I’m loving the actuaries riding into battle against the Covid minimisers. Very short thread on deaths, based…

I’m loving the actuaries riding into battle against the Covid minimisers. Very short thread on deaths, based on recent analysis of US death data from https://t.co/4zjjZrbXKB /1

Covid minimisers switch between absolute and relative figures depending upon what they’re trying to minimise at the time. With deaths, very often absolute numbers are used when discussing who is dying from Covid, because those numbers show an overwhelming skew to older ages. /2

Which is excellent minimising fodder, because these are the ‘people who were going to die anyway’. The ‘dry tinder’, who with a bit of controlled burning (i.e. killing them) allows minimisers to declare the pandemic over. But the actuaries aren’t buying it. /3

They need to know, for insurers, the *relative* risk of death from the pandemic, across age groups. That data is bad news for the minimisers. Because it’s younger age groups who have the much higher relative risk of dying, with Covid circulating. 35-44 is the peak. 2020 here. /4 https://t.co/kvHDo1WC3H

2021 data here. Younger people have a much higher *increased* risk of death because of Covid. Fewer of them die, and that’s what minimisers pick as their metric, the absolute figure. But the change (increase) to their risk of dying is much higher than the old. /end https://t.co/c1nKuwHscG