Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline
by leoedin on Sunday May 24, 2020 @04:06AM
(#23289999)
I think the point the parent was making is that many of the people who died in the last 2 months would likely have died in the next year anyway - so although there's clearly high numbers of excess deaths today, we may actually find that many of those deaths are just brought forward by 6 months. We won't know whether that's true for years though.
> If you plotted out the frequency of ages and deaths over time, it would primarily register as a small blip/compressing of deaths primarily amongst the older.
is not strictly true. In certain regions, NYC as an example[1], you have to look at excess mortality, or the number of deaths that are in excess of expectations given a periodic seasonal model. In some areas the number is much, much higher than normal. It's not enough to read off the reported deaths because there are many more that are attributed to other causes.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e5.htm