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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

#111

Post by scrollaway »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #105
codelord wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Indeed, and Sweden also had the benefit of the lockdowns in the rest of Europe. I don't think you can compare Sweden to the entirety of the US. A single state maybe.

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

#112

Post by clairity »

danenania wrote: post #90
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.

exactly. the measures were always about keeping us simultaneously busy and anxious and not about their actual effectiveness. it’s been so frustrating to see discussion after discussion about the minutiae of masking when they’re so minor to the overall picture. what mattered above all was indoor, familiar social proximity (where we’d be most likely to be exchanging spit for prolonged periods), exactly where our strong social norms dictate the least amount of vigilance.

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

#113

Post by pessimizer »

elchief wrote: post #45
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…

COVID mortality rate (deaths / closed cases) is ~2.5% https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The majority of people who died from covid were counted, the vast majority of people who got covid were never tested. You can't use this number as an estimate of your odds of dying if you get covid, it's not that simple.

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

#114

Post by GavinMcG »

chmod600 wrote: post #99
bytematic wrote: post #39

For people who think that is low, this is with the precautions taken, imagine if nobody did anything

Florida didn't lock down (EDIT: except a few weeks at the beginning), and their death numbers are middle-of-the-pack[1], just marginally worse than California, which did heavy lockdowns. We should probably assume that, in addition to not following some practices we should have, we also did a lot that we didn't have to. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html list the states by "of all time" a…

This or that state government's mandate or lack thereof really can't stand in for actual behaviors.

For one thing, regardless of state mandates, you can bet your buttons that a huge number of residential/nursing facilities for seniors in Florida did lock down, and thereby protected those most likely to increase Florida's numbers.

If you want to see the effects of policy, don't compare states (especially big diverse ones like California). Compare, for example, San Francisco (with peak 7-day-average new cases of 363, total cases 36.7k, and population of 874k) and Miami (peak 7-day-average new cases of 3240, total cases 494k, and population of 2710k). Per capita, Miami was about four times worse.

SF: https://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+covid+numbers

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

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

#115

Post by fastball »

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.

Not really. Excess deaths certainly are not entirely caused by the virus, so you still need to try to subdivide them somehow, which is once again a ripe opportunity for "gaming" / creative statistics.

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

#116

Post by chiefalchemist »

umvi wrote: post #89
ergot_vacation wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed. But now the bar is set. Hyperbole and data abuse have longer term consequences. Eventually, we'll face something more deadly. But plenty of citizens will be sceptical, as they should be. That's the problem.

Some call this a test run. I'm not so sure crying wolf qualifies.

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

#117

Post by eyelidlessness »

umvi wrote: post #89
ergot_vacation wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can accept that the initial worst case mortality claims turned out to be too high. But I can’t accept this claim:

> 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

People who’ve been sick and survived, even with minimal symptoms, are experiencing long term health issues. It’s one thing to recognize that the early estimates overstated mortality. It’s another thing to minimize what people who’ve survived infection are experiencing.

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

#118

Post by t8e56vd4ih »

candu wrote: post #95
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…

IMHO if you want to understand what an effective response looks like - don't look at North America or Europe. Think Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, and many parts of Africa, all of which had vastly better outcomes. Of course, I'm not an epidemiologist or public health expert, so while I have some guesses I'm not sure what exactly they did that was more effective - but there's no question that it was more effective.…

> Of course, I'm not an epidemiologist

and no geographer either apparently :D

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

#119

Post by kortex »

tester756 wrote: post #61

How strong is anti vaccine / anti mask movement in the US? As I see there's very little of it "on the american side of the internet", meanwhile "here" they tend to cause a lot of disruption and shitton of missinformation

Strong and unevenly distributed. The more rural the area, the less vaccinations are occurring, and also less mask compliance. So the ~33% anti-vaxxers aren't evenly distributed, they are probably 50% in others. As of May 16, there is about 45% vaccinated in New England but This means there will likely be covid hotspots and reservoirs for a long time.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/states-r...

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

#120

Post by pmoriarty »

disordinary wrote: post #78
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #41

Please don’t look at 7m-13m number and compare it to 7 billion population and say oh it’s only 0.1-0.2%. Pretty much ever country has seen a 15-20% increase in excess mortality rates (20% more people dying than averages in the past), this is huge. This is one of the best up to date visualizations on this topic, scroll down and see breakdowns by country - https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386...

Not only that, but the covid restrictions have meant that the normal death rate is lower. Because people aren't traveling and commuting the road toll is down, because people are at home and social distancing workplace deaths are down. So excess mortality is up and the base deathrate is down meaning excess mortality is actually higher than shown.

On the other hand, people have been avoiding going to the doctor, so diagnosis and treatment of all sorts of preventable/treatable diseases (like cancer) is down, leading to excess death, disability, and suffering.
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