Closing out Taiwans 2023 Excess Deaths and Other Matters
Before I get to the Excess Death Situation in Taiwan its been a wild week before the Elections this weekend.
Air raid alert turns out to be for a Chinese Satellite flying 300 miles in space over Taiwan, and has the Military apologizing for overreacting .
The Chinese language version stated clearly it was a satellite but satellites fly over all the time without any alerts
https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202401090018
Plus an Invasion of Chinese Balloons crossing the so called Median Line. Most people laughing it off
Meanwhile the War Mongers are warning at how much it will cost the world economy if China invaded
We got to believe
And what looks like the Fifth Omicron Wave that is rightly being downplayed due to a low IFR
Keep in mind Cases refers to Hospitalized Cases since those are the only cases they count now
Frankly they seem more worried about Flu
.
Lin said that over the past four weeks, adenovirus accounted for more than 40% of the respiratory pathogens isolated by contract laboratories. This was followed by the influenza virus (29.8%), and parainfluenza virus (11.9%), while other respiratory viruses, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID, continue to circulate in the community.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/5074964
Poor COVID
Meanwhile Births are down only slightly from the 2022 low, but with a Dragon Year coming a bumper crop is expected (my wife was a Dragon Baby)
https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202401100011
Ok, lets close out 2023 Excess Deaths. Things look to be winding down
November and December Death Totals are in. Not too bad
https://www.ris.gov.tw/app/en/2121?sn=23342712
And that completes the year
Breakdown by COVID and Non-Covid Deaths
Table
By quarter
In the past I compared deaths to a previous year or an average of a range of years. However, I realize comparing to previous years average does not take into account the natural increase expected in an aging population, and overstates excess deaths to some extent
For example here is Pierre Kory doing something similar
Life insurers have been consistently sounding the alarm over these unexpected or, “excess,” deaths, which claimed 158,000 more Americans in the first nine months of 2023 than in the same period in 2019.
That exceeds America’s combined losses from every war since Vietnam. Congress should urgently work with insurance experts to investigate this troubling trend.
But should we expect 2023 deaths to be the same as 2019?
That’s an average increase of 40,000 deaths a year, so it would be expected that there would be 160,000 more deaths in 2023 than 2019
CDC calculates excess death based on 2017-2019 average
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So its quite common, and I have been doing it as well but it does overstate the degree of Excess Deaths since even with a relatively stable population most populations are aging more aging pretty rapidly
So I did my best to try and account for expected increase in deaths due to aging population. Wont bore you with the details but my numbers are lower than previous posts.
Of course there is the Pull Forward Effect which if taken into account would increase Excess Deaths. In the US chart above I did include the PFE though
The way I understand how to apply the PFE for excess deaths in 2020-2022 to 2023 is that up to 50% of those who died early in 2020-2022 (excess) would have been expected to die to the subsequent 5 years at a rate of 10% per year. As such expected deaths should fall by that amount.
https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1635606835532034050?s=20
It actually makes a big difference for the US in 2023 since the PFE is from 2020-2022. Estimating total deaths at 3.05 million for 2023 (current CDC backlogged count 2.98 million) the PFE takes Excess Deaths in 2023 from 40,000 to 186, 000. Probably not as big a difference for Taiwan (~2,500 extra deaths in 2023) as US as Taiwan had little excess deaths in 2020-2021
Hopefully this is my last Excess Death Report until the NEXT Pandemic