This chart shows Sweden's mortality rate & excess deaths since 1900

While COVID-19 *seems* to be a small bump in mortality, 2020 has the most excess deaths of any year since the 1918 influenza pandemic

These ~4700 excess deaths are supported by SCB:

1/n
The line representing average expected mortality on the chart is a LOWESS regression

Normally demographers use more sophisticated statistical algorithm (eg. Farrington) to do so. LOWESS is kind of a sloppy technique, but it works well enough

2/n
For more accurate results, I didn't include 2020 data in the LOWESS regression. Instead I cut off the smoothing at 2019, and assume that without COVID-19 the expected mortality would have continued its generally improving trend of the last decades through 2020

3/n
Excess deaths/deaths deficit (bottom, in blue) are the difference between the expected and observed mortality (top, in red) multiplied by the population of that year.

4/n
My analysis is similar to the one by @VoidSurf1 () with one notable difference: I analyze 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 mortality (01 Jan to 31 Dec) not 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗹𝘆

This better reflects the true impact of COVID-19

5/n
Indeed some flu seasons might have 1-2 months with high mortality, appearing as high peaks on @VoidSurf1's chart

But through the whole year, COVID-19 causes far more deaths than a bad flu season, because excess deaths are spread out through at least 3 months (March-June)

6/n
And the year isn't done. You might have seen my forecast of Sweden surpassing 100 deaths/day before Christmas, hence surpassing the first wave:

This will cause more excess deaths in November & December

I estimate 6-9k excess deaths by year's end

7/n
Currently, correcting for reporting delays, Sweden is well on its way to 100 deaths/day:



8/n
It's also worth pointing out that COVID-19 causing the most excess deaths in a year since the 1918 influenza pandemic is doubly more impressive, when one realizes that <10% of Swedes were infected by November

[only ~6% were infected by June: ]

9/n
In theory, 5x more infected (<50% of Swedes) would thus lead to 5x more excess deaths, or about 25k, which would be on par with the 1918 pandemic

10/n
Some asked me about excess mortality rate per 1000 per year (as opposed to absolute no. of excess deaths)

The 8 worst years since 1919 are:

1918 4.808
1919 1.360
1931 0.690
1937 0.604
1927 0.584
1988 0.477
1936 0.459
2020 0.450 [COVID-19]

2020 will be >0.5 by year's end

11/n
So even normalized by population, 2020 will end up as the year with the worst excess mortality rate per capita per year since 1937.

12/n

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Beͫvͣaͬnͨd

Beͫvͣaͬnͨd Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @zorinaq

25 Nov
Things that happened in Sweden in last 2 months:

• family isolation
• ban public events of more than 8
• cinemas/museums/gyms closed
• nightlife curbed (alcohol ban)
• Tegnell: yes to face masks
• nursing home visit ban
• + many restrictions

Sources: see links below

1/n
Family isolation: household contacts of infected persons not allowed to go to work (since 01 Oct) folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-pr…

2/n
Ban on public events lowered to 8 people since Nov 24 dn.se/sverige/allman…

3/n
Read 9 tweets
18 Nov
I dusted off my COVID-19 model (that predicted the Florida July wave) & applied it to Sweden

After today's data update from the Swedish Public Health Agency (FHM) I confidently forecast Sweden will surpass the peak of 100 COVID deaths/day they had in April

Hard to believe?

1/n Image
Specifically: by 25 December we will see Sweden has recorded 100 deaths/day around 11 December

(due to reporting delays, it takes up to 2 weeks past a given date to have a complete count of deaths on this date: )

2/n
My model is formally described in outbreak.flashpub.io/pub/method-of-…

It predicts deaths from cases alone, but let me explain in layman's terms how it works...

3/n
Read 17 tweets
16 Nov
Covid lockdowns appear to reduce suicide rates

Suicide rates decreased during the lockdown in Victoria, Australia (paradoxically despite self-reported levels of depression increasing??)

Suicides (and other deaths) have also decreased in Peru:
Victoria chart is from @sometimes_data — thanks!

Who else has data for other countries?
Suicide rates have also decreased in Massachusetts during lockdowns:

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

h/t @binaryanalogue
Read 5 tweets
25 Oct
͏@VoidSurf1 wrote a cool thread on Sweden excess deaths over the last few centuries. At first sight, his analysis seems correct... But there is a fatal flaw.

1/n
Despite the mortality data for 2020 being preliminary, he took great precautions to make it as accurate as possible. Good👍

Note how it is apparent that the month of April alone had 2000 excess deaths.

3/n
Read 8 tweets
24 Oct
COVID deaths & hospitalizations always lag cases. The lag has been demonstrated, is often 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 than a month, and its timing can be predicted accurately (I have done it.) The #casedemic folks are just, well, wrong.

A thread explaining the lag with real-world examples.

1/n Image
I will show what causes the lag, and how I can predict it accurately. First, there are multiple causes behind it:

#1 clinical
#2 reporting
#3 age prevalence

I will explain these causes one by one

2/n
Lag #1 is the most obvious: clinically the mean infection-to-death time is 22.9 days (see pg 4: static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1…)

So at minimum deaths will lag cases by a little over 3 weeks

Similarly, infection-to-hospitalization is 1-2 weeks

3/n Image
Read 31 tweets
27 Sep
Excited to share this new COVID modeling script:

It applies various age-stratified IFR estimates to calculate the expected overall IFR in a given country. It's based on demographics (countries population pyramids): github.com/mbevand/covid1…

Many interesting findings—read on

1/n
First off, I use five different sources estimating the age-stratified Infection Fatality Ratio of COVID-19:

1. ENE-COVID
2. US CDC
3. Verity et al.
4. Levin et al.
5. Gudbjartsson et al.

If you know of more sources, let me know and I'll add them to my script

2/n
So, what do we find?

The overall IFR estimates, with the exception of Levin et al., are relatively consistent with each other, usually within 30-40%. Levin et al. is up to 2-fold higher than the others, depending on the country.

3/n
Read 9 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!