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The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

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Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#31
post #15
post #3

The part I found interesting was the number of death from flu and pneumonia: 5 year average: 28,140 deaths 2020 so far: 18,325 deaths (does not include November and December!) COVID 2020: 53,675 deaths So while it does seem to be killing some people who would've died from the flu/pneumonia anyway, it's still nearly double the 5 year average which would make it one hell of a bad flu strain.

In Germany the number of deaths from COVID-19 is below the number of people who died from influenza in 2017/2018. So far COVID-19 klilled about 13000 people, while the official numbers for influenza 2017/18 is between 20000 and 25000.

Because you guys in Germany took the virus seriously and put measures in place. The US went full YOLO.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that these kinds of impacts are even remotely common.

Are you sure? From https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/... : > In this study of a cohort of German patients recently recovered from COVID-19 infection, CMR revealed cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60 patients (60%), independent of preexisting conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and time from the original diagnosis. These…

> Obviously, this study doesn't say anything about truly long-term consequences of COVID

Exactly. And it's insane to just assume there is long-term damage with no evidence whatsoever.

Also, it would likely be possible to say something about actual long-term damage if it existed by monitoring patients' recovery and extrapolating.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that these kinds of impacts are even remotely common.

Are you sure? From https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/... : > In this study of a cohort of German patients recently recovered from COVID-19 infection, CMR revealed cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60 patients (60%), independent of preexisting conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and time from the original diagnosis. These…

Was the same study conducted for influenza in 2017/18? I had a really bad case of flu for about two weeks and feld like I got five years older during that time.

The major problem I see is that we currently watch the whole COVID-19 under amicroscope and discover a lot of horrible things. Actually, if you are a researcher, the only way to get attention is by finding horrible things. If we had done the same for epidemics in the past, would we have found horrible things as well?

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#34
post #20
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problems have had advancements in treatment in the last 20 years? HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes. Those are just three things off the top of my head that I know have improved, even without data to support me. I'm not sure, with the speed of technological improvements in the last decade, that 20 years is appropriate.

Curious if you looked at the underlying data. Aside from 2018, this year does not even look like much of an outlier: https://mobile.twitter.com/TLennhamn/status/1295269505984344... . 2012 seems to have been deadlier, for Sweden, than 2020, which was 8 years ago.

[deleted]

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#35
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious if you looked at the underlying data. Aside from 2018, this year does not even look like much of an outlier: https://mobile.twitter.com/TLennhamn/status/1295269505984344... . 2012 seems to have been deadlier, for Sweden, than 2020, which was 8 years ago.

What about other countries?

Other coutries used lockdowns.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#36
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is linearly adjusted to fill out the 2020 data. You are right though, that we don't have the full year's data.

Does it take into account that more people tend to die in December, January, and February than other months? In other words, did they adjust December properly? https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/10/more-people-die-winter-...

I agree that we can't look at the whole year until it's over, due to the irregular level of spread throughout the year.

However, it's interesting to note that during the first ten weeks of 2020, 8% fewer people died in Sweden compared to the average of 2015-2019, and 2020 had in fact the lowest number of deaths of the last six years[1] during the first ten weeks of each year.

[1] https://scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/befolkni... (Excel file, Tabell 5, fairly easy to translate)

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#37
post #13
post #2

This really depends on how far back you look. I was looking at the data for Sweden the other day. If you look at the last 20 years in terms of overall mortality, 2020 is right around the middle: https://mobile.twitter.com/TLennhamn/status/1295269941109764... It's certainly more than last year, or the year before that, but it's not an outlier for the last two decades.

If you zoom out 200 years, this year's mortality looks awesome! Yes, the world has become a safer place to live in over the years. Given the downward trend in age adjusted deaths per million over time, it makes a lot of sense to compare only the most recent years to 2020. See here to compare monthly mortality rates for every country in 2020 to the the prior 5 year period: https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-c…

> If you zoom out 200 years, this year's mortality looks awesome!

If you compare it with 1666, this is paradise.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#38
Maddening that they don't manage to present clear data points - deliberately, or because they don't know any better?

Like what is the point of comparing flu deaths between January and August with Covif219 deaths in the same time period? Perhaps those two diseases have different seasons? (Maybe not, but they way they present it, it is impossible to know). Perhaps all the flu deaths happen in December and all the Corona deaths in March? (Just an example). Also for example Sweden had exceptionally few deaths last years, leaving exceptionally many people "ripe to die" this year (what Marginal Revolution calls the "Dry Cinder Effect").

Also comparing to averages can also be very misleading. It is in fact to be expected that any given year deviates from the average. It would be very odd if every year was exactly on the average.

Then in the middle of comparing death rates of previous years, they seem to jump to absolute counting of Covid19 deaths again ("The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show"). When the whole point of looking a death rates of previous years is to establish how many excess deaths were really attributable to Covid19.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#39

Maddening that they don't manage to present clear data points - deliberately, or because they don't know any better? Like what is the point of comparing flu deaths between January and August with Covif219 deaths in the same time period? Perhaps those two diseases have different seasons? (Maybe not, but they way they present it, it is impossible to know). Perhaps all the flu deaths happen in December and all the Coron…

exactly. to boot, if you look at death rates for all of the UK, they have been on an upward trend for the past several years so it is no surprise that deaths would higher this year than in any year in the past five years https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/dea...
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