The Economist tracks excess deaths | Hacker News Reader

The Economist tracks excess deaths

economist.com

163 pointsZigurd275 comments

One interesting contributor to excess deaths is a spike in deaths attributed to Alzheimer's and other dementias - there were about 42,000 more of these deaths in the U.S. in 2020 than would be expected from the previous five-year average [1,2]. These deaths are primarily attributed to the negative effects of lockdowns on dementia patients - loss of access to family and caregivers as well as social isolation generally have a substantially more negative impact on this subset of individuals than on the general population.

Using a total 2020 U.S. excess death count of ~415,000 [3], this means that just above one in ten excess deaths can be attributed to the negative effects of lockdown rather than to COVID itself. On the other hand, the alternative would likely have been letting COVID ravage senior care facilities, which could have been much worse.

[1] https://www.aarp.org/health/brain-health/info-2021/alzheimer...

[2] https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-fig...

[3] https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101386118

What's interesting about this is that it doesn't look like it accounts for the expected reduction in deaths due to lockdown -- a lot of people die in car accidents every year, and at least early on in the pandemic, miles traveled was reduced by nearly 90%, and car accidents went way down, and even further down when you consider it was impossible to drive home drunk from a bar.

Which means the excess deaths would be even higher than shown here, at least early on.

EDIT: Looks like I am wrong. Below someone links to a report showing that traffic fatalities actually went up because the people still on the road were more risky. I was basing my statement on estimates made in early 2020.

I'm sure there were more overdoses and suicides due to the lockdowns too.

And there were indeed more of both:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/11/17/overdo...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-11/teen-suic...

There were more overdoses, but fewer suicides. Your second link references teen suicide attempts, which are neither representative of the overall suicidal demographic nor reflect actual suicide rates.

Suicide rates are tricky since mental health can have long lasting issues and the societal changes from lockdown will have even longer term effects. How do you attribute a suicide 2 years from now to depression that started during COVID? It’s going to be interesting seeing how the psychology field approaches this.

This is indeed an open question, and it's one we're going to need to address over the expected lifetimes of every single person who's living through COVID. We'll also need to address it for COVID "long-haulers," given that individuals with severely diminished qualities of life are a high-risk suicide group.

While that's true, a solid chunk (1/3) of suicides are based on pretty short cycles. That's why preventing a suicide is so valuable - 1/3 people you prevent are no more likely to attempt suicide again than a random person on the street. And that's without any psychological intervention. With therapy, that number gets even higher.

Not in New Zealand - our suicide rate went down.

https://coronialservices.justice.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Chie...

You’re getting downvoted because you appear to be guessing, even though you’re right…suicides and overdoses did indeed go up.

As I cited elsewhere in the thread: suicides went down in 2020, not up[1].

Drug overdose deaths are indeed up[2]. But they're an order of magnitude below COVID deaths, even before adjusting for undercounting.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf

[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...

I wonder what the median age for overdose deaths are compared to covid deaths.

I don't know how recent these numbers are, but the 25-44 and 45-54 male demographics are apparently over-represented in overdose deaths[1].

It's similarly hard to find up-to-date median age statistics for COVID deaths (and this is particularly troublesome, since the median age for COVID deaths should intuitively decrease over time), but the primary demographic seems to be >65 in most developed countries[2]. Interestingly, from that same source, it's lower in developing and undeveloped countries.

[1]: https://www.projectknow.com/discover/the-age-of-overdose/

[2]: https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/too-young-die-ag...

ending it with an overdose does sound like a very accessible and "clean" method to end life if you're either an addict or even for non addicts who have access to hard drugs. And how many of those who are addicts engage in "suicidal ideation". Is a an addict that ends themselves statistically counted as a drug casualty and at what point do we see them as just another human being that decided to end their life. For all we know the drug might have been the only reason that kept them from not committing suicide much sooner (and while sober).

it seems an odd line to draw IMO

I don’t have any sources at hand but in Cincinnati, but a lot of the overdoses here are accidents from fentanyl being mixed into less powerful drugs.

That's a scary compounding factor that I hadn't even considered. Thanks for bringing that up.

In the US, traffic fatalities went up in 2020. The typical congestion of dangerous stroads has a calming effect on speeds, and that was absent with the enormous drop in traffic.

Thanks for correcting me. That's certainly counterintuitive on first blush, but does make sense and is consistent with my and others' experiences cycling in NYC in 2020/1: more aggressive driving became the norm, and cyclist and pedestrian deaths increased[1].

[1]: https://www.transalt.org/press-releases/vision-zero-in-crisi...

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "accidents" going way down, but at least in the US, fatalities have gone up. In the US, there were more traffic fatalities in 2020 since 2007.

See https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show... for example.

Fascinating, I hadn't seen that report. What I said was based on estimates made in 2020 and I never went back to check otherwise. Thanks, editing my comment now.

That's kinda wild and really counter-intuitive. From the article:

NHTSA’s research suggests that throughout the national public health emergency and associated lockdowns, driving patterns and behaviors changed significantly, and that drivers who remained on the roads engaged in more risky behavior, including speeding, failing to wear seat belts, and driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

It was a wonderful time when you could just drive as fast as you wanted without any significant repercussions. I’ll never forget.

Evidently that attitude is what lead to greater likelihood of 'repercussions' that average.

People were frustrated and arguably so. I agree with targeted lockdowns or even draconian lockdowns (if it would stop the pandemic on its heels). But it’s going to frustrate people. Social psychology would say such pent up frustration has to be released somewhere and we saw that in the rise in domestic violence, car accidents and crime. (I’m not trying to justify it. It’s the way it is. Next time we have a pandemic may be we’ll also factor in these indirect variables in decide the scope and duration).

Great time to set some records too apparently!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cannonball-coast-coast-...

Yeah I don't think that record will ever be broken. Until the next pandemic I suppose.

Early on in the pandemic when roads were fairly empty, the local cops operating the speed traps wouldn't pull anyone over -- they'd just stand on the side of the road waving at you and making 'slow down' hand signals. Glorious indeed...

Haha. I do recall my amazement at driving from San Mateo all the way to the Bay Bridge without my speed dropping below 80 mph.

Very mind blowing experience.

Also a cause of increased traffic fatalities it seems

When a mind is blown, sometimes it literally explodes.

I can see a few things driving this. First, I think that pretty much everybody was under more stress in that period -- anybody on the road would be less patient and less generous / more aggressive. Second, there's some sampling bias -- the people on the road would be either essential workers (underpaid, overworked, even more stressed) or oversampled from a risk-tolerant subset of the population (more inclined to see an open road as an opportunity to drive recklessly). The risk calculation of driving drunk would go down with emptier roads, too.

I think it's counterintuitive unless you account for the fact that it's intuitive to think that the roads will be empty, which should impact people's behavior. I don't think I would have bet either way, but post-facto justification seems pretty tidy.

Crime in general has been going up. Does this include DUIs and reckless driving?

I think the explanation is easier.

All the well to do white collar workers who circle jerk about how safe they are were in their home offices leaving the less safe demographics (basically just younger and poorer) on the road thereby increasing the average riskiness of the average road user, driven mile, etc, etc.

A recent article and HN discussion on that topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29492129

It's possible that lockdown didn't reduce deaths. Excess deaths is a tricky stat because it contains so much underlying confounding inputs that all you know is that more people died than what you expected based on historical averages and that is --all-- you can get from it reliably.

Yeah I would look for “medical” deaths (as opposed to crime, suicides and accidents) as the metric to compare to covid deaths. Not sure if that data is widely available.

The other thing to add to the mix of ups and downs is that the demographic of covid deaths is overly people with a short life expectancy so I would expect 2021 excess deaths to be reduced by the 2020 covid deaths that would have died in 2021 otherwise.

I agree with this. I think that would be a measure of the direct impact and as long as it also factors in all types of medical deaths. I personally know people who died waiting for a hospital bed for completely unrelated stuff.

But what about places where less people died than normal?

It seems that people out during lock-down are quite often those set on trouble and reckless behaviour. (That's a casual observation, not a moral statement.)

That's also the reason some European countries have full lock-down, as in curfews, because while most follow government recommendations, those that don't, operate in a vacuum without the checks and boundaries of normal social life and cause quite a lot more trouble and disturbance than they would in more normative circumstances.

In NZ we just about eliminated flu (and COVID until recently), with resulted in the negative excess deaths reported in the article.

It’s slightly jarring to see a negative number, and even more jarring how much airtime those championing unlocking, unmasking and being antivax are getting here.

> and even more jarring how much airtime those championing unlocking, unmasking and being antivax are getting here

Not everyone agrees "excess deaths" is the ultimate variable society should optimize for at the expense of all other variables.

If election results are to be believed, New Zealanders like the results achieved.

Wearing a mask and getting a vaccine are not even tradeoffs. The choice is between being willfully obstinate and participating in measures that save lives.

Wearing a mask is obviously a massive tradeoff, it's an ongoing "hey, hey, be afraid of me, I might coronise you!" indicator. It makes most people uncomfortable both physically and mentally.

Of course, even if it were free, it's essentially pointless because unless you live in China and they actually remain zero covid forever, you're going to repeatedly get coronavirus anyway cause it ain't ever going anywhere.

Vaccination is not even in the same league, it's an obvious easy win that gives you a far better chance when (not if) you get it.

> It makes most people uncomfortable [...] mentally.

Citation needed.

No, citation wanted.

I'm not going to cite the sky being blue, tilt your neck.

Wearing a mask is all benefit for me. I'm fine with masking in public being a lifetime rule. I like looking out at masked faces, and I like wearing a mask.

I have no idea why anyone would find it uncomfortable in any way.

And yes, you might corona-ize me. But I'm more afraid that the antimasker idiot will do that than someone wearing a mask.

> I have no idea why anyone would find it uncomfortable in any way.

Your first sentence makes me think you're serious. You don't see how a sea of masked faces could be seen as dystopian? Or that it's a sign that "you're not safe," and people want to feel safe?

> You don't see how a sea of masked faces could be seen as dystopian? Or that it's a sign that "you're not safe," and people want to feel safe?

Not in the slightest, any more than a sea of drivers in seatbelts would feel dystopian or that I'm not safe. (Or a bunch of people in snow gear, if you want a similar aesthetic.) I don't see any dystopian vibe at all, and fail to understand why wearing an article of clothing is dystopian. Do you feel the same way about pants? I think just as many people feel safer with everyone masked up, we've just been less silent throughout the pandemic.

You should wear a hazmat suit with a helmet in public.

I would feel safer, and there would be less pressure on my healthcare service if you fall over.

If you don't, you're scaring me.

Well, you are verifiably insane.

As a person who is hard of hearing, please don't wear your mask forever. Wearing a mask is not all benefit for everyone. Studies are showing that everyone wearing masks are also stunting the emotional growth of newborns. A cloth mask doesn't do anything, there isnt much benefit. Society as as whole will benefit more of people don't wear masks.

I understand that other people wearing a mask is a hardship on some people (including the hard of hearing). While I sympathize, and certainly will make an effort to speak slower/louder/crisper, I'm not going to remove my mask in a public space so you can understand me. I wonder if the hearing aid business has been doing gangbusters since the pandemic started.

Nah, you don't give a toss because you've prioritised something which is literally impossible.

Wearing a cloth mask does nothing. And taking a vaccine might save your life.

No one is trying to optimize it for.

They're using it as a crude barometer for just how bad it is. We know about how many people die on average for any given period. We expect it to be in a range. When it is wildly outside of that range, then there's something going on.

If you ban people from driving cars and make them walk everywhere - you could also eliminate car accident deaths, it's not sustainable though...

I mean maybe you’re onto something and don’t realize it.

Banning cars would be more akin to totally locking down rather than incentivizing vaccination, masks and other public health measures that aren’t as invasive. Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is a good thing.

So basically destroy rural populations which are also the source of all our food? Unless I’m mistaken in that cities are actually the source of all life sustaining industries.

Enough with the hyperbole. Discouraging car use won’t destroy rural populations; it would improve the QoL of urban ones.

You can’t survive in a rural area without a car

The parent said:

> Maybe, similarly discouraging car y use and encouraging walking is a good thing.

That policy won’t take cars away from the rural populace.

Is discouraging synonymous with destroying in your lexicon?

Most people don’t live in rural areas and most deadly accidents don’t occur in rural areas either. Discouraging car use in cities has next to no effect on rural populations.

Approx 19.3% of Americans live in rural areas, and a higher proportion of rural residents are in poverty. Therefore, measures to discourage car use are likely to disproportionally adversely impact some of the poorest in society. Unless those measures somehow completely avoid affecting rural populations.

I’d support city only measures like a city income tax to fund public transportation and conversion of stroads to pedestrian friendly streets. But what is likely to happen are general taxations on car users such as fuel duty and onerous regulations which push up the cost of car ownership.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_areas_in_the_United_Stat...

You’re making a lot of assumptions as to what “discouraging car use” entails.

We both agreed that rural areas would not be a good place to target such policies, so why assume I was saying we should push policies that are overly broad?

How would you discourage car use? Taxes?

Realistically? Changing planning rules that require tons of extra parking, wide roads, and overbuilt freeways.

Current policies induce demand and make it difficult to promote transit and other modes.

What do you mean not sustainable???

If we limited and regulated car use pretty extremely and stuck with trains, bikes, and walking, we would be half the way there toward a completely sustainable society.

Cars are a major source of the least sustainable aspects of humanity on earth today.

Most of America needs cars. Society would collapse if you just "limited and regulated car use pretty extremely". If there's a solution to that, then let's just do that, and skip the authoritarian part afterward.

You mean most of America is designed to be car-dependent. So, yes, in the current design it needs cars.

I wasn't saying we could just suddenly ban them tomorrow.

The solution is hard because of how bad we've gotten things. But the solution has little authoritarian about it. We just change our priorities for the design of public infrastructure. We don't even need to actually ban cars at all. Make it practical and enjoyable to do everything by train, bike, or walking whenever possible and most people will happily do it. The result is a huge decrease in deaths both through healthier living and less cars.

https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/videos describes things pretty well and accessibly. In short: the Netherlands was on track 40 years ago to be nearly as car-dependent as the U.S. and yet protesters blocked some highway proposals and the country went in a different direction. Today, it's the best designed place in the world, and its even better for drivers too.

> But the solution has little authoritarian about it.

The authoritarian part was limiting/regulating car use pretty extremely. I'm perfectly fine with making alternatives to cars more practical, just not with making cars less practical.

Nothing authoritarian about that if the majority of the population agrees that’s the best way to move forward.

We already regulate where cars are allowed to go (e.g. which direction in which lane on which streets). All anyone means around "banning" cars is to have changes (reductions) in which places we allow cars. There's no increase in authoritarianism with that.

Ok here’s what we can do: pass laws significantly reducing the places cars can go. Tax automobiles. Buy up used cars and destroy them to keep prices high and ensure cars use recent environment technology.

Then create public transit districts, which operate like school districts. Real estate is taxed, and the proceeds go to busses.

Areas with high real estate values will have excellent public transit. Those with lower real estate values will have worse transit.

The advantage is (1) support by middle and upper class voters, who are traditionally opposed to public transit, (2) funding sustainability, (3) money is kept in local communities.

The downside is a drastic increase in inequality.

I’m obviously joking … but do you see how discouraging cars would increase inequality unless it was combine with an extremely equitable political system? A political system America doesn’t have?

I see effort at nuance here, but the conclusion is both almost right and also not at all right.

America's deeply unequal political system WILL NOT ever get us better equality. It's *incidental*, a symptom of the political reality that discouraging cars would be done in a way that exacerbates inequality.

Almost any policy can be done in ways that exacerbate inequality. And a more equitable political system would be needed in order to have more equitable policies.

There's nothing specific to cars about this stuff. So, there's no point in focusing on discouraging cars as inherently part of this trend. Gentrification is a real issue. But don't blame yoga for gentrification just because yoga studios are in gentrified areas. Policies that encourage healthy tree canopy also exacerbate inequality because richer areas can hire urban foresters and so on. I mean, every single worthwhile thing you can think of exacerbates inequality if the policies are set up to make the worthwhile thing go along with already-wealthier places. None of the worthwhile things are themselves the cause of inequality.

I currently live in a nice wealthy suburb. The folks who run the place go through great effort to ensure we do *not* have access to public transit.

Public transit attracts people who can’t afford cars. It also allows the “wrong element” to pass through our neighborhood.

Politically, how do you propose forcing public transit into communities that actively campaign against it?

I can’t wait to bike 12 miles to the nearest town in -20 degree weather to catch a train that doesn’t exist so I can get groceries.

You might as well say, “Well, if we just invented teleporters…”

I would suggest you try and see how countries that aren’t as car centered as the US operate. Trains, buses, trams all can make it very easy to lose the car addiction. And it can be done today, no teleportation required.

Those countries are usually heavily urbanized, though so is the USA. Those not living in urban areas generally have more dependence on cars (eg in Australia or New Zealand).

I’ve been to Japan (and NYC and…), so I have a pretty good idea. The system works great in Tokyo, and obviously the bullet train is amazing. In rural areas though, you’re dealing with long train rides and waiting on bus schedules. It can be done, but it seems like a lot of people in those areas just had cars.

It should be done where it’s practical, but in most of the US geographically it isn’t.

Most of the US lives in urban areas.

Then you would know what it looks like to live in the Alaskan bush (not many roads, so cars aren’t that useful).

Of course, where Alaska does have roads, they have a super high death rate. An uncle who I never knew being one of them (though in this case, and as usual, alcohol was also involved).

A larger percentage of the population lived in rural areas before mass production of cars.

Sure, and most of those people raised their own food and had a wife that could raise the children and cook all day. You could essentially live off of farming just what you needed, with maybe a little extra for spending money. That doesn’t work now unless you outlaw everything more advanced than a horse as farming equipment.

I don't suppose you are suggesting that nobody was able to live a decent life 12 miles out of town until we had cars, are you?

But I suppose your point is more like: we've built lots of completely car-dependent situations in which people live very far from core necessities in life with no way to get them except by car. And that's clearly true. But the answer isn't teleporters or biking in -20 to got 12 miles. The answer is to stop living so far from essential resources. And that doesn't have to mean everyone moving to crazy-dense living around existing resources like grocery stores. It could just as well (better really) mean modest density in mixed areas where we have more medium-size grocery stores so that more people are close to them.

I'm not suggesting individuals just live in car DEPENDENT contexts and then forgo the thing you DEPEND on. I'm suggesting we have drastically fewer car-dependent places.

I’m sorry, but I like that I basically don’t have neighbors and my little girl has 15 acres to play on and explore. A lot of other people feel the same way.

> A lot of other people feel the same way.

As a fact, a lot of people may feel that way, but not a large percentage. That's just a small percentage of a large number is still a large number. But tell me again why I have to subsidize your lifestyle by paying for your roads and inadequate federal gas laws recapturing the costs of pollution from your cars?

Meanwhile, most people raised like your little girl will end up moving to urban areas as an adult.

Presumably because you need to eat. Farmers are in the area. My wife does accounting for the food producer they sell to. I photograph their weddings. My wife’s mom helps run the healthcare for the area. My friend sells them equipment.

People generally don’t live where it doesn’t make at least some economic sense, and those farmers would probably stop farming if they didn’t have at least some basic necessities and amenities nearby.

Accounting and heathcare management can trivially be done remotely.

But it might not really matter. Do small farms produce a noticeable amount of food in our food supply? I thought it all was giant farms with giant machinery, not family farms, that actually produced food.

(Edited to try to make it more clear that was a real question. Maybe family farms are important for the food supply?)

Family farms large are “giant farms” nowadays, at least in my area. Nobody is farming 50 acres, they all have hundreds or even thousands. You can only really be born in to it when farmland is $10,000 an acre and the equipment will run you hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

And they’re all stupidly wealthy for the amount of work they do, but that’s another matter.

Note: that’s all for crops. Raising animals seems to be another matter with plenty of smaller farms - and they do more work too.

While all large farms are family farms as well, the total number of such large farms is, what, 10,000 in the USA? By a bunch of very rich people? The exact people who don't need their lifestyle subsidized by people in urban areas to keep living in the country otherwise they'll move away and stop growing our food.

I don't know what you're sorry about. There's nothing wrong with that idea. It just isn't feasible to have 8 billion people all living like that. If cars were only used by a sustainably small number of people who live like you, then it's fine enough.

The problem is the "lot of other people" issue. Your way of life works well only if most people forgo it. There's nothing inherently wrong with it in and of itself.

Most people don't live so far away from stores, or anything else. The vast majority of the population in any modern society is urban. And urban people can get by just fine on public transit anywhere that decides to put it in.

I don't own a car, neither does anyone around me. We all rely on public transport and bicycles. I live near the Artic circle and the temperature is routinely near -20º. If Aury knew what he was talking about, he'd know that weather is generally nice and sunny at that temperature and that snow and wind are more common when it's warmer.

I’m looking out my window at snow falling right now. You’re right that snow below 0 degrees in uncommon, but I’ve never noticed much of a difference in wind. That could be because where I live temperatures 20 below or worse aren’t common and are transient, so another front is probably nearby and creating wind.

I still wouldn’t want to bike in it, if only because of ice.

For the record I live in Minnesota, one of the coldest and snowiest states in the US.

You need spiked tires for your bike, just like for your car.

It's pretty sustainable on cities witth proper public transport. And I say that living on a city with pretty much subpar public transport, but on which I manage to go everyday just walking, save for a few trips from time to time where I definitely need to move by car (it's a bit under once per week, think 30-40 times a year).

If you banned cigarettes, you'd save many lives, and it's also pretty much sustainable for everybody except the tobacco industry.

I'm not sure which country (NZ?) implemented a law, that everyone born after some year, will not be able to buy cigarettes anymore, so old smokers can still buy them, but kids just turning 18 can't anymore, and never will be able to.

Banning cigarettes is not something that is comparable to banning people from traveling and gathering with their friends...

But it saves lives.

In my country (Slovenia), cigarettes kill more people than covid did (in the last 2 years)... we had huge lockdowns, and pointed the fingers at anyone who ignored some of the rules (even though our constitutional court ruled afterwards that most of the lockdowns were unconstitutional), but just banning smoking would save more lives than covid took away.

> but just banning smoking would save more lives than covid took away.

... Assuming people wouldn't buy on the black market, drive down to Croatia, Italy or Austria to replenish their supply, etc.

If you did an age-ban (anyone born after 2003 can't buy them), there'd probably be less younger smokers, because driving across the border takes time and money.

You may know this, but smoking is being banned in New Zealand.

People can travel without cars just fine. Feet, bicycles, public transit, there are tons of options for every scenario.

Not in most places. If you don't live in a big city, it's probably too far to walk or bike, and there is no public transit.

That only goes for countries that consider public transit to be for the poor or extremely dense urban environments where cars couldn't work. It's far from the case worldwide. ( Of course I'm not talking about small villages with a population in the hundreds, but towns in the thousands should have public transit connections).

It goes for most of the US, and the US is too big to just ignore.

We can travel and see friends. It’s harder, but we can.

Yes, NZ is in the process of changing the tobacco retail laws to slowly increment the age at which is it legal to sell a buyer any tobacco product.

The net effect if which is that it will never be legal to sell someone born after ~2006 any tobacco products.

Uncertain if that's true. Prohibition of substances hasn't worked for alcohol or illicit drugs in general. Unlikely to work for tobacco specifically, especially given how easy it is to grow.

… that’s us here in New Zealand too.

How long do you want the country to isolate itself from the rest of the world? Your view of managing COVID seems extremely conservative.

Well it resulted in one of the lowest restrictions on people in any country besides international travel. Giving people freedom to meet people and work is good

We have strong restrictions relative to our COVID cases. Majority of the country has practically no cases, yet they are at the middle alert level rather than the lowest one.

Auckland previously had a very strict lockdown based on very low case numbers relative to the rest of the world.

Of course there is the argument that if we didn't have such restrictions we wouldn't have dealt with COVID as well, but even taking that into account I think the government has been very conservative.

One perspective to consider is the length of these restrictions. Other countries have had years of lockdowns and restrictions. New Zealanders were going to concerts while the world was in lockdown. Even if New Zealand's restrictions have been strict the restrictions have been intermittent and only in some regions

This is true, but again I would compare restrictions relative to the severity of COVID outbreak.

Other countries have much longer/stronger restrictions, but they have also had much more severe outbreaks.

The government seems to be very slow to come around on changing their COVID strategy, especially given that the stakes are pretty low in NZ relative to other countries.

Isn’t the point to avoid severe outbreaks in the first place, and thereby not needing extensive periods of restrictions.

I think the perfect time would be when effective oral anti-virals are readily available, they are just around the corner. The average daily cases are increasing and the 4th/5th wave (depending on location) is ramping up now - exactly the wrong time for a country like NZ to change international quarantine.

I can travel if I want. I don’t want to.

Others not coming in needs to change at some point, but I don’t see that it is serving us badly.

We can't really travel because getting a quarantine spot for your return is very difficult.

Opening up the floodgates seems unwise, but our restrictions seem quite strict given how few cases we have had.

If anything, the story will be that those who have the choice are happy not being in the office all the time, and that road deaths and deaths from other infectious diseases will be down due to anti-COVID measures.

Imagine the amount of disease, death and suffering we could prevent if we lived in pods like in The Matrix.

Welcome to Metaverse

Nationwide mandates are oppressive and don’t allow people freedom to choose their own level of acceptable risk. Regional level variations are probably more tolerable allowing people to choose what type of society they want to live in.

I think you might be missing the fact that it's an airborne virus at pandemic levels. Regional restrictions can't work because people can just move and spread it everywhere, including places where local inhabitants don't want to "accept the risk".

Why would anyone who wants freedom move into an area where people are forced into isolation?

Because their family is there, or because there's better work there, or they like the weather better or any number of reasons.

They don't need to move there to spread risk, just move through, and as such tourism is one factor.

Early in the pandemic, I had an assignment to photograph in a particular area that was actively dissuading visitors, had signage up as such, etc. I had to stop to refuel the car, but that was the extent of my contact with people and interiors otherwise.

I live in a state that had closed borders for most of the pandemic until recently (when our adult vax rate hit 80%). They're now open and cases are predictably rising. Opening the borders seems to have had a political backlash because while families can move in/out of the state, the rising cases has brought about business lockdowns but without the support/stimulus from last year.

We don't have the "freedom to choose [our] own level of acceptable risk" in a lot of areas. So that's obviously not a point anybody is really, honestly concerned about.

It might be even more jarring when a population two years from now is hit by a flu they didn't get almost any exposure to this year. There is a complexity here that is hard to wrap your head fully around.

NZ is an island at the edge of the world, and their population is a fraction of most major cities, let alone states, provinces, and countries. Policies that work for them might not work for others.

Further, its a bit early to call victory if perpetual lockdowns are the only thing holding back the disease. What happens once they open the flood gates and covid is still active?

The 95%+ vaccinations rates (12+) in the three major cities and 92% overall (also 12+) would somewhat help. Along with the fact community spread is already present and has been for a few months, the measures in place have kept uncontrolled spread in check.

NZ keeps new introductions to a minimum to ensure that contact tracing is not overwhelmed and this adds to the effective decrease in reproduction offered by vaccinations. New Zealand being a season behind also allows the Northern hemisphere to burn through a wave and NZ can then decide when to lift international arrival restrictions to a time when the incidence levels are low from common arrival locales (UK, US etc).

I was surprised how many eastern European countries seem to top the list of excess death counts per capita, and have much higher excess deaths than official covid deaths.

Does anyone know what the causes are? Are they dealing with much worse epidemics of addiction, alcohol, poverty, or something else than most of the world? Or did they have an older population? Or is it mostly from covid but under-reported, and somehow eastern Europe was especially hard-hit?

I believe many of them are directly correlated because of influence of Russia. Those countries have more anti-vaxxers too.

Some of them have bought the Russian vaccine and well... That's not working out for them.

Similar to other countries that bought the Russian vaccine fyi. So you could check out Brasil and Mexico as a reference for my statement.

I can't think of another cause/correlation.

it's not like Pfizer or Moderna vaccine are working any better, we are still under lockdown, even tho 80% of population is vaccinated

Yes it does. Just check excess deaths, that's what this article is about...

They both already reduce severe illness.

Additionally, it's not just about the efficiency of the vaccine. But the Russian vaccine is overpromised and underdelivered regarding to sales/deliveries to the countries that agreed to buy it.

They are severely failing to deliver the 2nd dose as promised. Let's not go into detail about the corruption associated with it too...

Plenty of resources to verify if you did a little bit of effort ;)

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/07/09/a-royal-mark-up-ho...

https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/15/what-went-wrong-wit...

https://apnews.com/article/world-news-mexico-russia-europe-c...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58003893.amp

https://www.news18.com/amp/news/india/what-went-wrong-with-f...

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/22/a...

They didn't even do phase 3 trials and refuse to give sufficient information to the WHO. That's what you get for rushing things just to call dibs.

What a mess.

Not sure where do you see that, looking at United States from the chart:

  - October 2020, +15% deviation from expected deaths
  - October 2021, +25% deviation from expected deaths

The US is under-vaccinated versus its affluent peers and is also just about the heavy weight champ of the world (ie loaded with comorbidities that amp up the Covid mortality rate, such as diabetes). What's confusing about it?

Ya, and it just so happens that there is a big overlap in obesity, low income, and those that won't get vaccinated. Which has created a double whammy when it comes to US deaths.

Vaccines made a negligible difference to the case fatality rate.

> Vaccines made a negligible difference to the case fatality rate.

Source?

Because everywhere I look, vaccines seem to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.

Where are you located?

Off the cuff, The Netherlands is currently in lockdown, and I can't remember the other ones.

It's a partial lockdown in the Netherlands, mostly because countries/they were afraid if the infection rate of omicron.

I suppose they will lift it soon now more studies are getting released about it's severity.

A new variant doesn't mean that there's no danger because you are vaccinated. Studies need to happen for efficiency/severity.

Edit for below ( can't reply, sorry):

New cases != Severe cases

Not mentioned : infections were at record highs just before this lockdown. With a vacrate of 80%+ ( ~ 83% couple of weeks ago ).

> New cases != Severe cases

ICU were nearing capacity, there was talk about black scenario's.

If you can't reply, click the timestamp of the post

If I look at the Netherlands, the spike of deaths was on 9 December: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherland...

For me, that means it is mostly delta and not omicron. Considering the delay on hospitalisation/death and the appearance of omicron in Europe.

Just like the UK, the Netherlands was indeed close to severe issues in healthcare.

Ps. Hi from Belgium

> For me, that means it is mostly delta and not omicron.

For sure it was not omicron.

But that is not what this subthread is about. We had ~83% vacrate and record high infections. And health care nearing capacity.

And OP was doubting the effeciacy of the vaccines. Maybe he is right. High vacrates don't seem to do much.

Deaths were ~ halved while indeed record cases.

But I think it's more about the elderly being vaccinated first and that it was a long time ago.

No state or city in the US has any "lockdowns" in effect. Unless you've been living in complete isolation off the grid and re-emerged today, your comment is a classic internet strawman.

Most likely under-reported COVID deaths. Having looked at the Russia data at least, many deaths (earlier on) were marked with "pneumonia" and they didn't even bother testing for COVID.

I have found that pneumonia is apparently broadly misunderstood by a lot of people. (It's an inflammatory issue in the lungs, usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection. It is not it's own type of virus.)

We had some family friends that refused to get vaccinated. The wife contracted COVID and then died a few weeks later. When we asked the husband if he was going to get vaccinated, he said no. Because COVID is no worse than a cold. He explained that his wife died from pneumonia, not COVID.

I have seen this repeated a lot when it comes to cause of death. Reports can show things like cardio pulmonary arrest (which means your heart and lungs stopped) complicated by COVID and heart disease or whatever. And then people go away saying well, COVID didn't kill them, it was a cardio pulmonary arrest ... and they had heart disease...

It's amazing how much you can convince yourself of if you want to.

Yep. It’s like saying someone who’s been shot didn’t die from a bullet. They died of internal hemorrhaging. It’s a distinction without a difference.

And the shooting victim was older, so, they probably would have died soon anyway.

Or, the shooting victim had preexisting conditions. So it wasn't "just" the gun shot wound that killed them.

No, they died because they didn't have enough oxygen transported to the brain and internal organs.

It was initially declared that Russia is protected from COVID by God and by mighty Putin. Patriarch drove around Moscow in a Mercedes holding an icon. So doctors were ordered not to write "covid" on death certificates.

Russia appears to be in deep denial. Some of that influence will spread through the ethnic Russian population in other Eastern European countries.

Follow the link in the article to the overall likely undercount, based on excess deaths. It is pretty horrifying.

Uh…did Russia about to lose about 1% of its population due to COVID?? Slightly over 1M excess deaths in a country with a population of 145M.

I recall seeing articles that the largest postwar drop in Russia's population was in 2021

Right-authoritarian governments with populists strongman executives like Russia and Hungary are completely unequipped to handle anything like this disease.

I think a lot is attitude, chatting to a couple of eastern European friends the people like there are like big deal and ignore it to a large extent.

Code and data here https://github.com/TheEconomist/covid-19-excess-deaths-track...

Really nice to see a 'legacy' publication embrace open source

It's not so unusual. See...

https://github.com/abcnews

https://github.com/BBC

https://github.com/guardian

https://github.com/nytimes

And so on...

I built some tooling around the U.S. CDC data to better understand this at a state level: https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/

What did you use to make this website? I like it a lot.

Thank you. I did not imagine anyone would actually like the layout/UI. I have been looking for input on how to improve it.

The site itself is just handcoded HTML: https://github.com/mcculley/mcculley.github.io/blob/master/V...

The polar area diagrams are generated by Java code I wrote for this purpose: https://github.com/mcculley/ObservedDeathVisualizer

The bar charts and the line graph are generated by Datawrapper (https://app.datawrapper.de) using the CSVs exported by the aforementioned code.

how should i interpret this chart?

- Australia and Germany did well, Peru not so much?

- The Swedish COVID-19 Response wasn't a disaster[1]

- Brazil didn't make so bad as widely reported by the media?

References:

[1]: https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

Much of it is likely due to strength or weaknesses of various medical systems, as well as density/distribution of population. Remember this tracks deaths only, not case rates or hospitalization generally. I tend to think if you went into a hospital in Sweden, you got good care.

The US did fairly well, but you also have to consider there are large areas that are very spread out geographically, large suburbs, etc.

Seems like places that did the worst -- outside of the first wave when nobody was prepared -- are what you'd expect: places with poor, dense populations, and worse infrastructure.

> Seems like places that did the worst -- outside of the first wave when nobody was prepared -- are what you'd expect: places with poor, dense populations, and worse infrastructure.

Ok, that's make sense. I'm however more concerned in understand the "aftermath" from 2020 and 2021 regarding the Media narrative. Get all this data and correlate with what was being published live in in the media. I wish we could hold all the reporters, scientists and experts accountable for the amount of misinformation that was published mainly to generate clicks, support narrative and political stances.

Sweden did quite well economically too https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-econom... although Denmark beat them in both economy and deaths. I guess if you've got a country of mostly responsible educated people you can say behave sensibly without the government legislating loads of rules.

Germany gave itself a pat on the back the whole pandemic, and demonized Sweden, but looking the numbers, we have a totally different story. One of the main factors, said here is that Germany has a higher population density than Sweden, and the population trust more their government decisions[1]

Reference: [1] https://www.businessinsider.de/politik/deutschland/keine-vie...

In terms of excess death, those are correct interpretations. But a true measure of successful policy would've been some kind of death vs impact, corrected for difficult factor.

Death is what the article covers. Impact would be the cost of the policy on everything else, e.g. mental health due to lockdowns, kids' learning falling behind due to lockdowns, bankruptcies and debt due to lockdowns etc.

Some countries were able to get the same results with fewer strict lockdown measures of other countries, those countries can be said to be more successful.

Of course one could correct for difficulty factor. That's a gray area. For example, do you include Japanese culture of masking and rule abidance? Depends on your perspective. But in any case, it's clear that countries with for example an average age of 18 like Nigeria, will be less impacted as a country like Italy, where the average person is 46. Knowing 50% of the population is almost over 50, make a big medical difference. Similarly, countries with high population density will do better than countries with little population density, etc.

There's a ton of these factors that determine 'difficulty factor'. As such it's hard to really say who did well and who didn't.

But no, Sweden wasn't a disaster. Australia and Germany did quite well, but Australia had some harsh measures that must be taken into account. Brazil indeed wasn't the worst of the bunch (although a top-25 spot is certainly not a good look, especially as only one other country in that list of 25 (Russia) has more absolute deaths, and outside the top 25 only the US has more, 600 thousand dead in Brazil is a disaster if you ask me, it's >10 years of homicides worth of death, in a country known for some of the worst gun violence and gang violence in the world.

India doesn't feature in the table in their article. It is not represented in their sources, the World Mortality Database[0], or the Human Mortality Database[1]. Yet they somehow estimated that India had 2.3 million excess deaths. Based on what, exactly?

0. https://github.com/akarlinsky/world_mortality

1. https://www.mortality.org/

How interesting that they don't include China in this list, as they are notorious for outright lying about basically every metric ever.

It is very interesting. There is a link in this article to another article that contains a pretty shocking global estimate based on excess deaths: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...

It is more than 4X the official count. Some of that is probably in places with no official numbers. But one wonders how many are in China.

Tangential to that topic, one thing that puzzles me. When I look at the UK vaccination report [1]:

Table p31 shows the % of vaccinated among covid cases for the month of November. If you look at the population >18yo (had access to a vaccine), you get about 80% of new covid cases are vaccinated, which roughly makes sense, the vaccine doesn't really stop the infections, it mostly stops hospitalisations and deaths.

But p33 and 34 you have the same breakdown for covid deaths, and here again vaccinated are about 80% of covid deaths, I expected unvaccinated to be a much larger fraction. We know the vaccine has an impact on deaths as clearly the overall number of covid deaths are a fraction of what they were last year [2] for a similar number of covid cases.

The way I interpreted it is that the UK was probably capturing as covid deaths, elderly people who simply tested positive but died of some other reasons. But the economist numbers seem to show that excess deaths in the UK are in line with reported covid deaths. So I am not sure how to interpret the fact that 80% of deaths are vaccinated.

The French numbers are more in line with what I would expect [3]. The bar chart page 4 shows that 90% of the population is vaccinated, 85% of covid tests, 75% of positive covid tests, and only 60% of deaths are vaccinated, hence significant reduction.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

[2] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

[3] https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/...

From reading the report I think this is addressed p36 that might be because the vaccinated and unvaccinated population are different in other ways :

> 1Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection. Vaccine effectiveness has been formally estimated from a number of different sources and is summarised on pages 5 to 11 in this report. The case rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are unadjusted crude rates that do not take into account underlying statistical biases in the data and there are likely to be systematic differences between these 2 population groups. For example: • people who are fully vaccinated may be more health conscious and therefore more likely to get tested for COVID-19 and so more likely to be identified as a case (based on the data provided by the NHS Test and Trace) • many of those who were at the head of the queue for vaccination are those at higher risk from COVID-19 due to their age, their occupation, their family circumstances or because of underlying health issues • people who are fully vaccinated and people who are unvaccinated may behave differently, particularly with regard to social interactions and therefore may have differing levels of exposure to COVID-19 • people who have never been vaccinated are more likely to have caught COVID-19 in the weeks or months before the period of the cases covered in the report. This gives them some natural immunity to the virus for a few months which may have contributed to a lower case rate in the past few weeks

But all these factors would impact equally covid cases and covid deaths (since the UK definition of a covid death is a covid case who died), so you would still expect a reduction of the % vaccinated from one to the other. And by September all the vaccination curves plateau-ed, so it's unlikely to be a timing issue.

> the UK definition of a covid death is a covid case who died

This is what a bunch of us have been complaining about all along. Not everyone with COVID who dies actually died because of COVID.

I thought that but 1) the economist numbers seem to confirm the covid deaths numbers at least for the UK, and 2) you get roughly the same numbers of daily covid deaths [1] by "tested positive in last 28 days" vs "covid on death certificate". So while it is an explanation that would match the data, I don't know if that's true.

[1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

The footnote on p33 and 34 suggests an explanation, namely that vaccination rates among the elderly (where most of the deaths are) are particularly high. E.g. if the unvaccinated elderly are outnumbered by the vaccinated 1 to 20, then if the vaccines have an 80% effectiveness against mortality you'd still expect deaths among the unvaccinated to be outnumbered 1 to 4.

But that would affect equally both covid cases and covid deaths. But if you focus on the elderly, for say >70yo, vaxed are 87% of covid cases, and 84% of covid deaths. If the vaccine was 90% efficient, you would expect the vaxed death to be 40%, not 84% (84% implies a 15% vaccine efficiency).

> If the vaccine was 90% efficient, you would expect the vaxed death to be 40%, not 84% (84% implies a 15% vaccine efficiency).

I'm not too sure how you arrived at your figures, but here's my back of the envelope calculation for the percentage of either expected deaths or expected cases coming from the vaccinated part of an age group:

  V * (1 - E) / ((1 - V) + (V * (1 - E))

where V is the percentage of the age group that's vaccinated (~95% for >70yo) and E is the effectiveness against either death or symptomatic disease (which isn't exactly the same as a case, I know), i.e. only (1 - E) of the vaccinated population will face death or symptomatic disease.

Playing around with the effectiveness values, 87% of cases and 84% of deaths from the vaccinated in the >70yo group doesn't look impossible.

If you have a population of 100 positive cases, 87 vaxed, 13 unvaxed. Let's assume the unvaxed death rate is 100% (it doesn't mater).

If the vaccine is 90% efficient, then 10% of the 87 vaxed will die, 100% of the 13 unvaxed will die, therefore the % of vaxed in the deaths will be (we are using the same formula) 10% * 87 / (10% * 87 + 13) = 40%

If the vaccine is 15% efficient, then 85% of the 87 will die, and the % of vaxed in the deaths will be 85% * 87 / (85% * 87 + 13) = 85%

You're using "efficient" to mean effectiveness against death given infection, but the vaccines aren't close to 90% effective against that. [1] says they're 54% effective against death given infection, which actually predicts 78% of deaths being in the vaccinated if you plug it in to the formula.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Why are the negative numbers not colored on a scale too?

Do many deaths in the winter mean less deaths during the summer? I don't know, i have to hover the mouse over the months and guesstimate.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16406406...

https://i.postimg.cc/QM0ckk2C/Screenshot-2021-12-27-163738.p...

What happened in November?

I like how this tracker doesn't talk much about India or China at all (even though there were 2.3m deaths due to COVID there according to the Economist).

Interestingly, they do talk about Japan, South Korea, etc.

My impression is that Chinese and Indian stats seems to be intractable for different reasons (China because they fake every number they can, India because they have a hard time collecting them).

I believe the Indian government has been meticulously (under-)reporting them. There are government websites that are updated daily with this information. That is likely not the reason. But I'd prefer to attribute this omission to foolishness/laziness rather than malice (once again).

Omission of China was very strange. I get that you may not have data. But to not mention that fact, when it's 1/5th of the world population, ostensibly the point of origin of Covid-19, and a country where most people are curious as to the effectiveness of its policies, is weird. Together with India it was one of the first countries I Ctrl+F'd out of interest.

John Hopkins' sources do cover India, at 600k excess deaths (table at the bottom). Also covers China at just 4000 or so, clearly wrong. But it's not clear anymore which figures are right or wrong, as the table contains much of the exact same data as the Economist article on most other countries. Seems like there's a data consolidation happening in the background from many different sources, you'd have to review the methodologies of each yourself (or trust the news reporting to highlight doubts or margins of error, but if they report China without comment as having just 4000 excess death in ±2 years, you obviously can't do that).

https://time.com/5800901/coronavirus-map/

Can someone explain how they come up with the "expected deaths" number? The article doesn't explain how this number is calculated or which assumptions were made to come up with the number. Is this a moving average of earlier years? Does it compensate for the increase or decrease in demographics? What other aspects go into this "expectation" that might be relevant?

I wondered the same thing. This is why I built some tooling around visualizing the body count: https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/

It turns out that in many places there is a very clear difference between 2017-2019 versus 2020-2021. There is no way the population increased enough to account for the extra deaths.

Can I explain what they did? No. Can I give an idea of how to do it? I think so.

Way back in the day, one of the tables in the CRC Handbook was the "American Experience Actuarial Table". It said, for every age from 1 (or 0?) to 100, what fraction of people of that age one would statistically expect to die in America. You take a modern version of that data for the country in question, (perhaps per gender, which IIRC the CRC table did not account for) and throw it at the age distribution in that country. That gives you a fair idea what to expect.

In doing so, you assume that the racial profile of the population didn't change much in that two-year span (or if it did, that it did so according to previous trends), unless you have actual data saying otherwise.

Is it perfect? No. But it's fairly reasonable.

Again, note my opening disclaimer: I don't know that this is how this study did it.

Its there at the bottom:

>A previous version of this page used a five-year average of deaths in a given region to calculate a baseline for excess deaths. The page now uses a statistical model for each region, which predicts the number of deaths we might normally have expected in 2020. The model fits a linear trend to years, to adjust from long-term increases or decreases in deaths, and a fixed effect for each week or month.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2560/

Paywall

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...

Thanks for the link.

The paywall I was meaning was this.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgr...

I'm not seeing a paywall for the main article link. There is a link in the article that goes to another paywalled article. But I can see the posted article just fine, though I am not a subscriber.

This tells you everything you need to know, same thing happens with the FT & wsj if it's an article they want everyone to read....

Yeah, thanks to the other poster (who helped rather than those who downvoted) the link to the unpaywalled meat of the article is below.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgr...

This was the number thay should have been used all along in the western world. The excessive deaths were very high in Q2/Q3 2020 that warranted stringent lockdown. However starting Q4, the excess deaths have started to reduce and has significantly minimzed across the world in second half of 2021. Its most likely because of vaccines but the acquired immunity due to infections are also likely a cause. There is no need for any restrictions from a public health standpoint as excess deaths are now significantly lower likely with the expected error.

EDIT: the post was primarily about western countries with reliable data and vaccination records

Are you referring to any particular jurisdiction? In the U.S.A. for example Q3 2021 excess deaths were as bad as Q2-Q3 2020. 40% excess deaths is something like 3000 people every day.

Most countries in western Europe and many states seem to have less than 10 ℅ excess deaths in 2021. There is also likely to be an error that is not quoted here. Typically such comparisons must be made on 10 year average data and the changes within those years will provide the error which is likely to have variation of 5-10 ℅

> Most countries in western Europe and many states seem to have less than 10 ℅ excess deaths in 2021

That may well be true, but it cannot in and of itself be a reason to decide to relax measures.

It's like saying the number of traffic accidents are low, thus we can abolish drivers licenses, speed limits, age limits on driving, alcohol limits on driving, seatbelts etc.

No: the measures (e.g. seatbelts) cause the good results (low traffic deaths). Simply looking at the good results can never in and of itself be a reason to remove the measures.

You'd want to evidence that the desirable results will remain without the measures, before removing the measures. e.g. if there's evidence that removing speeding limits does not impact traffic accidents/deaths, then you can remove the limit.

I don't quite understand, how come "expected deaths" are almost the same across the whole year. Winter flu season is known to have a much higher death toll than summers, I remember reading news of triage tents were set up during winter flu season in new york.

These are tracking deviations from the norm. It's not that expected deaths are flat across the year, it's that they're just showing the difference. If we expect 50 and see 55, we have 5 excess deaths. If we expect 10 and see 15, we still only have 5 excess.

No, chart has "Total Deaths" and "Expected Deaths" numbers per month. Just hover over the tiles and you will see these values.

How much should it swing? ~+20% for US from Jan to June 2020 for example, is that not the difference you're looking for?

On the chart, "Weekly estimated excess deaths by age group", there's a swing of nearly 10,000 between the lowest and highest of expected deaths. And it seems to be week by week. So while week by week, the change isn't much (and it shouldn't be), overall there's a decent swing.

Even in the lower age groups there's a decent swing and it follows the seasons. Even though the numbers across the board are lower.

What are you looking for here? What would feel right to you?

They aren't. The article's data shows a clear trend towards higher excess deaths in winter months in the United States.

But even if the trend wasn't present: a large portion of the US's population lives in regions without 4 "true" seasons or where the flu season is dramatically shorter than in the Northeast. Analyzing individual climate regions within the US and accounting for varying degrees of public health compliance would provide a clearer picture.

They have subtracted out the average number of deaths on each day from 2015-2019 so that it is flat. If you roll over the orange/red rectangles for each country you can see expected deaths, excess deaths, and % of excess deaths. Long term the US is seeing about 10% excess deaths (mostly in the 40% of unvaccinated) since COVID was introduced.

That is why you can also see a negative number of excess deaths lower down the page.

It's not almost the same though. It's showing a 20% increase during flu season.

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