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

economist.com

141–150 of 489 posts

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

#141

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.

> the US that was mostly locked

the US was not mostly locked down, and indeed made noncompliance with safety measures a major partisan identity issue for the faction controlling the federal executive, the upper federal legislative house, most state governments, and much of law enforcement even in the other states. It mostly had modest, inconsistent, uncoordinated, and largely unenforced restrictions. A few jurisdictions did at least nominal lockdowns for fairly brief periods (California did twice, though virtually every county sheriff had publicly announced that they either would not enforce orders at all or would do so only by education around compliance by the time of the second one near the end of 2020.)

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

#142

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…

"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.

> The populations were much lower back then

As a percentage of the population, why would this matter?

Other than for population density which you would generally expect to cause an increased rate of infection, not less.

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

#143
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get that. I guess I just mean that the worst pandemic of the last 100 years and (so far) it's maybe 17% deaths over the baseline. That feels kinda low.

17% increase seems kind of big, no? If plane crashes increased 17% in a single year, it would be bit. If cancer deaths increased 17% in a year, it would be pretty remarkable.

Remarkable yes - but society stopped for a year, how remarkable is that ? This is full on war state for a year or so. From what I can see in 2021 death rates in the US came to 1980s levels.

It will also be interesting to see how death rates behave in the following years post covid, since it did affect elderly population disproportionately.

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

#144
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think anything they said about countries/continents was incorrect was it?

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

#145
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…

Regardless 7million is a huge number of people...

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

#146

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 don’t have anything to add except that California is huge and very unevenly applied “lockdown” - there are many towns a where businesses remained open or reopened frequently, but the big cities did have large shelter in place efforts. It would be interesting to compare on the municipal level if the data was that granular.

The closing of schools in California (vs open in Florida since last fall) was a very distinct difference in both policy and actual behavior. It seems not to have had a dramatic effect on outcomes.

At least in hindsight, the closing of schools might have been a huge mistake.

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

#147

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"

Would you typify the US as more Locked Down than Sweden? Because their numbers are better. If their approach was worse why are their numbers not worse?

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

#148
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're getting downvoted but I do believe you're correct. I'm a healthy 21 year old, please govt., give my vaccine to other countries. I will take it if offered, but I'd prefer to give it to those who really need it all things considered. Let me get the vaccine when others are safe.

You seem to have misunderstood my point. If you are offered a vaccine, take it immediately.

The point was that 100% of the USA could be vaccinated today, and the USA will not be done with covid.

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

#149
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

In how many of the countries that did really well did the virus have the same head start that it had in the US and Europe before getting discovered?

It started in China, a country with 1.4 billion people and 20 million pop cities and even if you 100x their official number they did better than the US or Europe. There's few excuses for our mismanagement.

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> The populations were much lower back then As a percentage of the population, why would this matter? Other than for population density which you would generally expect to cause an increased rate of infection, not less.

It matters because a million people dying is worse than ten people dying, even if those ten people were 50% of some population and the million were only 10% of another population.
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