They keep referencing 5 year average instead of what the maximum deaths were in any of the past 5 years. There were some flu death years that were pretty bad but never got any attention so wonder if that is why they don't mention how it compares to one of the maximums.
The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
91–100 of 114 posts
Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Extripating the virus completely from the population, and keeping it out through total physical isolation of that population from the rest of the world, is a tall task. Note that I wasn't arguing for that. My argument is that a few simple, low impact measures would be enough to drop the effective infectivity of the virus low enough that it would fizzle out. There's reason to believe that a simple combination of lim…
>>Note that I wasn't arguing for that. My argument is that a few simple, low impact measures would be enough to drop the effective infectivity of the virus low enough that it would fizzle out. What's the difference between a virus being extripated from a population, and a virus "fizzling out"? If it's not extripated, then it will immediately start spreading again as soon as those measures are lifted. >>That wouldn't…
> If it's not extripated, then it will immediately start spreading again as soon as those measures are lifted.
The goal is to maintain measures until a vaccine arrives, eliminating the threat for any said country.
> I argued that that would be extremely difficult to pull off and then maintain by physically isolating that country from the rest of the world.
You don't need the country to be isolated from the rest of the world. If the effective reproduction (R) of your country's population is below 1 it won't spread there, even if the rest of the world is letting it run wild and free.
And it's likely we can get R below 1 for any given population with just strict mask usage and curtailing some higher risk social activities. That's my argument. We don't need to do messy lockdowns, ruin our social lives, etc. If everyone just got on board with those simple measures instead of being selfish.
Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#93Key point: > The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 6 November 2020 was 14.3% higher than the five-year average. But it is good to know that the measures to control COVID-19 are also suppressing flu and pneumonia (though not enough to make up for COVID-19 mortality).
I really hope that is "14.3% higher than the 5 year average mortality rate for the first week of November from 2015 - 2019" not "14.3% higher than the 5 year average mortality rate for the entire time period from the start of 2015 to the end of 2019." Because mortality is pretty strongly seasonal.
Edit: "So far this year, up to 6 November, 517,650 people have died from any cause in England and Wales. This is 58,555 more than the five-year average." So the definitely seasonality adjusted excess mortality for the year to date is about 12.7% (or 12.4% possibly, depending on how the leap day was handled).
Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#94They keep referencing 5 year average instead of what the maximum deaths were in any of the past 5 years. There were some flu death years that were pretty bad but never got any attention so wonder if that is why they don't mention how it compares to one of the maximums.
.. or standard deviation, for that matter.
Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Note that I wasn't arguing for that. My argument is that a few simple, low impact measures would be enough to drop the effective infectivity of the virus low enough that it would fizzle out. What's the difference between a virus being extripated from a population, and a virus "fizzling out"? If it's not extripated, then it will immediately start spreading again as soon as those measures are lifted. >>That wouldn't…
> If it's not extripated, then it will immediately start spreading again as soon as those measures are lifted. The goal is to maintain measures until a vaccine arrives, eliminating the threat for any said country. > I argued that that would be extremely difficult to pull off and then maintain by physically isolating that country from the rest of the world. You don't need the country to be isolated from the rest of th…
>>The goal is to maintain measures until a vaccine arrives, eliminating the threat for any said country.
Yes of course, but if the crop of vaccines prove, after more extensive usage, ineffective, or if the virus mutates quickly enough to make the currently developed vaccines ineffective, as many coronaviruses have been known to do, it may lead to indefinite on-off lockdowns.
>You don't need the country to be isolated from the rest of the world. If the effective reproduction (R) of your country's population is below 1 it won't spread there, even if the rest of the world is letting it run wild and free.
That only persists as long as the lockdown measures you mentioned are in place. Yes if you maintain those measures indefinitely, you can keep the virus at bay indefinitely, and that's a different claim than I thought you were initially making.
Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#96The interesting question, to me, is whether we will see a visible spike in all-cause mortality for, let's say, 2020-2025. COVID-19 is particularly hard on the elderly, which is by no means an inevitable fact about epidemics. Every person who dies of this disease would have lived longer, which makes their death a tragedy: but how much longer? Cards on the table: my suspicion is that we won't. I could be wrong, particu…
I suspect we might even see a reduction in all cause mortality: Those who were going to die in 2020-2025 without the virus for health reason, were more likely to die this year because of covid.
Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, they didn't write the standard deviation, so that 14% is kind of useless
Over a stable population of 10s of millions of people, it's unlikely to be notable.
That misses the point. I want to know whether +14% is a 1,3, or 5 sigma event.
For that calculation stddev is in the denominator and whether it's 2%, 4% or 6% makes a huge difference, notable or not.
Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#98what these numbers and the media and your average joe terrified of dying seem to miss is something thats qualitative, not quantitative: quality of life. length of life could be enhanced for many, safe and securely shackled to a bed in a quasi-coma with a feeding tube down your throat. such a person may very well ask to die. it pains me to see ederly and terminally ill people saying goodbye to loved ones on zoom conne…
> what these numbers and the media and your average joe terrified of dying seem to miss is something thats qualitative, not quantitative: quality of life.
What? What led you to come up with that absurd baseless assertion? I see or saw no such thing ever anywhere. Ever.
What I do see is people forced to social distancing and into lockdowns because irresponsible, egocentric, and outright sociopath people have been perpetually and actively contributing for the disease to spread far and wide due to their apalling behavior.
Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over the last two decades, life expectancy has either peaked in the developed world, or has even declined for some demographics. Seems appropriate to me.
Not in Sweden. Life expectancy has gone from 77.4 to 81.3 for men since 2000. It does go up every year except for 2014/2015 (80.4 to 80.3). https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...
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Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
If _everyone_ wore masks and followed very basic guidelines, the virus would be dead in the water and we could go about living mostly normal lives. People could visit their loved ones, say goodbye to the terminally ill, work, have outdoor dining, see drive in movies. Scarce little impact on quality of life. Instead vast swathes of the U.S. and other countries flout even the most basic precautions making it impossible…
> As the statistics are showing we've seen a massive dropoff in cold/flu related deaths Is that not because we’ve stopped recording cold/flu deaths and started labelling them all as corona virus deaths?
No.