Re:France reports nearly half a million new Covid cases, a r...
by loceng on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @05:51AM
(#29992110)
Has anyone else been surprised that COVID numbers generally provide very narrow/shallow or no context for the numbers prevented, for example, how COVID numbers compare to flu season? Mind you I don't think any nation has ever done any mass flu testing before, so not all numbers are available.
That site reports weekly excess death numbers for most of Europe and Israel as well. Excess death appears to be defined not as excess from an average year, but as excess from an average period where there are no flu or other diseases circulating. This makes sense because the goal of collecting these data is to know quickly whether there are breakouts of diseases, and thus the baseline must be "a typical year without flu" rather than "a typical year". Thus, the numbers give you some idea of the impact of covid compared with the flu, at least in terms of deaths. Occasionally you can see other phenomena such as the impact of heat waves in the summer. I understand that the baseline is adjusted for population growth.
In the area covered it looks like there are about 70000 baseline deaths per week, or roughly 3.5M deaths for a year. There were about 100K excess deaths in 2017 and 2019, about 160K excess deaths in 2018, 400K in 2020 and 350K in 2021. Eyeballing, the current wave seems to be comparable to the 2017-2018 winter episode.
I find the graphs by age very interesting, especially the 0-14 range.
Re:France reports nearly half a million new Covid cases, a r...
by captainbland on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @04:46AM
(#29991678)
It's interesting that the UK didn't see anything quite like that, more like ~150k in one day. Although I suspect many are avoiding testing in the UK so that they don't have to miss work if it comes up positive because of our meagre sick pay policies.
Re:France reports nearly half a million new Covid cases, a r...
by refurb on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @03:48AM
(#29991324)
Australia hit record highs last week, so did Canada.
But at the same time, the more you test the more you find. Pre-Omnicron, most people I know never tested if they got sick, as long as it didn't feel like more than a cold.
Re:France reports nearly half a million new Covid cases, a r...
by DannyCasolaro on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @03:51AM
(#29991346)
Test positivity rates are through the roof, and wastewater sampling also indicates a huge surge of infections. I don't think this can be that easily dismissed as an artifact of testing.
Re:France reports nearly half a million new Covid cases, a r...
by DannyCasolaro on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @03:30AM
(#29991220)
To add some context to this number, France recorded new confirmed cases (there may be quite a bit more that went unreported) in 0.7% of its total population in one day.
That site reports weekly excess death numbers for most of Europe and Israel as well. Excess death appears to be defined not as excess from an average year, but as excess from an average period where there are no flu or other diseases circulating. This makes sense because the goal of collecting these data is to know quickly whether there are breakouts of diseases, and thus the baseline must be "a typical year without flu" rather than "a typical year". Thus, the numbers give you some idea of the impact of covid compared with the flu, at least in terms of deaths. Occasionally you can see other phenomena such as the impact of heat waves in the summer. I understand that the baseline is adjusted for population growth.
In the area covered it looks like there are about 70000 baseline deaths per week, or roughly 3.5M deaths for a year. There were about 100K excess deaths in 2017 and 2019, about 160K excess deaths in 2018, 400K in 2020 and 350K in 2021. Eyeballing, the current wave seems to be comparable to the 2017-2018 winter episode.
I find the graphs by age very interesting, especially the 0-14 range.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA
But at the same time, the more you test the more you find. Pre-Omnicron, most people I know never tested if they got sick, as long as it didn't feel like more than a cold.
Omicron - 0.3-0.5% mortality