Unprecedented? Overall Mortality in Sweden and other European Countries
Zack F
Jul 22·2 min read
Overall mortality is the best number we have to compare COVID19 to prior flu seasons. Overall mortality means counting the number of deaths certificates, regardless of any test result or interpretation by physicians or health authorities.
Germany
Let´s start with Germany
In January 2018, more people in Germany died than in March/April 2020. In 2018, Germany had its worst flu season of the last 30 years. Nobody was interested in this, media coverage was low. No lockdown — flu disappeared on its own.
Sweden
Now we continue with Sweden. What happens, when a country does not impose a lockdown?
Obviously, COVID19 overall mortality is in the range of a severe flu season. It remains arguable, whether it is identical to the flu season of 2005 and 2003, where the spikes are the same, or if we have to look back to 1995 or 1993 to correct for the declining average in mortality. The message keeps the same: there have been worse months in Sweden, and absolutely nobody was interested in. To look at these flu seasons in detail, we can have a look at the deaths per weeks:
France & Belgium
How about countries that were in the epicenter of the pandemic? Like France or Belgium? Well, even there, spikes are comparable to prior years. Again — nobody was really interested in these events
Mortality of COVID19 is high, but it is not unprecedented. For more charts about COIVD have a look at my twitter timeline.
https://twitter.com/FrankfurtZack