Note: This post has been edited (from original) to include a right skew that is even more extreme.
In this prior report, the 48th Percentile excess death per million for 2020 was 312 excess deaths per million. The highest possible mean value for COVID, using that “lower 48” value, would be 46% higher: (312 * 1.46=) 456 excess deaths per million.
Here is a distribution of values with extreme right skew, where the mean is the 66th Percentile data value (two-thirds of data lie below the mean):
NOTE: Parameters adapted from Linton et al. (cited below)
Assuming that excess deaths are no more skewed than this “extremely” skewed distribution (few natural processes have skew that is this large), the true mean value for excess deaths from COVID would be no higher than 456 excess deaths per million.
Because the excess death in Europe under severe flu in 2017/18 was 338 per million, that 456 per million value for COVID makes COVID out to be 35% worse than severe flu.
But, because the recorded mean excess death rate for the 237 population centers had been 537 per million, it indicates the presence of outliers, because if that mean were true, then the skew would be “beyond extreme.”
So the point estimate of 537 for COVID — which would be 59% worse than severe flu — is almost guaranteed to be too high. Nevertheless, any talk of COVID being 10x worse than flu is absurd, given known data. The 237 estimates on the 2020 excess death rates say otherwise.
Reference
[extreme right skew of a natural process] — Linton NM, Kobayashi T, Yang Y, Hayashi K, Akhmetzhanov AR, Jung SM, Yuan B, Kinoshita R, Nishiura H. Incubation Period and Other Epidemiological Characteristics of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Infections with Right Truncation: A Statistical Analysis of Publicly Available Case Data. J Clin Med. 2020 Feb 17;9(2):538. doi: 10.3390/jcm9020538. PMID: 32079150; PMCID: PMC7074197. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7074197/