numbers as counted from death certificates. So you have two unconnected sources matching up pretty closely. I'd say there is a good chance the near million COVID deaths number we are looking at is pretty close.

by JPKab 5y ago

MatteoFrigo 5y ago

In case you haven't seen it before, https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps has graphs of excess data for most of Europe (plus Israel) by age groups. I find it a great resource to cross-check the misinformation of the mainstream media. For example, I challenge anybody to look at the 0-14 and 14-44 graphs and tell me when covid actually occurred. Note that excess is not defined as a deviation from a typical year, but as a deviation from a typical year when no diseases are circulating. The goal of the euromomo website is to detect things like flu outbreaks, so the number of excess deaths is usually greater than 0, capturing the flu, heat waves, and presumably other disasters.

bonzini 5y ago
I am talking about the raw "deaths in 2020 - average deaths in 2015-2019" number. It is much higher than just the COVID deaths. > Note that excess is not defined as a deviation from a typical year, but as a deviation from a typical year when no diseases are circulating. Data is deseasonalized, which does not mean what you wrote.
- MatteoFrigo 5y ago
  > Data is deseasonalized, which does not mean what you wrote. You are correct that I oversimplified a complex situation. https://euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods/ https://euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods/ describes their method, especially section "Hypothesis". Their model includes a sinusoidal seasonal component, as you noted. However, what I said is also true. From the Hypothesis section, third bullet: "Parts of Spring and Autumn are less likely to be influenced by additional processes leading to excess deaths and the main pattern of mortality can therefore be modelling using only those periods, resulting in a baseline being the number of deaths expected when no particular process increases mortality." As is clear from the bullet that precedes the text that I quoted, "processes leading to excess deaths" means winter infections and summer heat waves. So my description, while incomplete, is hopefully not too misleading. For completeness, I should mention that they also adjust for population growth. (You can't just do 2020-avg(2015-2019) because the total population is different.)
  - bonzini 5y ago
    But winter excess deaths will not be zero _in the absence_ of winter infections. Because they add that sinusoidal component, they will be zero in an average-strong flu year for example, and less than zero in weaker flu years.
    - MatteoFrigo 5y ago
      Your claim is empirically false. The total number of excess deaths was 81K in 2017, 158K in 2018, 101K in 2019. (You need to click a few buttons to enable data from past years.) The reason is that the sinusoidal amplitude is fairly small and is explicitly calibrated not to capture the flu. Look for example at the 2019-2020 winter graph: the empirical data matches the model until covid kicks in. For some reason, people die more in winter irrespective of the flu, and the sinusoidal component attempts to capture this effect. Stepping back from the details for a minute: this is a 15-year long joint effort of public health authorities in Europe, with the explicit goal "to design a routine public health mortality monitoring system aimed at detecting and measuring, on a real-time basis, excess number of deaths related to influenza and other possible public health threats across participating European Countries." In terms of data analysis, their model is very simple, comprising a constant, a linear trend term for population growth, and a sine-wave term for non-flu seasonality. Do you really think that they would be so incompetent as to use a model that explicitly removes the flu, which is the very effect that they are trying to capture? Give them some credit, they know what they are doing.

rcpt 5y ago

> Drug overdoses, attempted suicides and actual suicides are way up, for example. Drug abuse is way up. Child abuse is way up. Just to be clear, you're saying that the reason we've seen hundreds of thousands of excess deaths last year is because of drugs, suicides, and child abuse.

throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-by-age-group/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm# https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm# If people want to explore some "crude" (CDC's word) data by age group. Cherry-picking some data, there were 10-15 times more drug overdoses then covid deaths in 2020 (Q2-3) for 25-34. Similar ratios for 15-24. And I'm sure it'll be the exact opposite for higher age groups or if you focused on people with comorbidities. Yet these demographics are grouped together without any nuance when it comes to mandates. Note this is pre-vaccine and pre-delta so not really representative of current state of things.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  There are 10-15 times more drug overdoses than COVID, but there arent significantly more overdoses than previous years. Some increase, but it looks like a steady increase. In other words, excess death counts would account for overdose deaths because they are expected. They wouldn't be considered "excess" deaths. The numbers I have seen for excess deaths pretty closely match COVID death numbers as counted from death certificates. So you have two unconnected sources matching up pretty closely. I'd say there is a good chance the near million COVID deaths number we are looking at is pretty close.