You can get part of that with excess death rates. From the weeks overall deaths subtract the average death rate for this week in past years. That should give both people who died at home and consequential deaths.
I'd reckon it's "doable" but not "easy", putting it in the realm of professional epidemiology. People are also dying less in car crashes, pollution-induced asthma, etc. There's quite a bit that may need to be accounted for. I suspect analyses will have decent error bars a year or so from now, but it's unlikely we'll get precise realtime estimates from this methodology. Would love to be proved wrong.
The NYT has been analyzing that.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...
Re:We’re Testing the Wrong People
by rechristened on Thursday April 23, 2020 @03:20PM
(#22959991)
There are a lot of people not going to hospitals either because elective procedures were canceled or they fear getting corona virus. These will contribute to excess deaths but not be caused by coronavirus.
this is not easy, as death rates are going down because people are not out and about.
Re:We’re Testing the Wrong People
by rechristened on Thursday April 23, 2020 @03:26PM
(#22960059)
The number of deaths may be off but that is likely to be dwarfed by the much higher number of total cases that haven't been confirmed. Between this study, the LA study, and the Santa Clara study there could be 10-80x as many cases. That is more significant that the death count being off by a couple percent when it comes to determining the fatality rate.
Most nursing home deaths are not getting tested either.
Re:We’re Testing the Wrong People
by user5994461 on Thursday April 23, 2020 @01:42PM
(#22958604)
France started testing systematically in EHPAD (nursing home for retired fully dependent elders). That's why they have the most dramatic fatality rate out of every country now.
Not sure it was a good idea to test and attribute all the deaths to COVID.
Re:We’re Testing the Wrong People
by WrtCdEvrydy on Thursday April 23, 2020 @02:48PM
(#22959549)
It's difficult because you don't want to use test kits on dead people.
I agree,, especially as you included the word “somewhat”. We have pretty good numbers on people who died in hospitals, but people who died at home appear to be seriously under counted.
Additionally, consequential deaths are currently invisible. These are people who died, say, ecause the coronavirus crowded out their access to hospitals. There’s been a drop in ER visits for things like heart conditions. Some of those people would have recovered fine anyway but some may have arterial blockage that will kill them. You don’t Want these numbers in the primary statistics (as they say nothing about control of the pandemic) but you do want these very hard to track numbers to understating future capacity planning, ethical procedures, and long term economic consequences.