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Comment by easytiger | Hacker News Reader

> Or did people just die at home afraid to go to the hospital?

Probably yes. In the UK there is a significant surge in non covid related deaths above historical stats. Bear in mind also the definition of a covid 19 related death is, err, generous in the first place

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/non-covid-deaths-are-als...

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Not saying you’re wrong, I do think there would be some of that but I am looking at a way to quantify it, especially since my friend is convinced that the lockdown is worse than the virus.

Here is something I found interesting:

Spain has a “hard lockdown” too. Their excess mortality has returned to a normal level according to momo: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Now I realise that some people that would normally die are not (car accidents etc), but at the same time if the lockdown itself was causing significant mortality you wouldn’t expect the excess mortality to drop to normal levels, would you? You would expect a small offset from 0 unless the savings from car crashes are exactly the same compared to “lockdown deaths” - and if they are, and the lockdown is saving “extra” lives then is it not still worth it?

We have to wait and see for England to see if it falls back to normal or below normal levels.

> Spain has a “hard lockdown” too. Their excess mortality has returned to a normal level according to momo

That's probably inaccurate. I've been following MOMO's graphs, and the yellow-band portions (most recent weeks) grossly underreport and are subject to upward correction. Data points get larger and larger as they age. For example, "Spain Week 11" was pretty small when first reported (in week 12?), was larger the next week, and larger still a week later.

The article says:

“Imperial College London’s Neil Ferguson has said, as many of two-thirds of 'Covid deaths' would have happened anyway”

Would these deaths have happened in a massive spike? If not, then it isn’t anything like the same and if so, why?

Presumably he means they would've happened in the same time period otherwise it's a meaningless statement. On a long enough timescale everyone who died of Covid would've died anyway.

Whether it's meaningless depends on the timescale. For zero months its very meaningful while for infinity months it's completely meaningless. And in-between it's meaningful, e.g. they would have died in the next 12 months.

The implication is they would have died soon, like in the next 6 months.

About half of Covid deaths are in nursing homes. The median lifespan after entering a nursing home is 5 months, and the mean is 13 months.

Coronavirus is very infectious, so if it enters a nursing home, it could easily spread and wipe out everyone who was on the brink of dearth, or on a fragile state.

According to The Economist, the average lifetime lost per covid death is over 10 years.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-mo...

Well, it's worth keeping in mind that the risk of death from a coronavirus infection is comparable to the annual risk of death from all causes. Coronavirus infection though is a once per lifetime risk, whereas all-cause mortality occurs every year.

Just as a random comparable, the annual risk of getting cancer if you're 35 years old is around 0.1%, and the annual risk of having a heart attack is around 0.5% (higher for men, lower for women). All of those diseases would have similar average lifetime lost as covid, but the risk is continuous, not a once per lifetime occurance.

Sounds like they took the life expectancy of certain age groups without taking into account individual preexisting conditions whatsoever.

Not according to the article: "Then the authors accounted for other illnesses the victims had, in case they were unusually frail for their age."

The CDC says we’re slightly under expected deaths in the US, including COVID cases.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

This isn't true, deaths reported lag, so the numbers continue to go up after the week is over.

I read that data as showing that the USA has had a sharp excess death event for each of the last four weeks reported. I'm seeing a much greater excess death rate than the official Covid19 reports.

Looks at the data by state or city. VA shows a huge spike over normal in early April. NY and NYC show even bigger spikes.

And the data is only through April 1. I suspect the excess death rates will be higher nationwide from April 1-May 1.

Where are you seeing "only through April 1" ?

The tables say 2/1/2020 to 5/2/2020 and shows 5 weeks of data for April thru May (the page is updated as-of today, 5/8/2020).

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