CATCHING UP WITH DEATHS

In Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, and a few more countries, fewer people died during the pandemic than during the average year.

If / once they re-open borders, will deaths “catch up”? Did they only delay the inevitable?

thread 1/7
First of all, green zones' populations are more vaccinated than Europe was in 2020-2021 and omicron is milder than Delta. This means that, even if the green areas got invaded by the virus in 2022 (say), there would be fewer excess deaths than recorded in Europe in 20-21.

2/7
Secondly, a major driver of excess mortality is the overwhelming of the healthcare system.

Green zones can modulate their reopening to travelers from abroad, thus having access to a flatter curve than Europe had in 20-21.

3/7
(The above is justified because infected abroad traveler are "seed cases" – and it would be possible for green areas to modulate borders and other restrictions to have fewer seed cases in 2022 than Europe had in 2021 (say))

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Finally, we've seen in Italy that the hardest-hit regions in the first wave are still the hardest-hit areas in winter 2022. It seems that "virus infrastructure" (geo-socio-demographic factors that help spread) matters more than herd immunity.

5/7
If the above is correct, green areas are more likely to have lower "virus infrastructure" and thus to be relatively spared by eventual future waves.

6/7
Did I miss anything?

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More from @DellAnnaLuca

Jan 12
Excess deaths in the age group 0-14 yo exceed the normal range for the first time since the start of the pandemic (Euromomo data). Image
It's currently at the level of winter 2019 (flu), but the "currently" refers to the latest week of full data, and that is week 48 of 2021, and it's known that child hospitalizations grew up fast in the last days of 2021. Image
.@MillunchickZ prompted me to verify an eventual link with children vaccination

These are the countries in descending order of excess children deaths. 🇨🇭 🇦🇹 (low child vaccination, high November cases) scores low; 🇪🇸 🇵🇹 🇮🇱 (high child vacc, low Nov cases) score high

1/2 Image
Read 4 tweets
Jan 10
The first chapter of the second edition of my book, “Ergodicity”

1/10
2/10
3/10
Read 10 tweets
Jan 9
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
Read 7 tweets
Jan 8
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
Jan 3
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
Jan 3
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

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