What I'd be interested in are some graphs that compare deaths of January, February, March and April for 2018, 2019 and 2020. To see the expected trend from 2018/19 and the reality of 2020.
If you scroll down low enough, you stumble upon per country multi-year comparisons. Notice how for Sweden, Switzerland, France or England the spike is not much higher than the seasonal 2017 flu.
Moreover the peak of the 2017 flu is cut out of the graph for France and England, as a couple weeks before/after new years are cut out from the graph for aesthetic[?!] reasons. For a publication that wants to be taken seriously, cutting out the most relevant comparison point is embarrassing.
Compare graph for week 15 and 16. The data in NYT are for 5 of April, but we were not done counting deaths. The true numbers are substantially higher. England is especially high.
Thanks for the link. If anything, these graphs are assuaging. I notice 2 things:
* The spike is steep, but it appears to have quickly receded. Perhaps an artifact of what you are calling 'not done counting deaths'. Would you elaborate, what's holding back the data, when can we count [sic] on accurate counts?
* The spike is not that tall. In deaths/week, 2017 peaks at 70k deaths and 2020 peaks at 86k over all age groups. Going to the 15-64 demographics, turns out that 2018 peaks at 8.9k, whereas 2020 peaks at 9.9k. So we've got 1k extra deaths per week for a few weeks at a population of 200M+ people, the end is nigh?!
PS. Speaking of sensationalist, this is a great time to start presenting data using honest charts that start at zero, and not arbitrary high values [40k/7k] to magnify small variability.
PS2. Does anyone know how to get the euromomo dataset? In a middle of a global pandemic, a bit sad that a critical piece of data is unavailable for independent verification / presentation.
> Note on interpretation of data: The number of deaths shown for the three most recent weeks should be interpreted with caution, as adjustments for delayed registrations may be imprecise. Furthermore, results of pooled analyses may vary depending on countries included in the weekly analyses. Pooled analyses are adjusted for variation between the included countries and for differences in the local delay in reporting.
Ad. "So we've got 1k extra deaths per week for a few weeks at a population of 200M+ people, the end is nigh?!"
There is a question about long term health of people who got COVID-19. Based on Japanese study on Grand Princess passengers [0] and some 6 divers [1] all with mild cases from Germany around 50 to 80% of people seem to have damage to the lungs visible on CT scans after mild symptomatic or even asymptomatic infection. Two of the divers had significant oxygen deficiency when doing physical exercise after 5-6 weeks of recovery. The guess of the doctor who was inspecting them is that this is permanent damage that may take years to recover if ever.
Also, the virus didn't go away - it's still there. Depending on location 0-20% of people got infected with median probably around 1%. In places where 20% got infected the virus killed significant portions of the whole population. In Bergamo province of Italy with little bit over 1 million population and 4000 deaths the virus killed around ~0.4% of the whole population or close to 1 in 200 people. It's very unlikely that there will be any mass events in Europe this year or next year before we get vaccines. Any indoors events involving more than 100 people - especially involving talking, dancing, singing or mourning are also very unlikely.
Ad. PS. They updated their website recently. This is how it looked like before - they were reporting z-scores only and only as a picture. https://twitter.com/Isinlor/status/1249252918609526784 I count the new website as a big step up :) .
Ad. PS2. Somebody would need to write scraping script from the website. Also:
> While the network fully supports data sharing, the network hub is not mandated by the participating countries to release any national data. If you are interested in exploring the possibility to access national data, please approach countries individually.
I guess we have to wait. Do you expect the counts to shoot up 10x or 10%?
* Not sure how to read the Japanese study. There were 3700 passengers on that ship, the CT study only tracks 101 of them. I could not figure out the selection process. Furthermore, how does this compare to the annual flu? Quick Internet search: "Chest CT findings of influenza virus‐associated pneumonia in 12 adult patients" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941884. Sounds ominous, and yet here we are.
* Yay for a better website!
* Who is better positioned to succeed in asking countries for permission to release the data: random citizens, or the researchers that already have connections to the respective countries health departments on this very topic? Stop hiding behind bureaucratic excuses. Pull whatever strings you have to pull to get the data published.
Thank you. It is embarrasing to see even "smart" people accept these charts on face value, without diving in and understanding them. Just... thank you.
Never accept charts at face value - try to go to source and look at gotchas. In case of EuroMOMO data the gotcha is that European countries are not done counting yet. Compare numbers in bulletin for week 15 and 16: https://www.euromomo.eu/bulletins/2020-16/
Still, I wish you could see specific years vs this year. For instance there were fewer deaths in Michigan in March of 2020 than in 2019, but I'm sure that would be different if you averaged it over the course of four years.
Ah thanks, I've got the bad habit of not opening articles anymore since most of them prevent ad blockers or demand tracking rights with obnoxious page filling popups, nowadays.
Especially when you consider things like the dramatic drop in reported mortality from things like heart disease the last few months according to the preliminary data.
But preliminary data isn't very good quality ever, so it is hard to tell how much of that is just bad data, how much is coronavirus killing people that were going to die in only weeks anyway, and how much is misreporting.
But in six months or so, when the data start to settle down, we will find out which direction we are miscounting in. (Clearly we are miscounting in both directions by significant amounts, but it's hard to tell the comparative magnitude)
It's certainly not the case that 100% of coronavirus victims were about to die anyway. But it seems very plausible that 10% were, and I think it's fair to consider that a significant overcount.
I think the question that you're trying to ask is answered in part by the publication "COVID-19 – exploring the implications of long-term condition type and extent of multimorbidity on years of life lost:" [1]
TL;DR: more than a decade of life-time lost on average per victim that dies of novel coronavirus.
Eyeballing the graphs, this looks consistent with a story that 10% of cases are at 0-1. (But I'm bad at eyeballing, so do let me know if the data says otherwise!)
This is what I read about the Great Smog in London. People tried to explain away deaths by saying all the people that died would have died in a few months anyways. But not supported by death records.
