4 ms·

Yeah, if you model New York with an appropriate epidemiological model using just mortality (which is more reliable than cases), the lockdown event is massive an

by gbrown 6y ago

Yeah, if you model New York with an appropriate epidemiological model using just mortality (which is more reliable than cases), the lockdown event is massive and trivial to detect. Anyone who claims otherwise is either dishonest or foolish.

fluffything 6y ago
In the EU there are graphs showing the "daily deaths / day" over the last 2 years. One can pretty easily see the impact of COVID-19 there, even on countries that are not testing and therefore not reporting any cases... Unfortunately I haven't been able to find that data for the US.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ They include "deaths per day" in one of the charts. Early on I found their stats to be consistent with other trusted sources; but I've not confirmed that recently.
  - zeusly 6y ago
    I think he's talking about all deaths, not the death's of positively tested, which allows you to guess the number of corona deaths even if you have few tests. This is also known as mortality displacement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_displacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_displacement
  - fluffything 6y ago
    That only counts "deaths of COVID-19 positive people". For countries that don't test, that number is zero. Quite the useless metric to report. Much more meaningful would be: "(actual deaths/day) - (avg deaths/day of 2019)"
  - Izkata 6y ago
    "Excess deaths" is the thing to search for: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking... In the graphs right at the top of the page you can see several locations have more deaths than usual even if you subtract the covid19 ones. These are likely covid19 deaths that haven't been included in the stats, probably due to lack of testing. According to that page, New York City, where almost 1 in 600 of the total population (not just of the infected) have died, is likely now tracking its stats pretty accurately.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    I think people are talking about excess mortality, or all cause mortality. Here's the EU version: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality There's some lag in these figures. The CDC will have something eventually.
areyousure 6y ago
Here is some data on travel and transit in New York: https://visitdata.org/bydatesel/New%20York/New%20York/Travel%20%26%20Transport https://visitdata.org/bydatesel/New%20York/New%20York/Travel... Can you detect the lockdown, which took effect at 8PM on Sunday, March 22?
- ryanwaggoner 6y ago
  How are you defining lockdown? Schools were cancelled on March 15, but that was after days of pressure. Many private schools had already closed at that point, and many workplaces had switched to WFH already. The official statewide lockdown started later, but authorities and businesses had been gradually locking down for weeks prior to that.
  - areyousure 6y ago
    In the context of this discussion (ending lockdown), it seems that the relevant definition of "lockdown" is action specifically from the authorities. The New York state governor announced the statewide lockdown on March 20 (to begin two days later, as indicated above). The statewide lockdown is not causally responsible for social distancing before then. The same is true for the announcement of closing New York City public schools, which came on March 15. If private schools closed before then, the closure of public schools later cannot "take credit" for it. This distinction is important for causal modeling, both of the past as well as the future, if/when orders from authorities are lifted. The effectiveness of the lockdown order is measured against a world without the lockdown order, which is still a world with a lot of social distancing.
    - ryankemper 6y ago
      Precisely this, I define lockdown as the forced closure of businesses, public parks, beaches, etc. Telling people "we recommend physically distancing and wearing masks" does not qualify as lockdown. I hope that I made that clear in my writeup. Thanks for jumping in here, I think you made the point far better than I could have.
Balgair 6y ago
The Washington Post had a good article a while ago on the issues with estimating death rates. The math is a bit complex, so I'll let them explain it to you (instead of a HN comment box). It's nuanced, as these pandemic things tend to be. TLDR: We're undercounting deaths due to covid-19 by ~60% nationally, and 40% in NYC. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/covid-19-death-toll-undercounted/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/cov...
- ryankemper 6y ago
  So, I've read the article, and it seems to not support this assertion of yours: > TLDR: We're undercounting deaths due to covid-19 by ~60% nationally, and 40% in NYC. What it does say is this: > “Thus I would probably add about 15% or so to the known death toll,” she wrote to two city officials. “However — no city or state will be factoring this in or reporting it, so I don’t think we should either. We should just assume that the deaths are about 15% more than we can count, but not include them in official modeling, because we will never really know.” It does pay some lip service to the notion that some of these at-home deaths could be precisely because of the "elective" (meaning, scheduled) surgeries that we had postponed. Interestingly per the https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm, we see something like 647,000 heart disease deaths per year. So, I haven't done the napkin math, but could the 20%-odd spike of cardiac arrest events they mentioned have more to do with postponed surgeries?
  - Balgair 6y ago
    See Figure 3. I was off, Nationally were underreporting ~47%, NYC is at ~60%. We can argue the pictures and stats in the Washington Post all day long. But either way, we're likely to be underreporting. Also, though not directly due to the virus itself, the 'avoidable' deaths are kinda due to the pandemic and an over-response-ish factor. This thing is going to take decades to sort out. Kinda like how people that die from digging up bombs from WW1 are counted in stats as WW1 collateral deaths, still.
    - ryankemper 6y ago

by gbrown 6y ago

fluffything 6y ago

In the EU there are graphs showing the "daily deaths / day" over the last 2 years. One can pretty easily see the impact of COVID-19 there, even on countries that are not testing and therefore not reporting any cases... Unfortunately I haven't been able to find that data for the US.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ They include "deaths per day" in one of the charts. Early on I found their stats to be consistent with other trusted sources; but I've not confirmed that recently.
- zeusly 6y ago
  I think he's talking about all deaths, not the death's of positively tested, which allows you to guess the number of corona deaths even if you have few tests. This is also known as mortality displacement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_displacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_displacement
- fluffything 6y ago
  That only counts "deaths of COVID-19 positive people". For countries that don't test, that number is zero. Quite the useless metric to report. Much more meaningful would be: "(actual deaths/day) - (avg deaths/day of 2019)"
- Izkata 6y ago
  "Excess deaths" is the thing to search for: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking... In the graphs right at the top of the page you can see several locations have more deaths than usual even if you subtract the covid19 ones. These are likely covid19 deaths that haven't been included in the stats, probably due to lack of testing. According to that page, New York City, where almost 1 in 600 of the total population (not just of the infected) have died, is likely now tracking its stats pretty accurately.
- DanBC 6y ago
  I think people are talking about excess mortality, or all cause mortality. Here's the EU version: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality There's some lag in these figures. The CDC will have something eventually.

areyousure 6y ago

Here is some data on travel and transit in New York: https://visitdata.org/bydatesel/New%20York/New%20York/Travel%20%26%20Transport https://visitdata.org/bydatesel/New%20York/New%20York/Travel... Can you detect the lockdown, which took effect at 8PM on Sunday, March 22?

ryanwaggoner 6y ago
How are you defining lockdown? Schools were cancelled on March 15, but that was after days of pressure. Many private schools had already closed at that point, and many workplaces had switched to WFH already. The official statewide lockdown started later, but authorities and businesses had been gradually locking down for weeks prior to that.
- areyousure 6y ago
  In the context of this discussion (ending lockdown), it seems that the relevant definition of "lockdown" is action specifically from the authorities. The New York state governor announced the statewide lockdown on March 20 (to begin two days later, as indicated above). The statewide lockdown is not causally responsible for social distancing before then. The same is true for the announcement of closing New York City public schools, which came on March 15. If private schools closed before then, the closure of public schools later cannot "take credit" for it. This distinction is important for causal modeling, both of the past as well as the future, if/when orders from authorities are lifted. The effectiveness of the lockdown order is measured against a world without the lockdown order, which is still a world with a lot of social distancing.
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    Precisely this, I define lockdown as the forced closure of businesses, public parks, beaches, etc. Telling people "we recommend physically distancing and wearing masks" does not qualify as lockdown. I hope that I made that clear in my writeup. Thanks for jumping in here, I think you made the point far better than I could have.

Balgair 6y ago

The Washington Post had a good article a while ago on the issues with estimating death rates. The math is a bit complex, so I'll let them explain it to you (instead of a HN comment box). It's nuanced, as these pandemic things tend to be. TLDR: We're undercounting deaths due to covid-19 by ~60% nationally, and 40% in NYC. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/covid-19-death-toll-undercounted/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/cov...

ryankemper 6y ago
So, I've read the article, and it seems to not support this assertion of yours: > TLDR: We're undercounting deaths due to covid-19 by ~60% nationally, and 40% in NYC. What it does say is this: > “Thus I would probably add about 15% or so to the known death toll,” she wrote to two city officials. “However — no city or state will be factoring this in or reporting it, so I don’t think we should either. We should just assume that the deaths are about 15% more than we can count, but not include them in official modeling, because we will never really know.” It does pay some lip service to the notion that some of these at-home deaths could be precisely because of the "elective" (meaning, scheduled) surgeries that we had postponed. Interestingly per the https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm, we see something like 647,000 heart disease deaths per year. So, I haven't done the napkin math, but could the 20%-odd spike of cardiac arrest events they mentioned have more to do with postponed surgeries?
- Balgair 6y ago
  See Figure 3. I was off, Nationally were underreporting ~47%, NYC is at ~60%. We can argue the pictures and stats in the Washington Post all day long. But either way, we're likely to be underreporting. Also, though not directly due to the virus itself, the 'avoidable' deaths are kinda due to the pandemic and an over-response-ish factor. This thing is going to take decades to sort out. Kinda like how people that die from digging up bombs from WW1 are counted in stats as WW1 collateral deaths, still.
  - ryankemper 6y ago