4 ms·

I’m not sure what the situation is elsewhere, but I don’t trust the death statistics here in Poland. Authorities here will be quick to remove a person from the

I’m not sure what the situation is elsewhere, but I don’t trust the death statistics here in Poland. Authorities here will be quick to remove a person from the death toll if they can attribute the death to something else than COVID-19, even when the person in question was tested positive [1]. People who have died in quarantine, having had symptoms but never tested, are also not included [2]. For that matter, testing patients with full-developed symptoms is officially outright discouraged [3]. Press sources in Polish: [1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/MZ_GOV_PL/status/1243090118270947329 https://mobile.twitter.com/MZ_GOV_PL/status/1243090118270947... [2]: https://poznan.wyborcza.pl/poznan/7,36001,25818730,koronawirus-jesli-umrzesz-w-domowej-kwarantannie-nie-zalicza.html?_ga=2.133855821.2353486.1585116539-1301350344.1509360404 https://poznan.wyborcza.pl/poznan/7,36001,25818730,koronawir... [3]: https://dentonet.pl/wytyczne-gis-nie-wystarcza/#gref https://dentonet.pl/wytyczne-gis-nie-wystarcza/#gref

mantap 7y ago
There's three classes of countries. Conscientious testers like South Korea and Germany. These countries have low death/confirmed_case rate and cases are only a small factor from reality. Disinterested testers such as UK which only tests hospital admissions (and royalty). The case numbers for these countries are completely unreliable and useless. Deaths are probably quite accurate. Lastly countries that are trying to perform a coverup, or developing countries where there is poor access to healthcare. Both cases and deaths are unreliable and there's nothing you can do about that.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  It's the dark zones I really worry about. A useful heuristic I've formed for anomolous situations (and especially disasters /emergencies / catastrophes) is that it's where there's no signal at all, or where the signal makes. no sense, that you should be most concerened. After major natural disasters, looking for regions in which there are _no_ reports of damage frequently repressent worst-hit areas -- all comms and monitoring are knocked out. In the case of pandemic, it's the capacity (and often willingnes) to sense which is lacking: medical infrastructure, personnel, diagnostics, reporting standards and organisations, etc. First signs will come a month or two in as 1,000s are dropping suddenly dead. Or before, as "patriotic" and tourist cases emerge -- nationals being diagnosed after leaving the country (this occurred in China with SARS giving rise to the sardonic term), or travellers transiting or arriving from the country testing positive, as happened with Italy and Iran recently.
beezle 7y ago
The flip side of that is over counting. I have read (but do not have source handy) that Italy may be over stating the death toll by lumping any death of a covid positive patient into 'covid deaths'. So if you die of a heart attack and are covid positive, its a covid death, even if you were not seriously ill with significant covid type issues (ie, respiratory).
- wool_gather 7y ago
  I'm no kind of expert on medical decisions/statistics, but I can see a possible justification for this. The premise of "flatten the curve" is that there's only so much capacity in the medical system, and once it's used up, not just COVID-19 patients, but anyone who needs urgent hospital care, is going to be worse off. If the situation is bad enough in a place (like Italy) that a heart attack isn't getting its usual level of care due to the COVID epidemic...it seems reasonable to count that as at least a "COVID-related" death.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    Exactly. It's a very bad time to get cancer, an organ transplant, a heart problem or trauma needing ICU. The base rate of deaths from those conditions is well known, so in time we'll be able to see which patients died as a side effect of corona (due to being more vulnerable or due to a shortage of medical treatment). Obviously complicated by the lack of road trauma and industrial accidents, and increase in in-home causation due to being off work (and we shouldn't exclude domestic violence, alcoholism, anxiety, suicide, robberies).

mantap 7y ago

There's three classes of countries. Conscientious testers like South Korea and Germany. These countries have low death/confirmed_case rate and cases are only a small factor from reality. Disinterested testers such as UK which only tests hospital admissions (and royalty). The case numbers for these countries are completely unreliable and useless. Deaths are probably quite accurate. Lastly countries that are trying to perform a coverup, or developing countries where there is poor access to healthcare. Both cases and deaths are unreliable and there's nothing you can do about that.

dredmorbius 7y ago
It's the dark zones I really worry about. A useful heuristic I've formed for anomolous situations (and especially disasters /emergencies / catastrophes) is that it's where there's no signal at all, or where the signal makes. no sense, that you should be most concerened. After major natural disasters, looking for regions in which there are _no_ reports of damage frequently repressent worst-hit areas -- all comms and monitoring are knocked out. In the case of pandemic, it's the capacity (and often willingnes) to sense which is lacking: medical infrastructure, personnel, diagnostics, reporting standards and organisations, etc. First signs will come a month or two in as 1,000s are dropping suddenly dead. Or before, as "patriotic" and tourist cases emerge -- nationals being diagnosed after leaving the country (this occurred in China with SARS giving rise to the sardonic term), or travellers transiting or arriving from the country testing positive, as happened with Italy and Iran recently.

beezle 7y ago

The flip side of that is over counting. I have read (but do not have source handy) that Italy may be over stating the death toll by lumping any death of a covid positive patient into 'covid deaths'. So if you die of a heart attack and are covid positive, its a covid death, even if you were not seriously ill with significant covid type issues (ie, respiratory).

wool_gather 7y ago
I'm no kind of expert on medical decisions/statistics, but I can see a possible justification for this. The premise of "flatten the curve" is that there's only so much capacity in the medical system, and once it's used up, not just COVID-19 patients, but anyone who needs urgent hospital care, is going to be worse off. If the situation is bad enough in a place (like Italy) that a heart attack isn't getting its usual level of care due to the COVID epidemic...it seems reasonable to count that as at least a "COVID-related" death.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  Exactly. It's a very bad time to get cancer, an organ transplant, a heart problem or trauma needing ICU. The base rate of deaths from those conditions is well known, so in time we'll be able to see which patients died as a side effect of corona (due to being more vulnerable or due to a shortage of medical treatment). Obviously complicated by the lack of road trauma and industrial accidents, and increase in in-home causation due to being off work (and we shouldn't exclude domestic violence, alcoholism, anxiety, suicide, robberies).