"Your statistical gymnastics knows no bounds."
Can you show were I have erred in my calculations, or have referenced data that is flawed?
"6,000 deaths is better than 300 deaths, well, who would've thunk that.
I'm old school where 6,000 deaths is worse than 300 deaths."
Well, for starters, comparing 6,000 deaths with 300 deaths is to compare apples with oranges.
It's 6,000 deaths in total vs 300 excess deaths per million head of population.
That you conflate the two figures is a reflection of your limited working knowledge of the subject matter.
PS. The notion of "excess deaths" is not some kind of a esoteric construct that I came up with: it is the stock standard metric that statisticians, epidemiologists and actuaries use as a measure of a virus's true impact.
And the reason that "excess deaths" is used instead of mere total deaths is best demonstrated in the following tow hypothetical scenarios in a population of 10 million people which has a natural death rate of 50,000 pa:
Scenario A:
Virus A causes 5,000 deaths, and by its particular nature it impacts all parts of the population.
So deaths in pandemic year = 5,000 + 50,000 = 55,000
Scenario B:
Virus B causes 10,000 deaths, but it impacts people who are older than average life expectancy age, 90% of which would have died from other causes anyway, based on statistics.
So deaths in pandemic year = 10,000 + 50,000 - 90% of 10,000 = 51,000
According to your "old school" you'd be thinking that Virus B, the one that causes 10,000 deaths, is the one which requires the most serious response.
Yet that is the one that caused the least excess death.
.
"Anyway, the question I asked was:- So without restrictions, what is your best estimate of what number of deaths we would be looking at at this point?"
That you ask about "number of deaths" - for a virus which mainly kills people who are older than average life expectancy - instead of excess deaths, tells me you don't really have a grasp of the continuum calculus involved.
No matter: I'll still answer.
But I'll pose the the relevant question on your behalf, namely, "Without restrictions, what is my best estimate of the number of excess deaths we would be looking at?"
It's not an easy one to answer: the best we can do is to draw on precedent and benchmark against what the excess deaths are for a country that did not have restrictions. Obviously Sweden becomes the default comparator (principally because it is the poster child globally for limited restrictions, plus it is one of the few countries that provides updated data from which excess death figures can be calculated).
Ergo: Using Sweden's 320 excess deaths per million head of population, and applying it to Australia's 25m population gives an indicative excess death rate of around 780, say 800 for neat maths.
PS. Before you go once again comparing dissimilar numbers with one another, that 780 (or 800) excess death figure is in no way directly comparable with the current total death number in Australia of 854 (at the time of writing).
As it happens, Australia is currently sitting on a negative excess death figure for 2020 (i.e., YTD, Australia is running at fewer deaths compared to an average year). What this means, of course, is that we are deferring deaths by a short period, meaning there will be a point in coming months during which the number of deaths will flip from negative, to exceeding typical average levels.
.
Expand
