- 26 Sep 2015
- 1,959
- 2,047
- 279
It strikes me how quickly we've become used to this. According to Thomas's table, about 2000 people died from Covid in Japan last week, and it's become accepted as part of the background news. On a rather morbid note, the current estimate for the number of excess deaths for Japan is about 135,000. Note that the figure was negative for much of 2020 because elderly people weren't going out much, greatly reducing their chances of getting influenza, etc. Excess deaths is a more useful statistic than the raw number of deaths for measuring the impact of Covid because it takes into account 1) the fact that many of the people who died of Covid probably had low life expectancy because of their age and 2) the effect of Covid on the health system because of delayed operations, reduced quality of healthcare, etc., because of resources diverted to treating Covid patients.
Estimated cumulative excess deaths during COVID
Estimated cumulative excess deaths during COVID
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