What's the counterfactual? How many of these people would have died this year anyway?

[Guineapigbridge]

As an economist I am finding the statistics on covid-19 frustrating. 227,300 people have died with Covid-19 as of this morning. According to the statistics from New York that are reported on the Worldometer site, 75 percent of those who died will have had pre-existing conditions including Diabetes, Lung Disease, Cancer, Immunodeficiency, Heart Disease, Hypertension, Asthma, Kidney Disease, and GI/Liver Disease. A further 14 percent of them were over 75 years old when they died, even though they didn't have pre-existing conditions. That makes it 89 percent of people who are at quite high risk of death in a given year anyway, right? So has anyone run the numbers on how many would've died anyway? Without a counterfactual a pure count of deaths is meaningless from a policy perspective.

suddenly all life seems to matter equally where it didn't, actually, before

my apologies. You clearly are an economist.

Just one who seems to have missed the excess death number thingy

yeah I meant to be so "rude" if that is what you think I was as your posts are so ... god knows what you could call them ...

I am not an economist, or anything connected with statistics but seeing as we are in a pandemic and all I educated myself about things like ... excess death numbers.

Pallisers I completely get that you might not want to talk to me but as a non academic I’d be very interested in the excess death thingy and grateful if you can point me to some sources.

okay, okay no need to be so angry....

I thought there must be excess death numbers somewhere (that's why I asked MN where I could find them). It's not clear that they're being used for policy or widely in reporting. The politics behind the use of statistics interest me.

I don't know why this method doesn't apply to covid, suddenly all life seems to matter equally where it didn't, actually, before.

It does. The estimated deaths if this disease runs wild (500,000) and the knock on effects of the health service collapsing would have a greater economic cost than even the current mess. That doesn't even factor in the lifelong debilitating effects of lung damage for some, previously healthy, patients.

The 25-40,000 deaths that you think are of such little value are only so few because of the lockdown.

I should have stated that the 89 percent of people that I referred to were 'higher risk' rather than 'high'

I'm higher risk. I'm 40. There is no reason I won't live another 40+ years. The at risk factors don't mean nearly dead.

We have excess deaths for the first quarter of this year. It had been stated that the overall excess deaths at the end of all this may not be as high as we might expect. I believe Neil Ferguson, who is leading the UK's modelling, stated that up 2/3 of those dying may have died this year anyway. This article from the BBC gives lots of interesting information:.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

Re the Sky news link. The fact is, about 70-75% of CV deaths are in the over 75s. That alone is a risk factor for death this year. Who can say if a particular older person would have died this year in the absence of a terminal illness - but lots of them would die because of their age and the body naturally wearing down causing an illness which kills.

The BBC radio 4 documentary, More or Less, had an expert on who had plotted likelihood of death at every age from Coronavirus on a graph. They then compared this graph with the chance of someone at each age dying of any cause in a given year. The surprising result was that the graphs correlated. So your chance of dying if you catch coronavirus at, e.g 24, is about the same as the average 24 year old's chance of dying within the next 12 months from any factor. Google the programme and have a listen. They have done quite a lot of Coronavirus programmes with insights into various statistics about the whole thing. The first programme they did on it is the only one I've heard so far but I think it would interest you OP.

I'm not angry at all. I'm sure you are all lovely people. But surely if you are worried about whether the deaths from CV19 "matter" or would have happened anyway would lead you to something other than MN. The excess death statistic is a thing separate from covid. It is how epidemiologists etc (no I am not medical either -liberal arts/law) figure out how diseases and infections affect communities.

So basically, Putin could say well we only had X amount of deaths in Russia from CV19 but for later generations, the excess death rate that year will tell another story.

I thought there must be excess death numbers somewhere...It's not clear that they're being used for policy

Oh sure. Probably no one in the government has thought of that. You should email them.

What were you before you started identifying as an economist?

It will be extremely interesting, after all this is over, to look at who died of covid, with covid and because of covid.

There will be excess deaths because of covid that don't involve infection. Suicide, cancer diagnosis too late, avoiding A&E with chest pains.

The excess death numbers don't mean a great deal until you look over time. Because if covid kills those who would have died anyway, these people won't show up in the statistics later this year. So excess deaths shouldn't be looked at short term and thought to be definitive data.

It will be very interesting. As data. Tragic as life.

People getting angry because people ask these questions is bizarre. Saying that someone is suggesting that the deaths don't matter because they ask questions like this... The deaths do matter on an individual level, and are really sad and awful for those involved. But as a society, we know deaths happen. We don't stop driving cars because people die in accidents all the time. If CV is mainly accelerating deaths which would have happened soon anyway, that would obviously change how this whole thing is handled in the long term. The aim isn't to prevent every single death - deaths happens all the time. The aim is to limit the amount of deaths as far as possible but ultimately, society will have to function again and that's why questions like the OP is asking, matter. There is a sense of outrage from some people that every single death from Coronavirus is unacceptable. The deaths are terrible but so many deaths could be prevented if we stopped all sorts of things - but we know ultimately, life has to go on. We could ban e.g. cars, planes, swimming pools and alcohol. That would cut death rates by huge numbers . But we don't do that. We accept the need for society to function and aim to limit death as much as we can - we don't prevent every death. It's not cold-hearted to think that way - it's how every single person has conducted their life up to this point. We need to find a balance and knowing about excess deaths is key.

Thank you Yolo2!!

What were you before you started identifying as an economist?
A bin man

Why is everyone getting so personal? Just asking the questions that I hope those in power are asking. If the Minister of Health and the Cabinet are asking these questions, why isn't there more disclosure of the answers to the public? It's the one metric that decides whether all the other actions taken by government are 'worth it'.

Yolo2 “ We accept the need for society to function and aim to limit death as much as we can - we don't prevent every death. It's not cold-hearted to think that way - it's how every single person has conducted their life up to this point. We need to find a balance and knowing about excess deaths is key.”

So much this.

I think with modern medical management, many of the 'pre existing conditions' are not going to have been expected to cause death particularly soon, if ever. Also many of the elderly victims could have had many years left.

Excess deaths is a good figure to use because presumably by definition it factors in the deaths that normally occur due to the prevalence of these conditions, and advanced age.

Broadly, from all expert opinion I have heard, we are not looking at a situation where most would have died anyway. Far from it.

This will be finer detail stuff I guess, but without post mortems how will we ever know how many died from covid or something else? People who aren't tested might have covid on their death certificate or not, and when the data is presented certificate mentions rather than positive tests may not be factored in. Not to mention the high number of false negative tests.

In NYC the emergency services were reporting a huge rise in call outs to heart attacks (can't remember how much, something like 8 x normal) where covid was not mentioned, but they believed that covid was in fact behind the sudden increase.

It's important to ask the questions, as well as to be aware of any personal bias and to be reasonably well informed about what you are looking at. I wouldn't attempt it as I am not informed enough. I will listen to more trusted sources. OP didn't sound too well informed either thinking that the pre existing conditions could be mostly rounded into a would have died imminently anyway group.

Thanks Ink
To respond to your last point dig I don't think I ever posed myself as an informed person, just someone asking a question. Yes, my first summation of the die-anyway group was clumsy.

Why is everyone getting so personal?

Because people thought you were trying to have a shot at being an armchair expert and that is not allowed, ever.

Unless you are using your armchair expertise to drum up hysteria and / or spread falsehoods about lockdown rules. Then it's allowed. Hope that helps. 😊😂

Some of these responses are... emotional. It's a good question and it will be interesting to see what the figures look like when all of this is said and done. Well, that's if I survive long enough to see them.

xx

Sorry for post of xx

I think we responded to OP because she started her post by saying:

" As an economist I am finding the statistics on covid-19 frustrating"

I thought as an economist she might know or have found out by now - many weeks in - how excess deaths are counted. Her question is a good question for someone who doesn't know how statistics work -but preceded by "as an economist" it makes it sound like she has an agenda

I accept OP simply wasn't aware of the ways governments calculate deaths and excess deaths. Wondering about that since she is an economist but then again people have areas of specialty.

I didn't mean to be rude. I was just explaining that people taking issue weren't taking issue with asking the question in itself.

The BBC started to answer this question in regards to the UK. It was to counteract the virus being dismissed.

We've had the highest death rate in 20 years. I think we are up around 13'000 deaths, but considering the pubs are closed and we haven't got a lot of other deaths from fights and the usual stabbings, it's more.

We haven't had care homes cleared out like this (that won't matter to some). We certainly have never had health care staff die like this. Not even at the start of the Elboa crisis.

But it's interesting, because i have Nigerian friends and their family in Lagos are taking the recommendations on board, but this is by no means the biggest threat to their lives. Their Parents were caught up in the Biafra Crisis, were four million people died and as we've seen across India etc, people are now dying from malnutrition. So the numbers so far mean nothing to those in the developed world. It's just the latest disease in a long line of threats to life.

It's an interesting discussion.

Malaria kills half a million people a year, has probably killed half the people who've ever lived and targets children. So that is, and continues to be, the big news in the majority world.

Op, haven't read the full thread but logic tells you a huge proportion of the world are dying even though it's in lockdown. Imagine what it would be without such extreme measures? That itself tells you something I think.

If you’re in NZ it’s worth noting that one in 7 NZ children has asthma and one in 8 adults. That’s over 600,000 New Zealanders with a pre-existing condition right there many of whom would most certainly not have died anyway

It’s also worth noting that currently mortality statistics are warped because of all the deaths not happening because of limiting social mobility ie the fact NZ now has the lowest road toll since forever