4 ms·

There is a way to head off all the quibbling about false positive rates and methodology, etc. Look at the all-cause mortality figures for April vs the historic

There is a way to head off all the quibbling about false positive rates and methodology, etc. Look at the all-cause mortality figures for April vs the historical average for that month. If it isn't COVID-19 killing all of those people at a multiple of the normal death rate, we have an even bigger mystery of what is causing all the extra deaths. In fact, these numbers were apparent for NYC a month ago: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/coronavirus-deaths-new-york-city.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/corona...

TheCoelacanth 6y ago
That only works if the quibbling is done in good faith and is based on facts.
elcritch 6y ago
It’s not too much of a mystery. There’s a very good likelihood that the fact that people aren’t getting regular healthcare for other health problem has lead to higher deaths rates. Hospital utilization is significantly below normal currently which means those common heart attacks, strokes, cancer screenings, among others are still occurring but not treated and resulting in higher fatalities.
- cma 6y ago
  But then why would it be correspondingly higher in New York along with their infection rate? Other places were just as locked down without a spike of similar magnitude. That makes no sense.
  - elcritch 6y ago
    Good point, and that could indicate those unaccounted deaths are skewed towards being covid-19 related. There’s still odd patterns with the covid-19 hotspots, and I’d suspect that the underlying reasons could correlate with higher non-covid-19 death rates. As in older and/or sicker populations.
    - cma 6y ago
      Didn't it follow the infection lag for the most part? Why would heart attacks lag lockdown infection growth stoppage by the same amount as virus deaths?
- kryogen1c 6y ago
  > Hospital utilization is significantly below normal currently this is true but misleading. hospitial utilization is down because elective procedures are cancelled, not because its illegal to show up with a heart attack or something absurd like that. ERs are still open like normal, albeit in a quarantine-sensitive model.
  - elcritch 6y ago
    That’s technically accurate, but doesn’t account for how many more serious diagnosis begin from routine care or how afraid people are of covid-19 they’ll still not go in even when they normally would. A local hospital put out a PSA that yes they were in fact open, safe, and that people should come in for medical issues. They indicated worries that people were suffering more serious issues due to fear of the pandemic.
rurban 6y ago
You cannot be serious. You fell into the trap the NY Times statistics fooled you in. And I don't think the NYT made a simple mistake, looks more like a deliberate lie. You cannot compare flu peaks in different months. The normal flu peaks much earlier, this years flu peaked April. Also normal flu waves come every second year, not every single year. With proper graphs you would see that. You can either shift the graphs to their respective peaks, or compare the absolute numbers. So why is the excess mortality in sum the same as with the last flu season? Around 80.000 for the US? Same for Italy, France. Much lower for all the other countries. Outliers are only B, NL, UK, Spain. Not much extra deaths. In Italy there were even much less extra deaths for the people <65. Also compare the IFR's. Not much to worry here. And this study is the flawed one. You really need to look at the dozen other good antibody and IFR studies, with the exact same results. From all over the world.
- throwlaplace 6y ago
  i don't know if you missed it but there was a 2 month worldwide lockdown just recently. when is the last time there was a lockdown for flu? even if the curves are shifted versions of each other up until now do you really think that lockdown had absolutely zero effect on the covid curve? so how do you explain the many people that haven't contributed to the covid curve (flattening the curve duh) yet (unfortunately).
  - rurban 6y ago
    The effect of the lockdown on the IFR is zero. That's a rate. Only certain categories affect the IFR, like density, age distribution, obesity, air pollution, health system. The lockdown could have an impact on the number of absolute deaths, but the question is still out of its positive or negative. Flattening the curve kept the virus longer alive than necessary, it was only necessary for countries with not enough ICU beds. Not many countries were in that desperate situation. Then we have 7 countries who didn't do these lockdowns, which do have the very same curves. Then we do have the countries where the curves already went down before the lockdown. Seeing the lockdown measures in the curves is pretty hard. You mostly see it with manipulated curves, as the NY times curves. Then you also get curves not from actual data, but calculated data from estimation models. And we know you bad those models were. Like the famous Imperial College model, which was totally off. Or the German RKI model which always points up for the very last week, but with the real data coming in next week it was still going down. Wrong model. And it's getting worse, not better. They don't give away the data, but you can see the wrong models at their web page. Since April 24 also on the previously serious euromomo.eu stats. Now it also went to the false model data. You do those drastic measures to keep the ICU's working but not much more, as too much lockdown will only lead to more deaths, not less. Keeping people in their homes is counterproductive, as this is their natural habitat. There it will be kept alive. Of course lockdowns do help with the spread, to keep the R rate down not becoming too exponential. Esp with an initial R0 of 5. But this only helps in the very first week, afterwards you cannot run after each single case anymore. When was the last lockdown for flu? Spanish flu famously. Massive immunosystem overreaction, like with the critical MERS virus, with an IFR of 50%. Was there a MERS lockdown, even if it was the most critical flu event recently? No, it was for an medium harmless SARS-2 variant, with an high R0 and a low IFR (of about 0.3, with 0.02% for <65 year olds). Remember, this rate is lower than using your car driving to work. The economy crash is due to a huge media panic to save a couple of fat old men, who would have died with the next flu anyway, to say it overly bluntly. The comparison to computer viri might be interesting. Why is there always a panic on more harmless viri with an extremely high distribution rate, and not with the extremely harmful ones with a much lower distribution rate? that's the strategy of terror. for an effective computer virus you do make it spreading, harmless, unpredictable to keep the media circus rolling, and you need play the media. Destruction rate of 0.3% sounds perfect.

TheCoelacanth 6y ago

That only works if the quibbling is done in good faith and is based on facts.

elcritch 6y ago

It’s not too much of a mystery. There’s a very good likelihood that the fact that people aren’t getting regular healthcare for other health problem has lead to higher deaths rates. Hospital utilization is significantly below normal currently which means those common heart attacks, strokes, cancer screenings, among others are still occurring but not treated and resulting in higher fatalities.

cma 6y ago
But then why would it be correspondingly higher in New York along with their infection rate? Other places were just as locked down without a spike of similar magnitude. That makes no sense.
- elcritch 6y ago
  Good point, and that could indicate those unaccounted deaths are skewed towards being covid-19 related. There’s still odd patterns with the covid-19 hotspots, and I’d suspect that the underlying reasons could correlate with higher non-covid-19 death rates. As in older and/or sicker populations.
  - cma 6y ago
    Didn't it follow the infection lag for the most part? Why would heart attacks lag lockdown infection growth stoppage by the same amount as virus deaths?
kryogen1c 6y ago
> Hospital utilization is significantly below normal currently this is true but misleading. hospitial utilization is down because elective procedures are cancelled, not because its illegal to show up with a heart attack or something absurd like that. ERs are still open like normal, albeit in a quarantine-sensitive model.
- elcritch 6y ago
  That’s technically accurate, but doesn’t account for how many more serious diagnosis begin from routine care or how afraid people are of covid-19 they’ll still not go in even when they normally would. A local hospital put out a PSA that yes they were in fact open, safe, and that people should come in for medical issues. They indicated worries that people were suffering more serious issues due to fear of the pandemic.

rurban 6y ago

You cannot be serious. You fell into the trap the NY Times statistics fooled you in. And I don't think the NYT made a simple mistake, looks more like a deliberate lie. You cannot compare flu peaks in different months. The normal flu peaks much earlier, this years flu peaked April. Also normal flu waves come every second year, not every single year. With proper graphs you would see that. You can either shift the graphs to their respective peaks, or compare the absolute numbers. So why is the excess mortality in sum the same as with the last flu season? Around 80.000 for the US? Same for Italy, France. Much lower for all the other countries. Outliers are only B, NL, UK, Spain. Not much extra deaths. In Italy there were even much less extra deaths for the people <65. Also compare the IFR's. Not much to worry here. And this study is the flawed one. You really need to look at the dozen other good antibody and IFR studies, with the exact same results. From all over the world.

throwlaplace 6y ago
i don't know if you missed it but there was a 2 month worldwide lockdown just recently. when is the last time there was a lockdown for flu? even if the curves are shifted versions of each other up until now do you really think that lockdown had absolutely zero effect on the covid curve? so how do you explain the many people that haven't contributed to the covid curve (flattening the curve duh) yet (unfortunately).
- rurban 6y ago
  The effect of the lockdown on the IFR is zero. That's a rate. Only certain categories affect the IFR, like density, age distribution, obesity, air pollution, health system. The lockdown could have an impact on the number of absolute deaths, but the question is still out of its positive or negative. Flattening the curve kept the virus longer alive than necessary, it was only necessary for countries with not enough ICU beds. Not many countries were in that desperate situation. Then we have 7 countries who didn't do these lockdowns, which do have the very same curves. Then we do have the countries where the curves already went down before the lockdown. Seeing the lockdown measures in the curves is pretty hard. You mostly see it with manipulated curves, as the NY times curves. Then you also get curves not from actual data, but calculated data from estimation models. And we know you bad those models were. Like the famous Imperial College model, which was totally off. Or the German RKI model which always points up for the very last week, but with the real data coming in next week it was still going down. Wrong model. And it's getting worse, not better. They don't give away the data, but you can see the wrong models at their web page. Since April 24 also on the previously serious euromomo.eu stats. Now it also went to the false model data. You do those drastic measures to keep the ICU's working but not much more, as too much lockdown will only lead to more deaths, not less. Keeping people in their homes is counterproductive, as this is their natural habitat. There it will be kept alive. Of course lockdowns do help with the spread, to keep the R rate down not becoming too exponential. Esp with an initial R0 of 5. But this only helps in the very first week, afterwards you cannot run after each single case anymore. When was the last lockdown for flu? Spanish flu famously. Massive immunosystem overreaction, like with the critical MERS virus, with an IFR of 50%. Was there a MERS lockdown, even if it was the most critical flu event recently? No, it was for an medium harmless SARS-2 variant, with an high R0 and a low IFR (of about 0.3, with 0.02% for <65 year olds). Remember, this rate is lower than using your car driving to work. The economy crash is due to a huge media panic to save a couple of fat old men, who would have died with the next flu anyway, to say it overly bluntly. The comparison to computer viri might be interesting. Why is there always a panic on more harmless viri with an extremely high distribution rate, and not with the extremely harmful ones with a much lower distribution rate? that's the strategy of terror. for an effective computer virus you do make it spreading, harmless, unpredictable to keep the media circus rolling, and you need play the media. Destruction rate of 0.3% sounds perfect.