John Burn-Murdoch Profile picture
Jun 23, 2020 12 tweets 5 min read Read on X
NEW: we’ve updated our excess mortality tracker, the best measure for international comparisons of Covid deaths

• US hit 122k a month ago, by far the highest worldwide
• UK 2nd on 66k
• Added Ecuador, world’s highest excess death *rate*

Free to read: ft.com/coronavirus-la… Image
Here are all countries’ excess deaths according to different metrics:
• Population-adjusted rate
• Raw numbers
• % of historical baseline

UK, Spain, Ecuador and Peru among the worst on most metrics. Image
Here’s our data for hardest hit cities & regions worldwide

Top row is all Latin America, which is now the undoubted global epicentre of the virus. Mortality has soared in the major cities of Ecuador, Brazil, Peru and Chile.

Also updated Moscow, where deaths are soaring. Image
Now showing 44 US states + DC. Will add more as data arrives.

Urban North East has seen bulk of US excess deaths, but most areas now showing elevated mortality.

Nationally, US hit at least 122k excess deaths by May 23, 30% higher than the 91k Covid deaths reported at the time. Image
Overall across the 24 countries where we have excess mortality data, we find 454,000 excess deaths during outbreaks.

This is 51% higher than the number of Covid deaths reported in these countries at the time.

You can freely access all our raw data here: github.com/Financial-Time…
UK has suffered one of worst outbreaks anywhere

Deaths have been:
• 52% higher than usual in England
• +41% in Scotland
• +34% in N. Ireland
• +34% in Wales

All 12 regions saw mortality at least 30% above normal

Bad outbreaks in many regions suggest action taken too late. Image
Here’s the same for Spanish regions.

Many parts of Spain had severe outbreaks. Three saw deaths more than double, and a total of 10/19 saw at least a 30% spike.

Nonetheless, the data suggest the worst of Spain’s outbreak was contained in fewer regions than the UK’s. Image
Here are Italian regions, now with fresh data

Lombardy hit v hard, and 5 other northern regions saw excess deaths of 50%+, but in most regions numbers were relatively muted, including Lazio (contains Rome).

5/20 regions saw no excess, and another 8 saw excess of less than 30%. Image
Finally here’s France, where Paris suffered badly, and the Grand Est region also faced a big outbreak, but although most other areas were affected none saw all-cause deaths increase by 30% or more.

For whatever reason, UK’s outbreak spread further than in peer countries. Image
We’re still looking for more all-cause deaths data, where India is now our top target, but any country is appreciated

Ideally daily, weekly or monthly data, for multiple years, and including 2020. Can be for one town or city, not just nationally

📦 ➡ coronavirus-data@ft.com 🙏
And a curious little footnote:

Russia usually publishes data on all deaths from natural causes with roughly a one month lag. Data for March were published on April 30, for example.

Almost two months later, there’s been no update. No deaths data for April or May... 🤔
Final note:

There are big time lags in death registration. Brazil & US probably the most affected here due to their size.

This means excess deaths for Brazil & US *for the period already shown* are likely to rise. We include historical revisions each time we update our charts.

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More from @jburnmurdoch

Mar 14
NEW 🧵: Is human intelligence starting to decline?

Recent results from major international tests show that the average person’s capacity to process information, use reasoning and solve novel problems has been falling since around the mid 2010s.

What should we make of this? Image
Nobody would argue that the fundamental biology of the human brain has changed in that time span. People’s underlying intellectual capacity is surely undimmed.

But there is growing evidence that the extent to which people can practically apply that capacity has been diminishing.
For such an important topic, there’s remarkably little long-term data on attention spans, focus etc.

But one source that has consistently tracked this is the Monitoring The Future survey, which finds a steep rise in the % of people struggling to concentrate or learn new things. Image
Read 15 tweets
Mar 7
NEW: The actions of Trump and Vance in recent weeks highlight something under-appreciated.

The American right is now ideologically closer to countries like Russia, Turkey and in some senses China, than to the rest of the west (even the conservative west). Image
In the 2000s, US Republicans thought about the world in similar ways to Britons, Europeans, Canadians.

This made for productive relationships regardless of who was in the White House.

The moderating layers around Trump #1 masked the divergence, but with Trump #2 it’s glaring. Image
In seven weeks Trump’s America has shattered decades-long western norms and blindsided other western leaders with abrupt policy changes.

This is because many of the values of Trump’s America are not the values of western liberal democracies.

My column: ft.com/content/304601…
Read 5 tweets
Feb 24
NEW: updated long-run gap in voting between young men and women in Germany:

The gender gap continues to widen, but contrary to what is often assumed, young men continue to vote roughly in line with the overall population, while young women have swung very sharply left. Image
Here’s my original analysis from last year: ft.com/content/29fd9b…
The key stats:

Young men’s AfD vote is somewhat higher than the national average (25% vs 21%), but their leftwing vote is also above average (15 vs 9).

Whereas young women’s AfD vote is significantly lower than average (14 vs 21), and leftwing vote far higher (34 vs 9).
Read 4 tweets
Nov 8, 2024
My wish for the next election is that poll trackers look like the one on the right 👉 not the left

This was yet another election where the polling showed it could easily go either way, but most of the charts just showed two nice clean lines, one leading and one trailing. Bad! Image
Pollsters and poll aggregators have gone to great lengths to emphasise the amount of uncertainty in the polls in recent weeks...

But have generally still put out charts and polling toplines that encourage people to ignore the uncertainty and focus on who’s one point ahead. Bad!
The thing about human psychology is, once you give people a nice clean number, it doesn’t matter how many times you say "but there’s an error margin of +/- x points, anything is possible".

People are going to anchor on that central number. We shouldn’t enable this behaviour!
Read 11 tweets
Nov 7, 2024
We’re going to hear lots of stories about which people, policies and rhetoric are to blame for the Democrats’ defeat.

Some of those stories may even be true!

But an underrated factor is that 2024 was an absolutely horrendous year for incumbents around the world 👇 Image
Harris lost votes, Sunak lost votes, Macron lost votes, Modi (!) lost votes, as did the Japanese, Belgian, Croatian, Bulgarian and Lithuanian governments in elections this year.

Any explanation that fails to take account for this is incomplete.

More here ft.com/content/e8ac09…
Did Biden hold on too long?

Has progressive politics alienated some Hispanic and Black men?

Yes and yes, but taking action to address those issues probably wouldn’t have produced a fundamentally different outcome.
Read 7 tweets
Oct 18, 2024
The recent political polarisation of Silicon Valley is really striking.

25 years ago most big tech and VC execs were moderates. Then the whole sector shifted gradually leftwards up until 2020, and now suddenly we have a sharp divide into Democrat-backers and Trump backers. Image
Chart is from my column this week exploring how the politics of corporate bosses have evolved over time ft.com/content/29426c…
Thanks to a brilliant new analysis from @reillysteel, we know the overall shift has been towards the left, but there are lots of other interesting things going on beneath the surface too Image
Read 7 tweets

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