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Comment by malkuth23 | Hacker News Reader

Less people driving?

Also perhaps fewer elective medical operations, which result in fewer iatrogenic deaths (3rd leading cause of death, at least in the US).

This is a good candidate. Although some of this effect might be countered by people dying because they didn't get elective treatment.

Regardless: when you change pretty much every parameter of society (risk behavior, driving, crime, health care, ...) I don't understand how one can use the overall death statistics and try to attribute them to Covid.

I think the elective treatment theory is a better point than my driving guess. If you have a disease and your options are to get surgery or take medicine, you are probably being pushed towards non-surgical options, even if that would have overall worse results on average. This might ultimately raise the mortality rate, but would temporarily depress it.

Anecdotally, I definitely find myself trying to be safer right now. I have avoided ladder work on my house and been super careful when using a knife. I just do not want to go to a hospital right now.

I think looking at the overall death statistics are super interesting though. If traffic deaths fall, that is in some ways a byproduct of Covid. If more cancer patients die, that is also a byproduct. All of this goes into factoring how much damage and protection both the disease and the quarantine orders have caused.

Didn't think about that. Looking at figures it's less than 6/week killed in traffic, while all deaths is 1700/week, so it's unlikely to make a dent. Easter is probably one of the worst traffic weeks, but even then it's probably not enough for a difference.

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