According to the laws of wartime: excess mortality is growing in Russia
Source: vostokmedia.com
Stubborn statistics
At the risk of being once again subjected to public condemnation on the Voennoye Obozreniye portal, at the beginning of the article I will cite the positive data of Rosstat over the past 19 years.
During this period, since 2002, Russia has observed positive trends in mortality reduction and an increase in life expectancy. If you believe the state statistics, every year Russians lived better and better - the number of deaths was systematically decreasing.
If at the beginning of the period in 2002 more than 2,3 million people died in Russia, then by 2019 this sad figure had dropped to 1,8 million. in absolute terms, it should fall. For this, there is a parameter of the general mortality rate, measured in ppm (one tenth of a percent or one thousandth). So, from 2002 to 2019, this ratio decreased from 16,2 to 12,3.
There are many reasons for this dynamics.
Here, the growth of GDP, and an increase in the standard of living of Russians, and the fight against drunkenness, and more effective work of law enforcement agencies - to kill and get into fatal accidents have become less common. And yes, medicine did not disappoint. Despite all the admonitions of skeptics, medical care for Russians has improved in recent years.
Of course, this is still not enough to meet world standards, but in comparison with Russia at the beginning of the XNUMXst century, the treatment is now better.
An indirect indicator of health care progress is life expectancy, which was recorded in 2019 - 73,34 years. This is not much - 96th place in the world ranking.
Russians usually live longer, for example, in Venezuela, Bangladesh, Belarus and Colombia. Not to mention the countries of the "golden billion" with a life expectancy of more than 80 years.
Nevertheless, in 2002, Russians lived even less - an average of 65 years. Growth in more than eight years is not amazing, but at least it is a positive dynamic.
All of the above does not in any way idealize the state of the social sphere in modern Russia, but it allows us to understand with what margin we have approached the COVID-19 pandemic.
Disaster
With the death toll from the coronavirus, things are very difficult.
For a year and a half we have become accustomed to the official statistics of the Stopkoronavirus.ru portal, which provides operational data every day. The data for the site is formed by Rospotrebnadzor and here it is very different from the calculations of Rosstat. As the latest statistical report has shown, the number of deaths on Stopkoronavirus.ru is 2,2 times less than in reality. And here, apparently, there is no malicious intent - it is far from always possible to accurately determine the cause of a person's death. Therefore, in Russia, deaths from coronavirus are recorded only in the most obvious cases.
At the same time, a clearly defined strategy has not appeared in the world - who is considered a victim of COVID-19, and who is not. In some countries, all who died with a positive test for coronavirus are considered dead from the new infection. In the United States, for example, a very interesting situation has developed, when in 2020 the number of victims of influenza and cardiovascular diseases decreased. At the same time, there were many more deaths from coronavirus.
Have Americans gotten less colds and heart ailments?
Of course not, just one size fits all coronavirus now register deaths with symptoms similar to COVID-19.
As a result, there is a real "idyll" in US medicine - at the end of 2020, 352,5 thousand citizens died from the coronavirus, and the excess mortality rate is 334 thousand. True, the New York Times refutes these numbers in the summer of 2021, pointing to 482 thousand victims. excess mortality in the United States.
Who to believe in the end is not completely clear.
If we focus on the available data, in Russia last year, 2 million 124,5 thousand people died. And this is a serious drop relative to 2019.
In total, excess mortality claimed 2020 thousand citizens in 324, which is 18% more than in the previous year. According to this parameter, the country slipped twelve years ago, and life expectancy fell from 73,34 to 71,5 years. If you do not know about the coronavirus cause of such mortality, you might think that Russia has entered the bloodiest war.
Unfortunately, this war is only getting worse this year - in nine months we see an excess death rate of almost 250 thousand people. In total, since the beginning of the pandemic, we have lost 574 thousand people. And there is no reason to believe that the pandemic will slow down its spread in the fall-winter of 2021.
Worst of all, from January to August, the excess of the number of deaths over births was a gigantic 675,7 thousand! In a pandemic, citizens not only die faster, but also hesitate to have children. In terms of this demographic parameter, Russia has returned to its 2002 position.
Rosstat assures that up to 76% of all excess deaths in 2020-2021 are due to coronavirus and related complications. Right now we are on the verge of yet another demographic hole, the consequences of which will affect Russian society for decades to come.
Fuel was added to the fire from across the ocean.
Came the other day news from the Financial Times on excess mortality in Russia for the entire pandemic of 753 thousand people. Allegedly, according to this indicator, our country is in the sad second place in the world after the United States. Very dubious calculations of the Americans, given the confusion with the calculation of their own citizens. Nevertheless, the Financial Times urges not to believe Rosstat data, but to focus on American opinion. Apparently, from across the ocean you can see better.
Regional features of mortality from COVID-19 are also of considerable interest.
In 2020, the highest relative mortality rates were recorded in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Chechnya, Lipetsk and Leningrad regions. It is noteworthy that in the Chechen Republic, known for its tough antiquated measures, they could not overcome the high mortality rate. The reasons for this paradox, as well as the extremely high mortality rate in Bashkiria, have not yet been found.
Examples of Moscow and St. Petersburg are typical, which last year accounted for 26% of all irrecoverable losses from coronavirus. However, these cities did not record a spike in deaths from other diseases not related to COVID-19. This indicates a high level of organization of local medicine, which has not gone into permanent shock.
Large numbers of deaths in Russia are very interesting data for large-scale statistical studies. Scientists from Moscow tried to find factors explaining the different death rates from COVID-19 in 85 regions of the country. It turned out that the density of railways and the level of urbanization directly affect the number of deaths from coronavirus in the constituent entity of the Russian Federation.
I must say, quite an expected result.
The surprise was the lack of a direct link between the availability of hospital beds, doctors, nurses and mortality from a new infection. The reason for this is the high mobility of the state, which managed to transfer the necessary resources and specialists to “hot spots” in time, in many respects leveling the chances of the regions for survival.
No matter how trite it sounds, the main reasons for such a high rate of growth in mortality are in the new, much more dangerous strain "Delta", as well as in the low proportion of vaccinated people.
Most of our compatriots preferred the strict rules of natural selection to herd immunity. You can read about what this ultimately can lead to from Uncle Darwin.
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