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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

#101

Post by kortex »

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…

You would likely need to look at county by county data. Austin TX is probably closer to Albany NY behaviorally, than it is to Kent County TX. Schoharie County NY is probably closer to your average TX county. America isn't red state vs blue state, it's rural vs urban.

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

#102

Post by ianai »

ianai wrote: post #92
josh_today wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not questioning the numbers but genuinely curious how the exponential math works in this case. Thanks

Per Google, the US is at 33 million total cases.

Just to tack on to this - the growth of the virus can be exponential. Seychelles (small island country) was at a high vaccination count but is currently experiencing an outbreak of covid. On the one hand, their case counts are up which sounds bad. On the other hand, they're not seeing the exponential growth in hospitalizations nor deaths - i.e. the vaccines are doing their jobs.

Edit-But the effects of the vaccine aren't exponential. You really need to get a good population coverage to axe the thing. And outbreaks can still occur (though less deadly) when/if outsiders come in from populations less vaccinated.

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

#103

Post by Fomite »

ceejayoz wrote: post #63
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 suspect there’ll be decades worth of study of this. Hopefully it’ll help the next time.

I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist, and there absolutely will be decades spend unravelling this.

To address the parent question - one thing to keep in mind is that states are extremely heterogeneous, and "Did or did not lock down/mask mandate/etc." isn't actually a binary variable, but a very difficult to measure continuous response of both policy and compliance.

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

#104

Post by teachingassist »

ethbr0 wrote: post #32
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…

100% COVID / vaccination isn't the end point. It's R_t So some amount < 100% of people infected / vaccinated will create enough spreading "distance" between that coronavirus won't be able to effectively reproduce, because the (limited) vulnerable hosts will be too "far" apart.

I agree that you could place the condition on reproduction number - you really intend that the virus becomes extinct.

But your 'less than 100% infected/vaccinated' is an assumption, not a guarantee. There's an ongoing possibility of immune escape.

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

#105

Post by aaronblohowiak »

codelord wrote: post #100
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…

This is from earlier: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countr... Interestingly Sweden that got famous for defying lockdowns saw an uptick of 1.5% excess mortality per 100K people compared to 12.9% for the US that was relatively more locked down. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it sure is an interesting data point.

I would not typify the US as "mostly locked down"

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

#107

Post by msbarnett »

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…

Another way to look at this is that if the Black Death had broken out in 2019, we’d have expected the excess mortality to be pretty close to zero (in truth some remote regions with poor access to antibiotics still experience it, but it’s essentially a non-issue in the modern world).

Which is to say, comparing deaths across centuries is hard. It’s hard to say how many people COVID would have killed without oxygen and intubation in the time period of the Black Plague. That it killed as many as it did even given our medical advances may indicate that it is in some absolute sense much worse, not better.

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

#108

Post by pmoriarty »

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…

"The Black Death was 30-50% of the population in Europe. The "Spanish" Flu of 1918 killed about .64% of the US population."

The populations were much lower back then. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, so there are probably many more deaths to come.

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

#110

Post by [deleted] »

dabbledash wrote: post #82
andrei_says_ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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