England had highest excess death rate in Europe over first half of 2020

[vegster]

World beating - if I hear that meaningless crap expression once more from Boris or one of his political pygmies I am going to put my foot through the TV...

No, they can’t be blamed for ALL that has gone wrong, but it’s on their watch, and it don’t look good, does it?...

The " World Beating/Leading " tag that Cummings/Johnson like to add to any scheme or idea really does grate as its so utterly ridiculous. It's just a desperate attempt to try to convince the public that we are still some kind of World Leader in anything despite the obvious fact that we aren't....

I laughed out loud the other day while listening to a radio interview with a junior minister about Brexit preparations, this involved building a huge lorry park off the M20 on order to accommodate freight lorries while their papers and loads were checked.....she actually said " We are building a World Leading Customs and Border system...." Are they thinking that, once complete( if ever!) countries such as North / South Korea, the US and Mexico, India and Pakistan will come to the UK to gaze in awe at our system and seek to replicate it?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Perhaps. But 7% and 0.2% is a remarkable difference. Obesity in France isn't as high as here, but it isn't the slimmest nation in the world either now, and they smoke a lot more than we do still. Just seems odd to me, considering the amount of deaths they had Covid related. Makes me still question the data slightly, even though I do agree with your post #14

You are absolutely right to “question” this figure, in the sense it needs further investigation as there appears to be a conflating reason at play. I touched on this in post #38.

Personally, as deaths across the EU are routinely and reasonably accurately recorded with no ambiguity or subjectivity, I trust the data. But the French figure is clearly highlighting something else.......which gives a good example of the use, and benefit, of the excess deaths measure.

I find stuff like this interesting, I’ll try and see if there’s any reason why the French figure is low as it is.

 

[Weststander]

I wonder whether obesity has been a factor, really.

There are many other countries nearby with similar or not far of our obesity rates now who didn't suffer badly.

As your own (excellent!) post before mentioned, I think the ethnically diverse population factor is very interesting to note for the reasons you mentioned. As well as not locking down hard enough. I do believe most brits would've adhered to it (it's not as if other countries didn't have problems with a certain % of people not adhering to the strict lockdown measures - I'm sure it would have been a similar % here), but the fact we had a slack lockdown in comparison, and let's face it, weakly enforced in a lot of cases (not the police's fault to add) , probably hasn't helped either.

Agree with your other points too about care homes and lots of major transport hubs for a compact country

Thanks.

Obesity - perhaps a combination of being obese and over 65, and/or being obese and an ex-smoker or smoker, makes someone particularly vulnerable? Not in being infected, but in dying from the resulting sickness.

I’m fairly confident that experts will over time come up with the answers.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

The reason this measure is used is that factors such as population demographics, disease incidence, social factors and different healthcare systems are less liable to skew the data. A measure of excess deaths also tends to level out any differences in the way deaths are counted. It allows us to see the full impact of COVID-19 on mortality, including deaths that were not directly attributable to the virus.

But you’re saying the counting of Covid deaths, and the varying ways they’re counted, is being put back into the mix? This defeats the object of the excess deaths measure.

Where did you see this?

Exactly.

The reason I looked at measures other than excess deaths is the latter is accurate but not precise meaninf rapid changes in infection spread are not picked up immediately. But when looking back at the impact of COVID, excess deaths tells us the full bottom line.

Excess deaths also 'normalises' the baseline (a trick I normally deplore in research, but here it is appropriate). This means it matters not whether you live with a low life expectancy or high (Scotland versus Japan, for example) an excess is an addition to the baseline that can be measured.

 

[e77]

Excessive deaths is probably a fairly accurate way of measuring month on month deaths (although as I presume there was more traffic accidents during lockdown there are other factors to consider). However the last released figures showed deaths were actually down on last year. I read somewhere here that the average stay in a car home is 12-24 months so it might be the case deaths were brought forward and over a period of years it might almost balance up.

I think even Boris Johnson would agree we should have locked down earlier. From my memory of the time had he done to two weeks before he might have met some resistance but the week before people were beginning to ask for it. We were way too late stopping flights from areas with outbreaks. We had at least 1,300 instances of it come in from abroad (of which from China was only 0.5%, interestingly). That said we have high obesity rates so we were always at a disadvantage.

The quarantine from Spain and localised lockdown might have been announced somewhat haphazardly but we are all going to have to get used to this sort of thing.

 

[daveinplzen]

I didnt entirely understand, but this, helped me understand it a bit. It is biased, but its difficult to argue against.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vvi88QT7Hg

 

[beorhthelm]

Excessive deaths is probably a fairly accurate way of measuring month on month deaths (although as I presume there was more traffic accidents during lockdown there are other factors to consider). However the last released figures showed deaths were actually down on last year. I read somewhere here that the average stay in a car home is 12-24 months so it might be the case deaths were brought forward and over a period of years it might almost balance up.

this is one hypothesis, the excess deaths are effectively premature deaths and over months, year on year the average will float out. it doesnt change anything, people still died and strategy was misguided, just how it looks.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

this is one hypothesis, the excess deaths are effectively premature deaths and over months, year on year the average will float out. it doesnt change anything, people still died and strategy was misguided, just how it looks.

I don’t know what you mean by “premature deaths” but this isn’t the case. Maybe you can explain what you mean? As has been previously said, excessive deaths is really simple and literally just the number of deaths above what you’d expect. They’re not premature, they’re not Covid....they’re simply just deaths.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

You are absolutely right to “question” this figure, in the sense it needs further investigation as there appears to be a conflating reason at play. I touched on this in post #38.

Personally, as deaths across the EU are routinely and reasonably accurately recorded with no ambiguity or subjectivity, I trust the data. But the French figure is clearly highlighting something else.......which gives a good example of the use, and benefit, of the excess deaths measure.

I find stuff like this interesting, I’ll try and see if there’s any reason why the French figure is low as it is.

As a follow up, there was a month period where French excess deaths were actually lower than previous years and in turn skew the data. A suggestion is that the extreme French lock down have reduced deaths by accidents.