“Which do you think had the greatest effect in preventing old people dying in Australia?”
I think not diagnosing COVID and treating large number of patients with COVID protocols saved the grannies in Australia in 2020-2021. Its these protocols along with health care service disruptions that occur with big COVID waves generated by massive PCR testing of asymptomatic people that killed them in US.
Australia was spared that so when they decided to start diagnosing and treating large numbers COVID during Omicron, perhaps to drive Vax/booster uptake you still had a large supply of dry kindle (grannies) who made up most of the deaths
I haven't tried it out yet. I think I’m tapping out on the Excess Data analysis though. Its been covered pretty thoroughly now. What people do about it is up to them. Hopefully it normalizes as more people stay away from the shots, but we don't really know the long term effects, especially with kids. If the kids start dropping off they might need another pandemic to blame it on.
How intriguing that the "death rate" view generates less orange than deaths. I usually only look at what reflects raw numbers. I think Unz's rationale for focusing on "working age" is sound - it is at the heart of the year-old claim that insurance data has the smoking gun for vaccine harms. Only for it to turn out to associate with different countries' virus-comorbidities. I can't really tell how he came up with high for Australia or flat for Germany, though.
I would have preferred to use the raw death data because I don’t know exactly what it’s going on under the hood when it’s calculating the rate. I don’t like “black boxes” that “standardize” things. I think there is a “manual” that explains it, but I don’t think it’s anything fancy, it’s just correcting for the population in each group from what I can tell.
I don’t think the obesity angle will hold up to much scrutiny. I think GINI co-efficient or some other “life style” index that combine income and life expectancy may correlate better but haven’t checked. The indigenous Australian population is an outlier here in Australia by the look of it, if they are generally poor, live in remote places far from health care, high diabetes rates, covid seems to effect them differently (worse) which makes me think it’s not a one size fits all problem.
Thanks for this Ivo. It's clear from your article the US is so different to here. Problems with obesity, drug dependence. Poorer people not being able to access health care. It's instructional to see how much higher their rate of death is on comparison graphs.
I understand the comment from Pete below on "tapping out" on excess mortality. It's such a wicked problem.
Another random thought I had while reading your article is that I wonder if the deficit in Australia in the lockdown years is also influenced by not going to doctors. You know there are studies that show when doctors go on strike mortality decreases (when nurses go on strike mortality increases).
I didn’t want to go into reasons why I think they’re different, I was just surprised at how different they are.
Yes. I was only just made aware of that paper regarding doctors strikes, there is at least one more I was made aware of earlier when I suggested it in jest in the comments section on another article and was pointed towards another paper that reached similar conclusions.
Nearly 1 in 4 patients who are admitted to hospitals in the U.S. will experience harm, according to a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
I haven’t looked into it. I usually don’t read the manual until after I’ve played with a new toy. If they don’t have a description it’s probably just some standard statistical technique that “everyone” in the field using it already knows.
As a side note, that reminds me of a (I think bio-stats or biology paper), that basically just explains integration as some sort of new novel consept. Newton & Leibniz would be spinning in their graves if they knew.
Usually five years avarage is taken, since in our days mortality changes quckly. The problem here is, that in OECD we have entered fourth highly unusual year.
That's what's nice about the visualization tool, you can change the reference level yourself and see what it looks like. I used 5 years prior to covid because 5 years is what it's always been in Australia until the covid reporting started, now I think they cherry pick the reference years to minimize the excess deaths. If I included 2020 as a rolling reference, excess deaths in Australia would be higher, but I don't think that's a fair comparison.
I’m sure it was, I think the problem was they painted themselves into a corner once the world agreed vaccines were the only solution. It was O.K to admit one technology was a problem, there was always the other one. Once they found problems with the other one, there was no choice but to double down and ignore any problems, they were out of ideas.
I can even imagine Pfizer and Moderna making moves behind the scenes to make sure their competitors were removed from the market.
I think they simply couldn’t back track. Much like we think China was crazy for not back tracking on zero covid. The rest of the world couldn’t back track on vaccines.
My favorite name of all the substack titles I read is “The Naked Emperor.” I thought once more and more people pointed out the Emperor was naked this would all stop. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be happening, it appears the Emperor and his whole court are nudists, they have no modesty, so I don’t think this is going to end anytime soon.
Interesting that article is so recent. Made me think of Cardinal Pell's death this week. Complication following hip surgery. Presumably if he did not have that surgery he would be alive. He was old and may have died in the upcoming years. I suspect there is a component of this in the 2020 deficit of mortality. All the elective surgeries cancelled. And I suspect the risk of death from medical treatment is greater the older one gets.
That’s so true, my dad had his knee surgery delayed multiple times during covid, probably close to 2 years, because of his age the surgeon said there was a real chance of him dying from being anaesthetised. If you delay elective surgery in the old, they end up being even older when when it’s finaly done so even more at risk.
Side note;
I did a comparison between the the last two censuses, to see who “survived” because all the age bins move over one slot, the largest age bin % growth was 85+ it could be an artifact because it’s the overflow bin, but not what I expected. I expected less “survivors” as age went up, which is true up until the 85+ bin. Also, we must be “importing” working age people with families, people mostly commonly about 27 y.o. with kids.
“Which do you think had the greatest effect in preventing old people dying in Australia?”
I think not diagnosing COVID and treating large number of patients with COVID protocols saved the grannies in Australia in 2020-2021. Its these protocols along with health care service disruptions that occur with big COVID waves generated by massive PCR testing of asymptomatic people that killed them in US.
Australia was spared that so when they decided to start diagnosing and treating large numbers COVID during Omicron, perhaps to drive Vax/booster uptake you still had a large supply of dry kindle (grannies) who made up most of the deaths
Quite possibly, I didn’t want to really speculate too much in this post. I just wanted to show the differences. Have you tried out the site?
I haven't tried it out yet. I think I’m tapping out on the Excess Data analysis though. Its been covered pretty thoroughly now. What people do about it is up to them. Hopefully it normalizes as more people stay away from the shots, but we don't really know the long term effects, especially with kids. If the kids start dropping off they might need another pandemic to blame it on.
How intriguing that the "death rate" view generates less orange than deaths. I usually only look at what reflects raw numbers. I think Unz's rationale for focusing on "working age" is sound - it is at the heart of the year-old claim that insurance data has the smoking gun for vaccine harms. Only for it to turn out to associate with different countries' virus-comorbidities. I can't really tell how he came up with high for Australia or flat for Germany, though.
I would have preferred to use the raw death data because I don’t know exactly what it’s going on under the hood when it’s calculating the rate. I don’t like “black boxes” that “standardize” things. I think there is a “manual” that explains it, but I don’t think it’s anything fancy, it’s just correcting for the population in each group from what I can tell.
I don’t think the obesity angle will hold up to much scrutiny. I think GINI co-efficient or some other “life style” index that combine income and life expectancy may correlate better but haven’t checked. The indigenous Australian population is an outlier here in Australia by the look of it, if they are generally poor, live in remote places far from health care, high diabetes rates, covid seems to effect them differently (worse) which makes me think it’s not a one size fits all problem.
Thanks for this Ivo. It's clear from your article the US is so different to here. Problems with obesity, drug dependence. Poorer people not being able to access health care. It's instructional to see how much higher their rate of death is on comparison graphs.
I understand the comment from Pete below on "tapping out" on excess mortality. It's such a wicked problem.
Another random thought I had while reading your article is that I wonder if the deficit in Australia in the lockdown years is also influenced by not going to doctors. You know there are studies that show when doctors go on strike mortality decreases (when nurses go on strike mortality increases).
I didn’t want to go into reasons why I think they’re different, I was just surprised at how different they are.
Yes. I was only just made aware of that paper regarding doctors strikes, there is at least one more I was made aware of earlier when I suggested it in jest in the comments section on another article and was pointed towards another paper that reached similar conclusions.
Related topic NBC News Report:
Nearly 1 in 4 patients who are admitted to hospitals in the U.S. will experience harm, according to a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
News Story
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/nearly-1-4-us-hospital-patients-experience-harmful-event-study-finds-rcna65119
NEJM Article on which story is based.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa2206117
Nice tool. Wonder why there is no description of the reference level.
I haven’t looked into it. I usually don’t read the manual until after I’ve played with a new toy. If they don’t have a description it’s probably just some standard statistical technique that “everyone” in the field using it already knows.
As a side note, that reminds me of a (I think bio-stats or biology paper), that basically just explains integration as some sort of new novel consept. Newton & Leibniz would be spinning in their graves if they knew.
Usually five years avarage is taken, since in our days mortality changes quckly. The problem here is, that in OECD we have entered fourth highly unusual year.
That's what's nice about the visualization tool, you can change the reference level yourself and see what it looks like. I used 5 years prior to covid because 5 years is what it's always been in Australia until the covid reporting started, now I think they cherry pick the reference years to minimize the excess deaths. If I included 2020 as a rolling reference, excess deaths in Australia would be higher, but I don't think that's a fair comparison.
Pfizer causes blood problems as well. TTP was even officially admitted on Israeli television and the same signal was picked up in Belgium.
I’m sure it was, I think the problem was they painted themselves into a corner once the world agreed vaccines were the only solution. It was O.K to admit one technology was a problem, there was always the other one. Once they found problems with the other one, there was no choice but to double down and ignore any problems, they were out of ideas.
I can even imagine Pfizer and Moderna making moves behind the scenes to make sure their competitors were removed from the market.
I think they simply couldn’t back track. Much like we think China was crazy for not back tracking on zero covid. The rest of the world couldn’t back track on vaccines.
My favorite name of all the substack titles I read is “The Naked Emperor.” I thought once more and more people pointed out the Emperor was naked this would all stop. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be happening, it appears the Emperor and his whole court are nudists, they have no modesty, so I don’t think this is going to end anytime soon.
Interesting that article is so recent. Made me think of Cardinal Pell's death this week. Complication following hip surgery. Presumably if he did not have that surgery he would be alive. He was old and may have died in the upcoming years. I suspect there is a component of this in the 2020 deficit of mortality. All the elective surgeries cancelled. And I suspect the risk of death from medical treatment is greater the older one gets.
That’s so true, my dad had his knee surgery delayed multiple times during covid, probably close to 2 years, because of his age the surgeon said there was a real chance of him dying from being anaesthetised. If you delay elective surgery in the old, they end up being even older when when it’s finaly done so even more at risk.
Side note;
I did a comparison between the the last two censuses, to see who “survived” because all the age bins move over one slot, the largest age bin % growth was 85+ it could be an artifact because it’s the overflow bin, but not what I expected. I expected less “survivors” as age went up, which is true up until the 85+ bin. Also, we must be “importing” working age people with families, people mostly commonly about 27 y.o. with kids.
"Western Australia may hold the answer, but they don’t have good data available (or at least any I can find)."
This is by design, friend.