But as you have said, even ignoring the outlier you would still expect a 1-1.5% decrease in mortality. Taking the 2018 deaths and extrapolating forward completely ignoring 2019 still gives you double the excess deaths compared to the mean/median
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Ideally, what you'd do is a Bayesian inference that takes into account the uncertainty of both the initial downtrend and the outlier of 2019, which I suspect is what the SCB has done, but even your crude example shows how useless it is to simply use the mean
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I agree that ignoring a possible downward trend in mortality was an oversight on my part. Something like 93-96k sounds about right for excess of 2-5k.
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Replying to @TedPetrou @zorinaq
96k would be ignoring the downtrend tho. By your simple regression model, it should be around 94k, and my guess is a more complex inference would revise that downward somewhat after taking into account the uncertainty of 2019 and previous years
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Im not ignoring it at all. There is large variance here and we don't know if the downtrend would continue. The 5 years of 2014-2018 were relatively flat. Thats why I gave a range. 96k would be at the high end and unlikely.
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Replying to @TedPetrou @zorinaq
I mean, it's a strong trend that has been present for the last 50 years not just in Sweden but across most/all developed nations. 96k requires you to assume that such a trend would not only discontinue but, given the 2019 figures, reverse!
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The trend has been slowing down and its very difficult to extrapolate. There is a probability of increase. Just like life expectancy in the US decreased for men in 2019 (I believe). Strange things happen. This is how most people define ranges -formally it is a confidence interval
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Replying to @TedPetrou @zorinaq
Actually, that is not the correct definition of a confidence interval. It sounds more like you're trying to create a predictive interval taking into account uncertainty around the predicted decline, except it's very one-sided
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If you were to take a realistic predictive interval taking into account the fact that 2019 is *likely* but not *definitely* an outlier, your true result would probably include 96k but also dip down into ~88k or lower
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88k deaths would be an elderly decrease of ~12% over a 2 year period. This would be by far the largest 2 year decrease in the last 20 years. 2019 was already the largest decrease in the last 20 years for the elderly. Going back to back would be essentially impossible.
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The last time that Sweden saw an increase in mortality of the sort you're proposing WITHOUT COVID between 2019-2020 was I believe 1944. They are both equally implausible, but if you're going to embrace the uncertainty it's ridiculous to pretend it only goes one way
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An increase of 0% over 2 years? I'm saying if mortality rates were the same as they were 2 years ago. As in - if 2020 had 2018 mortality rates. Try again.
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Replying to @TedPetrou @zorinaq
Yes, you're pretending that 2019 never happened, for whatever reason. But it did indeed, and so a death rate of 96k in 2020 would have been unprecedented in the data since the second world war
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End of conversation
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