Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of October 12

Analysis Finds True US Pandemic Death Toll Is Much Higher Than 200,000

BU researchers, who teamed up with collaborators from the University of Pennsylvania and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found more of these additional deaths in US counties that have greater income inequality, high percentages of non-Hispanic Black residents, less home ownership, and high population density. The data suggest that higher mortality rates are inextricably linked with socioeconomic disadvantage and structural racism.
...
For their analysis, Stokes and his collaborators looked at county-level mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for 1,021 counties with 10 or more COVID-19 deaths from February 1 to September 23. Although previous studies have estimated excess deaths at the national and state levels, this is the first study to examine the question at the county level, allowing researchers to better examine how patterns of excess deaths vary by demographic and sociostructural factors.
...
They found that for the 249,167 total excess deaths in these 1,021 counties, there were 183,686 deaths directly assigned to COVID-19 on death certificates, and another 65,481 excess deaths not officially assigned to COVID-19. This means 26 percent of all excess deaths were not directly attributed to COVID-19—or viewed another way, that actual excess deaths were 36 percent higher than the number that has been officially attributed to COVID-19.

Link to the paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.31.20184036v3

A lockdown is coming back for Belgium. Nothing has been announced but the writing is on the wall.

I suspect it will be announced this week.

Schools were the obvious culprit. Huge mishandling this last month, after doing really well since March.

At least 8 NY mayors quarantined after Binghamton's Richard David tests positive for COVID-19

Cases climbing quickly again in germany. +4k/day roughtly, after sitting at +400/day for large parts of the summer. Fucking glorious timing, right when I've got family back in the country on a rare occasion, and I'm not sure whether I should make the trip back to my folks. Would be really damn useful to know where all these people are getting infected, just to know what to do/not to do.

Canada

Most provinces have had a spike in cases coinciding roughly with the start of the school year, and I'm not happy about that. Unfortunately, it's just a tough decision for all involved, whether parents of school-aged children, or the various administrative persons involved in managing the situation (Ministry of Education, local school boards, etc.). Close schools and keep everyone at home: parents struggle with either getting babysitting, or the very stressful situation of needing to both do one's day job at home and supervise their children's remote schooling. Keep schools open: children become a vector for catching and spreading the disease, first among themselves, then to their households when they go home. It's negative whichever way you go.

I was feeling more relaxed about COVID during the summer, when everyone got used to the new pandemic lifestyle (masks in all public places, avoid large gatherings). But now I'm just as concerned (maybe more?) as when the first spike happened in the spring. The stressing of hospitals doesn't seem as bad as in the spring (which is great, considering), but it could get worse because the numbers don't seem to be tapering off just yet like we saw in the summer.

Anyway, I'm grateful we don't seem to have it as bad as other countries topping the "leaderboards". Hopefully we can all kick this thing by the end of 2021. As a planet, as the human race.