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by mrow84 2248 days ago
IANAE but ... all three years show the pattern of what I presume is the flu season (broadly speaking), causing deaths (mostly in the elderly), and differing in severity/rate between the three years.

2020 is different because there is a clear step-change in death rate after week 11, and the implication/fact is that that is COVID-19.

The conclusion is that those deaths are excess deaths on top of those that we would have had as a consequence of the 2020 flu season.
1 comments
mkagenius 2247 days ago
> clear step-change in death rate after week 11, and the implication/fact is that that is COVID-19

How does that compare with 2018 excess death graph, clearly some other novel virus would have caused that, it broke all previous highs quickly.

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mrow84 2247 days ago
In 2018 excess deaths increased at a roughly consistent rate of around 7,500/week to 113,302 excess deaths in week 15 and then stopped.

In 2019 excess deaths increased at a roughly consistent rate of around 5,100/week to 56,806 excess deaths in week 11 and then stopped.

In 2020 excess deaths increased at a roughly consistent rate of around 2,500/week to 27,552 excess deaths in week 11 and then started increasing at a rate of around 15,600/week to 105,564 in week 16.

Again IANAE, but different flu strains have different mortality rates, but broadly similar behaviour in that they mostly go away after winter. The step change (caused by COVID-19) is the difference, and the new excess death rate is much higher than the 2018 rate.

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mrow84 2247 days ago
Posting separately so as not to distract from the point about the data: I'm sorry (for myself) to be driven to being snarky/whatever, but I don't get why this isn't completely plain from that excess deaths chart. I don't get why people are trying so hard to insist that there isn't an issue. Really, wtf?
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cma 2247 days ago
I don't know if it is the case, but sometimes there is something like a flu A and flu B that peak at different times.
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rjtavares 2247 days ago
The excess deaths in the winter are flu related. A flu season can be worse than usual for several reasons: e.g. a particular bad strain or a strain outside of the coverage of the seasonal influenza vaccine.
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