by Patrick J. Byrne
Epidemiologists study the incidence, distribution and possible control of diseases. They find a good measure of covid19 deaths is to count “excess deaths”: that is the number of deaths this year compared with the average of deaths over the same period (say, January to August) in the past four years.
While “excess deaths” is not a perfect measure, it largely overcomes a major problem with “number of covid19 deaths” as reported daily by governments. Daily figu…