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Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

ourworldindata.org

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Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#51

Post by Thorrez »

jb775 wrote: post #47
idoh wrote: post #2

Excess mortality seems like the best way to track the pandemic because determining whether someone died of covid can be debatable sometimes, but there can be no debate over whether someone died.

This data is BS. Firstly, it's nonsense to take "average amount of deaths" over the past few years and extrapolate it to the current year without accounting for population growth changes, and rate of population growth acceleration. Secondly, if you look at the "expected U.S. Death Rate" data[1], it shows that they expected U.S. death rates (per capita) to rapidly accelerate about 7 years ago, but the rate of deaths d…

Did you look at the "Excess mortality using raw death counts" chart? It's very very clear that 2020 is a huge outlier. Is it possible some of their numbers are a bit off? Sure. But the size of the difference in 2020 dwarfs that.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#52

Post by Thorrez »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #22
hinkley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know at least one person who’s having problems exacerbated by lack of mobility. Atrophy in old people can be a big problem. I would not go so far as to support anyone claiming this is why we should be breaking quarantine, but can’t quite support racking them all up as COVID deaths either. Reality is somewhere between the two (but close to “most” than “few”)

There are quite a few risk increases associated with general shutdown. This is one with large impact. Another large impact is mental illness, in particular presenting in suicide and substance abuse. On the other side, many other common risks are reduced: workplace injury, other transmissible ailments. If the purpose of the analysis is to determine whether the preventive measure is effective and not overwrought, an ex…

>If the purpose of the analysis is to determine whether the preventive measure is effective and not overwrought, an excess deaths analysis is a good one because it helps infer what the toll would be in absence of the measure.

How do you know what the toll would be in the absence of the measure? Excess deaths tells us how many deaths are from virus+shutdown. I don't see how we can use this data to find out how many deaths there would be in a virus (no shutdown) scenario, or in a shutdown (no virus) scenario.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#54

Post by postingpals »

jb775 wrote: post #47
idoh wrote: post #2

Excess mortality seems like the best way to track the pandemic because determining whether someone died of covid can be debatable sometimes, but there can be no debate over whether someone died.

This data is BS. Firstly, it's nonsense to take "average amount of deaths" over the past few years and extrapolate it to the current year without accounting for population growth changes, and rate of population growth acceleration. Secondly, if you look at the "expected U.S. Death Rate" data[1], it shows that they expected U.S. death rates (per capita) to rapidly accelerate about 7 years ago, but the rate of deaths d…

I'm more inclined to believe the organisation literally called 'our world in data' as an authority for data research. Your analysis just seems incomplete and I highly doubt they would just leave something out or use bad data. Look at their formulas to get a better idea why.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#55

Post by JoeData »

jb775 wrote: post #47
idoh wrote: post #2

Excess mortality seems like the best way to track the pandemic because determining whether someone died of covid can be debatable sometimes, but there can be no debate over whether someone died.

This data is BS. Firstly, it's nonsense to take "average amount of deaths" over the past few years and extrapolate it to the current year without accounting for population growth changes, and rate of population growth acceleration. Secondly, if you look at the "expected U.S. Death Rate" data[1], it shows that they expected U.S. death rates (per capita) to rapidly accelerate about 7 years ago, but the rate of deaths d…

The CDC has an "expected death" curve which reflects the time trend (which thus includes population growth and aging) and seasonality of death.

U.S. deaths this year are well above that curve: https://imgur.com/p4kBgXF

We are on track to have 3.2 million to 3.3 million deaths this year. That's a crude death rate of 970 to 1000 deaths per, well above the megatrends (U.N.) forecast of 888.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#56

Post by saiya-jin »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #22
hinkley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know at least one person who’s having problems exacerbated by lack of mobility. Atrophy in old people can be a big problem. I would not go so far as to support anyone claiming this is why we should be breaking quarantine, but can’t quite support racking them all up as COVID deaths either. Reality is somewhere between the two (but close to “most” than “few”)

There are quite a few risk increases associated with general shutdown. This is one with large impact. Another large impact is mental illness, in particular presenting in suicide and substance abuse. On the other side, many other common risks are reduced: workplace injury, other transmissible ailments. If the purpose of the analysis is to determine whether the preventive measure is effective and not overwrought, an ex…

> workplace injury, other transmissible ailments.

For white collar workforce, it just becomes at-home injury, whatever it is. Transmission generally might not be so greatly reduced either - there are jobs which have to go to work (like my wife who is a doctor) so whole household is exposed, there are schools/kindergardens still open in many countries (so our baby can easily bring covid from it while I haven't been sitting in the office since mid march).

Using face masks and washing hands might be helping more with spread, something that was ridiculous and laughed at in western culture still 1 year ago. I was a fan of it even for regular flu as done in south east asia for a long time, but no way you could have done it here.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#57

Post by mkolodny »

throwitaway1235 wrote: post #46

Would total deaths be a more useful data point? CDC states that 2,839,205 Americans died in the year 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm I would be curious to know how many Americans died in 2020, once the year concludes.

This graph shows 357,335 excess US deaths from January 5 - October 25:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-cumulati...

There have been 2,000 - 3,000 known US Covid-19 deaths per day for the past few days. So, devastatingly, I think that number has gone up a lot since October 25.

https://www.google.com/search?q=us+covid+numbers

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#58

Post by JoeData »

vitiral wrote: post #28

I'm very confounded by the "Excess mortality by age group" data in the US. It _appears_ as if the mortality increase is _almost the same for all age groups_, especially at the beginning and after the initial hump. 15-64 yr olds had a 32% higher chance of dying at the hump and stayed above 11% for most of the year. Wow. All the previous findings were that COVID is _extremely unlikely_ to kill you if you are under 50,…

I made this table: https://imgur.com/PZqKWk2

It shows the point melolife made, that the percent excess (excess deaths as percent of expected) can be high, but the expected number is fairly low, so the total number of deaths is still relatively small.

The data is from November 9, so not up to date.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#59

Post by vinni2 »

hinkley wrote: post #6
idoh wrote: post #2

Excess mortality seems like the best way to track the pandemic because determining whether someone died of covid can be debatable sometimes, but there can be no debate over whether someone died.

I know at least one person who’s having problems exacerbated by lack of mobility. Atrophy in old people can be a big problem. I would not go so far as to support anyone claiming this is why we should be breaking quarantine, but can’t quite support racking them all up as COVID deaths either. Reality is somewhere between the two (but close to “most” than “few”)

What about all the traffic accidents which didn’t happen due to shutdown?

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#60

Post by JoeData »

throwitaway1235 wrote: post #46

Would total deaths be a more useful data point? CDC states that 2,839,205 Americans died in the year 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm I would be curious to know how many Americans died in 2020, once the year concludes.

The death data that the CDC has received and processed by yesterday, December 4, have a total of 2,893,571 deaths for weeks 1 through 48 (ending November 28). This number is incomplete because of a lag in reporting. The CDC estimates that there are at least 73,000 more deaths in weeks 1 through 48 that haven't yet been received and processed.

(Note that this data includes the last 3 days of 2019.)

But even with the incomplete count, we have already surpassed 2018 and 2019.

It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, but it looks we're on track to have 3.2 million to 3.3 million deaths this year. We won't have a firm grasp on the numbers until March.

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