[ExI] you'll never see this again

[Tom Nowell]

Spike wrote:"Question please: how many will die, not from the virus but from fear of
catching the virus convinces them to not see their doctor?  How do we count
them?"



Well Spike, I don't know how much data is available in your country, or how on the ball your statisticians and insurers are, but in the UK mortality figures are released by the Office of National Statistics. Our Institute and Faculty of Actuaries has a Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) which measures what the official statistics say about death and illness and how it affects insurance, so there are certainly people keeping track of the overall mortality effects of this. In the UK there's a big worry over how many people have had cancer treatment delayed from hospitals shutting all non-emergency work to reduce infection risk.
The statistical models are not without controversy - I remember the arguments over the figures when the British Medical Journal published an article about deaths in Iraq following the US-led invasion and people argued endlessly over the methodology. Still, there are established methods for looking at population mortality figures and constructing estimates for what they would normally be.
Tom
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