> In the case of Germany, there would be 12,000 weekly deaths on average, versus about 2000 weekly deaths due to COVID-19 at the peak - that is within the variance caused by the seasonal flu. It would not have been a suspicious rise.
If you're comparing covid-19 to flu you must count them using the same method, and you're not doing that here. Here, for covid-19 you're using "deaths after confirmed positive" but for flu you're using "all cause mortality". When you use the same method to count covid-19 and flu deaths you see much higher rates of death for covid-19.
> It's very easy to search for this information. Here's one link...
Your claim is that the lack in excess mortality is solely due to lag. Your link doesn't say anything about the extent of the delay regarding countries like Germany.
> If you're comparing covid-19 to flu you must count them using the same method, and you're not doing that here. Here, for covid-19 you're using "deaths after confirmed positive" but for flu you're using "all cause mortality".
The hypothesis is "If there had been mass spread back then, we would've seen it from excess deaths", which implies all-cause mortality. Of course I'm mentioning Influenza because it causes some of the seasonal variance and some of the same symptoms.
> When you use the same method to count covid-19 and flu deaths you see much higher rates of death for covid-19.
Yes, but that's in hindsight. That's not the way you would have looked at the cases at the time.
There are about 20,000 pneumonia deaths per year in Germany where the cause is never determined[1]. That's over 300 per week average, more in the winter years. Now suppose an old person comes in and dies of pneumonia. There's nothing suspicious about this. Suppose a few more come in this year than the last year. Again, nothing suspicious, some flu seasons are worse than others.
I'm not saying there have been 2000 undetected cases of COVID-19 deaths per week in Germany back in January/February, but there could have easily been 100-200.
It's very easy to search for this information. Here's one link: https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths-involving...
> In the case of Germany, there would be 12,000 weekly deaths on average, versus about 2000 weekly deaths due to COVID-19 at the peak - that is within the variance caused by the seasonal flu. It would not have been a suspicious rise.
If you're comparing covid-19 to flu you must count them using the same method, and you're not doing that here. Here, for covid-19 you're using "deaths after confirmed positive" but for flu you're using "all cause mortality". When you use the same method to count covid-19 and flu deaths you see much higher rates of death for covid-19.