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Comment by gojomo

Somewhat deceptive submission title ("No Excess Deaths in Sweden Compared to the Last the Years") and presentation, which might lead the inattentive to think 2020 is on a pace for fewer total deaths in Sweden than all or most previous years.

Chart declares itself to be data "as of November 6". That's the 311th day of our 365-day leap-year 2020. Thus naively scaling the 77,300 number to the full year would predict ((365/311) * 77300 =) 90,721 deaths in 2020. That's higher than 5 of the shown previous 10 years.

But also, the deaths as of November 6 may not be a complete total: often such data series continue to be updated (increased) for a few weeks after the calendar date.

And further: looking at US figures for 2017, November tends to have about an average number of daily deaths, but December is one of the deadliest months, with about 15% more deaths-per-day than is typical in the lowest-deaths Summer months of June-July-August.

So even my extrapolation to 90,721 is likely to be a floor on the true end-of year number, if lagged reporting or a typical December death acceleration means these November 6 numbers aren't an accurate sample for the full year. (And that's not even counting the Covid-19 case surge happening now in Sweden as with most of Europe.)

Everyone trying to draw final conclusions from Sweden is making a call too soon based on incomplete data. We probably won't truly understand whether Sweden is on-net a Covid-19 success or disaster until retrospective analyses balancing all factors in late 2022 or 2023.

parent gojomo 6 years ago

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