Euromomo lets one easily compare the mortality for various European countries: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps . I think this is much easier to grasp than the tables in the linked paper.
The very first graph shows that it's not "just another flu". Abnormally many deaths, even with the strict measures. Mainly for those aged 45 and older (but also not just "old people" dying, lots in the group 45-64).
Further down "Z-scores by country" also shows a pretty normal curve for Norway and Denmark but many excessive deaths for Sweden, meaning the notion of "sweden just reports covid deaths differently" that was common a few months back isn't an explanation.
Not sure what you're trying to show, but your screenshot is of a table showing very high excess mortality in Sweden in April. The Euromomo graphs show very high excess mortality in Sweden in April. I got the impression that you were trying to contradict something, but the data you post agree with the other data, so...?
First of all. There is one (perhaps two) month with excess mortality. "very high excess" is not a term I would use since it would leave almost no room between standard variance in death numbers and "high excess" or "medium excess" or "low excess". I see what mind-set you bring into this though - good, you are part of the group I wanted to reach.
I will post what I just posted below:
"Do you need help interpreting the data and graph given previous conversation? The height of the bars represent the number of deaths over different years and the bars are basically same height. I.e. considering all deaths, covid and actions taken (no lockdown but more distancing), no more than usual have died. Especially considering last year was a bit lower and therefore likely some old people who didnt die last year unfortunately did so this year."
If you only look at one month then yes there is absolutely an increase. If you want to stare blindly at that month then go ahead. Scream if you want to also. But I think some might be interested in hearing that no more than usual have died in Sweden this year. I have seen similar stats for other countries.
> There is one (perhaps two) month with excess mortality. "very high excess" is not a term I would use...
The mortality this April was 13% higher than the next highest value in the table. 29% higher than the next highest April value in the table. If you really have a problem with "very high", we can agree on "high". But we do agree that (a) this is not just an accident but caused by a real-world cause, (b) that real-world cause is Covid-19, and (c) the spike could have been avoided or at least flattened. Yes?
> good, you are part of the group I wanted to reach.
If you really want to reach us, a good way would be to tell us what you really want to tell us. If what you want to tell us is that Sweden did everything right at all times, you'll have to argue a bit more explicitly.
> no more than usual have died in Sweden this year
Yes. Looks like after its disastrous April Sweden managed a good turnaround.
Im not interested in arguing with you. I wanted to show you the data so you have a chance to make up you own mind. My definition of "really reach us"(you) is that you have some more facts in this crazy world of lies, hysteria and ruined lives+businesses. If you then draw some other conclusion than I do, thats ok.
I am trying to help you understand the actual death numbers that you were talking about in the thread I commented on (Sweden). Im not sure how data is reported to Euromomo, but sometimes its better to look at data with as few middlemen as possible.
Total (and monthly) deaths per 100k inhabitants, per Jan-Sep period each year. The bar-chart shows the "Total" row from the Excel. Both illustrations have descriptions in English
Not sure what you are on about. It is an explanation of what he is looking at.
Do you need help interpreting the data and graph given previous conversation?
The height of the bars represent the number of deaths over different years and the bars are basically same height. I.e. considering all deaths, covid and actions taken (no lockdown but more distancing), no more than usual have died. Especially considering last year was a bit lower and therefore likely some old people who didnt die last year unfortunately did so this year.
They mention it, but a big factor driving this is almost certainly obesity. I'd really like to see this done with proper controls for obesity, age demographics, smoking, etc. I think there'd be interesting stuff to learn from that. It's shocking how difficult it is to do these studies correctly. E.g.
Similar obesity rates, similar AS obese people though?
E.g if obesity is > 30 BMI, Australia might have similar percentage to the US, but US might still have much mor people > 35 BMI than Australia which could have mostly 30-35 BMI people.
Australia counts 0.1% of the population as infected while the US counts 2.4% of the population as infected. Where in the study did they control for that when looking at the mortality (which is counted per population and not per infected)?
EDIT: My point is that the epidemic is not over yet and countries with a low immunity could be hit harder later on. It's just too early to compare mortality numbers.
Why would you want to do that? At the end of the day, successful pandemic response is a question of how well you prevent deaths overall, not how likely infected people are to die.
Yes. Once the epidemic is over. It's not over yet.
Having low numbers now could mean that the following outbreaks are more severe. Having lockdowns now could mean that there is no more money for a second, third or fourth lockdown to keep the following outbreaks under control. It could be but it does not have to be. We have to wait until the pandemic is finally under control to really count numbers.
Well, if you believe that government interventions are useless in influencing infection rates, then it would make sense to compare case fatality rates instead of total excess mortality.
Well, it replaces one set of variables (those influencing infection rates) with another set of variables (those influencing percentage of infections detected as cases). If you believe that policy has no effect on infection rates, and you believe you can better control for the latter set of variables, then CFRs make a better metric for judging policy effectiveness.
I should point out this is all predicated on a statement I believe to be false. (I suspect policy does meaningfully affect infection rates.)
There was a paper (which I of course can't find now) that claimed that you also needed to control for the extent to which obese people were given worse treatment or de-prioritised by medical professionals. It's not a blindable variable.
This study only looks at all-cause mortality - which is reasonable once the epidemic is over.
Is it over? I don't think so. Cases are rising quickly in Europe now that winter is coming. We should refrain from issuing judgement on the matter and comparing strategies of different countries until at least next spring when cases go down again in all countries. There may be some surprises coming in winter.
I guess reopening the whole EU over summer to save what was left of the tourism industry didn't necessarily help. Not saying that I am against having loosened restrictions, but maybe we loosened things a tad too much.
Because after the summer vacations were over, everyone went back to normal. People returned to offices, children to school. At schools, measures were in place for the first two weeks. Since then, business as usual to a large extent. I have the impression that we got complacent, this thing isn't over yet unfortunately.
They served that purpose very well, if you ask me. The goal now would be to minimize the impact on the economy as much as possible while minimizing the impact on people's everyday lives.
I am afraid that we traded our summer vacation against new lockdowns, so. Schools where I live already switch certain events to virtual, most likely cancel certain classes. And they are approaching the point where they are forced to close again. And we are only a couple of months into the new school year. Doesn't bode well.
>While the US had a lower COVID-19 mortality rate than high-mortality countries during the early spring, after May 10, all 6 high-mortality countries had fewer deaths per 100 000 than the US.
I'm not sure why the factor this in at all. Why not compare each country to its OWN baseline mortality -- as opposed to confusingly compare between high and low mortality countries?
It's dumb to do this analysis now, when we're in the _middle_ of the epidemic. According to most experts, we're looking at the end of 2021 for the whole thing to play itself out. Take a look at the steep incline the curves have taken on in the countries which previously were "better" than the US and Sweden. In the US deaths are declining (in spite of slight rise in cases), in Sweden hardly anyone is dying at all. Take a look at countries that were "worse" too - Italy for example. Exponential growth in cases. Deaths will lag, as they usually do.
My prediction is that unless a miracle happens and an amazing vaccine (or a therapeutic) is developed, Swedish strategy will "win" this one. The curves aren't looking good at all for other European countries heading into winter, and their economies are decimated, so they can't tolerate full shutdown anymore.
It's a virus. It's endemic. _Everyone_ will get it eventually, if not now, then a month or two from now. There's really no way around this simple fact.
Treatments are already much better than they were in the early phase of the pandemic, and they are unlikely to get worse over time. Also mortality is likely to rise with hospital load.
So it follows that stretching your infections over a longer time is beneficial.
> It's dumb to do this analysis now, when we're in the _middle_ of the epidemic.
Correct. Mortality doesn't say very much now. The true IFR would be a better indicator but since testing availability is very inconsistent it is hard to compare the number of infected across countries or time. The mortality numbers are also inconsistent in many places (which is why we looked at all-cause mortality in the first place).
> It's a virus. It's endemic. _Everyone_ will get it eventually, if not now, then a month or two from now. There's really no way around this simple fact.
This is plainly wrong. Vaccines have decreased the severity of many viral diseases and in some cases even eradicated the virus completely. Even without a vaccine, some countries have driven down the infection numbers almost to zero. Even the countries that could not eradicate it will only see 10-80% of the population infected in the long run.
> Swedish strategy will "win" this one.
For one, it is too early to declare a winner. We have to wait.
The Swedish strategy may work very well in Sweden. But that doesn't mean that it would have worked in countries with a different social structure, population density or climate.
At a minimum, this is not "plainly" wrong: there's no vaccine against any other coronavirus, and vaccine against the flu (next most fatal thing on the table) is not great.
Also, a vaccine does not prevent _infection_. It merely gives your body antibodies to deal with it when you get it. Sometimes those antibodies work, sometimes they do not. The initial estimates for C19 vaccines seem to put it at 50% effectiveness. People seem to be expecting a silver bullet. It's not going to happen, especially not this quickly. But irrespective of whether we have a vaccine, yes, everyone will get it eventually.
> For one, it is too early to declare a winner. We have to wait.
My point exactly. That's why I'm not declaring them the winner. They are experiencing an uptick in cases, too, though nowhere near as dramatic as e.g. France, Spain, Italy or the UK.
What really interests me is that, looking at an all-cause mortality graph [0] the coronavirus is clearly detectable but ultimately the numbers are pretty much business as usual. Although there are more deaths than is routine, going purely by deaths the situation is mostly normal.
It'll be fun when the dust settles to going back to look at alternative approaches to estimate how effective the lockdowns were.
> the numbers are pretty much business as usual . . . going purely by deaths the situation is mostly normal
The article notes that, through July 25, there were 235,610 excess U.S. deaths. The link you gave shows that excess deaths started March 28th, for a period of ~119 days.
Wikipedia says that the U.S. had 291,557 combat deaths during WWII, which was over a ~1366 day period of U.S. combat involvement if we count the period from Pearl Harbor until the end of the war. The U.S. is about 2.46 more populous now, so adjusting for that, the ratio of the rate of excess death over the period studied vs. U.S. combat deaths in WWII is (235610 / (119 * 2.46)) / (291557 / 1366) = 3.77.
Since you're calling 3.77x the population-adjusted rate of WWII combat deaths "mostly normal", I would be curious to know what rate of death you would consider abnormal.
On a non-population-adjusted basis, which is arguably the correct measure if we want to think about waging a war that's the equivalent of WWII, the death rate over the period studied would've been equivalent to the U.S. combat deaths from waging 9.28 simultaneous WWIIs. Personally, I wouldn't consider simultaneously engaging in nine wars the size of WWII to be business as usual.
Is WW2 generally perceived in america as having caused many deaths among american military aged males? I'm sure we can point to D-day and other punctual events as being outstandingly bloody but does this extend to the whole conflict?
I'd be particularily interested in comparing the above ratio for Vietnam, or to German or Russian (combat & non-) WW2 deaths.
Having grown up in the US in the 1980s and 1990s, the American Revolution and WWII both loom large in the mythology of American exceptionalism, so I think the sacrifices of the soldiers weigh psychologically disproportionately.
I think most college-educated Americans are aware that the Soviets lost nearly endless waves of soldiers against the Nazis. I also think most Americans are largely indifferent to the numbers of German rank-and-file soldiers killed, as if sympathy for the enemy dead would somehow diminish admiration for the heroes who defeated the Nazis.
On a side note, I have a Scottish friend who still swears up and down that Americans weren't involved in D-Day. I tried pointing him at Wikipedia entries for Utah and Omaha beaches, but I get the impression he believes it's just American propaganda that the US had much involvement in WWII before the Nazis were on the retreat.
> I would be curious to know what rate of death you would consider abnormal.
Well, clearly this is an abnormal number of deaths. Pretty much every week is statistically Very Unlikely.
But it is 20% higher than the background rate. Quitting a job as a day labourer and going into roofing is something like a 400% death rate. People voluntarily subject themselves to some pretty outsized risks.
> Wikipedia says that the U.S. had 291,557 combat deaths during WWII...
That is about a decade worth of car accidents. So on the one hand, horrific. On other other hand, the raw number of deaths is not the biggest issue at play. It didn't stop Americans marching over to the other side of the world to fight people.
> Since you're calling 3.77x the population-adjusted rate of WWII combat deaths "mostly normal"
This is an example of how statistics can mislead. Why not select the worst 119 days of ww2 and compare it to 119 days of covid? After all, most of 1366 days of ww2 didn't involve actual fighting. Also, are we including definitive covid deaths or "covid related deaths". Because if we included "ww2 related deaths and not just combat deaths", then I suspect that ratio would plummet towards 0.
> I would be curious to know what rate of death you would consider abnormal.
I guess it depends, but spike in deaths every now and then is normal even if it looks abnormal. It may sound counterintuitive but that's just life.
Your statistical analysis is intentionally dishonest. You cherrypicked the time frame and example to fit your agenda. How about try another set of data - the US combat deaths on D-Day ( 2500 deaths ) and extrapolate that to 119 days and population adjust and enjoy. Funny how that makes covid look like a walk in the park huh? But if I did that, it would be just as intellectually dishonest as your example.
Also, almost all of the combat deaths in ww2 was young healthy men whereas covid seems to afflict predominantly older people - almost all of them 45 and over. So not quite apples to apples right?
And what happens if you repeat these calculations over different period?
There is a "harvesting" theory which claims that COVID causes some deaths to happen sooner. So it is a possiblity that there were many more deaths in April 2020, compared to Aprild 2019, but there will be way fewer in April 2021.
Somewhat similar "dry tinder" theory is sometime applied to Sweden: they had fewer excess deaths during the flu season for a last couple of years and got hit hard by COVID claiming lives spared by the flu.
Well Covid-19 causes all deaths happen sooner than they would without it, the important question is how much sooner, and early research shows its much sooner (like 10 years too early in the median case, which would mean the harvesting theory is wrong).
Aren’t the numbers “business as usual” because of the actions governments took worldwide? I’m not sure about others, but Italy peaked to extreme when there were not enough beds and ventilators in some places, which is what every country is trying to avoid.
> Without such measures, deaths would have been 10-20 times higher.
Is that based on anything? I’m skeptical - many places that took more severe measures did worse than places that took less severe measures (both within the US and internationally), and nowhere ended up with death rates per capita an order of magnitude larger than what we’re seeing in the US.
I have a hunch (based on family and friends in the US) that the US is the only country that the population did its best to not take the measures seriously. Here in the Netherlands masks aren’t required in stores, but people still wear them anyway. Same with Sweden and France when I visited there over the summer. (Though France does require it in stores IIRC).
>Here in the Netherlands masks aren’t required in stores, but people still wear them anyway.
I really disagree with your observations based on living in NL and visiting Sweden several times over the last few months. These are two very poor examples of countries where mask-wearing is prioritized and accepted.
The Dutch government only a week or two ago "urgently advised" wearing masks indoors, and even with that advice in my own experience a majority of people are not wearing one. Before that, hardly anyone wore a mask indoors. I've traveled to Antwerp a few times for work in the past few months, and the prevalence of masks there compared to NL is striking.
And Sweden generally has been quite averse to wearing masks in public...it's not ever been mandated anywhere, not even on transit like in NL.
I think it depends on where you go. At AH in our neighborhood, over 50% of people have a mask on. I went to Jumbo in another neighborhood today and no one had a mask on.
I'm not sure that's true. Mortality is very high in the elderly, so if it went tearing through the rest of the population, you'd expect more deaths, but nowhere close to what you see in the 60+ old age group.
The Brazilian city of Manaus is an example of where restrictions were ignored by ~50% of the population (based on mobile phone data), resulting in approximately 66% of people becoming infected before herd immunity started to have an impact [0]. With an estimated infection:fatality rate for the US at ~0.5% (all ages) this would mean nearly 1.2 million deaths in the US.
The peak period of 35.6 - 40.4 percent excess is not "business as usual". Even the September 19 period which looks relatively low shows a 4.2 to 8 percent excess.
> The US has experienced more deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than any other country and has one of the highest cumulative per capita death rates.
Why would you start both the article and the abstract by saying that the US has experienced more death than any other country when the US also has (by far) the largest population of all countries surveyed?
Reporting the per capita figure would be enough to make the point that the US did not handle the pandemic well. This way it just sounds like unwarranted self-flagellation.
> It's worth mentioning both. The United States is, after all, not the most populous country in the world.
The GP was arguing that per-capita deaths should replace total deaths. In context, your argument is "Total deaths are a useful metric and should be included, because the US is not the most populous country." Maybe it's true, but the argument is non-sequitur. As we all know, the real reason total deaths is a useful metric is that pancakes are delicious.
Also, the GP was explicitly arguing that the US is the largest of the 18 surveyed countries, which gives an implicit nod to the US not being the largest country in the world.
yes but it's not like they surveyed every country in the world though. I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available. It just does not seem like a meaningful statistic given the sample they are studying.
> I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available.
You would be incorrect. Perhaps the reason this death rate was mentioned is because the US is an outlier in both absolute numbers as well as per capita deaths.
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but anyways:
Maybe I should have added reliable to data.
I'm highly skeptical of the ~4000 deaths figure reported as the death count for China and I have the sense that the authors of the study were too or they would have included it in their study.
As for India, when you factor in rural areas, I don't think the reporting and data would be as reliable as for the US. [1]
To go back to my original point, I'm not arguing that the US successfully handled COVID. Nor am I trying to demonize China or India. I'm just saying that the author's decision of foregrounding absolute death toll over per capita is poor and misleading given the sample they used. It could be seen as bad faith on the part of the authors when the per capita number can support their argument just as well.
While I share the skepticism in the numbers from China and India, I believe that if they were anywhere near a similar per capita rate as the US there would be visible evidence. China attacked the problem hard and by all accounts seems to have succeeded. For the most part India seems to have just gotten lucky; maybe India's numbers will be adjusted over time to reveal some rural devastation, but I will want to wait for some real evidence before I group them with the cluster of fuck-up states like the US, Brazil, and UK.
China was trucking in loads of urns every day that were more than ten times larger then their reported death rates; doesn't that count as visible evidence?
Citation needed. This is the first I have heard of this and given how desperately the current administration wants to pin anything COVID-related on to China I think that this would have been widely publicized if it were actually true.
China did originate the virus as far as anyone can tell, they were not forthright with evidence, didn’t shut down travel globally and they seemed to push malign influence through the WHO.
It’s not hard to see they have lots of blame and that has nothing to do with the US administration.
The virus originated in China, but China did not 'originate the virus.' Please do not make unfounded speculation regarding the causality in this event.
China has not been completely forthright about the early stages of the covid's spread and they engaged in tactics similar to, but not quite as bad, as what the current US administration and some states have done to try to hide the scope of the disease within their jurisdiction. It seems like a lot of countries have done poorly at communicating with their citizens and with each other regarding covid.
China didn't shut down travel fast enough, but by the time things has started to appear and become concerning covid had already left China and was en route to Italy and the west coast of the US. Once the nature of the disease and particularly the asymptomatic transmission stage became clear everyone needed to adjust. To claim this is some fault of the Chinese government is pure BS.
As for pushing 'malign' interest, you are entitled to your own opinions but that seems to be another unfounded value judgement that is just as easily dismissed as right-wing propaganda.
Insofar as other countries are blamed for failing to “contain” the virus, yes, China did originate it. They had knowledge of it being airborne, etc. and there’s ample evidence that information was scrubbed and suppressed as it typically happens in authoritarian regimes where disasters undermine the charade of omnipotence and excellence.
I did follow the link, and so far there seems to be a small cluster of stories all reprinting each other and the exact same pictures with reference to a single shipment to a single crematorium in late March.
One. Single. Event.
Where are the other shipments in to other cities? Where is the supply chain evidence that this was an across-the-board jump in urn orders and not a single entrepreneur aiming to pre-order big and then have inventory he could resell at a markup if things went bad? Where is the rest of the evidence?
You wanted a citation, I gave it to you, and now you’re shifting the goalposts. If you want more extensive evidence, I would invite you to investigate, and post your findings here.
Lazy rhetoric is ruining HN, and your posts here are part of the problem.
You provided one very weak piece of supporting evidence and expect us to consider that a validation of your otherwise completely unfounded claim regarding China having a high death rate and hiding it? You are projecting when it comes to claims of shifting goalposts and lazy rhetoric.
Let's go back to your original claim, shall we? "China was trucking in loads of urns every day that were more than ten times larger then their reported death rates; doesn't that count as visible evidence?" No, China was not trucking in loads of urns every day. There was one _single_ report of a large shipment and from the picture provided it would have trouble filling a single truck, certainly not 'loads.' Then there is that 'every day' lie. It was one single day. So yes, for a single day in March it was 'every day' and then for each day thereafter it was not. The number of urns delivered was double the reported death rate and not ten times. It would appear that every single clause of your short claim was wrong. I have a hard time seeing how that counts as supporting evidence.
I'm not sure what you're asking here, both are mentioned in the very first sentence -
> The US has experienced more deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than any other country and has one of the highest cumulative per capita death rates.
It seems likely India has the most total cases already. But India has a much younger population so I don't know if that really translates to twice the deaths that they report.
The US is not an outlier in per capita deaths. It is at the higher end of the range, especially among developed countries, though many countries have similar rates (such as most of Latin America).
And this statement captures all the info one needs, in my opinion. But abstracts are partly about selling the importance of the paper, so there's some leeway in how facts are presented.
China is not reporting accurate data, so I have no idea how you could possibly say definitively that China's numbers were less than the US on any basis. [1]
We are saying that China's numbers are less than the US because if they were fucking up at a level even close to what the US is going through the evidence would be clearly visible. You cannot hide millions of dead. You can hide the bodies, but not the holes in the population and social structure that comes from losing this many people. So far your only evidence is a report that their case numbers were higher than reported from six months ago. Have anything more recent?
There's evidence that deliveries of urns to cemeteries was substantially higher than reported death counts [1], as well as gigantic drops in active subscriber counts in China's telecom providers [2].
I also vehemently disagree "the evidence would be clearly visible". History is littered with genocides on a massive scale that were successfully covered up. We still don't know exactly how many people died in the Holocaust or Holodomor, for example (estimates vary by millions). So this claim that you cannot cover up deaths is clearly false.
It's also very likely the US is over-reporting numbers.
For example, studies have shown US death certificates have "major errors" the majority of the time [3], and several US states have counted unrelated deaths as "COVID" deaths, including Washington State (later partially corrected) [4].
I also disagree with your claim that evidence of China's data manipulation does not count because it's 'six months old', you can't wave away evidence like that.
A single claim about a delivery of urns but nothing reported after about those urns being used. They could easily have been ordered in anticipation of things going pear-shaped and then re-sold when the death rate remained stable. As for the telcom subscriber number, the very article itself posits a more rational expanation -- migrants who would normally have a second cell plan for their current work city not getting these during the economic downturn.
It looks like you are still grasping at straws and lacking evidence for the claims being made.
Actually, I provided multiple sources and you provided no counter sources beyond conjecture (like your claim that news articles become false after 6 months). You still haven't addressed the evidence backed by US intelligence, unless you're calling them into question.
You provided two small pieces of data that are each not even strong indicators of your claim let alone conclusive evidence and expect us to pat you on the head and pretend that you delivered some sort of courtroom fait accompli? I guess people are right, the standards here have dropped significantly over the past few years.
The evidence 'backed by US intelligence'? WTF are you talking about? Did you not even read the articles you provided as your 'evidence'? None of them reference US intelligence sources. One is a trade rag describing a single data point without context and the other is a mid-level conservative paper that used random twitter pull quotes to tart up a minor story being passed around the wire services.
India and China both have fewer deaths. The US is also a large and sparsely populated country. Best to suck it up and admit that the US has failed in every aspect and measure to respond to this pandemic.
OP did literally say that they didn't handle the pandemic well. I don't think they're trying to avoid that. If anything, per capita figures would make this even more clear when comparing with the current situation in India and China.
The very first graph shows that it's not "just another flu". Abnormally many deaths, even with the strict measures. Mainly for those aged 45 and older (but also not just "old people" dying, lots in the group 45-64).
Further down "Z-scores by country" also shows a pretty normal curve for Norway and Denmark but many excessive deaths for Sweden, meaning the notion of "sweden just reports covid deaths differently" that was common a few months back isn't an explanation.