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canyonwalkerThe true death toll of Covid so far is far higher than official figures, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated in a report released today. While official reports count 5.5 million Covid deaths worldwide, a method of analysis called excess mortality estimates nearly 15 million more people died in 2020-2021 than in two normal years. Link: WHO publication, May 2022. Example news coverage: NY Times article, 5 May 2022; CNN article, 5 May 2022.
"Excess deaths" analysis looks at the number of deaths in a period compared to averages from beforehand. The approach catches differences between official figures and reality. Why might official figures be inaccurate? One big cause, particularly for developing and middle-income countries, is that there aren't medical and government resources to identify and track the cause of every death.
Another big cause is that countries outright lie about deaths, for political purposes. This is notoriously true for autocratic countries. Russia and China, for example, have boasted repeatedly about how well they supposedly controlled the spread of Covid compared to "corrupt", "ineffectual" democracies. Meanwhile they grossly undercounted cases and death to maintain credibility both domestically and on the international stage.
It's not only autocratic countries with state-run media that have misled. The greatest number of excess deaths occurred in India. An estimated 4.7 million excess deaths occurred there in 2020-2021. India's official Covid death toll from the period was 481,080. That's a staggering difference of nearly 10 to 1. India has resource challenges as a middle income country; but it also has political leadership that bragged about how well it was doing, to the point that it exported millions of vaccine doses it produced because they were "not needed" domestically.
The US came in close with its official figures. Officially 824,338 died of Covid in 2020-2021. The WHO's estimate is that there were 100,000 excess deaths beyond that. There may have been some political manipulation of the figure here. Recall that former President Trump notoriously opposed Covid testing because "They're just trying to increase my number." But in the US the agencies that report deaths are decentralized so it's harder for one leader to suppress such statistics.
An interesting aspect of excess mortality analysis is that it counts people who died— or avoided death— as an indirect cause of Covid. This is where differences like the ~12% in the US may arise. People who were turned away from hospital ICUs when they were overloaded with patients, and died when otherwise they would have been saved, count toward excess mortality. Interesting, excess mortality also counts the reduction in deaths from other causes Covid led to. For example, while we curtailed trips and travel in 2020, there were far fewer deaths due to traffic accidents. Those deaths averted reduce the excess mortality estimate.
"Excess deaths" analysis looks at the number of deaths in a period compared to averages from beforehand. The approach catches differences between official figures and reality. Why might official figures be inaccurate? One big cause, particularly for developing and middle-income countries, is that there aren't medical and government resources to identify and track the cause of every death.
Another big cause is that countries outright lie about deaths, for political purposes. This is notoriously true for autocratic countries. Russia and China, for example, have boasted repeatedly about how well they supposedly controlled the spread of Covid compared to "corrupt", "ineffectual" democracies. Meanwhile they grossly undercounted cases and death to maintain credibility both domestically and on the international stage.
It's not only autocratic countries with state-run media that have misled. The greatest number of excess deaths occurred in India. An estimated 4.7 million excess deaths occurred there in 2020-2021. India's official Covid death toll from the period was 481,080. That's a staggering difference of nearly 10 to 1. India has resource challenges as a middle income country; but it also has political leadership that bragged about how well it was doing, to the point that it exported millions of vaccine doses it produced because they were "not needed" domestically.
The US came in close with its official figures. Officially 824,338 died of Covid in 2020-2021. The WHO's estimate is that there were 100,000 excess deaths beyond that. There may have been some political manipulation of the figure here. Recall that former President Trump notoriously opposed Covid testing because "They're just trying to increase my number." But in the US the agencies that report deaths are decentralized so it's harder for one leader to suppress such statistics.
An interesting aspect of excess mortality analysis is that it counts people who died— or avoided death— as an indirect cause of Covid. This is where differences like the ~12% in the US may arise. People who were turned away from hospital ICUs when they were overloaded with patients, and died when otherwise they would have been saved, count toward excess mortality. Interesting, excess mortality also counts the reduction in deaths from other causes Covid led to. For example, while we curtailed trips and travel in 2020, there were far fewer deaths due to traffic accidents. Those deaths averted reduce the excess mortality estimate.
