AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yeah. So far (starting in 2020), the putting it off (or COVID) has increased those death stats substantially. It's certainly possible that we'll have longer term higher mortality from some conditions though.Well lets say you had a severe condition with a 20% chance of death each year...
But you can do a procedure with a 40% chance of death or full recovery.
If you decided to put that off until after COVID then you would reduce the excess death stats (on average) this year. But for you, waiting is a ticking time bomb, and your overall outcome % is worse for waiting.
Maybe later this year is going to bad for excess deaths when people finally do that risky elective procedure they have been putting off.
We'll find out in a year or two. If I had to guess what we'll see is: 1) high excess deaths through about May 2021. 2) Lower than normal deaths the rest of the year - we lost a lot of vulnerable, mostly older people - I think that deficit will actually persist for a few years - we just have fewer old people now than we would have.
(I'm assuming no winter surge here - that's not a sure thing of course. But I do think if there are NPIs still in place we could see continued lower than normal flu mortality for the end of this year as well. Hopefully we get no surge and we have NPIs in place and we also have no flu.)