The Swiss Bundesamt für Statistik is providing excellent data, which tempted me to analyze deaths in Switzerland, and compare to Germany. Again, starting point are the population figures as of end of the previous year, stratified by age (a bit more fine grained than for Germany):
And then deaths:1
I am omitting the death rates (number of deaths divided by population), proceeding swiftly to their ranks (1/red = largest rate among the 12 years, 12/white = smallest rate):
Curiously, the year 2022, although having produced the second-highest total rate of deaths, looks benign in all age groups (that’s textbook Simpson). The year 2020, on the other hand, ended with many deaths in the older age groups. Let us compare to counterfactual data, as we did for Germany (actual deaths minus hypothetical deaths, computed by applying death rates from previous years to current population levels), starting with 2020. Positive numbers (in yellow, or in red if larger than 100 - note that the population of Switzerland is around 10% of that of Germany) indicate higher actual mortality:
And 2021:
And 2022:
Both 2021 and 2022 seem unremarkable. Is this due to Switzerland having had a much worse Covid winter 2020/2021 than Germany, leaving no vulnerable people? Or is there a different explanation?
And, just to make it clear that all is not well in Switzerland, there is the issue of missing births (cumulative births by month, difference to 2017-2021 median):
This is still a small-scale replica of the situation in Germany (maybe without the bump around June, which I conjecture to be the “Ukrainian babies effect”):
Both deaths and births are difficult to analyze because there may be underlying country-specific trends (ageing population for Germany; different levels of migration; specific problems with health care systems; generally declining birth rates for southern European countries, etc.) interfering with the current situation. More analysis is needed, and it is a shame that this is being left to humble substackers.
And finally, I just discovered that you can’t have footnotes in substack subtitles.2
Figures for 2022 are preliminary, and based on weekly deaths for calendar weeks 1-52, hence (1) missing the first two days of January 2022 and (2) including January 1st, 2023.
So, here it is: Psalm 72:3 is a strange verse, and various translations, both English and German, are going to considerable lengths to squeeze something out of it.