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I think "COVID is not that deadly" is literally true, in the sense that it is not likely to kill you in any age group, but is understating the net harm. For in

I think "COVID is not that deadly" is literally true, in the sense that it is not likely to kill you in any age group, but is understating the net harm. For instance: https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcauses_05042022/WeeklyExcessDeaths?:embed=y&:toolbar=n&:tabs=n&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcause... Really a lot of people have died who would not have otherwise died. Arguably some of that is "pulling deaths forward" and we might see improvements to all cause mortality over the next few years but overall COVID has had a pretty big impact on mortality. In the US for instance life expectancy has fallen from 78.9 to 76.6 over the course of the pandemic.

native_samples 4y ago
That's for the USA. The USA seems to have suffered much more than many other countries, for reasons that real epidemiologists would be keen to investigate but the ones we're stuck with are remarkably incurious about. It's not to do with their own measures (Sweden has had lower than average mortality impact from COVID), so is more likely related to lifestyles, racial makeups, or something else that isn't understood.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  Definitely. I am just using it as a yardstick for the sake of orders of magnitude. According to this article https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-... US excess deaths over the course of the pandemic are 347 per 100k people compared to the UK's 221 which is a lot more(!) to be sure but I think the point still stands.