> 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).
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).
I should warn you that you might have to scroll a little, lest you find yourself writing a comment in response before you read section 2.
Instead vast swathes of the U.S. and other countries flout even the most basic precautions making it impossible for the rest of us to live normal lives.
The argument that being safe == poor quality of life presents a false dichotomy. The truth is that we can be safe _and_ have the same quality of life. Instead many have chosen the third option: they believe that their "right" to shop at Walmart without an extra piece of clothing is more important than people being able to say goodbye to loved ones; more important than their neighbor's wellbeing; more important than the economy.
I would further argue that not only would quality of life not suffer if everyone took basic precautions, in many ways QoL would be _better_. As the statistics are showing we've seen a massive dropoff in cold/flu related deaths, even with poorly implemented COVID protections. Less auto accidents and less pollution. A rise in work from home. The list goes on.
Contrary to the doom and gloom of this year, COVID was really a chance to build a better world. We might just yet do it in small ways. But much of the potential good is being squandered, as it always is, by selfish, ignorant, hateful people.
Anyone advocating that as the goal for society needs to present a plan that has a high chance of succeeding without an unreasonable burden being placed on society. I think maybe the development and mass-deployment of rapid tests for the virus could achieve that, but ironically we don't see much emphasis on this strategy by lockdown advocates. It's almost as if the opposition to the lockdown is all the proof needed to convince some of its advocates that it's the right strategy.
On a side note, we now we see that the lockdown advocates have simply switched their rationale for the lockdown, from "flatten the curve", to "eliminate the virus from the population", once the curve was flattened. For those who believe society is better off being tightly controlled, with heavy restrictions on individuals to achieve larger goals that benefit the public, the coronavirus is the gift that keeps on giving.
Unfortunately, the politicization has turned this issue into a binary decision with bad outcomes on both ends. I think there is a place for people to engage in a more "normal" life even in the context of the pandemic...but it's hard to define that space in 2020.
Also, in my view, the covidiots aren't the people that wish they could be with their sick or dying relatives/friends. Those are the people that absolutely refuse (as a matter of principle) to do the bare minimum to help contain this...or worse, the people who pack clubs, parties, etc fantasizing that his pandemic doesn't really exist.
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.
It's certainly more than last year, or the year before that, but it's not an outlier for the last two decades.
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-covid
If the data only looks bad when you look at 5 year window, and not 20 year window, that seems like a pretty fragile argument.
If you compare it with 1666, this is paradise.
The twitter thread linked above is from August, so definitely does not account for these rapidly changing numbers.
(Recent data is available all over the place--here's one source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ )
[Edit]
And what is "Age Adjusted + Population Adjusted Deaths"? (Yes, I get "population adjusted".)
[As of 2019, Sweden's population has increased 16% since 2000, 13% in the 0-17 yrs and 35% in 65+ yrs groups. The population of "Foreign Born" is up 97% (!) vs 11% growth in Swedish citizens. In that time, life expectancy has gone from 77.4 to 81.3 for men, 82.0 to 84.7 for women. "Crude death rate" has gone from 10.5 to 8.6 (per 1000). Source: https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje... As a bottom line, I'd suggest Sweden's demographics changes in the last 20 years have been crazy pants.]
These rates change in 2020, but the proportion of the population in these age groups changes, too. So you set a baseline proportion (maybe equal to 2019), compute the per-age-group death rates in 2020, and rescale the total death rate so that the age proportions are the same as the 2019 baseline.
The ultimate goal is to correct for the effects of changing age demographics in computing the death rate. You'd use it if want to look at changes that are corrected for, for example, the population as a whole aging.
Looking at the outliers Norway, Denmark on one side and Peru and Ecuador is so much more interesting: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...
Even at that take a look at the last few columns, more particularly the slope from month to month in the last couple years. Note how from July 2019 through March 2020 the levels were at or below the previous years, however in the last few months the slope accelerates to an increasing upward monthly trend. I would be quite curious to see this chart with August, Sept, and Oct 2020 data included to see if that acceleration continued. Consider this is what Sweden's case count has looked like: https://i.imgur.com/ofUhXvK.png
In essence this chart is really showing only about 4 months of pandemic influence, and at a time when Sweden was doing pretty well. But in those last 4 months there is a clear accelerating trend in relation to the previous years. I won't say this was cherry picked to be misleading, but at the least it is an incomplete representation of what is happening now.
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.
The western world is much more cavalier when it comes to the flu and cold viruses (shopping and coming into work sick, not wearing masks on public transport, etc.)
I think the measures account for the lower flu/pneumonia deaths as a side effect.
COVID-19 is not a type of the flu, in the same way that a human is not a type of bat.
> 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 findings indicate the need for ongoing investigation of the long-term cardiovascular consequences of COVID-19.
Note that this study includes a group of COVID survivors who have recently recovered, and 2 control groups: healthy, age-matched participants, and a group of risk-factor matched control patients. It is published in JAMA Cardiology.
Obviously, this study doesn't say anything about truly long-term consequences of COVID, but that, IMO, is more because we haven't had time to reach "long-term" status yet. I would give it at least another 6 months to a year before making up my mind about the incidence of long-term consequences.
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, particularly if recovering from the disease shortens lifespans for an appreciable number of patients. We'll know when we know.
https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker...
Scroll to “Hospital Admissions by Age Group”
So while some scans etc will have been missed for this age group during lockdown, they would also have suffered losses as a result of an overwhelmed health system.
*given that they contract covid
https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/advance-article/doi/10.1...
"Deaths among adults 65 and older accounted for 80% of excess YLL in April but only 36% of excess YLL in June. Since April, working age adults 20-64 have accounted for 47% of excess YLL, and males 20 to 64 have contributed 34%."
https://healthcostinstitute.org/hcci-research/the-impact-of-...
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.
Calculated total deaths, 2015 (pop. 64.85 million): 595,258.15; 2020 (pop. 67.89 million): 639,048.57.
Difference: 43,790.42. Weekly averages: 11,000 - 12,000.
See Figure 1, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... for a chart of England's excess mortality.
"In week 16 2020, an estimated 22,351 all-cause deaths were registered in England and Wales (source: Office for National Statistics). This is an increase compared to the 18,516 estimated death registrations in week 152020. ... In the devolved administrations,no statistically significant excess all-cause mortality for all ages was observed for Northern Ireland or Wales in week 17. Statistically significant excess all-cause mortality for all ages was observed for Scotland in week 15." (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...)
It looks like the peak occurred in week 17, with 22,351 deaths.
Here are some proper curves where you can see the UK (England) problem: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country
And compare to other countries with a similar failing nursing system, to the ones with a proper one.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
