The US excess mortality rate from Covid-19 is substantially worse than Europe’s | Hacker News Reader

The US excess mortality rate from Covid-19 is substantially worse than Europe’s

voxeu.org

32 pointshhs17 comments

A comparison should also be made between obesity rates in Europe vs the US, with the US at a strong disadvantage (because obesity has a strong correlation with higher Covid deaths).

The same thing can be said about diabetes, I suspect the US had a higher percentage of persons affected by diabetes compared to Europe. IMHO diabetes is also a strong differentiator between South America and Africa in terms of deaths, I think that higher diabetes incidence in South America was partly to blame for a higher rate of Covid deaths when comparing it to Africa.

Vietnam has the lowest obesity rate in the world. Guess how well they've managed to avoid major damage from the virus...

Insinuating that there might something like personal responsibility affecting disease outcome is dangerous business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBJpYIfDF3A

Mere mention of a fact like obesity differences in population doesn't imply personal responsibility. US has a market, culture, and educational system that's as much to blame as individual choices.

Aside from even examining any of that - it's clear you have a personal bias that makes you want to impute "the US market, culture, and educational system."

How convenient that a disease comes along that magically confirms all your priors about the wickedness of American institutions and culture!

Must we descend into ad hominem attacks?

Let's call a spade a spade: - market manipulation [0][1] - culture [2] - education [3]

0. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

1. https://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food

2. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-su...

3. https://www.healthyway.com/content/how-did-the-government-ge...

> Mere mention of a fact like obesity differences in population doesn't imply personal responsibility.

If there is no personal responsibility whatsoever in obesity, then this statement is true.

> US has a market, culture, and educational system that's as much to blame as individual choices.

If this statement is true, then there is still some personal responsibility in obesity.

Both statements can not be true at the same time. Also, culture and education doesn't absolve anyone from personal responsibility.

I'm not saying there is no personal responsibility. That's why I wrote "...as much as...".

That said, a case could be made that poorly educated consumers, born to a calorie optimized tribe (say islanders), in a market flooded with industrialized food and deceptive marketing would have little hope of avoiding obesity.

This is the first time when I'm sad that the article was flagged: excess mortality is the best metric we have for comparing countries / timelines. I like to look at https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ sometimes to get an overview instead of just looking at the overly detailed reports that are not suitable for understanding the big picture.

Perhaps a naive question: aren’t all these evaluations based on the idea that reported deaths are accurate, globally? That seems like a pretty big flaw.

Yes, that is the case. Look up the Human Mortality Database and it's documentation if you're truly interested. I would say 200+ years of quite adequate data is available for some countries (perhaps undercounting things like infant mortality). My view is that Napoleon taught us well to register future and former tax payers.

I believe these arguments based on mortality rates will, eventually, be considered "racist". And I say that with some trepidation, the label is easily thrown around today.

It is almost certain that some sub-populations are more sensitive to COVID19. The causes may be genetic, environmental, cultural. Societies taking equal measures and similar socio economic backgrounds could experience vastly different outcomes for no other reason but the natural response of their bodies to the disease.

Take African countries for example, is anyone here seriously considering that Tanzania or Niger had a better response and better health systems dealing with the disease than Belgium?

The issue with Africa is demographics. Most of their high risk population is already dead.

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