6 ms·

> with 153k cases in Florida and 3.5k deaths (2.3%), is it really that bad? You don't even know if it's 3.5K deaths _due to_ COVID in the first place. The way

by m0zg 6y ago

> with 153k cases in Florida and 3.5k deaths (2.3%), is it really that bad? You don't even know if it's 3.5K deaths _due to_ COVID in the first place. The way US counts the deaths from this is "unique" in that if someone had COVID when they died, but they did not die _from_ COVID, they're still counted as a COVID death. That's why countries like Russia with much less formidable healthcare systems have "lower" fatality ratios. They're counting those who died _because of_ COVID, not _with_ it. Why are we counting our deaths like this? I genuinely do not have a rational explanation, assuming there is one. And soon you won't even know if the number of cases is accurate either, since CDC has put out guidance that there is a chance of false positives in newer tests if you had common cold. Which most people have _several times a year_. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/antibody-tests-guidelines.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti... Quote: "Some tests may exhibit cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold."

atmosx 6y ago
Because for many cases it is not clear. The resources needed to understand are not there, they need to allocate them to save the living. This situation is extremely complex and we simply don’t have the tools and resources to deal with it effectively.
l0ner 6y ago
In most countries, if you die having COVID, and you cant exclude COVID as being the cause, you are included in the COVID death count. In russia, if you die having COVID, but yoy also have any other sickness that could be the cause of death, you are not included in the COVID death count. While the former overestimates, the latter underestimates. I dont have any reference to prove it, but my gut feeling tells me that the latter is probably even further away from the true number than the former. In any case, they are absolutely not comparable.
- barrkel 6y ago
  The best statistical tool we have to figure out the real death rate due to COVID is excess mortality, and these numbers have been higher even than the seemingly overattributed numbers. There are still a bunch of people who die and don't get attributed, and there are people who die because there's a pandemic on and they don't get healthcare as a result, either because there isn't capacity or to avoid infection.
JohnBooty 6y ago
The way US counts the deaths from this is "unique" in that if someone had COVID when they died, but they did not die _from_ COVID, they're still counted as a COVID death That's how diseases work. In a literal sense the only actual cause of death ever is a cessation of cardiovascular function. You don't die "from" AIDS. You die from pnuemonia, malnutrition, opportunistic infections that attack your weakened immune system, etc. You don't even die directly "from" cancer. The tumors on your pancreas don't directly kill you in the sense that stepping on a landmine directly kills you. That's why countries like Russia with much less formidable healthcare systems have "lower" fatality ratios. They're counting those who died _because of_ COVID, not _with_ it. That's not realistic at all. Your odds of dying from disease during any given month are pretty low. If you get COVID-19 and die, the overwhelming probability is that.... yes, it was COVID-19. While not a perfect method of accounting it is assuredly more accurate than assuming the opposite, which is what countries like Russia are apparently doing. If a person has cancer (or hepatitis, or psoriasis, or dementia, or whatever) for two years, and then they contract COVID-19 and die the next week, it certainly may have been the cancer that did them in, but it was almost certainly the COVID-19 that put them over the edge. In reality, a number of factors did them in, but if you had to pick one it would be their acute bout with COVID-19 that proved the deciding factor.
- m0zg 6y ago
  > the overwhelming probability is that.... yes, it was COVID-19 Even if you had stage 4 cancer and would die in a week anyway? Then there's the issue of excess deaths caused by _not going to the doctor_ because you can't do "elective" procedures like stents and such, or just because you're afraid of getting infected. You can die of cardiovascular (or other) disease this way, and if you had e.g. asymptomatic covid (like most people who have it) you'd be counted as a COVID death then.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Even if you had stage 4 cancer and would die in a week anyway? Why yes, then it might be more accurate to say that your stage 4 cancer killed you. But now, consider: most people are not in the absolutely final, terminal phase of a deadly illness. To what percentage of dead COVID-19 sufferers would a situation like that possibly apply? A very tiny one, surely. That is why tallying COVID-19 deaths in this manner is acceptable and accurate. It perhaps introduces a small amount of error, but is superior to Russia's method (which sounds like outright denial of reality) and the error % introduced is in any event, is at least an order of magnitude (if not two) smaller than that posed by the number of undiagnosed COVID-19 cases.
prostoalex 6y ago
That’s just one of the approaches, another one is counting excess deaths - delta between predicted and actual mortality rates. It normalizes against external factors, such as poor testing infrastructure or (in some countries) government pressure to keep the numbers low. 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...
- m0zg 6y ago
  Could it be that a good fraction of those "excess deaths" is caused by people choosing not to seek (or being unable to get) medical help with the conditions they already have? 2.65 million people die in the US in an average year in total, most of things like cancer or heart disease. Some of those things you can treat, some you can't nowadays, because procedures are "elective" and hospitals don't do them.
  - pcl 6y ago
    Yes, and there is a good argument that such deaths are COVID-related, even though the virus itself didn’t infect the person. This is one of the reasons that “excess deaths” is a compelling measure.
    - ballenf 6y ago
      If I shoot you to prevent you from falling over the edge of a cliff, is that a fall-related death? Causation is difficult. Obviously the answer is somewhere in the middle. I just hope that in the coming years, researchers are permitted and incentived to analyze the numbers in detail.
  - fredophile 6y ago
    If you won't or can't get medical care due to covid and die from your lack of medical care I'd say it's fair to say that you died because of covid.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NamTaf 6y ago
As countless others have explained, this is an incredibly obtuse way of looking at it since they wouldn't have died in the nearly total majority of cases if it weren't for COVID. This is provably the case, since the average death rate is very steady year on year, yet shot up this year. People are dying in droves from something, and if not COVID then what do you propose? Hell, in reality the US and other countries are underreporting their figures, because there's still a whole tonne of unexplained deaths above the COVID numbers and no other explanation as to why those deaths have occurred. See the following for further explanation. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233066 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233066

by m0zg 6y ago

atmosx 6y ago

Because for many cases it is not clear. The resources needed to understand are not there, they need to allocate them to save the living. This situation is extremely complex and we simply don’t have the tools and resources to deal with it effectively.

l0ner 6y ago

In most countries, if you die having COVID, and you cant exclude COVID as being the cause, you are included in the COVID death count. In russia, if you die having COVID, but yoy also have any other sickness that could be the cause of death, you are not included in the COVID death count. While the former overestimates, the latter underestimates. I dont have any reference to prove it, but my gut feeling tells me that the latter is probably even further away from the true number than the former. In any case, they are absolutely not comparable.

barrkel 6y ago
The best statistical tool we have to figure out the real death rate due to COVID is excess mortality, and these numbers have been higher even than the seemingly overattributed numbers. There are still a bunch of people who die and don't get attributed, and there are people who die because there's a pandemic on and they don't get healthcare as a result, either because there isn't capacity or to avoid infection.

JohnBooty 6y ago

The way US counts the deaths from this is "unique" in that if someone had COVID when they died, but they did not die _from_ COVID, they're still counted as a COVID death That's how diseases work. In a literal sense the only actual cause of death ever is a cessation of cardiovascular function. You don't die "from" AIDS. You die from pnuemonia, malnutrition, opportunistic infections that attack your weakened immune system, etc. You don't even die directly "from" cancer. The tumors on your pancreas don't directly kill you in the sense that stepping on a landmine directly kills you. That's why countries like Russia with much less formidable healthcare systems have "lower" fatality ratios. They're counting those who died _because of_ COVID, not _with_ it. That's not realistic at all. Your odds of dying from disease during any given month are pretty low. If you get COVID-19 and die, the overwhelming probability is that.... yes, it was COVID-19. While not a perfect method of accounting it is assuredly more accurate than assuming the opposite, which is what countries like Russia are apparently doing. If a person has cancer (or hepatitis, or psoriasis, or dementia, or whatever) for two years, and then they contract COVID-19 and die the next week, it certainly may have been the cancer that did them in, but it was almost certainly the COVID-19 that put them over the edge. In reality, a number of factors did them in, but if you had to pick one it would be their acute bout with COVID-19 that proved the deciding factor.

m0zg 6y ago
> the overwhelming probability is that.... yes, it was COVID-19 Even if you had stage 4 cancer and would die in a week anyway? Then there's the issue of excess deaths caused by _not going to the doctor_ because you can't do "elective" procedures like stents and such, or just because you're afraid of getting infected. You can die of cardiovascular (or other) disease this way, and if you had e.g. asymptomatic covid (like most people who have it) you'd be counted as a COVID death then.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  Even if you had stage 4 cancer and would die in a week anyway? Why yes, then it might be more accurate to say that your stage 4 cancer killed you. But now, consider: most people are not in the absolutely final, terminal phase of a deadly illness. To what percentage of dead COVID-19 sufferers would a situation like that possibly apply? A very tiny one, surely. That is why tallying COVID-19 deaths in this manner is acceptable and accurate. It perhaps introduces a small amount of error, but is superior to Russia's method (which sounds like outright denial of reality) and the error % introduced is in any event, is at least an order of magnitude (if not two) smaller than that posed by the number of undiagnosed COVID-19 cases.

prostoalex 6y ago

That’s just one of the approaches, another one is counting excess deaths - delta between predicted and actual mortality rates. It normalizes against external factors, such as poor testing infrastructure or (in some countries) government pressure to keep the numbers low. 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...

m0zg 6y ago
Could it be that a good fraction of those "excess deaths" is caused by people choosing not to seek (or being unable to get) medical help with the conditions they already have? 2.65 million people die in the US in an average year in total, most of things like cancer or heart disease. Some of those things you can treat, some you can't nowadays, because procedures are "elective" and hospitals don't do them.
- pcl 6y ago
  Yes, and there is a good argument that such deaths are COVID-related, even though the virus itself didn’t infect the person. This is one of the reasons that “excess deaths” is a compelling measure.
  - ballenf 6y ago
    If I shoot you to prevent you from falling over the edge of a cliff, is that a fall-related death? Causation is difficult. Obviously the answer is somewhere in the middle. I just hope that in the coming years, researchers are permitted and incentived to analyze the numbers in detail.
- fredophile 6y ago
  If you won't or can't get medical care due to covid and die from your lack of medical care I'd say it's fair to say that you died because of covid.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

NamTaf 6y ago

As countless others have explained, this is an incredibly obtuse way of looking at it since they wouldn't have died in the nearly total majority of cases if it weren't for COVID. This is provably the case, since the average death rate is very steady year on year, yet shot up this year. People are dying in droves from something, and if not COVID then what do you propose? Hell, in reality the US and other countries are underreporting their figures, because there's still a whole tonne of unexplained deaths above the COVID numbers and no other explanation as to why those deaths have occurred. See the following for further explanation. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233066 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233066