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International [Scientific article] Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

And the messaging wasn't helped when doctors wrote an open letter saying "if we agree with your cause, you don't have to obey lockdowns!" As well as spreading the lie that masks didn't work back in march last year. Just imagine if trump had gone maximum wuhan instead (the optics of us military welding shut any skyrise apartments would have been something to see)

And thats before we get to the political decay and deterioration that had been accelerating in us politics well before trump.
Nah, after all the effort the Western Elite put in condemning China as barbaric tyrants for their actions (and at the same time as incompetent liars), how could they admit that the Chinese government was right?

They were a victim of their own propaganda.
 
So essentially, the US has had more deaths from Covid than the total of all US soldiers killed in combat in every war we've been in. Thanks, Trump.

Even Rufus's data is underestimated. We never have had total analytical coverage, even in developed countries. In Poland offcialy all started in March, but since late November 2019 we had overabundance of "pneumonia with unknown etiology", hospitals overflowing, people dying. In other countries was the same - the moment checking started the virus was already spread throught the countries and rest is history. And then it only have escalated from there. Nowadays we still do not know how many people have died due to the COVID-19 and ancillary dieseases.
 
Admittedly I major in Poli Sci, and I do suck at maths. But.

Our approach to estimating the excess COVID-19 death rate is based on measurement of the excess death rate during the pandemic week by week compared to what would have been expected based on past trends and seasonality. However, the total excess death rate does not equal the excess COVID-19 death rate. Excess mortality is influenced by six drivers of all-cause mortality that relate to the pandemic and the social distancing mandates that came with the pandemic. These six drivers are: a) the excess COVID-19 death rate, that is, all deaths directly related to COVID-19 infection; b) the increase in mortality due to needed health care being delayed or deferred during the pandemic; c) the increase in mortality due to increases in mental health disorders including depression, increased alcohol use, and increased opioid use; d) the reduction in mortality due to decreases in injuries because of general reductions in mobility associated with social distancing mandates; e) the reductions in mortality due to reduced transmission of other viruses, most notably influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and measles; and f) the reductions in mortality due to some chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory disease, that occur when frail individuals who would have died from these conditions died earlier from COVID-19 instead. To correctly estimate the excess COVID-19 mortality, we need to take into account all six of these drivers of change in mortality that have happened since the onset of the pandemic.

Our analysis follows four key steps. First, for all locations where weekly or monthly all-cause mortality has been reported since the start of the pandemic, we estimate how much mortality increased compared to the expected death rate. In other words, we estimate excess mortality in all locations with sufficient data. Second, based on a range of studies and consideration of other evidence, we estimate the fraction of excess mortality that is from excess COVID-19 deaths as opposed to the five other drivers that influence excess mortality. Third, we build a statistical model that predicts the ratio of excess COVID-19 deaths to reported COVID-19 deaths based on covariates and spatial effects. Fourth, we use this statistical relationship to predict the ratio of excess to reported COVID-19 deaths in places without data on excess COVID-19 deaths and then multiply the reported COVID-19 deaths by this ratio to generate estimates of excess COVID-19 deaths for all locations. More details on each of these analytical steps are presented below.

And.

We analyzed data from 12 countries that provide cause of death data by week or month, which allows us to test whether some causes decreased significantly during 2020 and whether that decrease was related to the decreases in mobility that have been reported.

Seems a bit sus for me. The paper doesn't specify which countries they analyzed. Only saying that.

Based on our analysis, we have generated a ratio of excess mortality to reported COVID-19 mortality for each location. These analyses, based on weekly or monthly mortality data, have been supplemented with published studies for 12 national and subnational locations where the detailed data have not been made publicly available for our analysis. Figure 4 shows the distribution of these ratios in the available data.
total-mortality-figure-4_0514.png

So okay, they used some 12 papers that supplemented the data from countries/ sub-regions that might not have data, but when I see the references section. It only has 11 references? And they're all papers that were meant to supplement previous points?

Again, I'm a Poli-Sci major, so I could be talking out of my ass. But Doing Ctrl-F on Chrome only points to 1 section where it says 12. And that's the paragraph mentioned upwards. I don't see no justification for why those 12 countries are chosen, why they are chosen, how the data from those 12 countries could be used to make a model for a global trend, and who are those 12 countries to begin with.

This could be a paper where the actual paper is paywalled, or they haven't done the publishing in some sort of academic conference, so the details might be good/ bad. But with my limited knowledge, I lean towards cautiously skeptical on this one.

If someone with a background in STEM can refute me on any of my points, feel free to do so. Maybe I am wrong the entire time.

EDIT: I am VERY certain pretty much all countries under report COVID deaths BTW. This is such a fast-moving pandemic with symptoms that might not even exist for some people, that, even at a pretty generous interpretation, means that a significant part of the population can have COVID and is spreading it, but does not have the symptoms of COVID and thereby doesn't report it to the gov.

And there's the incentives for authoritarian countries which is a whole can of worms I don't wanna open.
 
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Latest estimates of the Indian fatalities due to the pandemic, between 3,2 and 3,7 millions dead. Ouch.
 
I wonder what the latest estimates for US and Russia are. Probably in the millions close to two ?
 
I wonder what the latest estimates for US and Russia are. Probably in the millions close to two ?
Given the size of population in India these estimates are most likely on the short side, just like everywhere else, mainly becouse of unsufficient testing and analytic capability.
Also one should add to that the deaths caused undirectly by the Pandemy and umployment of preventive measures (like quarantine and conversion of hospitals for COVID only, which tightened the avaiability of healthcare for non-COVID related cases and reallocation of resources causing deficit for other treatmens).
 
Given the size of population in India these estimates are most likely on the short side, just like everywhere else, mainly becouse of unsufficient testing and analytic capability.
The studies considering the extra mortality and quality of reports indicated that a good part of Europe was pretty accurate in its reporting of the pandemic's effects, TBH.
 
The studies considering the extra mortality and quality of reports indicated that a good part of Europe was pretty accurate in its reporting of the pandemic's effects, TBH.

True but grade of sensory and analytical coverage in Europe isn't translateable directly to the countries of Africa, South America and many Asiatic, India for example, which by deafult creates problem to count mortalities. In Poland was the same problem, then everyone acted astonished when additional deaths were published, but then we must take into account public double think - everyone sees dead in the hallways of hospitals, crematory lines booked up, expanding grayveyards like never before and even greater lack of avaiability for other than COVID treatments and personel, while simultanously official line is that everything is fine, nothing happens, lockdown unncecessary etc.
In extremis it ends with another Italy.

Outside the "wealthy North" and some cases of developed countries in the rest of the world, caacity for tracking the spread of Pandemy seems to be limited at best. I personally add also whole other bunch of losses asociated with the COVID but not caused by it directly - makes up much more comprehensive picture, darker and especially unpalatable, but whole.
 
True but grade of sensory and analytical coverage in Europe isn't translateable directly to the countries of Africa, South America and many Asiatic, India for example, which by deafult creates problem to count mortalities. In Poland was the same problem, then everyone acted astonished when additional deaths were published, but then we must take into account public double think - everyone sees dead in the hallways of hospitals, crematory lines booked up, expanding grayveyards like never before and even greater lack of avaiability for other than COVID treatments and personel, while simultanously official line is that everything is fine, nothing happens, lockdown unncecessary etc.
In extremis it ends with another Italy.

Outside the "wealthy North" and some cases of developed countries in the rest of the world, caacity for tracking the spread of Pandemy seems to be limited at best. I personally add also whole other bunch of losses asociated with the COVID but not caused by it directly - makes up much more comprehensive picture, darker and especially unpalatable, but whole.
That's why I precised Europe. For the US, Russia and the other continents, the standards of reporting are a lot worse, cue the much higher likely values.
 
I can assure everyone that the figures for India are grossly underreported. Of the 17 people I know who died of Covid, none have been reported as such.

And I live in Delhi.
 
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