Taiwan Births-Deaths, 2023 Update
I’ve posted regular updates on Taiwans Excess Deaths and Births since July. Here is the 2022 summary.
I was hoping that would be the last one expecting things would get better, but it was clear things were not going well with the burst in COVID deaths in February.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/taiwan/
Here is the vaccination data according to one blogger. Most of the new doses are boosters. Notice the January bump before the Lunar New Year holiday
https://www.cw.com.tw/graphics/covid-live-updates-2021-en/
Another look here
Thats about 53,000 doses per day in January, or about 765,000 doses adjusted for US population size. US administered 166,000 doses the same day so Taiwans uptake was about 4 times that of the US per capita
Recently Taiwan announced recommendation for a yearly COVID shot (2 shots for those most at risk)
So anyways, I digress. Taiwans February update.
https://www.ris.gov.tw/app/en/2121?sn=23069527
With February data in we can look at how Taiwan has fared in the Death and COVID Department these two months. It ain’t pretty. Pretty much more of the same.
Although authorities here are declaring victory over COVID due to reduced case counts by eliminating most mask mandates and announcing an end on March 20 to mandatory home quarantine for those who self test and and an end to mandatory reporting of their positive results , COVID deaths are still running high. February had the 3rd highest number of deaths/day of the pandemic.
In the Non-Covid excess death department things are equally bleak in the first 2 months of 2023
As we enter a new year some adjustments must be made to expected death calculations. Taiwan is an aging population with the 65+ populations increasing its share of the population by about 0.7% per year (~40,000 per year), so using 2016-2020 average might understate expected deaths. As such I will shorten that to 2019-2020 average. Since mortality rate has been increasing at 1.6% per year due to aging, I will adjust 2023 expected deaths up by 3.2% (and recalculate 2022 using an upward adjustment of 1.6%. I think this will provide a reasonable expected death number for 2023 and the result is a modest reduction in 2022 excess deaths
One more thing. Mortality displacement and death harvesting in 2022 should serve to reduce expected deaths in 2023, as a number of those deaths in 2022 were pulled forward. I think 20% of the excess deaths in 2022 would be reasonable (~3.5%), but I will not include this in my calculations. Just keep in mind whatever percentage I report in 2023 might be understated by as much as 3.5%.
Here are the data for 2023 thus far.
17,770 deaths in Jan 2023 (1056 COVID)
18,506 deaths in Feb 2023 (1640 COVID)
Year. Actual. Expected Excess. %
*2023 - 36,276 31,434. 4,842. 15.4%
2022- 207,230. 180,502. 26,728. 14.8%
Total (22-23). 211,936. 31,570. 14.9%
*Through February
2021 -183,732 177,567. 6,165. 3.5%
Total. (21-23) 389,503 37,735. 9.7%
2021-2023
Total COVID Deaths. 17,995 (47.7%)
Non-Covid Excess Deaths. 19,740 (52.3%)
Now for Births
10,948 babies born in Jan 2023
10,113 babies born in Feb 2023
Total 21,061
Given there were 36,276 deaths this means a 16,215 deficit
What it look like in other years
2022- 22,754 (2023 - 7.4%)
2021- 23,775 (2023 -11.4%)
2020 - 26,046
2019- 21,536
2018- 30,584
2017- 30,372
2017-2020 avg. 27,134 (2023-23.4%)
Its clear there was something going on here besides COVID and the jabs. Maybe thats why they have doubled the baby bonus
https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202303020010
Also I should point out that most of 2022 and January 2023 was the year of the Tiger when births tend to slide as its not considered a good year to have a baby.
In addition, while I have no evidence either are related, scientists have suggested plausible mechanisms, so the HPV vaccination program of the last decade not to mention the rollout of 5G starting in 2020 might be having an affect. Add to that the shrinking population of women of child bearing age due to declining fertility rates of the last 20 years.
I will also point out the US , albeit with a lower but still significant vaccination rate has no similar significant birth declines, although like Taiwan fertility rates has been in decline for the last 20 years and unlike Taiwan , has significant influx of younger immigrants
In any event as Taiwan seems determined to leave COVID behind, much like the rest of the world in an eerily coordinated fashion,
CDC Taiwan on March 7 had 3 posts covering other viruses like AIDS, Monkey Pox, Influenza. No COVID. It was their first post since March. (Its since been revised and they removed the AIDS post)
Perhaps conditioning the public for the next Pandemic
Its last daily COVID post on cases/deaths was February 23
It still reports here, but you can only see cases/deaths for that day although there is a weekly case graph
As you can see, weekly cases are dropping like a rock. What about deaths? Not so quick.
The weekly case peak for the latest wave (the 5th since May 2021 )was 1/29-2/4
Week. Deaths. Cases. *CFR
1/29-2/4. 390, 190k (0.21%)
2/5-2/11. 432, 146k. (0.3%)
2/12-2/18. 406, 117k. (0.35%)
2/19-2/25. 366, 103k. (0.36%)
2/6-3/4. 325. 80k. (0.4%)
3/5-3/11. 292. 66k. (0.44%)
*since deaths lag cases BY ABOUT 2 weeks as cases decline calculating CFR in this way overstates CFR
Ok, cases decline faster than deaths. There is about a 2 week lag. Lets look at this a different way, calculating CFR based on that weeks death with cases from same week (0), previous week (1), 2 weeks earlier (2) and 3 weeks (3) earlier. True CFR is somewhere in there
Week. CFR-0. CFR- 1. CFR-2. CFR-3
1/29-2/4. 0.21%. 0.3%. 0.29%. 0.25%
2/5-2/11. 0.3%. 0.23% 0.33%. 0.32%
2/12-2/18. 0.35% 0.28% 0.21%. 0.31%
2/19-2/25. 0.36%. 0.32%. 0.25%. 0.19%
2/26-3/4. 0.4%. 0.32%. 0.28%. 0.22%
3/5-3/11. 0.44% 0.28%
I see no discernible short term trend. Good think we did not rely on CFR-0. However, there is a big problem, based on CFR-2 the CFR is looking somewhere around 0.27% for the period, but the CFR -2 in 2022 was 0.16%-0.17% (+/-3%) although there were brief periods of elevation during the peak deaths in June and in December (only a month after the arrival of first shipment of the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 vaccine)
Has the CFR really increased ~50% or are cases being underreported by 1/3. If the latter is the case we must inflate reported cases by 50%. If CFR is increased then thats a whole different matter, something is going wrong.
Of course we cant say which it is, maybe even some combination. All we can really say is that the calculated CFR seems quite a bit higher.
I used to be able to draw in another data source. CDC Taiwan used to provide a daily pdf with each death with age, date of case. Informed, actual date of death and I could calculate the CFR precisely albeit with a bit of a time lag since it takes confirmed cases some time to die and then reporting is delayed as well. Alas, these reports are no longer available as of 1/20/23
One hypothesis is COVID fatigue. Fewer people are complying with the test and report mandate if they have mild cases or no symptoms and actual cases are higher. That would account for the underreporting
According to the last report deaths are still mostly in the elderly
Deaths are on the bottom right for each age. The under 10 deaths are rather remarkable though at 273 (1.6%). In the US COVID deaths in 0-17 accounted for only 0.3% of COVID deaths in 2022
Anyways, thats all I got for now.
Here are the previous posts
Deaths+ Births-July
Deaths-July
Deaths-August
Births-August
Deaths-September
Deaths-October
Deaths-November
Deaths-December
Births-2022