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| I used to think like you but I have since come to realize that even that number does not carry as much weight as I thought. It has to be adjusted for several things to truly understand the significance (or lack thereof) of coronavirus. The required adjustments to the excess all cause deaths number are:
1. How many non-COVID deaths were saved by the lockdown? For example, with less driving, there are less accidents.
2. How many non-COVID deaths were caused by the lockdown? From the information I have seen, it’s likely that somewhere around 60,000 deaths so far have been caused by the lockdown itself. People being afraid to seek medical care and so on
3. Was the year or so leading up to coronavirus higher or lower than average mortality? If it was lower than average mortality, that represents a backlog of people who are more susceptible to any illness, not just coronavirus.
4. How many of the COVID deaths were simply deaths that were pulled forward by 2 weeks to a year? This is why I am asking about about an 18 month timeframe. Thankfully this virus is not a big risk to infants and really anyone on much under the age of 70 but especially under the age of 50. Which means that many who truly died of it maybe would have lived another year or maybe not.
But a direct answer to your question is that I believe we are somewhere around 270,000 excess deaths as of the end of August. That is nothing to sneeze at. But like I said, those four factors listed above need to be accounted for when analyzing the true impact of coronavirus and what our reaction should be to it. | |
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Because of COVID, how many more people do you think will have died by the time 18 months have passed
