[jonplackett]

I saw some research the other day that they think the decrease in death rate is because everyone is wearing masks and social distancing. Therefore anyone getting sick is getting a very low viral load compared to before. If comparing to flu we should compare to pre-lockdown, pre-mask death rate.

[matz1]

No, The decrease of death rate is because more testing done on more people. The more you test, the larger the number of asymptomatic/mild symptom case you have, thus decrease the death rate.

[elcritch]

I could see both, and likely both would need to be part of estimation. It's not binary, but likely, 20% due to mask lowering viral exposure loads, 50% due to more healthy people (hence asymptomatic) getting the virus.

However, that doesn't invalidate the overall comparisons. Countries like Sweden have a lowering death rate despite no broad mask wearing (https://fortune.com/2020/07/29/no-point-in-wearing-mask-swed...). You can see an example graph here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...