The Economist's excess deaths model

Re:The Economist's excess deaths model by evilpotatoes on Tuesday May 25, 2021 @01:44PM (#27279886)

Isn't this based on a rather questionable assumption that all excess deaths in this time period were due to undiagnosed COVID ? There's been a large spike in drug overdoses, and some increases in suicides that have been seen. Would it not be reasonable to assume that a number of these deaths were caused by lockdowns, and various other heavy-handed measures authorities used to try to control outcomes ?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Economist's excess deaths model by thebruce87m on Tuesday May 25, 2021 @04:54PM (#27282508)

All the data on suicides I have seen so far shows that there are no significant changes to the suicide rates outside existing trends.

For your other point about excess mortality being caused by lockdowns, you can view charts of excess mortality here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

You can see that some countries, e.g. Norway had lockdowns but did not incur any severe excess mortality - but note that this only proves that you can have lockdowns with no excess, not that every lockdown is equal.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Economist's excess deaths model by petertodd on Tuesday May 25, 2021 @07:06PM (#27283925)

"Suicide attempt admissions have increased by 100 per cent on average during the pandemic," the release says. "Admissions for substance-use disorders have increased by 200 per cent."

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/cheo-joins-other-children-s-hospit...

While that's not the same as saying actual deaths from suicide have increased, there is a serious problem, at least here in Canada.

edit: Attempts up 90% in Colorado as well:

https://coloradosun.com/2021/05/25/mental-health-emergency-c...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Economist's excess deaths model by thebruce87m on Wednesday May 26, 2021 @02:22AM (#27287053)

Sure, I was aware of the increase in ideation and attempts but we were talking about excess deaths. I don’t like it when articles use percentages and omit the absolute numbers which are also important to give a sense of scale.

Suicide is a serious issue and shouldn’t be ignored. We should also apply the same logic to suicides as people are applying to covid - would these people have tried suicide anyway but covid/lockdown just brought it forward? Will we therefore have a drop in attempts now to mirror the spike up?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Economist's excess deaths model by mattmanser on Wednesday May 26, 2021 @03:01AM (#27287284)

You're cherry picking numbers.

While a children's hospital in Colorado might have reported a 90% increase, across the whole of the US suicides were down 5%.

As far as I know, most countries are reporting an overall drop in suicides during the pandemic.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Economist's excess deaths model by mattmanser on Tuesday May 25, 2021 @07:02PM (#27283880)

Suicides numbers are nowhere near high enough to make a significant difference, they'd have to increase by 1000%. And apparently they fell by 5% in the US in 2020 anyway.

And US drug overdose went from 72k in 2019 to 81k in 2020. So less than 2% of the economist's 500k[1] might be attributable to that.

You might point at road deaths, which have increased quite strangely, but again, wrong order of magnitude, by 2 orders even, increase of 4k compared to 500k.

So to answer your question, no, it's not a questionable assumption.

Perhaps you might consider the simplest explanation, a deadly virus, is the best one?

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/04/05/deaths-i...

[ Parent | on HN ]