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Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

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Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#51

Post by KMag »

phreeza wrote: post #40
threatripper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia counts 0.1% of the population as infected while the US counts 2.4% of the population as infected. Where in the study did they control for that when looking at the mortality (which is counted per population and not per infected)? EDIT: My point is that the epidemic is not over yet and countries with a low immunity could be hit harder later on. It's just too early to compare mortality numbers.

Why would you want to do that? At the end of the day, successful pandemic response is a question of how well you prevent deaths overall, not how likely infected people are to die.

Well, if you believe that government interventions are useless in influencing infection rates, then it would make sense to compare case fatality rates instead of total excess mortality.

Though, I'm not sure that was the GP's intention.

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#52

Post by matsemann »

rimliu wrote: post #32
matsemann wrote: post #26

Euromomo lets one easily compare the mortality for various European countries: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps . I think this is much easier to grasp than the tables in the linked paper. The very first graph shows that it's not "just another flu". Abnormally many deaths, even with the strict measures. Mainly for those aged 45 and older (but also not just "old people" dying, lots in the group 45-64). Further d…

When talking about the Sweden don't look just at the current year. Take a lookt at the previous and compare it to the neighbours.

And then see what? https://i.imgur.com/4wNdK1M.png

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#53

Post by [deleted] »

tpoacher wrote: post #45
coldtea wrote: post #39

> While the US had a lower COVID-19 mortality rate than high-mortality countries during the early spring, after May 10, all 6 high-mortality countries had fewer deaths per 100 000 than the US. I'm not sure why the factor this in at all. Why not compare each country to its OWN baseline mortality -- as opposed to confusingly compare between high and low mortality countries?

It makes sense to do so politically. :p

[deleted]

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#54

Post by phreeza »

KMag wrote: post #51
phreeza wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to do that? At the end of the day, successful pandemic response is a question of how well you prevent deaths overall, not how likely infected people are to die.

Well, if you believe that government interventions are useless in influencing infection rates, then it would make sense to compare case fatality rates instead of total excess mortality. Though, I'm not sure that was the GP's intention.

Not sure I follow, why would comparing CFRs make more sense? A lot depends on testing in that case.

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#55

Post by hef19898 »

threatripper wrote: post #37

This study only looks at all-cause mortality - which is reasonable once the epidemic is over. Is it over? I don't think so. Cases are rising quickly in Europe now that winter is coming. We should refrain from issuing judgement on the matter and comparing strategies of different countries until at least next spring when cases go down again in all countries. There may be some surprises coming in winter.

I guess reopening the whole EU over summer to save what was left of the tourism industry didn't necessarily help. Not saying that I am against having loosened restrictions, but maybe we loosened things a tad too much.

Because after the summer vacations were over, everyone went back to normal. People returned to offices, children to school. At schools, measures were in place for the first two weeks. Since then, business as usual to a large extent. I have the impression that we got complacent, this thing isn't over yet unfortunately.

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#56

Post by m0zg »

threatripper wrote: post #44
m0zg wrote: post #36

It's dumb to do this analysis now, when we're in the _middle_ of the epidemic. According to most experts, we're looking at the end of 2021 for the whole thing to play itself out. Take a look at the steep incline the curves have taken on in the countries which previously were "better" than the US and Sweden. In the US deaths are declining (in spite of slight rise in cases), in Sweden hardly anyone is dying at all. Tak…

> It's dumb to do this analysis now, when we're in the _middle_ of the epidemic. Correct. Mortality doesn't say very much now. The true IFR would be a better indicator but since testing availability is very inconsistent it is hard to compare the number of infected across countries or time. The mortality numbers are also inconsistent in many places (which is why we looked at all-cause mortality in the first place). >…

> This is plainly wrong.

At a minimum, this is not "plainly" wrong: there's no vaccine against any other coronavirus, and vaccine against the flu (next most fatal thing on the table) is not great.

Also, a vaccine does not prevent _infection_. It merely gives your body antibodies to deal with it when you get it. Sometimes those antibodies work, sometimes they do not. The initial estimates for C19 vaccines seem to put it at 50% effectiveness. People seem to be expecting a silver bullet. It's not going to happen, especially not this quickly. But irrespective of whether we have a vaccine, yes, everyone will get it eventually.

> For one, it is too early to declare a winner. We have to wait.

My point exactly. That's why I'm not declaring them the winner. They are experiencing an uptick in cases, too, though nowhere near as dramatic as e.g. France, Spain, Italy or the UK.

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#57

Post by hef19898 »

coldtea wrote: post #39

> While the US had a lower COVID-19 mortality rate than high-mortality countries during the early spring, after May 10, all 6 high-mortality countries had fewer deaths per 100 000 than the US. I'm not sure why the factor this in at all. Why not compare each country to its OWN baseline mortality -- as opposed to confusingly compare between high and low mortality countries?

Because this tells you something about the effectiveness of countermeasures. Which is something we need to learn as much about as possible.

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#58

Post by KMag »

mlang23 wrote: post #46
coldtea wrote: post #39

> While the US had a lower COVID-19 mortality rate than high-mortality countries during the early spring, after May 10, all 6 high-mortality countries had fewer deaths per 100 000 than the US. I'm not sure why the factor this in at all. Why not compare each country to its OWN baseline mortality -- as opposed to confusingly compare between high and low mortality countries?

Because it is obviously a competition between countries. "We managed to get through with less casualties then country X, so we are superior."

> with less[er] casualties than country X

Is that a subtle joke about mean body mass in the US, or a grammatical error? http://ddg.gg/?q=count+vs+mass+noun

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#59

Post by jacobush »

evgen wrote: post #30
pattusk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll probably get downvoted for this, but anyways: Maybe I should have added reliable to data. I'm highly skeptical of the ~4000 deaths figure reported as the death count for China and I have the sense that the authors of the study were too or they would have included it in their study. As for India, when you factor in rural areas, I don't think the reporting and data would be as reliable as for the US. [1] To go bac…

While I share the skepticism in the numbers from China and India, I believe that if they were anywhere near a similar per capita rate as the US there would be visible evidence. China attacked the problem hard and by all accounts seems to have succeeded. For the most part India seems to have just gotten lucky; maybe India's numbers will be adjusted over time to reveal some rural devastation, but I will want to wait fo…

Sweden is close to the UK in numbers dead per capita

Re: Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 18 Comparison Countries

#60

Post by 0xy »

evgen wrote: post #15
pattusk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes but it's not like they surveyed every country in the world though. I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available. It just does not seem like a meaningful statistic given the sample they are studying.

> I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available. You would be incorrect. Perhaps the reason this death rate was mentioned is because the US is an outlier in both absolute numbers as well as per capita deaths.

China is not reporting accurate data, so I have no idea how you could possibly say definitively that China's numbers were less than the US on any basis. [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-con...

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