source: https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/world-m...
Tremendous progress is being made against Malaria. Of course, it's not enough until will destroy this scourge.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-kills-people-an-ave...
Agreed. But I think quantifications can still be useful.
Person-years probably aren't the right sort of quantification though, in that they blend together too many kinds of human experience. But I imagine most people would agree that statements like "X% of grandparents, lost 10 years earlier than expected" or "Y% of children under 10" allow for comparing the relative impact on families.
Quantifying losses doesn't mean that we consider the quantified as fungible.
Unless you're a hospital director on a budget, or something. (I don't know how such people cope; there's no winning decision there.)
And in context of opportunity cost, in a situation where limited medical resources need to be allocated, it’s not a controversial opinion that a 90 year old can be let go in favor of saving a 10 year old.
"Potential" person years lost, I guess. If you used "person years" the same way you use "Our firm has a combined 125 years of experience" then it's the other way round.
(Grim discussion, I guess, but I'm just not certain I agree with the unspoken assumption that seems to be in that statement, that the younger the death, the more tragic/more effect on society.)
>(Grim discussion, I guess, but I'm just not certain I agree with the unspoken assumption that seems to be in that statement, that the younger the death, the more tragic/more effect on society.)
It is a matter of morality and personal ethics. I chose to mention it only because the discrepancy in this case is so large, and it felt almost misleading to not relate the information. That said, I regret framing it in such a coldly utilitarian way.
Hard to know. Do you think there's zero chance that, when you're their age, you might be the one telling your adult kid that you've had a happy, long life, and don't feel the need to experiment with longevity?
It's not only deaths, it's also lost opportunity, as malaria is a chronic disease. Children miss out on schooling, adults miss out on work, and malarious areas miss out on investment.
I'd been hearing the numbers might be inflated from diagnoses on dead people without tests. Hard to know what's really going on with anything with all the conflicting information.
Here are some good state-by state graphs [1], and here's a country-wide graph [2]
By any measure, our "excess deaths" since February have spiked enormously, and significantly more than the current official Covid death count.
Some may be due to hospitals overflowing preventing other care. But it's pretty clearly all Corona-related.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/28/us/coronaviru...
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/05/02/exc...
Over the past few years, the evidence linking human health and overall mortality to isolation and human contact has been increasing. Don't get me wrong I'm staying locked down for the foreseeable future, but I have family and close friends whose mental health I'm seriously worried about. Not to mention physical health from stress, isolation, reduced activity, and can't afford to eat as healthy / stress-eating.
No idea if those are trends that will even come close to direct covid deaths, but we can't make informed decisions considering them.
> But it's pretty clearly all Corona-related.
If you count the above as "Corona-related", then I don't think the number has much meaning in terms of informing public policy.
Of course as that article and any other responsible ones should point out, the benefits and harms fall quite unevenly, and there is a lot of real misery too. And at some point the economic harm from ongoing lock down would certainly affect more and more people regardless of previous income. But even so as far as society overall goes it at worst looks like a wash right now, and seems more likely to lean towards fewer deaths. So excess vs previous years does look like a valid number to use as some level of gut check given the ongoing poor state of testing.
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1: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/recessions-dont-lead...
2: https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-offers-a-clear-view...
Yes, but you don't have to give up. If you use critical thinking and assess the competing claims and the strength of the evidence for them, it becomes clear that the evidence for inflated counts is extremely weak, bordering on hearsay, and inconsistent with the overall data, while the evidence for extra uncounted deaths is much broader and stronger and consistent with the overall data, so while there is uncertainty about the true numbers, on net it's reasonable to assume more deaths are being missed than overcounted.
Should we assume that social isolation, lack of physical activity, change of habits, being laid off a job and worse health care (preventive for example) have no impact on the number of deaths? That's quite a big assumption.
There are certainly some deaths being incorrectly attributed to COVID-19, but I think the data conclusively rejects the hypothesis that there is rampant COVID-19 over-reporting.
It's worth noting that in terms of person-years lost, an average malaria death is significantly worse as it predominantly kills children under the age of 5.