Excess mortality from March to December of 2020 • Hacker News Board

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#101

Post by zimpenfish » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 3:45 PM UTC

scoopertrooper wrote: post #88

zimpenfish wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, Japan seems to be undergoing a startling rise in suicide rates. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/asia/japan-suicide-women-...

Interesting quote from your article: "We didn't even have a lockdown, and the impact of Covid is very minimal compared to other countries ... but still we see this big increase in the number of suicides," said Michiko Ueda, an associate professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, and an expert on suicides.

A bit further down:

> Women make up a larger percentage of part-time workers in the hotel, food service and retail industries -- where layoffs have been deep.

> In a global study of more than 10,000 people, conducted by non-profit international aid organization CARE, 27% of women reported increased challenges with mental health during the pandemic, compared to 10% of men.

> Compounding those worries about income, women have been dealing with skyrocketing unpaid care burdens, according to the study.

Doesn't exactly sound "very minimal" for women.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#102

Post by rufus_foreman » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

wjnc wrote: post #91

A puzzle I'm facing right now professionally is in what way to take Corona into account in actuarial longevity / mortality models. Current thinking is it doesn't impact the long term best estimate of longevity. We will probably resume the ever upward trend in lifespans after we've successfully managed this storm. But what to think of the 1-in-200 year shock scenario? Do we expect another pandemic in the next 200 year…

>> We will probably resume the ever upward trend in lifespans after we've successfully managed this storm

US life expectancy was lower in 2019 than it was in 2013. Pretty unprecedented outside of things like the collapse of the Soviet Union. That's probably a bigger issue than the pandemic long term.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#103

Post by pashamur » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

rufus_foreman wrote: post #102

wjnc wrote: post #91

A puzzle I'm facing right now professionally is in what way to take Corona into account in actuarial longevity / mortality models. Current thinking is it doesn't impact the long term best estimate of longevity. We will probably resume the ever upward trend in lifespans after we've successfully managed this storm. But what to think of the 1-in-200 year shock scenario? Do we expect another pandemic in the next 200 year…

>> We will probably resume the ever upward trend in lifespans after we've successfully managed this storm US life expectancy was lower in 2019 than it was in 2013. Pretty unprecedented outside of things like the collapse of the Soviet Union. That's probably a bigger issue than the pandemic long term.

There's large variance there depending on demographic factors & income quintiles. Life expectancy is going up for some, while down for others:

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44846.pdf

"Their most relevant finding for Social Security reform is that life expectancy increased continuously with income and that, according to them, “[t]here was no dividing line above or below which higher income was not associated with higher life expectancy.” At increasingly higher levels of income, they report that an increase in income of a given dollar amount produced positive but smaller gains in life expectancy. "

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#104

Post by gpderetta » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #97

viraptor wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because of extended lockdowns in te west I'd rather phrase it as "because of inadequate social support during lockdown". A few countries paying low support had money to do more. Blaming that just on long lockdown is missing all the other possible solutions. As for the effect on mortality of the lockdowns themselves, it will be interesting to look at Australia in a few months where the infections stayed relatively l…

I agree but I am talking about the consequences on third world countries of a slowing economy.

The economy would have slowed down anyway, lock down not though.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#105

Post by anoncake » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

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.

But what are you going to do with that information? It's important to know if someone died of Covid or because of our measures against it. Or even of Covid because of our measures against it (stress weakens the immune system + getting infected anyway).

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#106

Post by centimeter » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

batiudrami wrote: post #30

centimeter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean people will point to all-cause excess mortality as a justification to say "Coronavirus killed X million people" even if half of those were lockdown deaths.

You're trying to see something in the data that isn't there. Even if there was a spike in suicides, it would be a drop in the ocean compared to the excess deaths attributed to physical symptoms of COVID-19. For what it's worth, Melbourne just went through one of the harshest lockdowns (in order to successfully eliminite the COVID-19 in the state), with no spike in suicide rates [1]. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/20…

If unemployment suicides maintain the normal relationship to unemployment rates, it’s likely that more people will die from suicides than from having covid as a primary morbidity.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#107

Post by DanBC » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:28 PM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #83

scoopertrooper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another large impact is mental illness, in particular presenting in suicide At least one study didn't find an uptick in suicides as a result of the lockdowns. Situation may differ in America because it's run by idiots that cut off state income support and didn't commit to locking down till the situation was under control. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...

As a counterpoint, Japan seems to be undergoing a startling rise in suicide rates. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/asia/japan-suicide-women-...

That's not a great source.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.06.20207530v...

> By August, the total number of suicides was 7.72% higher than the average number of suicides in the same month of the previous three years.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#108

Post by scoopertrooper » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 12:40 AM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #101

scoopertrooper wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting quote from your article: "We didn't even have a lockdown, and the impact of Covid is very minimal compared to other countries ... but still we see this big increase in the number of suicides," said Michiko Ueda, an associate professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, and an expert on suicides.

A bit further down: > Women make up a larger percentage of part-time workers in the hotel, food service and retail industries -- where layoffs have been deep. > In a global study of more than 10,000 people, conducted by non-profit international aid organization CARE, 27% of women reported increased challenges with mental health during the pandemic, compared to 10% of men. > Compounding those worries about income, wom…

This is not an article in an academic journal and we don't know how scientifically valid the CARE survey was - which btw wasn't specifically about Japan. It would almost certainly cover countries that were unable to effectively subsidise their shutdowns. Having said that, it does intuitively make sense that the economic down turn would place additional stress on those most affected by it.

The lockdown, however, was not the source of the economic down turn, but rather the virus roaming about killing people was the cause. An effective lockdown, supported by government subsidies and contact tracing, has been proven to be beneficial to the economy. After the shutdown, consumers can roam about in the comfort of knowing that they have almost zero chance of contracting the virus. Australia and New Zealand are now so confident in their success that they can fill entire stadiums with people as though a vaccine had already arrived.

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#109

Post by scoopertrooper » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #107

zimpenfish wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, Japan seems to be undergoing a startling rise in suicide rates. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/asia/japan-suicide-women-...

That's not a great source. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.06.20207530v... > By August, the total number of suicides was 7.72% higher than the average number of suicides in the same month of the previous three years.

Still though, as noted by the paper, there hasn't been a shutdown in Japan:

> Without introducing lockdown measures or strict domestic movement restrictions during the state of emergency, authorities requested non-essential businesses to close or opt to work remotely. Stores and restaurants were asked to operate for reduced hours. The state of emergency was lifted on May 25, 2020.

Yes economic down turns can increase the suicide rate shock, but shutdowns are obviously not a factor for Japan as they haven't imposed nearly as onerous containment measures as other countries. The main reason for Japan's current plight is that its economy is heavily susceptible to external economic shocks such as decreased global consumption due to an ongoing pandemic.

https://www.businesstoday.in/current/world/covid-19-effect-j...

Re: Excess mortality from March to December of 2020

#110

Post by onecommentman » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

I assume someone posted this link in the discussion and it has faded, but the US CDC has a fine webpage addressing excess deaths in the US, with time series data for the last 3 years and an ability to look at individual State-level info

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

I’m not a fan of the automatic rescaling and truncating of the y-axis on charts by the original link. It is associated with a “lying with statistics” attack on the meaning of the graph. The CDC graphs don’t suffer from that problem.