It'll be fun when the dust settles to going back to look at alternative approaches to estimate how effective the lockdowns were.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm - "Weekly number of deaths (from all causes)"
It'll be fun when the dust settles to going back to look at alternative approaches to estimate how effective the lockdowns were.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm - "Weekly number of deaths (from all causes)"
The article notes that, through July 25, there were 235,610 excess U.S. deaths. The link you gave shows that excess deaths started March 28th, for a period of ~119 days.
Wikipedia says that the U.S. had 291,557 combat deaths during WWII, which was over a ~1366 day period of U.S. combat involvement if we count the period from Pearl Harbor until the end of the war. The U.S. is about 2.46 more populous now, so adjusting for that, the ratio of the rate of excess death over the period studied vs. U.S. combat deaths in WWII is (235610 / (119 * 2.46)) / (291557 / 1366) = 3.77.
Since you're calling 3.77x the population-adjusted rate of WWII combat deaths "mostly normal", I would be curious to know what rate of death you would consider abnormal.
On a non-population-adjusted basis, which is arguably the correct measure if we want to think about waging a war that's the equivalent of WWII, the death rate over the period studied would've been equivalent to the U.S. combat deaths from waging 9.28 simultaneous WWIIs. Personally, I wouldn't consider simultaneously engaging in nine wars the size of WWII to be business as usual.
I'd be particularily interested in comparing the above ratio for Vietnam, or to German or Russian (combat & non-) WW2 deaths.
I think most college-educated Americans are aware that the Soviets lost nearly endless waves of soldiers against the Nazis. I also think most Americans are largely indifferent to the numbers of German rank-and-file soldiers killed, as if sympathy for the enemy dead would somehow diminish admiration for the heroes who defeated the Nazis.
On a side note, I have a Scottish friend who still swears up and down that Americans weren't involved in D-Day. I tried pointing him at Wikipedia entries for Utah and Omaha beaches, but I get the impression he believes it's just American propaganda that the US had much involvement in WWII before the Nazis were on the retreat.
Well, clearly this is an abnormal number of deaths. Pretty much every week is statistically Very Unlikely.
But it is 20% higher than the background rate. Quitting a job as a day labourer and going into roofing is something like a 400% death rate. People voluntarily subject themselves to some pretty outsized risks.
> Wikipedia says that the U.S. had 291,557 combat deaths during WWII...
That is about a decade worth of car accidents. So on the one hand, horrific. On other other hand, the raw number of deaths is not the biggest issue at play. It didn't stop Americans marching over to the other side of the world to fight people.
This is an example of how statistics can mislead. Why not select the worst 119 days of ww2 and compare it to 119 days of covid? After all, most of 1366 days of ww2 didn't involve actual fighting. Also, are we including definitive covid deaths or "covid related deaths". Because if we included "ww2 related deaths and not just combat deaths", then I suspect that ratio would plummet towards 0.
> I would be curious to know what rate of death you would consider abnormal.
I guess it depends, but spike in deaths every now and then is normal even if it looks abnormal. It may sound counterintuitive but that's just life.
Your statistical analysis is intentionally dishonest. You cherrypicked the time frame and example to fit your agenda. How about try another set of data - the US combat deaths on D-Day ( 2500 deaths ) and extrapolate that to 119 days and population adjust and enjoy. Funny how that makes covid look like a walk in the park huh? But if I did that, it would be just as intellectually dishonest as your example.
Also, almost all of the combat deaths in ww2 was young healthy men whereas covid seems to afflict predominantly older people - almost all of them 45 and over. So not quite apples to apples right?
Not only is it not actually business as usual, as other commenters remark, but this rate of death is despite the severe measures taken.
Without such measures, deaths would have been 10-20 times higher.
Is that based on anything? I’m skeptical - many places that took more severe measures did worse than places that took less severe measures (both within the US and internationally), and nowhere ended up with death rates per capita an order of magnitude larger than what we’re seeing in the US.
I really disagree with your observations based on living in NL and visiting Sweden several times over the last few months. These are two very poor examples of countries where mask-wearing is prioritized and accepted.
The Dutch government only a week or two ago "urgently advised" wearing masks indoors, and even with that advice in my own experience a majority of people are not wearing one. Before that, hardly anyone wore a mask indoors. I've traveled to Antwerp a few times for work in the past few months, and the prevalence of masks there compared to NL is striking.
And Sweden generally has been quite averse to wearing masks in public...it's not ever been mandated anywhere, not even on transit like in NL.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200831/sweden-remains-an-outlier-d...
[0] COVID-19 herd immunity in the Brazilian Amazon: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.16.20194787v...
And, I wouldn’t necessarily extrapolate what happened in one city to what would happen across an entire country.
So yeah, more deaths, no doubt. But 10-20x more? Seems unsupported.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...