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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

#401

Post by nradov »

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.

Please stop spreading misinformation. Rebekah Jones was not fired for reporting data manipulation. She is simply a liar. All of her key claims have been debunked.

Please stop spreading misinformation. Rebekah Jones wasn't a data scientist and was never asked to falsify any numbers. She is simply a liar.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/rebekah-jones-the-cov...

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

#402

Post by spankyspangler »

dang wrote: post #340
spankyspangler wrote: post #227

That sounds like a pretty wild conspiracy theory. Any basis for this belief?

Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do that, as you know. We're trying to have a different quality of discussion than what this sort of thing leads to. Please make your substantive points thoughtfully. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27178252 .

Ahh, you not only detached the subthread but also crippled my ability to reply. Your intentions to swiftly protect the feelings of your user base and shield them from difficult conversations is laudable, though misguided because you inadvertently left the "The “become COVID-19 carriers to own the libs” strategy kinda worked." comment up. Or is that what you mean by different quality of discussion?

It was certainly not my intention to start flamewars so I will make all endeavours to stop doing that (and stop beating my wife etc). From the votes and subsequent productive discussions in the thread you disconnected, it seems like a good number of users agreed with me, and we were able to shut down the conspiracy theory talk while leaving the door open to further discussion of the interesting parts (virus spreading between towns and cities). So I genuinely don't see the problem, but I can hold my nose and try to be gentler with conspiracy theorists if that would help.

Because I will continue to call out baseless conspiracy theorists and hateful / flamewar comments as I see them, while trying to be calm, measured, and proportionate in response. If calling out baseless and harmful conspiracy theories proves too much for fragile users or moderators to cope with, I'm more than happy to move along from your site, and leave you to your "different quality" discussions and conspiracy theories.

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

#403

Post by andrei_says_ »

fastball wrote: post #399
dabbledash wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you assume the main thing special about this year was the virus and strategies aimed at mitigating it, you can still compare overall outcomes between jurisdictions. If tight lockdowns decrease COVID deaths but increase other deaths enough to compensate then they didn’t achieve anything. It would be valuable to know the exact breakdown but you don’t have to.

Right, but my point is that it's hard to separate those things if your idea is just "excess deaths tell us the cost". So if lockdowns slow COVID but increase suicides... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know it’s easy to be a bit cynical once we take an abstract view.

Please let’s remember it is not a simple lever.

Let’s remember the overflowing ICUs and morgues and the very very limited menu of possible immediate actions - all this amongst unprecedented scrutiny, politicization and division.

We’re human. We’re doing the best we can. Lockdowns do flatten the curve.

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

#404

Post by andrei_says_ »

jmahyoung wrote: post #226
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.

Somewhat related, on the opposite point. Elon Musk among others said the counting of deaths was manipulated upwards, with comorbidity being counted as a COVID death even when the patient had 2 or more serious health conditions already. I think there is a desire to overcount which must not be glossed over either.

I’ve been wondering recently... should I appoint ELon Musk as an authority on everything or not?

The jury’s still out in my case.

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

#405

Post by nradov »

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…

The current best estimate of infection fatality rate is not 0.5%. It's actually half that at 0.23%. However the error bars are pretty wide on that number.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33716331/

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

#406

Post by nradov »

raydev wrote: post #391
nradov wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it actually help, or was that just coincidental?

The alternative was not closing schools while cases and incoming patients were increasing exponentially. Is that a theory we should be testing when we've already paused elective medical procedures due to the already high numbers of people in the hospital?

Education is essential so yes that is a hypothesis we should be testing.

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

#407

Post by belltaco »

exegete wrote: post #304
belltaco wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If New York ONLY ignored the problem that'd be one thing So where would recovered nursing home residents go? Keep staying in the hospital which would mean active covid patients would die in the streets? Or the streets?

In hindsight to one of the many unused field hospitals? But at the time we didn’t know how effective the mitigations were going to be and fully expected the field hospitals to be full

Not to mention the USS Comfort was banned from accepting any Covid patient.

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

#408

Post by mattnewton »

greggman3 wrote: post #367
shoguning wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a study in PNAS, shelter-in-place policies in the US did not work: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e2019706118 Another study in Eur J Clin Inv had similar findings comparing countries: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484 COVID went wild basically everywhere. There were a few strong exceptions: China (apparently), Australia, New Zealand and some others. What these had in common was v…

Here in Japan they've never really had lockdown. Restaurants have remained open the entire time, just asked to close at 8pm. I could/can walk by them at 7pm and see them full of people talking and eating without masks. I was invited by Japanese friends the entire time (didn't go) and would see them posting pictures of their restaurant dinner gatherings on Facebook. Further, as a comparison, Tokyo Metro has 38 million…

This is super interesting. My entirely unqualified gut reaction is that this is cultural- that Japanese people take infectious disease seriously and test+quarantine after experiencing symptoms or traveling at all, having already handled SARS outbreaks before, and many Americans are still debating whether the pandemic is real, and that behavioral difference is enough. I don’t know how to test that. But it could also just be as simple as Americans being less healthy.

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

#409

Post by URSpider94 »

atweiden wrote: post #356
sellyme wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Australia and NZ have the huge advantage of no land borders. Australia had a major outbreak in Victoria in July last year. Victoria has a 2,550km land border with other states, including with South Australia, which peaked at 10 active cases over the same time period. The evidence shows that strict quarantining and early lockdowns prevent spread even when there's an outbreak on the other side of a land border, and i…

If being an island state was really the only thing that mattered here, why is Hawaii not at Covid zero? Why is Alaska not at Covid zero? (Despite not being an island, AK is still highly comparable to OZ.)

It’s hard to appreciate just how strict the lockdown measures in places like New Zealand and Taiwan have been. People are driven from the airport directly to a hotel, then someone comes and checks on them and they monitor the front door. Even in Hawaii, the arrival quarantine was just in whatever resort you were staying in, and was almost entirely self-imposed.

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

#410

Post by belltaco »

reader_mode wrote: post #143
madeofpalk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's only 17% due to the lockdowns. If not the deaths would be way higher, not just because of the higher numbers of people infected, but also because of overburdened hospitals unable to provide critical care and oxygen.
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