Victoria continues to have a disproportionate death rate.
The key metric is the average age of the deaths - I’d be surprised if it’s not around 80.
I find that an odd comment.
There are many ‘key’ metrics with COVID. Why is average age of deaths the key one in your view?
I’m inferring that Yaco suggests that Victoria’s population is older and that’s where the deaths are.
Disproportionately older than other states? Enough to show in death stats?
Or disproportionately lower positive case rate as declared to the health department?
If anyone thinks the actual infection rate isn’t 3x what’s being reported they’re in fairy land.
That’s why I look at death rate.
Victoria just has more deaths / population than any other state.
In both States, it is the date when deaths are reported.
How are the comparable rates averaging over a longer time frame?
More covid - more deaths.
Definitely spreads more easily down here.
Aged care centres prolly barely even trying anymore.
Even if you take out the bad period in 2020 when Covid was running a muck here, we have a higher death rate / capita.
@choppsuey is right, we just have more covid here.
The Federal Health site has comparative State data for cases in Aged Care, disaggregated to residence level.
From memory, cases in Victoria are lower than those for NSW.
However, no comparative data for Aged Care deaths.
ADD
Victoria continues to list deaths by age group
Average age of deaths paint a more accurate position of how COVID affects the population - For example in Hong Kong the average age is 85 - I doubt there will be significant differences from country to country.
edit - Australia’s average age of death from COVID is 84.7.
Old people are more susceptible to illness. Another groundbreaking truism there Yaco. I reckon the average age of deaths to heart attacks, flu and pneumonia is similarly skewed towards people in their 80’s.
All countries collect this data, so it must be considered important by the relevant authorities moving forward - I suggest it will help with future vaccines and treatments.
To be fair, average age of death for many other illnesses, like influenza, will be lower than COVID, because both the very young and the very old are susceptible.
What I don’t understand is why that difference makes this the most important stat for tracking COVID, unless you believe that the elderly are less important for whatever reason.
I think there are may other stats that are at least as important, if not more so, and some of those we don’t yet have clear answers on. How often can we expect to get COVID on average over the next 10 years? How many months/years of life are lost on average to subsequent infections? How much is Long COVID going to impact our economy, both in terms of medical and rehabilitative costs, as well as lost working years?
These stats are important because they will inform us about how we need to handle COVID on an ongoing basis, as well as how our economy and insurance costs will be affected.
I never used the words ‘most important’ in my post. but instead used the word ‘accurate.’ My posts refer specifically to death because ultimately, authorities want to reduce this in the future, in case society is hit with another COVID type illness in the future.
Your points about other effects of COVID are important and all go into the melting pot, when authorities are making future plans to combat COVID and other similar illnesses. The development of high quality medicines and treatments is vital moving forward.
Finally, Mainland China is in for a world of pain when they are forced to open their society
You said ‘key metric’, which is more ambiguous, so you could have meant most accurate, while I thought most important. You did refer to average age of death as the key stat, rather than percentage of deaths. I trust authorities want to reduce the percentage of deaths rather than the average age of deaths.
I only took umbrage with the thinking that average age of death is the key metric, because whenever I hear this bandied about, it is usually followed with some comment about old people dying being unimportant.
It’s a blessing that COVID doesn’t also kill the very young in large numbers, because if it did, this pandemic would have killed twice as many people, our hospitals would have been under even greater strain, and young parents would have potentially been losing their children and their parents at the same time.