EXCESS MORTALITY IN ITALY (NO SIGN OF NATURAL IMMUNITY BEING CLOSE)

There doesn't seem to be any major trend emerging from analyzing 2021 excess deaths against 2020 ones.

No clear sign of herd immunity nor harvest effect.
These are the hardest-hit provinces.

The two hardest-hit ones have excess mortality back to baseline, but most other ones still have excess mortality.

Why don't I consider Bergamo province as an example of herd/natural immunity?

(answer next tweet)
Here is the scatterplot of all towns in Bergamo province (I excluded tiny ones with <10 yearly deaths during baseline years)

No clear trend
Here are the hardest-hit cities in Bergamo province. Again, I only see noise, no clear herd immunity trend.

For example, Pradalunga and Montello had 150% excess deaths in 2020 AND 30-34% excess deaths in 2021.
These are the provinces with *negative* excess mortality in 2020 (a clue that perhaps lockdowns save more people than they kill).

Again, no clear trend (my hypothesis: lack of natural immunity is offset by lower virus circulation)
The data is public from ISTAT website istat.it/it/archivio/24…; for the moment it only considers Jan-Oct 2021, so for all computations above I only considered Jan-Oct (across baseline, 2020, and 2021).

You're encouraged to play with it and see if you reach different conclusions.
To summarize:
- no sign of herd immunity being close yet
- no sign of lockdowns killing more people than they save
- herd immunity / natural immunity peddlers should explain Italian data or seriously second-guess their conclusions

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More from @DellAnnaLuca

10 Jan
The first chapter of the second edition of my book, “Ergodicity”

1/10 Image
2/10 Image
3/10 Image
Read 10 tweets
8 Jan
EXCESS MORTALITY IN ITALY, 2021 vs 2020

These are the top towns by 2020 excess mortality vs baseline

What happened in 2020 doesn't seem to have affected what happened in 2021 (what herd immunity? what harvest effect?)
Below, the chart for all Italian towns of significant size.
Again, no significant relationship between excess deaths in 2020 and 2021. (In the thread, I only consider towns whose baseline yearly deaths are >100/y)
Also, note that for 16% of Italian towns, excess mortality in 2020 and 2021 have both been lower than baseline (the bottom-left quadrant).

Possibly a sign that lockdowns don't cause excess deaths, the virus does?
Read 4 tweets
3 Jan
Any herd immunity supporter who can explain why the hardest-hit Italian regions during the first wave still have more cases today *and* higher test positivity rates?
My hypothesis is that we’re still very far from herd immunity thresholds, and the further we are, the more “virus infrastructure” matters over natural immunity

(virus infrastructure = the demographic, cultural, infrastructure, connectivity factors that facilitate spread)
This matters because, if the hypothesis above is correct, the hardest-hit regions will be still hit hard for a long time, much longer than herd immunity supporters tell us.

Losing competitiveness (uptime, business desirability, fiscal solidity) compared to lighter-hit countries
Read 5 tweets
3 Jan
THREAD: VIRUS RISK FACTORS

Scenario: yesterday, I got a coffee with one of my best friends.

Here are some of the factors that influenced our risk of catching COVID.

1/N
2/ We decided to go to a small coffee shop, with 6 people inside.

We could have gone to Starbucks (60 clients), but by going to a coffee with 1/10th of the people, we cut our risk in 10, all other things equal.
2B/ (Actually, a bit less, because some of the clients in the Starbucks would have been too far away to infect us with the same likelihood of those around us. So, let's downgrade the risk reduction from 1/10 to 1/5.)
Read 19 tweets
2 Jan
My book "100 Truths You Will Learn Too Late" is currently on a -37% off promotion. The idea is that you buy the book this week and read a chapter a day for the first 3.5 months of 2022.

Below, excerpts of the first few pages (I'll post more tomorrow)

gum.co/100Truths
Read 7 tweets
28 Dec 21
COVID incidence in Italy maps over incidence two years ago.

Suggesting that:
- herd immunity is still very, very far
- infrastructure* drives outcomes much more than we give it credit

(*demographics, how and where they live, connections, etc.)
This map alone suggests that Sweden having had it relatively easy can in no way be interpreted as “if a country with high incidence had done the same, it wouldn’t have had worse results”

If a country with high virus infrastructure & incidence hadn’t had restrictions, catastrophe
Very important: countries that had been hit lightly have everything to gain competitively to drop all measures compared to countries who got hit hard.

If you’re from the US, UK, South- or Eastern Europe, or any other high-mortality country, don’t be fooled.
Read 4 tweets

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