Florin’s right that the 15-64 age group doesn’t pain a clean picture of the actual numbers since it combines very different excess death rates, but even the 25-44 group experienced a serious increase. Rather than Katja being “wrong,” they are very much right.
”For the next 2 years, you will have a 25% higher risk of death than usual” is not a high absolute risk of death, but that shift from baseline is not just “not entirely insignificant” either.
I think we mostly agree, although I still think using the OWID chart is wrong or at least very misleading.
While the 25% is okay in aggregate, there does seem to be a 60% peak in mortality in 2021 at week 35 for the 25-44 group. So, I was wrong about that. However, the 45-64 group has only a 37% peak in mortality in 2021 at week 36, and using the raw data, I calculated (just averaged and didn’t do any fancy weighting) that there was only a 18% increase in excess death overall.
But that’s not the end of the story.
2020-2021, 25-44: 757,645 (single year average) 2015-2019, 25-44: 542,284 (single year average) Difference: 215,361 (2x what eyeballing the chart suggests, but whatever), 28% increase in excess deaths
2020-2021, 45-64: 2,632,764 (single year average) 2015-2019, 45-64: 2,162,344 (single year average) Difference: 470,420, 18% increase in excess deaths
Each age group makes up about 26% of the US population, but the 45-64 group has more than double the risk of death, even though it has a lower increase (relative to pre-2020 years) in excess deaths. So, the focus on the relative (what the OWID chart is about) rather than the absolute increase in death is misleading.
The IFR data (mentioned in another comment) also seems to suggest this.
Florin’s right that the 15-64 age group doesn’t pain a clean picture of the actual numbers since it combines very different excess death rates, but even the 25-44 group experienced a serious increase. Rather than Katja being “wrong,” they are very much right.
”For the next 2 years, you will have a 25% higher risk of death than usual” is not a high absolute risk of death, but that shift from baseline is not just “not entirely insignificant” either.
I think we mostly agree, although I still think using the OWID chart is wrong or at least very misleading.
While the 25% is okay in aggregate, there does seem to be a 60% peak in mortality in 2021 at week 35 for the 25-44 group. So, I was wrong about that. However, the 45-64 group has only a 37% peak in mortality in 2021 at week 36, and using the raw data, I calculated (just averaged and didn’t do any fancy weighting) that there was only a 18% increase in excess death overall.
But that’s not the end of the story.
2020-2021, 25-44: 757,645 (single year average)
2015-2019, 25-44: 542,284 (single year average)
Difference: 215,361 (2x what eyeballing the chart suggests, but whatever), 28% increase in excess deaths
2020-2021, 45-64: 2,632,764 (single year average)
2015-2019, 45-64: 2,162,344 (single year average)
Difference: 470,420, 18% increase in excess deaths
Each age group makes up about 26% of the US population, but the 45-64 group has more than double the risk of death, even though it has a lower increase (relative to pre-2020 years) in excess deaths. So, the focus on the relative (what the OWID chart is about) rather than the absolute increase in death is misleading.
The IFR data (mentioned in another comment) also seems to suggest this.