European mortality monitoring shows increase in excess mortality - <AUTHOR> https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ <comment><USER2> When comparing figures between previous years and 2020 one has to keep in mind that the current excess mortality is despite people adopting unprecedented behaviours like strict social distancing, regular hands cleaning etc.

That put things into perspective.

<comment><USER3> Some excess mortality might even be caused by such measures. I feel like I would have a much higher threshold before looking for (Covid-unrelated) medical help. Suicides should be on the uptick. Other things like accidents should go down.

I'm not saying the measures and restrictions aren't necessary, just that there are some costs associated. Those deaths aren't really "Covid-19" fatalities even though they are indirectly caused by the pandemic.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand there are much fewer traffic accidents, much less pollution and people aren't going to bars and getting into fights. So I'm not sure if the net effect of the lockdown on mortality is actually expected to be positive or negative.

<comment><USER5> > So I'm not sure if the net effect of the lockdown on mortality is actually > expected to be positive or negative.

Wouldn't this kind of graphs precisely answer the question, since deaths are not just related to COVID19 only?

<comment> jon-v The main effect we expect to see on excess mortality is not from the lockdown, but from the overloading of the health care systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those interested, there's a breakdown by sub-region by French National Institute of Statistics:

[https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/4470857](https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/4470857)

Needless to say, it matches closely the COVID-19 clusters. Kudos to this institution used to release yearly studies for the quick turnaround. (and all the data is available to download).

<comment><USER6> Also of note for HN readers: in "Bouches-du-Rhone", a high-density population area, a ransomware attack has rendered the local cities unable to send the statistics for the second part of March, which they sent manually. I'm not sure how resolved this is, but it shows (yet again) how cyberattacks can have real-life impact (and this isn't a hospital…)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> These kind of graphs, while useful, still miss a point. My experience in Spain is that there are a some hotspots like Madrid where hospitals and morgues are collapsed but other cities/villages, which have the same lockdown didn't have so many infected people per capita, so they will actually have probably the same or less mortality rates. The country on itself looks bad, but in the hotspots is terrible

<comment><USER8> But these graphs don't tell a story of collapse. Or perhaps they do but no worse than Spain normally experiences? Spanish excess mortality has peaked already at only slightly above what it peaked at in 2017.

Remember that everything we think we know about collapsed hotspots comes via the media. For every anecdote there are other anecdotes telling the opposite.

The new EuroMOMO site is really much, much better than before (kudos to whoever did that upgrade if you're reading this!). Usefully it now shows cumulative deaths. Compared to 2018 _we still have had fewer deaths so far this year even with COVID included_. That's staggering. It'll probably change soon given the slope of the graph, but that's really worth thinking about. So far _fewer_ people have died than normal in 2020 than by this time in 2018.

<comment><USER7> That's what I'm saying. These graphs are too broad for a country because the numbers change a lot between cities. I'm expecting that some cities even report less deaths because of the lockdown (less risky activities, less traffic accidents, less labour accidents,...). So even if the numbers look similar to the ones of previous years, it is not distributed as other years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unrelated, but this new website is way better than the old one which was online just weeks ago ([https://web.archive.org/web/20200323070430/https://www.eurom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200323070430/https://www.euromomo.eu/)).

Graphs are client-side rendered now ! And we can have the raw data too ! Great :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Could someone help me understand the all ages excess mortality graph? Naively it looks like

a) there were way more deaths in 2018 and 2019 than were expected, and

b) despite Covid-19, the excess mortality still hasn't caught up with 2018 levels

What am I missing here?

<comment><USER11> IANAE but ... all three years show the pattern of what I presume is the flu season (broadly speaking), causing deaths (mostly in the elderly), and differing in severity/rate between the three years.

2020 is different because there is a clear step-change in death rate after week 11, and the implication/fact is that that is COVID-19.

The conclusion is that those deaths are excess deaths on top of those that we would have had as a consequence of the 2020 flu season.

<comment><USER12> > clear step-change in death rate after week 11, and the implication/fact is > that that is COVID-19

How does that compare with 2018 excess death graph, clearly some other novel virus would have caused that, it broke all previous highs quickly.

<comment><USER11> In 2018 excess deaths increased at a roughly consistent rate of around 7,500/week to 113,302 excess deaths in week 15 and then stopped.

In 2019 excess deaths increased at a roughly consistent rate of around 5,100/week to 56,806 excess deaths in week 11 and then stopped.

In 2020 excess deaths increased at a roughly consistent rate of around 2,500/week to 27,552 excess deaths in week 11 and then started increasing at a rate of around 15,600/week to 105,564 in week 16.

Again IANAE, but different flu strains have different mortality rates, but broadly similar behaviour in that they mostly go away after winter. The step change (caused by COVID-19) is the difference, and the new excess death rate is much higher than the 2018 rate.

<comment><USER11> Posting separately so as not to distract from the point about the data: I'm sorry (for myself) to be driven to being snarky/whatever, but I don't get why this isn't completely plain from that excess deaths chart. I don't get why people are trying so hard to insist that there isn't an issue. Really, wtf?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know what was going on in 2017 (winter 2016/2017) that caused the spike in excess mortality?

<comment><USER14> Flu most likely?

[https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/summary- infl...](https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/summary- influenza-2016-2017-season-europe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it's important to note that while the cumulative excess mortality is indeed increasing (it could hardly do otherwise since it's defined as a monotonically non-decreasing function) the weekly excess mortality count sharply decreased in the most recent week (week 16).

That said the decline is so large from the previous week (9289 vs 20975) that I suspect there may be some error in the graph or the data.

EDIT: My claim that cumulative excess mortality is defined to be monotonically non-decreasing is not correct, as the below comment points out.

<comment><USER16> as I reported else thread, I have been following these reports for a few weeks now, and there is often a sharp drop at the end which goes away on the next report. I think it is an artifact of their modelling for delayed registration that forces a regression to the mean.

<comment><USER15> Thanks, I suspected it was some sort of artifact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Numbers do not look that bad yet, but the trajectory is steeper. Is that sharp drop real or just lag?

<comment><USER16> I have been following these reports for the last few weeks. There is often a sharp drop in the end, but it goes away the next week. I believe it is just an artefact of the modelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Swedish "Very high excess" is a bit surprising.

\--

Extremely high excess: UK, France, Spain, Italy

Very high excess: Sweden

High excess: Switzerland

Moderate excess: Portugal

Low excess: Denmark

<comment><USER19> These analysis are based on data provided by the countries. While they all may provide mortality as a number at some point, some may not already do so in the interval needed to draw accurate comparisons over the last two months. For example: I find the difference between England/Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland to be strange. I'd expect these to be closer together.

<comment><USER20> Why would you expect them to be closer? The respective government responses were very different - the UK initially decided to to pursue a "herd immunity" strategy - i.e. do nothing to stop the spread of the virus. In contrast, the Irish government locked down early and hard - the UK lock down occurred later (once the significance of the threat became more obvious) and even then introduced lock-down measures more gradually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 15-64 is a pretty wide age group covering everything from kids to senior citizens. I wonder why they havent divided it further into at least adolescent/adult and possibly +50

</comment><comment><USER22> A general question: Can someone explain to me, why the integral of the z-score chart is not zero but positive?

Is the sum of the standard deviations not zero?

</comment><comment><USER23> Am I correct to assume from this data that the current flu season (Early onset) is not more severe than previous years?

<comment><USER24> According to data, the last previous two flu seasons in Europe have been rather mild.

<comment><USER23> I wonder how the current data compares to severe flu seasons and what the deviation is?

<comment><USER25> spoiler: the deviation is insignificant

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Czechia is missing

</comment><comment><USER27> I, Robot: stay in your homes, it is for your own protection.

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone know why data only goes back to 2016. This organization was started in 2008, did it really take them 8 years to be able to start collecting data?

<comment><USER29> A common reason for this is some bureaucratic change in the collection procedure that breaks comparability with older data.

Another reason could be that it indeed took 8 years to get 26 countries to agree on, and implement correctly, common enough data reporting standards before the final analysis could be performed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sad post: a lot of work, a lot of nice data, zero explanation of what it means.

<comment><USER27> Agreed. Newsflash: put people in cotton wool boxes they'll experience fewer accidents, but might suffer some other issues. Imagine that, more variables outside than inside.</comment></comment>


"Cat Video" DDoS. Alexa Top 50 website turns video viewers into DDoS Zombies - <AUTHOR> http://www.incapsula.com/blog/world-largest-site-xss-ddos-zombies.html

<comment><USER2> So, how many video sites are there on top 50?</comment>


Github Down (again) - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/09/11/github-goes-down-second-time-two-days/

<comment><USER2> First update says it's starting to come back. Excellent.</comment>