Source
ArepaConMateLiberalism with Uruzuelan Characteristics•

I like using excess deaths, even if it's not a perfect measure (for starters, you'd want more detailed demographic data than what FT got). If one gets a heart attack but can't get it dealt with because the hospitals are swamped with the Rona, that would be counted as a death from the virus.

14
Rameaus_Uncle•

I disagree with you.

I do not think deaths from COVID-19 should be conflated with deaths which may be better associated with other causes. Lumping them together screws with the data.

3
RUSSELL_SHERMAN:bernanke: Ben Bernanke•

The best way is to measure deaths from COVID-19 itself and deaths due to the pandemic in general separately. They are useful statistics for different things. For example, the latter won't be very useful from an epidemiology standpoint, but it will shed light on overall public health policy.

4
euro_norm•

Lumping them together screws with the data.

Its how influenza deaths are calculated. Have the deceased been diagnosed with influenza 30 days before death, it is counted as an influenza death.

2
MessageToObserverOP•

Unfortunately the lack of COVID19 testing on both the living and the dead badly skews the data the other way.

Excess deaths are the best way to look at the impact of coronavirus. New Yorkers previously died at home at a rate of 20-30 a day. We did not all get together in a meeting and decide to start dying at 200 a day just because.

Some articles:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-homes-insigh/uncounted-among-coronavirus-victims-deaths-sweep-through-italys-nursing-homes-idUSKBN2152V0

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-deaths-insig/death-at-home-the-unseen-toll-of-italys-coronavirus-crisis-idUSKBN21N08X

https://gothamist.com/news/surge-number-new-yorkers-dying-home-officials-suspect-undercount-covid-19-related-deaths

https://gothamist.com/news/map-home-deaths-shows-dramatic-variation-between-zip-codes-during-pandemic

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52196815

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/world/americas/ecuador-deaths-coronavirus.html

1
Rameaus_Uncle•

The question is, how many of those are the result COVID itself, and how many of those are due to the social distancing measures?

If we conflate deaths from COVID with deaths from government policy, then many preventable deaths might be listed as being unpreventable.

1
MessageToObserverOP•

Massive numbers of people do not start dying in nursing homes or at home because of social distancing.

Sweden, which is famously doing much less social distancing than most has seen a much larger spike in excess deaths than Denmark, which started social distancing much earlier and much more aggressively.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/coronavirus-deaths-sweden-denmark

BuzzFeed News has analysed data published by the official Swedish statistics office and other available figures in an attempt to answer that question. The answer is not encouraging: We found that the country recorded a record number of excess deaths in the first three weeks of April.

In the 21 days before April 19, 7,169 people died — 1,843 more people compared to the average number of deaths during the same weeks between 2015 and 2019. That’s the equivalent of a 34.5% increase.

And on Monday, the Swedish statistics office said the number of deaths recorded in the week ending April 12 was the highest this century, surpassing a milestone set in the first week of 2000 when 2,364 people died. Three of the four weeks with the highest death tolls in the past two decades have occurred this month.

A bridge away in Denmark, the numbers tell a very different story. Statistics Denmark recorded 201 extra deaths over the same three weeks compared to a five-year average, an uptick of 6.5%. The contrast with the recent past is minimal. Even taking into account population size — Sweden is home to 10.3 million people, Denmark to 5.8 million — the gulf between the two countries appears stark.

1
FreshEconomist:bernanke: Ben Bernanke•

I was just calming my anxiety.

2