Excess mortality in Germany 2020-2022

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362777743_Excess_mortality_in_Germany_2020-2022

by z7 • 4 years ago

90 54 4 years ago

Lacerda69• 4 years ago

Can someone how understands this give a quick rundown?

Why did mortality jump 40k deaths from 2019 to 2020? AFAIK covid only started in 2020? Or am I reading the charts wrong? (Just looked at the figures, did not read the whole paper)

upsidesinclude7• 4 years ago

This paper attempts to correct for the inconsistent data and reporting around mortality, excess mortality, and deaths that were actually caused by SarsCoV2.

They use actuarial science (what insurance & risk analysis uses) to predict a baseline for mortality if no pandemic occurred. This should be a fairly accurate representation working of historical data.

It is sad that this submission has been flagged by zealots as it represents an interesting approach to determining the impact of the pandemic and attempts to correct for factors that unfortunately alter the data toward the negative- such as hospital funding contingent on diagnosis.

rdtsc• 4 years ago

The high excess mortality in 2021 was almost entirely due to an increase in deaths in the age groups between 15 and 79 and started to accumulate only from April 2021 onwards. A similar mortality pattern was observed for stillbirths with an increase of about 11 percent in the second quarter of the year 2021.

At first I thought that stillbirths would be expected to go up if there were more births recorded as well, but they did control for that and recorded the stillbirth rate per 1000 births.

joe_the_user2• 4 years ago

On a side note, sites that only don't work without javascript but also block you for not enabling javascript are "something special".

mtmail• 4 years ago

It may be an annoyance but it's also covered in the guidelines under "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

weberer• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/veKmo

vesinisa• 4 years ago

Section 6.3 claims that the excess deaths coincide with vaccinations. Looking at the graph, I don't buy that there is a clear correlation - for example there is no marked effect for the second shot.

origin_path2• 4 years ago

There's clearly a temporal correlation.

A possible explanation for why the effect isn't linear is that you'd expect the impact to be less for later shots, because people who had bad near-miss reactions to the first will sometimes choose to be "unvaccinated" rather than take the risk of another bad reaction. That then leaves people in the pool whose systems can either take it, or who didn't detect the damage and who then later die unexpectedly (been lots of SADS around lately).

EverydayBalloon• 4 years ago

It's going to be very difficult for some people to admit that they made such an obvious mistake.

cm2187• 4 years ago

Even if I have been extremely critical of covid vaccine mandates when the mandate is irrespective of age and health condition, I sincerely hope vaccines aren't the cause of this, because the consequences would be terrible in term of public trust. You would end up next time like Russia, with a reasonably efficient vaccine declined by a population who lost any trust in its own government.

thepasswordis• 4 years ago

Literally all they had to do was make this vaccine optional. Say "hey this vaccine is available. Here is the data we have. We recommend taking it, but of course that is your own decision."

But because of the attempts to force people to take the vaccine (which I did take, btw), trust has already been eroded.

somewhereoutth• 4 years ago

In all the statistics I've seen, excess deaths have been driven by Covid variant waves. I'm sure this is no different. Of course, the crazies will go berserk over any temporal coincidence with the vaccination rollout programs.

I'd prefer not to see this kind of nonsense given time of day on HN, as a supposed science/technology based forum.

acta_non_verba• 4 years ago

Science is the system of questioning things through a repeatable methodology.

Is that not exactly what is happening here?

Science is always in a state of flux, as it should be until we know everything. Don’t get religious about it.

version_five2• 4 years ago

I'd prefer not to see this kind of nonsense given time of day on HN, as a science/technology based forum.

Then why did you make a comment that's mostly about it?

wessorh2• 4 years ago

Its not crazy if we just talk data and statistics. I find the intersection with vax mandates and the overwhelming datasets coming from Germany and Israel and the UK quite interesting. So lets just stick with facts and debate those.

SubiculumCode2• 4 years ago

The authors have never published a paper in epidemiology, and trust me, there are plenty of pitfalls even very smart people can fall into when they don't understand the ins and out of a field.

SubiculumCode2• 4 years ago

Those two researchers have never published a paper in epidemiology. Why should I trust these yahoos anti-vax propaganda?

joe_the_user2• 4 years ago

This was flagged and dead but somehow revived. Jeesh.

cf141q53256• 4 years ago

I dont think calling published data scientists "yahoos" is such a good look, especially if you at the same time frame the interaction with papers as a matter of trust.

edit: I would also think its also worth reflecting on the fact, that two of the most vocal and derogatory posters in this thread not only share the same opinion but also a show a blatant misconception of how to interact with papers. It is not a matter of trust and not a matter of belief. Even if you fully believe you are in the right here, is behaving like this really productive? Especially with the major concern most people on the fence on this topic have being the influence of people acting exactly like this on the scientific process?

upsidesinclude7• 4 years ago

This exactly. The opinion is the wrong one and must be smashed!

Notice how they are "yahoos" or some other derogatory framing?

(*disregard whoever they may be, they aren't established, well known, approved, epidemiology experts employedby the government!)

jlmorton4• 4 years ago

Your first stop when evaluating a massive and heterdox claim like this should be to double-check their fundamental data against other sources [1].

What you'll find is that other sources do not contain the same data at all. It's not just slightly different, it's _wildly_ different. There is no large jump in mortality in April 2021. There _is_ a large jump in morality 2020.

I don't have time to thoroughly examine their research, because it doesn't come close to passing a sniff test.

On a separate note, it's really discouraging how this stuff gets voted up on HN. Flagged.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

nicoco• 4 years ago

This guy apparently took the time to propose counter arguments: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362959885_A_note_on...

wessorh2• 4 years ago

The two researchers actually have a number of publications in data science, please sniff again. Your kind of argument is called a an appeal to an irrelevant authority. You also forgot to cite your sources or link to the data you are advocating for. Please consider taking the time to properly advocate your point

jlmorton4• 4 years ago

Two people who have never published in epidemiology stumble upon a new method for calculating excess deaths, at odds with all the existing sources, whether official sources like the WHO, domestic official government sources, or other independent groups like The Economist which have tracked this closely.

And lo and behold, what do they find? A wildly different result that shows no deaths from Covid and all the deaths from the vaccine.

No, I'm not going to sniff again, because it stinks to the high heavens.

origin_path2• 4 years ago

You shouldn't be flagging articles simply because you disagree with them, that's not what flagging is for.

Especially because you are wrong - the OurWorldInData link you provide does indeed show German excess mortality climb steeply in April 2021 and then again in March 2022. Current mortality by that data has been at the same level as it spiked to in April 2020 (first wave), but sustained since March. I don't understand how you can look at the graphs there and not see it because the data is so plain.

Remember that after COVID we should be seeing negative excess mortality due to the pull-forward effect. We should not be seeing positive excess mortality after an epidemic that near exclusively takes out the elderly. The pull forward effect can be seen after the winter 2020 wave in the German data but not later.

"On a separate note, it's really discouraging how this stuff gets voted up on HN. Flagged."

It's really discouraging how some people visit a site meant for "intellectual curiosity" and then immediately and incorrectly flag anything that creates cognitive dissonance in their mind, especially when they go on to make misleading statements about the data.

z7• 4 years ago

There is no large jump in mortality in April 2021.

Eurostat reports a 16.1% increase between March and April 2021:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Europe overall: "Excess mortality levels reached a third peak in April 2021 (20.9 %)"

Euromomo shows a progression from baseline level in March to "substantial increase" in April:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

ohiovr• 4 years ago

There will be many stories like this in the days, weeks, and months to come. But not years from now.

upsidesinclude7• 4 years ago

What is it you mean by this?

I hope it is that we won't find ourselves in such a quandary, where lack of trust in public institutions is at an all time high.

moistly2• 4 years ago

12.5 BILLION doses have been administered. The datasets are deep and wide, the analysis tools are powerful, and tens of thousands of well-trained epidemiologists have been analyzing the data for many, many months. The opportunity to make one’s mark has never been better.

But it’s these two brainiacs, who are not trained in the science, who have revealed the Shocking Truth that blows the lid off, using weird math and alternative facts.

Pull the other one, it has bells on!

upsidesinclude7• 4 years ago

Among the other detractors, you miss a fairly important distinction.

Not being an epidemiologist stands in their favor.

Most other scientists are taking the data they receive at face value instead of taking the time to evaluate if the underlying assumptions are valid.

You respond emotionally and preemptively assume they are wrong.

It wasn't "anti-vaxxers" that employed hundreds of thousands of social media posters to disseminate the official message.

I feel genuinely sorry for people so deep in the wool.

Edit: At the present moment, it is impossible to determine if such vehement opposition is not also paid

moistly2• 4 years ago

There must be a German word for the embarrassment I feel for you.

pupppet• 4 years ago

I expect this garbage on Uncle Bill's Facebook feed, not HN.

hulitu• 4 years ago

"The state-of-the-art method of actuarial science is used to estimate the expected number of all-cause deaths in 2020 to 2022, if there had been no pandemic."

They shall be asked how many people are expected to die tomorrow and then, tomorrow, to explain the difference.

Excess mortality in Germany 2020-2022

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