Here is a copy of the English version of the @RSCTheAcademies report on excess all-cause mortality in Canada during the #COVID19 epidemic (francais au dessous).
Based on our estimates, Canada likely falls around the same position as Greece on the chart in this report.
We're not alone in underestimating COVID-19 deaths. We're not special. Just one of many countries that have experienced the same, including most of our high income peers.
This is what I don't get....why it's tough for some to accept that we're like most of our peers and aren't particularly exceptional wrt COVID-19. This should be the default assumption when presented with excess mortality data that correct our understanding of how we "performed".
If anything, the onus should be to "prove" that we did "perform" exceptionally and why we did, because this is the distant from the norm exception, and requires a more stringent examination to support the conclusion.
This is a classic Occam's razor example. The default assumption should be that, like most of our peer countries, Canada missed quite a few COVID-19 deaths.
We have an internal positive control in Qc, which did NOT miss many of these deaths, and appears to have performed among the best in the world in this regard.
But it doesn't appear that the rest of Canada wants to explore how we may have missed so many C19 deaths when QC didn't.
Outside Quebec, we like the narrative that we did much better than our cousin. Looking at excess mortality, yes, other provinces did, but not as much as we think. And by the end of the 2nd wave I would bet that multiple provinces will have passed Qc in per capita excess mortality
Of course, death reporting is so incredibly slow everywhere in Canada except Quebec that we won't even have a rough sense of what happened until fall, and this problem is enormous in BC, SK and MB, where we likely won't know until the end of 2021 what happened during the 2nd wave
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@WilsonKM2 you'll be glad to see some numbers for Atlantic/Northern Can have come down since last update--for regions with low numbers these numbers may tilt back and forth a bit. Numbers are increasing everywhere else. Still less than 95% of reporting completed after Dec 5.
By contrast, QC DOES report probable
C19 deaths in their reported numbers.
This goes at least some of the way toward explaining why excess deaths in ON and SK are greater than reported C19 deaths from March-Nov 14, 2020, and why this is not true in QC.
Thread on Canadian excess deaths during #COVID19, round 3.
Why do I keep posting about this?
Because I'm worried we've missed a lot of C19 deaths outside LTC and that we may see many more during the 3rd wave because of slow rollout of vaccination of older adults in community.
When did I start thinking about this?
Last year, after reading a paper from @LauraCRosella & colleagues about excess mortality during first wave in Ontario, estimated from cremation data (which is reported fast and includes place of death information).
Actually, it dates back further, to a @CIHI_ICIS report on #COVID19 deaths in congregate care in #Canada, which found that 80% of deaths in the first wave were in congregate care (long-term care, retirement homes), which in turn is twice the OECD average.