5 ms·
That the official numbers underreport Covid-19 deaths by a factor of 4 is one hypothesis -- but it's also possible that this is how many people would be saved b
by zamfi 7y ago
That the official numbers underreport Covid-19 deaths by a factor of 4 is one hypothesis -- but it's also possible that this is how many people would be saved by quick interventions at the hospital, but who otherwise died.
For example, maybe the ICU beds were full for a month, and in that time they would've saved 96 people, but couldn't.
- gdubs 7y agoAre you saying a spike in non-covid deaths — e.g., heart-attack, etc? That’s certainly a possibility and one of the main dangers at the moment with an overwhelmed healthcare system. It also raises an interesting question of how you account for the toll of the disease: on one hand you have deaths due to the disease itself, and on the other deaths that could have been preventable had the disease not overwhelmed hospitals.
- scarmig 7y agoDepending on how you count, you could hypothetically end up with mortality rates >100%. I.e. a disease that kills everyone it infects, and also closes down a hospital causing deaths among people it doesn't infect.
- hanklazard 7y agoGood point. Some part of the increase is almost certainly this ... just hard/impossible to know how much. Edit: actually, i guess if you also looked at the top 10 typical causes of death, seems like you could account for it (ie, heart attack, MVA, or whatever would show abnormally low numbers).