Interesting statistical side-effect (Covid-related, so ignore if you're over it: I know I am)

"Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen" (distraxi) 08/18/2020 at 21:45 • Filed to: lies damn lies and statistics, covid-19

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The NZ government statisticians just released first-half figures on a whole bunch of shit. One of the things that’s popped out is that in the first half of the year, total all-causes death rate in New Zealand went * down * 6% on 2019. It’s the lowest per capita that it’s been since we started keeping records.

In one of those “totally unsurprising if you stop to think about it” moments, it turns out that if you keep everyone quarantined for a couple of months and then lock your borders, you stamp out pretty much every other infectious disease as well as Covid. We’re entering flu season here, and typically we lose around 500 people a year to it. Total hospitalised cases since May this year: zero. Personal experience suggests even the common cold’s way down.

It also turns out that if you lock people in their houses they don’t kill themselves on the road or on sportsgrounds (slightly offset by a rise in home improvement related incidents), and that because they’re not driving around and factories are shut down, air pollution goes down and respiratory illness related deaths also drop.

All of which miles outweighs the modest number of Covid deaths we’ve had.

It’s kinda analogous to the drop in US military casualty rates during Gulf War 1: when everyone’s operating on war rules, less people die of non-combat injuries, so if the actual combat bit isn’t too hazardous, its a net win.

None of which is to recommend this as an everyday approach to reducing death rates, or to relitigate the wisdom or effectiveness of various countries’ covid approaches or the cost/benefit in economic terms thereof. It’s just interesting to see all the moving parts moving .

shop-teacher > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/18/2020 at 22:00

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73% of people believe them, whether they’re accurate statistics or not.

wafflesnfalafel > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/18/2020 at 22:11

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E xactly right, love that - everything is complicated, everything has secondary, te rtiary, etc effects.

My bird IS the word > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/18/2020 at 22:18

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It is 85% easier to lie to people when using statistics vs. Anecdotal statements

GLiddy > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/18/2020 at 22:29

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It seems to be similar here in the USA. While I don’t have the numbers from last year, if you look at total weekly deaths from all causes before the pandemic and then after the pandemic, there is a decrease in overall deaths after May . Even with COVID-19, total deaths seem to be lower by about 1000-2000 per week.

Data source:

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Week-Ending-D/r8kw-7aab

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > shop-teacher 08/18/2020 at 22:30

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Jim Jeffries had a rant on his show about that at one point. A pparently it does his head in that even though the statistics he quotes in his routines are totally made up, he’s compl etely open about that, and eve ryone knows it’s comedy not news, t hey still believe them.

shop-teacher > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/18/2020 at 22:31

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK6zjtUj00

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > GLiddy 08/18/2020 at 22:36

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The NY Times had some analytics on that a few days ago . Their take is a little different - the article opens with:

Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.html

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > shop-teacher 08/18/2020 at 22:38

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Todd Snider will always get a star!

(but also, WTF Kinja, why didn’t the video embed?)

pip bip - choose Corrour > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/18/2020 at 22:47

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How was the domestic violence numbers though?

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > pip bip - choose Corrour 08/18/2020 at 22:52

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Probably pretty ugly, I suspect: my brother in law’s a cop, and accor di ng to him that was pretty much exclusively what he was dealing with during lockdown.

The official death-by-cause figures haven’t actually been released yet: what’s in the post is just taken from various public- health figures speculating in the media on how it’s come about .

BaconSandwich is tasty. > pip bip - choose Corrour 08/18/2020 at 23:10

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Or suicides, for that matter? :(

GLiddy > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/18/2020 at 23:34

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Obviously a more in-depth examination. I hadn’t seen that data set. The one I found above was the best I could locate with my admittedly poor search abilities. I was interested in finding out just what the overall mortality from this thing is. I found myself questioning why reporting on the pandemic boiled down to ever increasing totals of deaths and infections. I wanted to know how many people die in the normal course of things in the USA (about 60,000 / week) and how many more people than that are dying because of the corona virus (and other things).

Exage03040 @ opposite-lock.com > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/18/2020 at 23:48

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Here in BC we’ve had almost as many deaths from drug OD last month alone ( 173)   as total deaths from Covid since mid March ( 198). There have been ~520 OD deaths in the same period as Covid deaths.

Covid axed the saf e injection site ops and OD deaths have unsurprisingly doubled comparably since this time in 2019 for the past 2 months. Medics saw OD response attendance the highest recorded last month in the past 5 years of records .

Nick Has an Exocet > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/19/2020 at 00:05

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I’ve seen some dark shit about domestic violence and suicide appears to be a large problem as well. Quoting Forbes: “ The CDC conducted a survey of 5,412 people between June 24 and 30 and the collected data on suicides is alarming. Roughly 25% percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 say they’ve considered suicide because of the pandemic. About 30.9% of the respondents said that they “had symptoms of anxiety or depression” and about 26.3% reported trauma and stress-related disorders caused by the outbreak. Over 13% said that they have used alcohol, prescription and/or illegal drugs to deal with their pandemic-induced stress and anxiety. “

Not everywhere publishes suicide rates but Fresno was up 70% over last year for the month of June.

I’ve heard the argument, and I’m thinking that it’s not too far off, that the + $600/wk was a thin thread holding some people back. Unfortunately, I saw a lot of people blow that on coping mechanisms like alcohol .

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: people are going to be studying the data from this pandemic for decades. It may be an entire major or grad program. 

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Exage03040 @ opposite-lock.com 08/19/2020 at 00:09

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The second order effects in all this are going to totally dominate the primary ones in the end, I expect. Which means we’ll never know the true story about how dangerous it is or what the “right” government res ponse would have been. For example I don’t know what our OD rate looks like here, but I’ll bet our overall homeless death rate has drop pe d a lot because the government offered free motel accommodation to homeless folks during lockdown, which has gotta be a lot better for their health than sle eping under bri dges.

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > GLiddy 08/19/2020 at 00:11

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“j ust what the overall mortality from this thing is”

I suspect we’ll never know for sure. Too many variables - can’t work it out directly bec au se testing rates and reporting criteria are all over the place, and can’t work it out calculating backwards from overall mortality beca u se of all the other moving parts.

pip bip - choose Corrour > BaconSandwich is tasty. 08/19/2020 at 00:16

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Good point 

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Nick Has an Exocet 08/19/2020 at 00:20

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“ people are going to be studying the data from this pandemic for decades”

Oh hell yes. It’s a public health specialist’s wet dream and their worst nightmare rolled into one. Or maybe their second to worst nightmare .

It’s going to get an ord er of magnitude more complicated again o nc e people start considering quality of lives lost as well as just numbers: the people who pay the penalty for getting Covid are largely older and those who pay the penalty for damping down C ovid are largely younger. How many 80 year- olds do you have to save to pay for a 25 year old losing their job and descending into hopelessness, drugs and death?

Makes me glad I’m not the one having to make some of these public policy decisions...

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > pip bip - choose Corrour 08/19/2020 at 03:31

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My wife has vowed to murder me several times in the past few mon ths...

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/19/2020 at 03:36

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I was curious about suicides and drug overdoses etc.. I’m sure we can study new data about why some people are total shit too, like the potus, and why anyone would just ignore all of this. I’m sure the extra $600 kept some people sane for a lot of reasons. 

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > Nick Has an Exocet 08/19/2020 at 08:38

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Down here in my neck of the woods, we’ve had a surge in both extremes of shutting people together for long periods of time, pregnancies and domestic violence. Oh, and dental prolems as well, we’re seeing a lot of people come to  the hospital with absolutely rotten, infected teeth due to dentists shutting down during the pandemic

shop-teacher > Dead_Elvis, Inc. 08/19/2020 at 11:22

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I love him!

Damn Nibbles!

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > shop-teacher 08/19/2020 at 13:14

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He’s entertaining as hell in concert, if that’s something that ever happens again. Dude could just stand up there & tell stories for an hour or two , never mind actually playing .

shop-teacher > Dead_Elvis, Inc. 08/19/2020 at 14:11

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Yeah, I saw him live almost 20 years ago.  It was a great show.

Nick Has an Exocet > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 08/20/2020 at 02:05

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My brother was nearly one of those people. He ended up getting an emergency wisdom tooth pulled. He was in so much pain that getting the tooth pulled was almost childs play.

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Nick Has an Exocet 08/20/2020 at 15:23

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This just in on suicide rates here: apparently they’ve gone down too. From a bad year last year, admittedly, but still, that is very odd.

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/122519593/suicide-rate-shows-slight-drop-after-recordhigh-year

Nick Has an Exocet > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 08/20/2020 at 15:32

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I gave some thought to applying to a position in NZ a while back. I probably would have done it if I was married but the area that they job was in wasn’t going support the dating life.