Aug 30, 2021 10:30AM kbl wrote:

Thank you, JO-5. I’m sure some felt I was not being kind as well. I will own responsibility for that. I want this page to exist. Maybe if we get back to the basics of it being a rant page, they will unhide it. I did have honest questions. It doesn’t mean I didn’t listen but still have the same mindset, but I wanted to hear the answers.

How do we get it to be a rant page without it overtaking the forum? Any suggestions other than hiding the page?

Aug 30, 2021 10:36AM serenitystat wrote:

People who don't want to see it under Active Topics can just block it from their personal view. I've done that for many topics that don't interest me.

Aug 30, 2021 11:04AM - edited Aug 30, 2021 04:49PM by beesie.is.out-of-office

runor, to your question, here is some information I found on excess mortality.

From the WHO:

"Excess mortality is defined as the difference in the total number of deaths in a crisis compared to those expected under normal conditions. COVID-19 excess mortality accounts for both the total number of deaths directly attributed to the virus as well as the indirect impact, such as disruption to essential health services or travel disruptions."

Most interestingly, the WHO have found that excess mortality in 2020 was significantly higher than the number of cases of Covid deaths. This most likely reflects the lack of medical care for those who died of other causes. I would expect that some of this is self-imposed; I recall reading reports last year indicating that a significant number of people were reluctant to go the hospital when they fell ill, resulting in unnecessary deaths for treatable conditions (heart attacks, strokes, etc.). But I'm sure there are also cases where people have died because they have been unable to get the medical care that they needed, despite trying. And I have no doubt that there will be more excess deaths in the future, for example people who were diagnosed with cancer months later than they otherwise would have been, due to delays in screenings and biopsies and operations.

Note that the WHO state that their information is incomplete, both due a lag factor in reporting and the fact that many underdeveloped countries simply have poor reporting systems.

The above is for 2020; the following is more recent information from a different source, "Our World in Data" from the University of Oxford. To make the graph legible, I've chosen to just include the U.S. and Canada.

This graph shows that during peak periods of the Covid pandemic, weekly mortality rates were as much as 45% - 50% higher in the U.S. than would be expected, and 20%-30% higher in Canada. Here again, it's stated that the figures may be inaccurate during to incomplete reporting and delays in reporting, so we can expect that the actual excess mortality will in the end be somewhat higher than what's shown here. And here again, this doesn't account for people who will unnecessarily die in the future due to delays in diagnosis and treatment during the pandemic period.

Unfortunately this source does not provide a global number, nor do they provide a cumulative number. Eyeballing the chart, it would appear that for the U.S., the average % increase in deaths for 2020 is about 30%.

What to me is most significant in this chart is to see how excess mortality has dropped in 2021, as vaccinations have become widely available in Canada and the U.S..

Aug 30, 2021 11:14AM exbrnxgrl wrote:

beesie,

Thank you for those clear graphic illustrations. I know some on here did not want info from WHO or the CDC for that matter but I believe they are reliable sources. Are they perfect 100% of the time? Of course not but I hope that as adults we understand that nothing is

Aug 30, 2021 11:16AM exbrnxgrl wrote:

Hey, we’re back on active topics! Thank you KBL for your efforts.