Many commentators, not to mention Government spokesmen, are still relying on ‘COVID-19 deaths per million people’ as a measure of the disease’s lethality. However, we know that excess mortality – the number of deaths in excess of what you’d expect based on previous years – provides a more accurate gauge of the pandemic’s death toll.
Unlike ‘COVID-19 deaths per million people’, this measure does not vary with factors like testing infrastructure or the criteria for assigning cause of death. (Though the best measure to use is age-adjusted excess mortality.)
In the U.K. and some other countries, excess deaths ran much higher than official COVID-19 deaths in the first wave, due to a lack of testing. However, since the start of this year, they’ve have been running much lower than official COVID-19 deaths in Western Europe. As I noted in a previous post, Ariel Kalinsky and Dmitry Kobak have collected all the available data on excess mortality in one place. (Note: they use a linear trend over the last five years as the baseline, rather than a simple average, which yields more accurate estimates of excess deaths.)
The latest version of their study includes a chart showing excess deaths and official COVID-19 deaths over time in sixteen different countries:
In Peru, Mexico and South Africa, excess deaths have been running substantially higher than official COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic. By contrast, in all but four of the European countries, excess deaths closely matched official COVID-19 deaths up the end of 2020.
Read More: Excess Deaths Have Been Running Much Lower Than Official COVID-19 Deaths in Europe
