Comment by unpolloloco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unpolloloco | Hacker News Reader

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If I'm reading this correctly, this paper is defining excess deaths as the number of people who died in the US who wouldn't have were those people living in Europe instead of the US at that point in time? Which points to structural issues in the US system, but not to some event in 2017 that resulted in extra deaths vs. any surrounding years (just that the death rate in the US has dropped much slower than in Europe over the study timeline 2000-2017).

The US death rate didn't appreciably increase (~3 per 100k) in 2017 vs. 2016[1] and has generally been improving. That's about 10k extra deaths, not 400k, like the paper says (because the paper's usage of that term is very different than The Economist's!)

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/mortality-trends...

> but not to some event in 2017 that resulted in extra deaths vs. any surrounding years

But that's exactly what the paper shows. It's reasonable to ask the question why was the difference in deaths far greater in 2017 than in the surrounding years and why was the mean age of the persons excessively dying so relatively young? There most likely are structural differences causing excess US deaths, but the claim that those structural differences caused a huge relative spike in one year for no particular reason isn't very satisfying.

Did you read the paper? It effectively has three US data points it's using: deaths in 2000, 2010, and 2017. And it's comparing to European countries in the same time to calculate excess deaths. But they're defining excess deaths as those due to living in the US vs. Europe. Not excess deaths in 2017 vs. 2000 or 2010. This is pointing to structural issues in the US (like healthcare, violence, opioid issues, etc.) causing a long-term mortality rate difference between the US and Europe (it's significantly worse in 2010 as well as 2017). Not that there was a peak in 2017.

I don’t see how I can state what I’m saying more clearly and you’re obviously not following. Maybe try reading the comment you’re replying to more carefully?

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