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For some reason Europe saw a lot fewer excess deaths in 2020.

For example, in Germany it was only ~ +3%, and Sweden, which didn't lock down and had no mask mandates, had a lower death rate than in 2012:

https://i.redd.it/73x3fysmu7k61.png

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Germany was one of the countries that I remember handling it pretty well in the early days though. Italy, Spain, Belgium, and to some extent UK and France were the ones towards the top of the Worldometers per capita deaths IIRC.

What I wonder from that table though is why does Germany seem to have a higher death rate than peer countries over the prior few years? They are in line with Estonia and noticably higher than all the other countries listed.

Well, the first outbreaks in Europe were in Italy and Spain, too, so I'd say they had more of an excuse than the rest of us.

A big contributor (at least according to local epidemiologists) was the numbers here in Belgium were over reported, whereas most countries under reported. There was also an issue getting accurate numbers, because (mostly privately run) elderly homes weren't looking into it carefully enough to distinguish between Covid and other causes. That said, balls were definitely dropped.

Especially for Germany, the statistics are not complete for 2020. They will be in a few months hopefully.

Europe is light years ahead in medical emergency services, when compared to US, this my limited observation, I am EMT volunteer in US.

That's interesting. I'm a layman at best, but I've always heard that the US health care infrastructure is really good, as long as you are eligible for care in the first place. Given the potential astronomical cost of a sudden uninsured health emergency, it would seem that the money is there for it to be that way at least. I'm not american so I've only heard anecdotes though.

I meant in terms of emergency services response in general and transport/care from incident to hospital. I can't speak much about care in hospitals. But initial response to COVID was substantially worse in US then in Europe, in my subjective perspective.

It seems to vary also a lot by region. Take for instance this local news article from yesterday about excess death in some east German states: https://www.dnn.de/Region/Mitteldeutschland/Uebersterblichke...

Among other things it says the excess death in last December among members of a large health insurer (AOK) rose to 250% of the previous year in various heavy hit regions like Zwickau, Görlitz and Sächsische Schweiz ("So stieg die Übersterblichkeit im vergangenen Dezember unter den sächsischen AOK-Mitgliedern in den Landkreisen Zwickau, Görlitz und Sächsische Schweiz auf 250 Prozent des Vorjahresniveau.").

Sure, but if you look at the general trend in Sweden the death rate had been in a steady decline for many years so 2020 was a clear trend breaker.

Some call Sweden a nanny state and it's true in some regards as there had been changes to regulations (esp laws regarding smoking in bars,etc), comprehensive cancer screening initiatives, road construction laws,etc to decrease the impact of common mortality causes.

That's interesting, why is that?

Higher obesity in US maybe?

I doubt the entire US became sharply more obese in the past year, though, so much so that it also died from it.

The suggestion wasn't that they were dying from obesity, but from its correlation with covid. Not sure if it can account for the increase, but in conjunction with pretty terrible handling of the crisis during 2020 I could imagine it at least.

That makes sense, I misunderstood, thanks.

the US was already more obese than Germany -- and obesity seems to correlate with higher covid-19 mortality

I'm assuming tokai is saying that because obese people are more likely to have complications from Covid19, the US saw a higher increase in excess deaths, given that the obesity rate is higher than eg Germany.

This also explains some of the racial disparities in COVID deaths since the obesity rate for blacks is 49.6% vs 44.8% for Hispanics, 42.2% for whites, and 17.4% for Asians

Oh, I see, I thought they meant that the excess deaths were caused by obesity, not by COVID19 leading to higher rates of death among the obese. That makes more sense.

But the pandemic could have hit the more obese American population harder.

Probably a combination of:

- US letting it rip through vulnerable populations with the promise of "herd immunity" being right around the corner

- Fewer hospital beds available in less populous areas.

- Taking COVID seriously became a culture war issue. So while some countries might've had its youth catch it while mostly keeping it away from older populous, the US had the opposite: less vulnerable youth took it relatively seriously, with lots of 60+ flaunting safety measures they felt were oppressive

How does that explain Sweden? Or Germany. Or any of of the stats the person above you was replying to.

I'm not sure it's really a good comparison to pick a subset of European countries and compare them to the whole US. Some countries seem to have handled it better than others, which we could definitely learn from, but I don't think it is a US vs Europe problem like some other commenters seem to be implying. We could also compare Italy, Belgium, Hungary to Vermont.

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