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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

There's a second order death toll too, because resources that would otherwise be available are being used to treat the pandemic.

That means many things that might not be lethal if treated quickly and with the best care, for example injuries from a car accident or a heart attack, are now entering a stressed health care system and likely have worse expected outcomes.

Then, all the folks who would normally be secondary concerns and receiving preventative care are now most likely not receiving that care. It's less likely that these develop into death, but could easily turn into serious health complications.

It's important to remember that it's not just covid-19 we're dealing with. It's covid-19 plus all the stuff we'd normally be taking care of. We'll be unwinding this ball of yarn for a long time after addressing the virus itself.

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Very true. There's a second order reduction in deaths, too. The huge reduction in vehicle traffic leads to far fewer car accidents [0]. The temporary closure of polluting industries improves air quality. Working out the overall impact of this thing will be quite a challenge indeed.

[0] A pretty extreme example is here in Vietnam where I'm "sheltering in place" -- normally an average of two people a day die in traffic accidents in Saigon alone. Traffic has been reduced so much (although there isn't a strict lockdown) that it's apparently down to one person in two weeks. Meanwhile, Covid-19 hasn't directly killed anyone in the whole country (according to official figures).

This will obviously be studied for years but I imagine plotting taking "total deaths in region X for time period Y - total deaths in region X given comparable previous time period Y" will give a pretty good estimate of the complete effect of Covid. It won't be able to pinpoint individual cases but it seems like a very simple and unbiased way of getting the complete delta in deaths due to Covid.

I mentioned this in another thread but check out http://euromomo.eu/ - all-cause mortality vs. baseline for every European country, overall and by age group, going back a decade. There's a time lag because of reporting delay so it will be a few weeks before the current situation in Italy/Spain is well reflected there.

It does only have country-level data, so some amount of excess mortality in one sub-country region (e.g. Lombardy) can get diluted by the rest of the country, although Lombardy is 1/6 of the population of Italy so significant excess should show up.

It's interesting how even the delay adjusted z-score in countries doesn't work very well. Compare the graph of Netherlands to the graph that RIVM presented to the government yesterday (page 6):

https://www.tweedekamer.nl/downloads/document?id=fb38642a-88...

I don’t have any hard data, but LA mayor Garcetti mentioned in one of his briefings this week that while the total number of accidents has gone down, the number of ‘severe’ accidents has increased, due to speeding, ignoring traffic signals/stop signa, and a general increase in pedestrian/bicycle traffic

> The temporary closure of polluting industries improves air quality

That is not true and it doesn't reduce anything

It's not a few days that change things

Besides, in Lombardy the real pollution problem is due the lack of strong winds and the actual low precipitations

The lack of strong wind and low precipitation (and the surrounding mountains and ocean) cause air pollution to persist for longer, but the air pollution still has to come from somewhere.

The problem with the lack of winds is that the pollution precipitate on the ground and ends up polluting groundwaters

Rain can sometimes dilute them and winds disperse them

Another problem with the perception of reduced pollution is that people think that cars running are the major source of air pollution, while home warming is, so the reduction is also due to the warm season coming.

Cars running major effect is picking up fine dust with their tyres and disperse them into the air

Which increases air pollution but also makes it less persistent

When on the ground it becomes more dangerous in the long term

However, the distancing measures are also having unanticipated positive effects: traffic and workplace accidents are way down, and reports from Japan indicate that incidence of regular (non-COVID) flu are far below usual levels.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-sees-silver-lining-to-cor...

I think there is also a downside to this: suicide rates due to isolation. I’ve got no data, it’s just a hunch.

Depends, in countries like Italy most people seem to isolate with extended families so suicide rates might go down.

But yes there will be a big negative effect due to the lockdown I’m guessing psych majors have their thesis material for the next 5 years easy.

Sort of. Lots of things that normally kill healthy people have dropped to less than 5% of their previous numbers * car accidents * random street assaults * skiing accidents * stupid shit young people do when they’re roaming around bored

Not all, but the higher the infection, the more the crackdown on quarantine.

Of highest concern are things like childhood asthma, baby accidents (swallowing batteries, etc). Stuff that would need immediate attention in the ER, but might get brushed aside a little too long with serious consequences.

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