COVID-19 ... how we cope :)

[Dilip Panjwani]

I do understand the arguments surrounding excess death stats. But if you believe they support the premise North Dakota got it right, show us your calculations.
Do the math and support your claim.

4% excess mortality implies less than two-thirds of the excess (over usual) deaths than 6.5% excess mortality would imply, per capita...that is quite a bit of math, isn't it?

[Dilip Panjwani]

.. then you need all of that data, don't you?

Excess mortality effectively adds up all that data into one figure... and the worldwide and the US statewide data can be very easily googled...

[Peter McKillop]

Excess mortality effectively adds up all that data into one figure... and the worldwide and the US statewide data can be very easily googled...

Estimates of excess deaths presented in this webpage were calculated using Farrington surveillance algorithms (1). A range of values for the number of excess deaths was calculated as the difference between the observed count and one of two thresholds (either the average expected count or the upper bound of the 95% prediction interval), by week and jurisdiction.

RATS!!! November 5, 1969 - I skipped classes after attending the Led Zeppelin concert in Kitchener the night before in, shall we say, an altered state of consciousness. November 5 - the day we studied Farrington surveillance algorithms in Math 335. I'm out of this discussion.

[Pargat Perrer]

RATS!!! November 5, 1969 - I skipped classes after attending the Led Zeppelin concert in Kitchener the night before in, shall we say, an altered state of consciousness. November 5 - the day we studied Farrington surveillance algorithms in Math 335. I'm out of this discussion.

There is a bright side Peter.... you are Ramblin' On up the Stairway To Heaven! :)

[Pargat Perrer]

Excess mortality effectively adds up all that data into one figure... and the worldwide and the US statewide data can be very easily googled...

So if deaths from car accidents went down so much that the number dwarfed the number of Covid deaths.... Covid is a GOOD thing? Lockdowns are a GOOD thing?

[Dilip Panjwani]

So if deaths from car accidents went down so much that the number dwarfed the number of Covid deaths.... Covid is a GOOD thing? Lockdowns are a GOOD thing?

What state/country are you referring to?
In the examples I gave, there was no lockdown in Sweden/N. Dakota...
As Trump said, don't make the treatment worse than the disease; right, Frarey?

[Neil Frarey]

What state/country are you referring to?
In the examples I gave, there was no lockdown in Sweden/N. Dakota...
As Trump said, don't make the treatment worse than the disease; right, Frarey?

Sorry, I still having a hard time dealing with how incredibly low Oprah has fallen ...what the hell happened.

But yeppers Panjwani, Trump did say something about that almost a year ago to the day.

https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...-cure-be-worse

[Bob Gillanders]

What state/country are you referring to?
In the examples I gave, there was no lockdown in Sweden/N. Dakota...
As Trump said, don't make the treatment worse than the disease; right, Frarey?

Oh my goodness. I said I understood excess deaths argument, not that I necessarily believed in it.
I invited you to show us the math, but you declined.
Excess deaths calculations are nothing more than a smell test offered up by those who choose to ignore all the facts before them. It can indicate false data may be present, but it is in no way a prove by itself. You gave insufficient data to support your claim.

And if you then have to quote Trump, well that says it all.

I guess the analogy would be this: Trump claims he must have won the election because his rallies were larger than Biden's. This would be his excess deaths argument. But when you show the math, (ie. the ballots, recounts, court challenges, and the reason why Biden didn't hold large rallies) the argument falls apart.

[Hans Jung]

Italy has reached 100,000 + deaths.

[Brad Thomson]

RATS!!! November 5, 1969 - I skipped classes after attending the Led Zeppelin concert in Kitchener the night before in, shall we say, an altered state of consciousness.

I still like listening to Led Zep. But on April 2, 1967 I saw The Monkees at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. You will notice I said "saw" because we could barely hear them for all of the screaming, and yet we were sitting fairly close. I learned only many years later that Jimi Hendrix was opening for The Monkees earlier in the tour but he did not make it as far as Toronto. Oh well...

[Peter McKillop]

I still like listening to Led Zep. But on April 2, 1967 I saw The Monkees at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. You will notice I said "saw" because we could barely hear them for all of the screaming, and yet we were sitting fairly close. I learned only many years later that Jimi Hendrix was opening for The Monkees earlier in the tour but he did not make it as far as Toronto. Oh well...

Hendrix was the one performer from the sixties I really regret not seeing.

[Dilip Panjwani]

Oh my goodness. I said I understood excess deaths argument, not that I necessarily believed in it.
I invited you to show us the math, but you declined.
Excess deaths calculations are nothing more than a smell test offered up by those who choose to ignore all the facts before them. It can indicate false data may be present, but it is in no way a prove by itself. You gave insufficient data to support your claim.

And if you then have to quote Trump, well that says it all.

I guess the analogy would be this: Trump claims he must have won the election because his rallies were larger than Biden's. This would be his excess deaths argument. But when you show the math, (ie. the ballots, recounts, court challenges, and the reason why Biden didn't hold large rallies) the argument falls apart.

Hey Bob,
As Aris once said on Chesstalk, (something like this), the cause of death can be faked, but the death itself is always real. Sid also therefore pointed out that the most reliable piece of stats we have is the excess mortality rate. What you are probably looking for is the details of the excess deaths, but I don't think that is required for deciding which reaction to the pandemic produced the least misery or the most misery (and that includes economic misery, which unfortunately also translates into more deaths in the real world)...
And BTW, even though both you and me are happy that Trump is no longer the POTUS, I choose to acknowledge that he did have clarity of vision on many issues (including how to win 75 million supporters despite all his shortcomings)...

[Victor Itkine]

4% excess mortality implies less than two-thirds of the usual deaths than 6.5% excess mortality would imply per capita...that is quite a bit of math, isn't it?

Hello Folks,

Somehow, I didn’t notice this discussion, and paid attention to it when it was already on page 110. I would like to add my 2 cents here, but forgive me if this was already discussed on previous pages.

From my point of view, the concept of “excess mortality” is not the best criterion for assessing the impact of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality in individual countries. “Excess mortality” is the difference between actual mortality and expected (predicted) mortality; the project of expected mortality is a very rough estimate with a margin of error, usually within the range of at least 15% (despite use of Farrington surveillance algorithms, etc.). Not to mention the fact that different countries use completely different methodologies for predicting mortality.

A much more informative criterion (for assessing the effectiveness of lockdowns) is the death rate per million population, which is very accurately reported on the Worldometer website for each country (the error hardly exceeds 0.1%).

When using this criterion, we should not forget that mortality from the COVID-19 in a single country significantly depends not only on the severity of lockdowns, but also whether the population of this country was mandatory vaccinated against tuberculosis with the BCG vaccine.

Almoust a year ago the first scientific articles appeared with the hypothesis that BCG vaccine, vaccinated in infancy or in early childhood, significantly reduces a person’s risk of dying from COVID-19. In the vast majority of developed countries, BCG vaccination was mandatory at birth or early childhood from 1950s – 1960s to 1980s – 2000s (in some countries it is still mandatory). These countries include Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, some Eastern European countries, Russia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, etc. However, in some developed countries BCG vaccine has never ever been mandatory: Canada, US, UK, Italy, Belgium, and, probably, few more.

When I for the first time read about BCG hypothesis, I have made my own statistical analysis using the example of two parts of Germany (to get the maximum possible “purity of the experiment”). In West Germany BCG vaccination was mandatory from 1961 until 1975. In East Germany it was mandatory from 1951 until 1998 (despite the fact that Germany was united in 1990, in the territory of the former GDR BCG vaccination was still mandatory until 1998). Without going into small details, my statistical analysis showed that as at April 24, 2020 the death rate from COVID-19 in the former East Germany territory was 29.4 per million, however, in the former West Germany territory it was 76.9 per million, i.e. the death rate in former West Germany was 2.6 times higher (I took the initial data – for each of the provinces separately – from the official website of the German Ministry of Health; I have not updated the data since April 24, 2020, but the overall picture could hardly have changed dramatically). When I checked the death rate separately for Berlin, it was somewhere in the middle between former Eastern Germany and Western Germany rates. This can be explained by the fact that the current population of Berlin consists of the population of the former East Berlin and West Berlin, which until 1990 was a separate city.

Now – to my main point: comparing the death rate from COVID-19 in Sweden to the death rate in Canada (or in North Dakota) is the same as comparing oranges to apples. In Sweden the entire population between 45 and 80 years old (and part of the population between 34 and 45 years old) received BCG vaccinations in childhood. Therefore, the death rate from COVID-19 in Sweden, all other things being equal, would be significantly lower than in Canada or in North Dakota. To assess the consequences of the lack of lockdowns in Sweden, it must be compared not with Canada or North Dakota, but with neighbouring countries Denmark, Norway and Finland. In all of these countries, in addition to the general similarities between them, the vast majority of the middle-aged and older population received BCG in childhood. Therefore, the main reason for the differences in mortality rates from COVID-19 in these countries is precisely the severity of lockdowns. As of today, we have 116 death per million rate in Norway, 140 – in Finland, 410 – in Denmark, and 1286 – in Sweden. These numbers speak for themselves. In fact, they mean that from over 13,000 people who have died from COVID-19 in Sweden, at least 9,000 elderly people would have survived if Sweden had introduced lockdowns as most civilized countries did.

And if you want to estimate the death rate from COVID-19 in Canada or in North Dakota, then compare them with other US states, or with Belgium, Italy and UK, where the majority of population does not have BCG vaccination. This comparison will be of great advantage in favour of Canada (587 death per million vs 1,901 in North Dakota, 1,918 – in Belgium, 1,828 – in UK, 1,657 – in Italy, and 1,621 - average in USA). This means that it was not in vain that we experienced these lockdown inconveniences – it helped save thousands of lives.

This post, of course, does not purport to be a complete analysis. There must be other factors – apart from lockdowns and BCG shots – that affect mortality rates. One of these factors is the quality of healthcare in the country. For backward countries, this factor may be the most critical; but for developed countries, which were compared above, I neglected the difference in the quality of their health care.

Sorry for the long post. In short it didn’t work out.

[Peter McKillop]

...

And BTW, even though both you and me are happy that Trump is no longer the POTUS, I choose to acknowledge that he did have clarity of vision on many issues (including how to win 75 million supporters despite all his shortcomings)...

WTF??? You think Trump had clarity of vision on "many" issues? There wasn't much clarity at all unless you're a racist or a homophobe or a misogynist. Trump got 70+ million votes for two basic reasons: 1. the wealthy and near-wealthy loved him because he was filling their pockets with cash, and 2. the U.S. is full of white, under-educated, racist, beer-swilling assholes like the 'people' who stormed the Capitol. Dilip if your comments are representative of your clarity of vision and you're touting libertarianism, then I'm not going to waste any time checking it out.

[Pargat Perrer]

I still like listening to Led Zep. But on April 2, 1967 I saw The Monkees at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. You will notice I said "saw" because we could barely hear them for all of the screaming, and yet we were sitting fairly close. I learned only many years later that Jimi Hendrix was opening for The Monkees earlier in the tour but he did not make it as far as Toronto. Oh well...

Hey, this reminds me of those old Get Smart shows from the 1960s that I've seen on reruns...

Maxwell Smart: "So you're going to inject me with drugs to get information, eh? For your information, I was at the November 5th 1969 Led Zeppelin concert in Kitchener, and I smoked caterpillar and had peyote and mushrooms and purple microdot and coke and heroin all at once, and the police didn't get any information out of me!"

CHAOS agent: "I find that rather hard to believe."

Maxwell Smart: "Would you believe I was at the April 2nd 1967 Monkees concert in Toronto with no Jimmy Hendrix and I was juiced on cough syrup and the police didn't get any information?"

CHAOS agent: "The Monkees? WITHOUT Jimmy Hendrix? That's preposterous!"

Maxwell Smart: "How about the 1968 Saturday matinee in Guelph of the Dick van Dyke musical "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and I was hyperventilating after a whole box of Sour Gummies?"