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US Mortality Monitoring – Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, State Map

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Re: US Mortality Monitoring – Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, State Map

#61
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked up Slovakia data specifically. Deaths: 2020: 59,000 [1] 2019: 52,234 [2] 2018: 53,914 [2] So a 9.4% increase from 2018 to 2020. By contrast, Sweden had a 5.7% increase. [3] Slovakia has lockdown and curfew. Isn't the conclusion here that lockdown in Europe is failure, when with only voluntary measures Sweden was able to achieve a lower death rate? [1] https://spectator.sme.sk/c/22594536/in-2020-slovakia-suff…

What else do you know about Sweden that could have skewed their figures? Great healthcare? Strong public support of the measures that were put in place? Trust in govt? Healthy community to start with? To say that Sweden and Swedes took no steps to protect themselves and their communities is baseless - I assume you do not live there? I have friends in Sweden, and the lives they are living are very very different to th…

Many deaths in care homes early in the pandemic, that's what skewed their figures. If you took number for the second wave only they would score way better. Lithuania already surpassed Sweden by number of cases per capita, and is really close to surpass it by number of deaths per capita. Sweden never had lockdowns. Lithuania has been living in strict lockdowns for 6 or 7 months, I am not even sure.

Re: US Mortality Monitoring – Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, State Map

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"road toll"? Is that an idiom or do you mean fees charged to drivers?

"The death toll incurred by driving on roads".

yes this - we have a socialised medical system, the government understands that reducing the demands on our health system by reducing the number and severity of car accidents is a useful thing, it reduces the costs we all have to pay.

So our police, who are responsible for picking up the pieces, do continual public outreach encouraging people to drive safely/sober/etc the yearly "road toll" is a continual metric that is used to show how well we are doing as in "the road toll this easter has been higher than last year, please drive more slowly"

Re: US Mortality Monitoring – Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, State Map

#63
post #17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My explanation has been that many of the elderly who died from covid did not have much live expectation left because they had suffered multiple diseases already. So in excess deaths they don't show that big, even though there were many cases. But the 25-44 olds would still have decades left, so every death makes a greater impact on excess deaths of their age group. But my statistics math is on a very basic level...

That's not what excess deaths mean. Excess deaths is number of deaths above previous years average. It has nothing to do with age, other than tracking who has died at what age.

So why would you not be able to categorize excess death into age groups?

Last period 100 70 - 90 years old died. This period 110. If they died only a fraction of the period earlier, they would have shown up in the same category anyway with some probability.

This period 5 20-40 years old died, this year 10 Normally they would have died decades later, so they would have not shown up in this category during the period.

(Of course with small numbers statisical relevance decreases. But I have understood in countries with many covid deaths in elderly care excess deaths for high age categories did not increase that much over a year.)

This would show a 10% increase in the older group, but a 50% increase in the younger group.

Of course

Re: US Mortality Monitoring – Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, State Map

#64
post #37

Does anyone have a list of all countries with annual deaths in 2020, vs prior years for the past decade? Surely the best way to examine the true impact of COVID is to understand the raw death figures, particularly if there were factors such as weak 2019 flu seasons/deaths which may have contributed to mortality displacement?

Best way to assess the impact in terms of deaths, but don't forget that the impact will also be on those suffering long covid symptoms. My wife was first ill with covid this time last year, and is still suffering now. She didn't get covid that bad, wasn't hospitalised, and prior to falling ill was working out 4 days a week and a damn busy person. Now a 15 min walk can see her needing to sleep it off for 2 hours. We a…

Do you have any evidence that these symptoms were caused by long covid and not by something else that changed at roughly the same time, like lockdowns?

Re: US Mortality Monitoring – Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, State Map

#65

Does anyone have a list of all countries with annual deaths in 2020, vs prior years for the past decade? Surely the best way to examine the true impact of COVID is to understand the raw death figures, particularly if there were factors such as weak 2019 flu seasons/deaths which may have contributed to mortality displacement?

> Surely the best way to examine the true impact of COVID is to understand the raw death figures Is it though? As an example motor vehicle fatalities went up sharply in 2020. Is this due to the pandemic? If anything the pandemic should have decreased car accidents, because miles driven went down . It seems there’s possibly an orthogonal force at work. Possibly the rising market share of monster pickup trucks, which a…

According to data in the UK from May last year, more likely to be in a crash (although total trips were down, as you note). Link below notes crashes around a couple of football events went from 16 (in jan) to 70 (in mar). I don't think pedestrians enter into it.

So perhaps more risky driving occurs when fewer other cars are around? Maybe the risk-averse stay home, leaving only riskier people to go out? Clearly, the pandemic had an indirect effect here though.

https://www.vin.li/era/covid-uk-report/

Re: US Mortality Monitoring – Deaths, Excess, Z-Scores, State Map

#66
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best way to assess the impact in terms of deaths, but don't forget that the impact will also be on those suffering long covid symptoms. My wife was first ill with covid this time last year, and is still suffering now. She didn't get covid that bad, wasn't hospitalised, and prior to falling ill was working out 4 days a week and a damn busy person. Now a 15 min walk can see her needing to sleep it off for 2 hours. We a…

Do you have any evidence that these symptoms were caused by long covid and not by something else that changed at roughly the same time, like lockdowns?

Obviously I have none at all, though on online covid support groups you will find people from a range of countries that have (or have not) locked down to varying degrees - so should be pretty obviously not linked. It is so odd that people are so keen to question others long term impacts from a novel disease, when I've not seem the same effort put in to down playing the long term effects of SARs on people.
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