Get ready for a concept you might not have ever expected to hear about — it’s called “excess deaths,” and new numbers in that particular calculation are coming to Canada in the next few days.
The numbers are a starting point for finding out the true impact of COVID-19 in this country, and, if the statistics are similar to those found for other countries, they could be sobering.
The concept is straightforward enough: you look at the number of people who die during a specific period and compare it to the same period in years past. In this case, Statistics Canada plans to compare death rates in the first three months of 2020 to the same period in 2019. If there’s a marked increase, then that’s the number of excess deaths.
The problem is, with a situation like COVID-19, the count of the impact of the virus only measures those who have died after testing positive. That means the number of deaths — more than 4,500 Canadians so far — is likely understated.
Other people may have died as a result of the pandemic without officially testing positive, and even more tangentially, some may have died after not going to the hospital for treatment of a serious condition because they were afraid of the possibility of catching the virus.
The problem is, with a situation like COVID-19, the count of the impact of the virus only measures those who have died after testing positive. That means the number of deaths — more than 4,500 Canadians so far — is likely understated.
The number of excess deaths can be staggering. You can look at the bizarrely shorthanded Euro-MOMO, or European mortality monitor, and see that 24 European countries combined are showing excess mortalities of 149,447 over the last eight weeks — a huge spike over the number that shows up in a regular year.
In New York City, a New York Times analysis of data from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the number of deaths is six times the normal number — 23,000 excess deaths between March 15th and May 2nd, which is some 20,900 more than would be expected in a normal year. At that point, only 16,693 of those deaths had been directly connected to COVID-19.
The Times examined excess death rates in 20 countries that suggested as many as 64,000 deaths may have been connected to the virus but not reported that way. In the United Kingdom there were 44,400 excess deaths, 65 per cent higher than normal, but only 29,907 that were counted as being caused by COVID-19 — meaning 14,500 more deaths than usual during the same period (which was between March 14 and April 24). Do the same math in Italy and there were 10,900 unexpected deaths in March alone.
The brutal truth is that we won’t begin to know the actual breadth of this pandemic until after it is over, and probably not even then.
But in the dry land of statistics, it’s already abundantly clear that this year is not like any other in recent history, and one particular virus is to blame.
Batten down the hatches.
