Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Excess Deaths in 2020

kieranhealy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 220 posts

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#41

Post by StavrosK »

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #38
StavrosK wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because it would give people a better intuitive sense of how bad COVID is in a larger civilizational/historical context. Over the past 12+ months, people have accepted enormous infringements on freedoms in their everyday lives. Many of the public health measures that we take as a matter of course in the "new normal" - lockdowns, social distancing, extended closing of churches, etc.- are things that would have been al…

I don't understand your argument. You're saying that because people didn't mind dying from infectous diseases at a time where scraping your hand could prove deadly, we shouldn't mind it today either?

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#42

Post by lettergram »

I’m always fairly torn by these numbers (I’ve done a lot of research and tracked this[1]). There’s a lot of confounding factors...

The lockdowns increased the rate of suicides substantially. Largely suicides occur in people 65+, so a 100% increase in suicides would be some 150k deaths in the same age range as COVID.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml

Murder is also up some 50% and there were riots...

Not disputing the excess deaths, just the causes aren’t all that clear imo.

[1] https://github.com/lettergram/covid19-analysis

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#43

Post by heswrongsoru »

StavrosK wrote: post #2

This is terrible, but at least I can show this to my "AlL-CaUsE MorTAlItY WiLl Be tHe SaMe" friend so he can ignore it.

You're made for each other. Excess deaths capture the deaths from lockdown related causes too, like my grandmother, who died when her social life was indefinitely stopped, and teenagers that committed suicide due to lockdowns

Excess deaths don't tell us how deadly COVID really was, they tell us how deadly COVID plus the COVID response really were.

Someday historians will argue: which was worse? The disease or the treatment? I don't think it's as clear cut in reality as you or your "friend" that you're mocking think.

Maybe both of you should try listening to the people you disagree with

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#44

Post by neatze »

sim_card_map wrote: post #5

For some reason Europe saw a lot fewer excess deaths in 2020. For example, in Germany it was only ~ +3%, and Sweden, which didn't lock down and had no mask mandates, had a lower death rate than in 2012: https://i.redd.it/73x3fysmu7k61.png

Europe is light years ahead in medical emergency services, when compared to US, this my limited observation, I am EMT volunteer in US.

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#45

Post by Tade0 »

DataDaoDe wrote: post #32

One thing I would like to know, and I don’t know enough about mortality measures so maybe someone who does could chip in, would be essentially what is the probability of observing a year like 2020 with respect to all cause mortality. Is it in 99th-percentile or are we looking at an observation within a standard deviation of the expected value,etc.

As a data point in my country (Poland) there haven't been that many deaths since WW2.

The pre-war population of this country was around 34mln - a figure reached again in the early 70s - while currently it's slightly less than 38mln, so this event can definitely be seen as rare.

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#46

Post by caddemon »

StavrosK wrote: post #8
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #3

I'd like to see a version of this analysis that incorporates all-cause mortality from a much larger time period; say the past fifty years rather than the past five.

Why?

In a vacuum it would give you more of a sense about how much of an outlier this year was. But obviously enough other things have changed over the last 50 years that the numbers would stop being comparable. Perhaps looking at a 5 year sliding window to see how big the peaks usually are relative to their surrounding years could get at this with a bit less confounding.

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#47

Post by 015UUZn8aEvW »

StavrosK wrote: post #41
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would give people a better intuitive sense of how bad COVID is in a larger civilizational/historical context. Over the past 12+ months, people have accepted enormous infringements on freedoms in their everyday lives. Many of the public health measures that we take as a matter of course in the "new normal" - lockdowns, social distancing, extended closing of churches, etc.- are things that would have been al…

I don't understand your argument. You're saying that because people didn't mind dying from infectous diseases at a time where scraping your hand could prove deadly, we shouldn't mind it today either?

It's not a question of what people "mind" or "don't mind", it's a question of what level of risk people will accept in order to live a normal life. Hiding away from people may reduce risk in a lot of ways, but most people find it unacceptable.

Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken about that.

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#48

Post by joshuahedlund »

HideousKojima wrote: post #40

I'm curious if there's a good way to breakdown how much is caused by COVID vs., say, caused by the lockdown (i.e. delayed elective medical procedures, suicides, etc.). For example the US suicide rate declined from 2018 to 2019, but went back up in 2020. Naively assuming that all of the increase was due to the effects of the lockdowns would attribute ~2,880 suicides to them (or more if in a counterfactual world the su…

Suicides declined in 2020 [1]

Cost benefit analysis is important. But it's pretty clear the vast majority of excess deaths were covid related, because there's a very strong correlation between excess deaths and reported covid cases/deaths, even when you look at different states that had different peaks at different times, and no such correlation to other responses like different types of lockdowns. More delayed / indirect / long-term effects might be harder to measure though.

[1]https://www.axios.com/suicide-decreased-in-2020-pandemmic-me...

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#49

Post by caddemon »

StavrosK wrote: post #41
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would give people a better intuitive sense of how bad COVID is in a larger civilizational/historical context. Over the past 12+ months, people have accepted enormous infringements on freedoms in their everyday lives. Many of the public health measures that we take as a matter of course in the "new normal" - lockdowns, social distancing, extended closing of churches, etc.- are things that would have been al…

I don't understand your argument. You're saying that because people didn't mind dying from infectous diseases at a time where scraping your hand could prove deadly, we shouldn't mind it today either?

50 years ago was 1970. I agree that just comparing last year's death rate directly to rates from the past 50 years would be a bad analysis, but I think this is some hyperbole too.

Re: Excess Deaths in 2020

#50

Post by ortusdux »

tiahura wrote: post #35
euroclydon wrote: post #12

In a year when Geico is giving their customers an across the board rebate on their premiums because driving miles are down so much, and driving accidents are the third or fourth leading cause of death in a non-pandemic year, I think we'd need to adjust downward the baseline. I wonder if these calculations take that into account?

'Tragic': Driving Was Down In 2020, But Traffic Fatality Rates Surged The National Safety Council (NSC) says deaths from motor vehicles rose 8% last year, with as many as 42,060 people dying in vehicle crashes. When comparing traffic deaths to the number of miles driven, the rate of fatalities rose 24% — the highest spike in nearly a century, NSC says. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974006735/tragic-driving-was-...

Enforcement went down to basically zero in my area. Now that the officers are vaccinated, they have started aggressively enforcing moving violations.
Post reply on HN