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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

#191

Post by jussij »

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.

Sweden's early success with their 'herd immunity' experiment was short lived.

They failed to actually achieve 'herd immunity' and did not avoid the eventual virus death toll:

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/sweden-cris...

By comparison Finland, it's neighbor took a much stricter approach and never reached the same level of death.

Finland: 931 deaths at 168 per million with a 1.0% death rate.

https://epidemic-stats.com/coronavirus/finland

Sweden: 14275 deaths at 1406 per million with a 1.4% death rate.

https://epidemic-stats.com/coronavirus/sweden

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

#192

Post by hn8788 »

nicoburns wrote: post #167
danenania wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> what people are doing behind closed doors with family and friends. Lockdowns don't have much effect on this. At least here in the UK, lockdown meant not seeing friends or family (unless you lived with them). Was that not the case in the US? Of course if people flout the rules then they won't have any effect.

It varied from state to state. I live in Maryland, and there was maybe a 2 week period last spring where you weren't allowed to drive anywhere except to get groceries and medicine, or if you were an essential employee for a business that was allowed to stay open. Outside of that two week period, the only travel restriction I know of was a mandatory quarantine period for people traveling in from other states.

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

#193

Post by disordinary »

virtuallynathan wrote: post #132
disordinary wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not the case with automotive fatalities, they were up in 2020. "A 24% spike in roadway death rates is highest in 96 years"

There was a global 24% spike in roadway deaths? I find that hard to believe. Please provide evidence. In my country we saw a 10% reduction in road deaths through 2020.

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

#194

Post by Karsteski »

MauroIksem wrote: post #58
wyager wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither mortality rate nor vaccine administration rate are uniform. The mortality rate is much lower than 0.5% in e.g. people under 60 years old, and people who are in high-risk groups are mostly already vaccinated. The effective mortality rate today is probably at least an order of magnitude lower, maybe two. Edit: To whoever is downvoting this - you are not only wrong, but hilariously directionally wrong, and in a…

This is literally just your opinion and you have zero to base this on. Stop spreading misinformation.

I love how the term misinformation is now used to say "I don't like what you are saying and it doesn't adhere to my worldview, therefore it is misinformation".

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

#195

Post by MattGaiser »

archsurface wrote: post #137

What rubbish. In the UK the figures have been blatantly inflated. The entire UK media has turned into a bought and paid for government propaganda machine; the only journalists left are the independents. The whole thing has been such farce that I now struggle to acknowledge anything more than the presence of a virus. I still, after a year, don't know anyone who knows anyone who's died from this catastrophic, sky is fa…

So all nations are creating fake deaths now?

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

#196

Post by alerighi »

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.

Really... not many. In my city of about 14k people last year died 19 people, that is like 3/4 more than the norm, but with these numbers, we are well inside statistical error.

Also we must evaluate the increase in mortality in a longer period. I can as well being that most of the people that died of COVID were either old people or people with other health issues that would have died anyway in a year or two.

The problem with COVID to me seems that everyone just remembered that people will die. In the old days death was normal, there were wars, there were al sort of illnesses and infections that caused death, it was common to see people die even at young ages. And I don't talk about centuries ago, it was like that till the end of WW2.

Nowadays we are used to people that lives till 90 years, we no longer have wars, we are able to cure practically every illness, so a virus that kills slightly more people that we are used to see terrifies us. But in reality, it's nature, we will all die one day, COVID or not, so there is no real reason to fear it to me. In fact, we will live worse life because of the fear of this virus, and all the restrictions that we had put in place to avoid that (without so much success, in the end).

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

#197

Post by bradlys »

lostapathy wrote: post #136
candu wrote: 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.…

I'd wait to draw any serious conclusions until after the pandemic is "over" in both countries you're comparing. It sure seems like this virus doesn't need much of a foothold to take off, and just because an island has been able to deny that so far doesn't mean they'll be able to deny the virus until they are fully vaccinated and out of the woods.

I don't think thinking of these places as "islands" really makes sense. The USA could do the same for all people flying or driving in. It just has chosen not to. The US could close its boarders if it wanted to.

Just because we have two neighboring countries on north and south borders doesn't mean we couldn't lockdown people from coming in...

Literally do not get this argument.

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

#198

Post by giantg2 »

teachingassist wrote: post #104
ethbr0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"...you really intend that the virus becomes extinct."

Which might not be possible due to many factors, including non-human hosts.

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

#199

Post by orblivion »

PeterisP wrote: post #153
orblivion wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For me "countries that did really well" is mainly places like Singapore and Taiwan and South Korea, which got the virus earlier than USA and Europe but took it seriously from the very start.

Okay, if they actually got the virus that early, then these countries are the answer to my question.

However... at least for Taiwan that doesn't feel like it adds up:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/taiwan

They've had fewer than 1700 cases, and that's including a recent massive outbreak. They peaked on March 26th 7-day average with 21 cases a day. Granted, the US took maybe a couple more weeks to ramp up to its first plateau, so maybe if it was caught here a few weeks earlier it would have made all the difference. But it feels a lot more like Taiwan just didn't have a lot of travel to and from Wuhan?

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

#200

Post by robbrown451 »

therufa wrote: post #83
robbrown451 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Relative to what, again? The old days, before antibiotics?

I mean, if you go back far enough, 1 out of 5 people died by homocide. That still wouldn't make it reasonable to say that we're "relatively good" if only 10 million Americans a year are getting murdered.

Death, and specifically premature death, is still a very unfortunate reality. Playing it down as if "well it happened more often in the old days" is, frankly, a bit bizarre.

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