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by gmiller123456 1879 days ago
It appears as though you're using the first interpretation, and assuming it's true. It is not. I agree it'd be very interesting if true.

The second interpretation (which is the one I called "not interesting") just means there was at least one non COVID death in each interval, and the total deaths never dropped below the average number of deaths. One could reasonably assume there was at least one non-COVID death per week, making that part of the statistic useless, and you could just state the total deaths.
1 comments
joshuamorton 1879 days ago
No I'm using the second interpretation. It doesn't mean that there was one non covid death on each interval, but that there was one non covid death above the baseline of the expected number of deaths. Or in other words, deaths were always higher than expected, even after accounting for deaths attributed to covid.

The number of unattributed excess deaths is fewer than the number of covid attributed excess deaths, bit it should be zero, because the null hypothesis is that the only things killing people are "the same stuff as last year" and covid.

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gmiller123456 1879 days ago
>there was one non covid death above the baseline of the expected number of deaths

While a true (and interesting) statement, that's not what the OP said. He said "Excess deaths exceeded COVID deaths", not "Excess deaths minus COVID deaths exceeded expected deaths". Again, the second statement is true (based on his graph), but not all all what he said.

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joshuamorton 1879 days ago
> He said "Excess deaths exceeded COVID deaths"

Yes, and this is the right statement!

Excess deaths minus covid deaths should be zero, because the null hypothesis is that covid is the only thing contributing to the excess deaths.

That there are additional excess deaths beyond covid deaths is interesting (and means, as I originally said, that covid deaths are undercounted, or that some other unknown force is killing people).

The statement you provide as an alternative "Excess deaths minus COVID deaths exceeded expected deaths", doesn't make sense. Excess deaths are already above the expected deaths.

Let me run an example.

Last year, 100 people died each month. This is the expected number of deaths. This year, 150 people died each month. This gives us 50 excess deaths. 40 deaths are attributed to Covid. So, 10 are of unknown origin. This is interesting!

If the excess deaths - covid deaths exceeded expected deaths, you'd have to have 40 covid deaths, 110 deaths of unknown origin, and 100 "expected" deaths, which would also be quite interesting, but abjectly terrifying too (the death rate would need to more than double).

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