This repository contains the replication code and data for The Economist's excess deaths model, used to estimate the true death toll of the covid-19 pandemic.
To replicate the model and export estimated excess deaths for a locality, please run the scripts 1, 2, and 3, in the scripts folder. As the model draws most of its data dynamically, you can use these scripts to generate updated estimates as time passes.
To read about what the model shows, see our Briefing: Counting the dead.
To understand how we constructed it, see our Methodology: How we estimated the true death toll of the pandemic.
A special thanks to all our sources and to those who have made the data to create these estimates available. We list all our sources in our methodology. Within script 1, the source for each variable is also given as the data is loaded, with the exception of our sources for excess deaths data, which we detail in on our free-to-read excess deaths tracker. The gradient booster implementation used to fit the models is aGTBoost, detailed here.