Deaths per million of the elderly as the best, unused criterion
April 18, 2020
Good coronavirus stats are hard to find. As a measure of societal impact, deaths per million people is probably the best, at least somewhat closer to reality than diagnosed cases per million. It does have the problem of people dying undiagnosed and of different areas using different methodologies for counting a death. I expect retrospectives in the future will just use what's often done during epidemics, comparing the year-on-year death rate before and during the epidemic. For now, deaths per million with somewhat varying methodologies is the best for overall impact - but not for measuring how well the country has handled the disease.
The overall impact depends on demographics, which is beyond immediate control of society. If you want to consider how good a job they've done given their demographics, then you need to adjust. Elderly people age 65+ are 15% of the US population and 23% of Italy's population. I've been arguing that deaths per million of the elderly are the best way to compare countries' effectiveness of their interventions, but you can't find that stat anywhere.
So here's my tentative effort. In the US, about 80% of the deaths are from people age 65+. In Italy, about 85% of fatalities were 70+. I couldn't find the figures that included those age 65-69. Current total deaths in the US and Italy are 37,000 and 22,700 respectively, and populations are 320 million and 60 million.
Math time: 48 million elderly in the US, 14 million in Italy. So that's 30 thousand elderly deaths in the US, 19 thousand in Italy. The American death rate for elderly currently is 625 per million, and Italy is 1,350 per million.
Very rough and ready stats that I'm sure could be improved. Making it worse but easier to figure out is to simply assume 80% of deaths anywhere are among the elderly. Spain has 20 thousand deaths, 46 million people, 17% elderly. That's 2000 deaths per million. France is 1500 per million. Germany is 200 deaths per million.
The US has done better than I expected. We'll see how this plays out over time.
The overall impact depends on demographics, which is beyond immediate control of society. If you want to consider how good a job they've done given their demographics, then you need to adjust. Elderly people age 65+ are 15% of the US population and 23% of Italy's population. I've been arguing that deaths per million of the elderly are the best way to compare countries' effectiveness of their interventions, but you can't find that stat anywhere.
So here's my tentative effort. In the US, about 80% of the deaths are from people age 65+. In Italy, about 85% of fatalities were 70+. I couldn't find the figures that included those age 65-69. Current total deaths in the US and Italy are 37,000 and 22,700 respectively, and populations are 320 million and 60 million.
Math time: 48 million elderly in the US, 14 million in Italy. So that's 30 thousand elderly deaths in the US, 19 thousand in Italy. The American death rate for elderly currently is 625 per million, and Italy is 1,350 per million.
Very rough and ready stats that I'm sure could be improved. Making it worse but easier to figure out is to simply assume 80% of deaths anywhere are among the elderly. Spain has 20 thousand deaths, 46 million people, 17% elderly. That's 2000 deaths per million. France is 1500 per million. Germany is 200 deaths per million.
The US has done better than I expected. We'll see how this plays out over time.
