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According to the article, there are 2 types of excess deaths: - the virus can also cause death by exacerbating underlying health issues; the body’s immune syst

by devy 6y ago

According to the article, there are 2 types of excess deaths: - the virus can also cause death by exacerbating underlying health issues; the body’s immune system is weakened while fighting off the illness. - the sudden emergence and rapid spread of the disease overwhelmed critical care units when the virus was at its peak, reducing the amount of care any individual patient could receive. And the argument of "35% excess deaths not caused by COVID-19" is perhaps technically correct due to the reasons above, however, those are indirect deaths that had the root cause of SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus. Notice the difference between COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2? The former is the disease, the latter is the virus. As Dr. Mike Hansen said in a few of his autopsy report review videos he made in his YouTube channel[1], there are very few direct cause of death in the death certificate he signed and issued for his ICU patients, most related to blood clots and lack of oxygen but the common indirect cause is the SARS-CoV-2. In other words, if it weren't for the coronavirus infection, these deaths could either be prevented or delayed. So I think it's more nuanced than simply saying we are attributing 35% the excess deaths to COVID-19 whereas these are indirectly caused by SAR-CoV-2 viral outbreak. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h8TIxeg1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h8TIxeg1g

jtbayly 6y ago
No. You are not representing the article or the study accurately. There are many other reasons for excess deaths than the two you mentioned. From the article: >there were 96% more diabetes-related deaths than experts predicted. For heart disease, the figure was 89%; for Alzheimer’s disease, it was 64%; and for stroke, it was 35%. >As well as people not being able to get the necessary treatment due to hospitals being overloaded, the study authors also speculate that people may have stayed at home due to the virus despite experiencing worsening symptoms of another condition they may have had. >They also believe that the pandemic’s effects on people’s mental health may have played a part. >As Prof. Woolf notes: “We can’t forget about mental health. A number of people struggling with depression, addiction, and very difficult economic conditions caused by lockdowns may have become increasingly desperate, and some may have died by suicide. People addicted to opioids and other drugs may have overdosed.”
- e40 6y ago
  Just on the heart disease alone, I understand these deaths were due to the virus causing clots in the arteries near the heart. That seems directly related to the virus.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    At this point it seems like basically everything and anything is being attributed to this virus, often without any kind of study or robust evidence. Occam's Razor can help here. We know that there are treatments for these ailments that can help people. We know these treatments stopped due to lockdown and people being afraid to go to hospitals. We know this must, but implication, increase deaths from these ailments. The alternative explanation is far more complex, actually it's of unbounded complexity because as far as I know there isn't any clear known mechanism of action that shows how this type of virus can cause all these different kinds of problems. Is there even a robust set of studies that show how this type of virus causes blood clots? As far as I know there is some evidence that blood thinners can help a bit with flu, sometimes, so it's not entirely implausible, but I think it's also unknown what exactly happens there and why. And people keep saying this virus is totally unlike flu so that similarity should maybe be discarded.
    - vikramkr 6y ago
      The mechanism of action behind the broad symptoms we see is actually reasonably straightforward- the ace2 receptor the virus uses to enter cells is everywhere in your body. In vitro, they replicate in pancreatic cells and intestinal cells, which lends a mechanistic explanation for the link to gastrointestinal distress and diabetes seen in correlative findings. Heart muscle also has high concentrations of the ACE2 receptor. One of the mechanistic hypothesis for clotting [0] proposed is that the complement system and immune cascades trigger clots, since they saw evidence of the virus binding to an element in the complement cascade. This could turn out to be entirely wrong of course, but that's a hint at the other key aspect of this that allows varied results - your immune system can react poorly and is capable of screwing up in fascinating and varied ways. It could be the virus killing pancreatic cells, or an autoimmune response triggered by the virus that causes pancreatic cell death since the virus infects them and marks them for destruction. Are these the driving forces behind increased clots etc? Maybe not. Maybe its contributing equally with people staying at home, or maybe not at all. But the mechanistic reasons for the broad symptoms are there and they're relatively straightforward, driven by the ability of the virus to infect lots of different cells and the variability of the human immune system [0]https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2020/07/what-is-known-about-covid-19-and-abnormal-blood-clotting https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2020/07/what-is-known-ab...
RHSeeger 6y ago
Do those numbers get counted in the numbers we see due to Covid (on the news and elsewhere)? For example, the current US death count of 135K.

by devy 6y ago

jtbayly 6y ago

No. You are not representing the article or the study accurately. There are many other reasons for excess deaths than the two you mentioned. From the article: >there were 96% more diabetes-related deaths than experts predicted. For heart disease, the figure was 89%; for Alzheimer’s disease, it was 64%; and for stroke, it was 35%. >As well as people not being able to get the necessary treatment due to hospitals being overloaded, the study authors also speculate that people may have stayed at home due to the virus despite experiencing worsening symptoms of another condition they may have had. >They also believe that the pandemic’s effects on people’s mental health may have played a part. >As Prof. Woolf notes: “We can’t forget about mental health. A number of people struggling with depression, addiction, and very difficult economic conditions caused by lockdowns may have become increasingly desperate, and some may have died by suicide. People addicted to opioids and other drugs may have overdosed.”

e40 6y ago
Just on the heart disease alone, I understand these deaths were due to the virus causing clots in the arteries near the heart. That seems directly related to the virus.
- thu2111 6y ago
  At this point it seems like basically everything and anything is being attributed to this virus, often without any kind of study or robust evidence. Occam's Razor can help here. We know that there are treatments for these ailments that can help people. We know these treatments stopped due to lockdown and people being afraid to go to hospitals. We know this must, but implication, increase deaths from these ailments. The alternative explanation is far more complex, actually it's of unbounded complexity because as far as I know there isn't any clear known mechanism of action that shows how this type of virus can cause all these different kinds of problems. Is there even a robust set of studies that show how this type of virus causes blood clots? As far as I know there is some evidence that blood thinners can help a bit with flu, sometimes, so it's not entirely implausible, but I think it's also unknown what exactly happens there and why. And people keep saying this virus is totally unlike flu so that similarity should maybe be discarded.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    The mechanism of action behind the broad symptoms we see is actually reasonably straightforward- the ace2 receptor the virus uses to enter cells is everywhere in your body. In vitro, they replicate in pancreatic cells and intestinal cells, which lends a mechanistic explanation for the link to gastrointestinal distress and diabetes seen in correlative findings. Heart muscle also has high concentrations of the ACE2 receptor. One of the mechanistic hypothesis for clotting [0] proposed is that the complement system and immune cascades trigger clots, since they saw evidence of the virus binding to an element in the complement cascade. This could turn out to be entirely wrong of course, but that's a hint at the other key aspect of this that allows varied results - your immune system can react poorly and is capable of screwing up in fascinating and varied ways. It could be the virus killing pancreatic cells, or an autoimmune response triggered by the virus that causes pancreatic cell death since the virus infects them and marks them for destruction. Are these the driving forces behind increased clots etc? Maybe not. Maybe its contributing equally with people staying at home, or maybe not at all. But the mechanistic reasons for the broad symptoms are there and they're relatively straightforward, driven by the ability of the virus to infect lots of different cells and the variability of the human immune system [0]https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2020/07/what-is-known-about-covid-19-and-abnormal-blood-clotting https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2020/07/what-is-known-ab...

RHSeeger 6y ago

Do those numbers get counted in the numbers we see due to Covid (on the news and elsewhere)? For example, the current US death count of 135K.