Hacker News Reader

Comment by angelzen | Hacker News Reader

> Based on the newly updated provisional dataset released today from the Canadian Vital Statistics Death Database, from the end of March 2020 to the beginning of April 2021, an estimated 62,203 deaths were reported among Canadians aged 0 to 64. This represents 5,535 more deaths than expected were there no pandemic, after accounting for changes in the population such as aging. Over the same period, 1,380 COVID-19 deaths have been attributed to the same age group (those younger than 65), suggesting that the excess mortality is, in large part, related to other factors such as increases in the number deaths attributed to causes associated with substance use and misuse, including unintentional (accidental) poisonings and diseases and conditions related to alcohol consumption.

View on HN

The summary is the lock downs resulted in +4,155 excess deaths under 65 for 2020?

Thats pretty damning for the government and a confirmation of what anti-lock down protesters have been saying since last year.

If they let under 65s free while sheltering the vulnerable and keeping mask and distance protocol would there be 4x the covid deaths, probably not.

And we could have avoided the ~$400+ billion dollar deficit.

It's not immediately obvious that the excess deaths are lockdown related deaths. There's also a growing overdose epidemic among that age group, for example.

It's well supported that the combination of lock down isolation[1] in addition to the free CERB money resulted in the spike of drug abuse / suicide deaths[2].

[1] https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-coronavirus-is-killing-thousa...

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addict...

...

And I don't believe we have even begun to see the psychological / developmental effects of isolation and distance learning on young kids.

But we can see the impact of those who has become orphans because of COVID. I prefer your armchair problems any day

The results of the study are that more orphans were created by the lockdowns than covid.

The study doesn’t say those who die because of their addiction during lockdown were parents.

No, it's absolutely not well supported that deaths by suicide have increased.

I mean, from your own link:

> We don’t have data that the lockdowns are causing more suicides,

I would guess that people who are socially isolated and unemployed are more likely to engage in drug abuse.

I believe that increasing trend in overdose deaths was accounted for in the excess mortality calculation used in the article.

That's not what it says at all. This is preliminary and no conclusions have been made. It could be that 4155 COVID deaths were not properly tested and incorrectly categorized.

Yeah, restrictions in Canada varied by region and shifted on and off, so it would take a lot more analysis to say one way or the other.

I disagree. The paper goes into some details explaining how many deaths are due to alcohol abuse vs. poisoning etc. They also have a list of conditions that they associate with the various causes of death. For example, if somebody dies of alcoholic gastritis, they classify the death as alcohol-related.

Now, like all estimates, I am sure there are errors, but it's not like they haven't done their homework.

There isn't enough data in the paper to blame the lockdown per se, however. E.g., it could be that the media fear-mongering is driving people crazy more than usual. There is no way to tell.

There could actually be way less covid deaths due to improper testing.

I'm glad people are finally admitting that there could be problems with covid testing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com