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Comment by Fjolsvith | Hacker News Reader

> The more interesting question is: Will we come ahead in lives saved without the covid measurements.

I'm still waiting to see what has happened to the number of deaths caused by heart attack, stroke, etc. that aren't COVID related. I'm betting those causes of death have dropped by about the same amount of COVID deaths.

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I saw an article that they are up a lot. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/13/deaths-f...

A theory in that article is that it's likely to due to undiagnosed CORVID deaths from effects it can have on the entire respiratory system.

At least in some European countries where COVID cases has submerged the healthcare system, it is a very bad time to have a stroke or a car accident since the ER rooms are full and a lot of hospital resources are diverted to fight the pandemic. So it increases the mortality of these other situations.

I’m not sure that’s true https://youtu.be/sN6Trgzf9kY

Not sure how this is a contradiction to what the previous poster said. There is a huge variation across Europe and across regions of each country. There are regions where the medical system is completely overloaded. Northern Italy, central Spain and France. It plays a huge role, what phase of the pandemic a country is in. The peak of hospital load is clearly yet to come in the UK. Also, as the vlogger says, people are coming less to the hospitals with non-covid diseases, partially because the local docters are loaded.

In the UK people are delaying seeking medical help for things like stroke or heart attack. At the moment we think these deaths are going to increase.

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