What I'd be interested in are some graphs that compare deaths of January, February, March and April for 2018, 2019 and 2020. To see the expected trend from 2018/19 and the reality of 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...
If you scroll down low enough, you stumble upon per country multi-year comparisons. Notice how for Sweden, Switzerland, France or England the spike is not much higher than the seasonal 2017 flu.
Moreover the peak of the 2017 flu is cut out of the graph for France and England, as a couple weeks before/after new years are cut out from the graph for aesthetic[?!] reasons. For a publication that wants to be taken seriously, cutting out the most relevant comparison point is embarrassing.
And, of course, no breakdown by age.
The numbers will grow further.
Compare graph for week 15 and 16. The data in NYT are for 5 of April, but we were not done counting deaths. The true numbers are substantially higher. England is especially high.
* The spike is steep, but it appears to have quickly receded. Perhaps an artifact of what you are calling 'not done counting deaths'. Would you elaborate, what's holding back the data, when can we count [sic] on accurate counts?
* The spike is not that tall. In deaths/week, 2017 peaks at 70k deaths and 2020 peaks at 86k over all age groups. Going to the 15-64 demographics, turns out that 2018 peaks at 8.9k, whereas 2020 peaks at 9.9k. So we've got 1k extra deaths per week for a few weeks at a population of 200M+ people, the end is nigh?!
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
PS. Speaking of sensationalist, this is a great time to start presenting data using honest charts that start at zero, and not arbitrary high values [40k/7k] to magnify small variability.
PS2. Does anyone know how to get the euromomo dataset? In a middle of a global pandemic, a bit sad that a critical piece of data is unavailable for independent verification / presentation.
Ad. "So we've got 1k extra deaths per week for a few weeks at a population of 200M+ people, the end is nigh?!"
There is a question about long term health of people who got COVID-19. Based on Japanese study on Grand Princess passengers [0] and some 6 divers [1] all with mild cases from Germany around 50 to 80% of people seem to have damage to the lungs visible on CT scans after mild symptomatic or even asymptomatic infection. Two of the divers had significant oxygen deficiency when doing physical exercise after 5-6 weeks of recovery. The guess of the doctor who was inspecting them is that this is permanent damage that may take years to recover if ever.
Also, the virus didn't go away - it's still there. Depending on location 0-20% of people got infected with median probably around 1%. In places where 20% got infected the virus killed significant portions of the whole population. In Bergamo province of Italy with little bit over 1 million population and 4000 deaths the virus killed around ~0.4% of the whole population or close to 1 in 200 people. It's very unlikely that there will be any mass events in Europe this year or next year before we get vaccines. Any indoors events involving more than 100 people - especially involving talking, dancing, singing or mourning are also very unlikely.
Ad. PS. They updated their website recently. This is how it looked like before - they were reporting z-scores only and only as a picture. https://twitter.com/Isinlor/status/1249252918609526784 I count the new website as a big step up :) .
Ad. PS2. Somebody would need to write scraping script from the website. Also: > While the network fully supports data sharing, the network hub is not mandated by the participating countries to release any national data. If you are interested in exploring the possibility to access national data, please approach countries individually.
[0] https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryct.2020200110
[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
* Not sure how to read the Japanese study. There were 3700 passengers on that ship, the CT study only tracks 101 of them. I could not figure out the selection process. Furthermore, how does this compare to the annual flu? Quick Internet search: "Chest CT findings of influenza virus‐associated pneumonia in 12 adult patients" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941884. Sounds ominous, and yet here we are.
* Yay for a better website!
* Who is better positioned to succeed in asking countries for permission to release the data: random citizens, or the researchers that already have connections to the respective countries health departments on this very topic? Stop hiding behind bureaucratic excuses. Pull whatever strings you have to pull to get the data published.
Edit: Another presentation of the euromomo data: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking.... Looks quite a bit more balanced than the NYT piece.
Especially when you consider things like the dramatic drop in reported mortality from things like heart disease the last few months according to the preliminary data.
But preliminary data isn't very good quality ever, so it is hard to tell how much of that is just bad data, how much is coronavirus killing people that were going to die in only weeks anyway, and how much is misreporting.
But in six months or so, when the data start to settle down, we will find out which direction we are miscounting in. (Clearly we are miscounting in both directions by significant amounts, but it's hard to tell the comparative magnitude)
TL;DR: more than a decade of life-time lost on average per victim that dies of novel coronavirus.