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There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

economist.com

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Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#81

Post by tbenst »

rossdavidh wrote: post #43

If you're talking about a 7 billion population, the deaths of which will vary from year to year, this seems like a number in the noise range which would be very hard to distinguish from background variation. If everyone of the 7b people lived 100 years, we would expect about 70 million deaths a year, and we know they don't live 100 years on average. Any reasonable range of assumptions puts this in the range of too-sm…

You make a strong claim with no supporting evidence or analysis. On the other hand, we have roughly 3.3M (Econimist) or 3.4M (Financial, Times [1]) confirmed COVID-19 deaths. Is it so surprising that only 25-50% of actual deaths due to COVID-19 were confirmed? Why do you try to downplay that COVID-19 is the second most deadly pandemic in a century, after HIV/AIDS? [2]

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7866842/

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#82

Post by dabbledash »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #75
khazhoux wrote: post #51

This has me a bit confused: I look at the stats on cases and deaths per capita across various U.S. states, including California (which was very locked down, at least in theory) and Florida (which was flippant towards risks of contagion), and many states in between. The per capita cases+deaths are nearly identical across many states with very different approaches. This left me really wondering which measures were and…

Count of covid cases and deaths has been highly politicized and manipulated in Florida to the point of firing people for reporting them. Not sure how possible it is to get accurate info in this environment.

That’s why overall excess deaths are a better measure. You really can’t game them.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#83

Post by therufa »

robbrown451 wrote: post #70
kortilla wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Huge” is very relative. 20% increase of a number that is very low by historical standards is still really low.

Very low? You mean not that many people die, of any cause, typically? Not sure what you are getting at here.

very low in a sense that since we discovered antibiotics, the global mortality rate went down by a factor of 10. compared to that we are still in a relatively "good" position.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#84

Post by ianai »

sneak wrote: post #22
hedora wrote: post #11

The earth’s population is 7.9b, so the excess deaths are 0.1% of the population. COVID’s mortality rate is about 0.5%, so roughly 1/5 of the population has has had it (or died of other related things, like starvation in developing countries due to the lockdown stopping food harvests in California). Currently, 1.45b doses of a vaccine have been administered, so about as many people have had the vaccine (partially, at…

It's disheartening seeing people in the US mad at the 30% vaccine hesitant there, while 6B+ at the gates have no vaccines available at all. The US isn't an island, and the borders are nowhere near closed. The variants that grow in the other 96% of humans that aren't americans will doubtlessly end up there, and will be end up tending toward vaccine resistance due to selection pressure. I think this is going to get muc…

This might be a blindspot among the US citizens. I know the European countries have united to supply vaccines to the developing world with their Covax program. But I don't think the US is doing anything similar. I'm not even sure how the US would go about doing that. Would it have to be a Presidentially-ordered/led initiative?

As a private citizen, I'd be 100% for the US helping to vaccinate the world. It's an obvious benefit to the US to not have variants arising outside its shores and coming into the country.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#85

Post by pilsetnieks »

timmg wrote: post #14

If I did the math right, that's (at most) .17% of the population. In a normal year I'd guess we lose 1% of the population. I guess this seems lower than I'd expect?

Also, deaths are not the end-all be-all to be assessed. Many more people have survived it but many have near crippling after effects from it, and even more, if not suffering now, have had a terrible and painful experience going through it.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#86

Post by atweiden »

Covid makes your country worse. It’s like having endemic malaria. No one wants endemic malaria in their country, and costly government intervention was required to rid the developed world of it.

Similarly, it’s disheartening to see so many people — especially on partisan lines — promulgate the talking point that we just need to “learn to live with it”. This is insanity. Annual mRNA booster vaccines ad infinitum, with continuous vaccine passports is a wholly inadequate vision for the future. Melbourne, Oz — a diverse, international city of 5M — demonstrates it’s very possible to eradicate Covid with international, interregional and interstate border closures, with hard lockdowns plus federal financial support. Four months later, zero covid.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#87

Post by natural219 »

hedora wrote: post #11

The earth’s population is 7.9b, so the excess deaths are 0.1% of the population. COVID’s mortality rate is about 0.5%, so roughly 1/5 of the population has has had it (or died of other related things, like starvation in developing countries due to the lockdown stopping food harvests in California). Currently, 1.45b doses of a vaccine have been administered, so about as many people have had the vaccine (partially, at…

Still not sure where 0.5% IFR is derived from; the best data I've seen puts it at 0.25% - 0.4%.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#88

Post by sidlls »

whimsicalism wrote: post #46
reader_x wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky already put the “rational market participant” myth to bed for good.

Definitely, for the consumer. I think the idea that "rational market participant emerges when you get the average of a lot of people (ie. the firm) together to make a decision" still remains alive and well. There is sort of a Darwinian argument there, that in the long-run only the rational market participant remains in business and functioning as a firm. The import of behavioral econ. definitely remains understated t…

That seems likely to veer into begging the question or tautology territory.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#89

Post by umvi »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #53
hedora wrote: post #11

The earth’s population is 7.9b, so the excess deaths are 0.1% of the population. COVID’s mortality rate is about 0.5%, so roughly 1/5 of the population has has had it (or died of other related things, like starvation in developing countries due to the lockdown stopping food harvests in California). Currently, 1.45b doses of a vaccine have been administered, so about as many people have had the vaccine (partially, at…

Thanks for summing up the relevant numbers, it's helpful in putting all this in context. .1% isn't nothing, but it isn't really a disaster either. The Black Death was 30-50% of the population in Europe. The "Spanish" Flu of 1918 killed about .64% of the US population. Things could still get worse of course. But barring that, and considering the absolute disaster that Covid has revealed our political system and interl…

> If this had been a "real" plague, of the kind humanity has faced repeatedly in the past (and has been expected for some time now), we would have been totally and utterly screwed.

Not necessarily. Part of the reason there was so much pushback against public health mandates was because covid was so tame. You are being forced, by the government, to wear a mask, isolate from others, and stop going to work for an entire year for a disease that, for the vast majority who get it, just makes it so you can't taste or smell anything for a few days along with fatigue and flu-like symptoms. If it were like black death and 50% of people who got it were dying you better believe there would be bi-partisan support for mask usage and lockdowns.

Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic

#90

Post by danenania »

khazhoux wrote: post #51

This has me a bit confused: I look at the stats on cases and deaths per capita across various U.S. states, including California (which was very locked down, at least in theory) and Florida (which was flippant towards risks of contagion), and many states in between. The per capita cases+deaths are nearly identical across many states with very different approaches. This left me really wondering which measures were and…

I've always thought the main driver of spread was probably not the political football issues like masks in public and businesses being open or closed, but what people are doing behind closed doors with family and friends. Lockdowns don't have much effect on this.
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