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SvennoJ on 12 October 2020
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haxxiy said:
Mnementh said:

You can't use a guesstimate for cases and compare it to confirmed deaths. You would also have to guesstimate deaths. We know about Bergamo at least, that only about one fourth of deaths reached official statistics. That may be similar in other regions. The real number of deaths is higher than 1M.

That is not true.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20067074v3

All combined excess deaths, whatever their cause, were about twice attributed Covid-19 deaths by May 24 in Bergamo (3101 to about 6285). I couldn't find whether more deaths were re-attributed to Covid-19 later than this date, so let's leave at that. The other most affected regions in Northern Italy had all combined excess deaths at around 40% above to 100% above the total Covid-19 deaths.

Elsewhere, talking now about places where deaths have more or less returned to baseline by now, you have Manaus (2,500 Covid-19 to 3,400 excess), Mumbai (9,300 Covid-19 to about 13,500 excess). Peru as a whole is probably the worst case in the world (33,500 Covid-19 to 87,000 excess) but healthcare has collapsed months ago, so it's hard to tell how that's impacting other preventable causes. Of course, the pandemic is ultimately the root cause, so let's count all of that as Covid-19 deaths.

So, as a whole, there's little evidence to believe the real toll is much higher than 1.5 - 2 million worldwide at the moment.

Remind that the world, on average, is over a decade younger than most of Europe or North America, with a fraction (a third to less than a tenth) as many people over 65 years of age. That alone might overwhelm all other factors, including access to healthcare, in terms of determining the IFR worldwide.

Yep, the average age makes a huge difference. Comparing India to the USA, both would end up with about the same death toll (adjusted for age demographics) while India has over 4 times the population.

Excess deaths aren't reliable anymore since lock downs, far less travel, better hygiene and face masks. Those all prevent regular accidents and infections as well. No more bringing home exotic diseases, less work related injuries and deaths, less travel related deaths, less deaths from other infectious diseases. It's of course hard to tell how many extra deaths were caused by Covid-19 due to overwhelming the healthcare system and suspending other treatments and preventative surgeries.

Currently Western nations are flirting with disaster. We keep going until the healthcare system gets too busy. The focus doesn't seem to be on saving lives anymore (maybe it never was) but on saving money as usual. Maybe every death should cost the government 100K, then they'll do something about it.