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We really do need to address what constitutes a proper Covid death. So long as there are people who die from unrelated causes, while happening to have Covid, be

by beaner 6y ago

We really do need to address what constitutes a proper Covid death. So long as there are people who die from unrelated causes, while happening to have Covid, being marked as a Covid death, there will be a lot of people skeptical of the statistics.

gchokov 6y ago
You included?
sb52191 6y ago
What do you mean by this? What unrelated causes are people dying from that aren't exacerbated by COVID? I've heard this argument before but it's never made sense to me. If you have AIDS, it's not the AIDS that kills you, it's the fact that AIDS weakened your immune system to the point that something else can kill you. But to say that AIDS wasn't paramount to killing the victim is just wrong. Seems to me like COVID is a similar situation...
- Y-bar 6y ago
  Not OP, but in the first half of this year (not sure if this is still the case, I have heard they have attempted to fix this): Anyone in Sweden who had been either diagnosed with Covid 19 and died of any cause, e.g. a traffic incident would be counted as a Covid death. Or if they died of any cause and the autopsy revealed Covid 19 it would also be counted as a Covid death. Edit, source: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utbrott/aktuella-utbrott/covid-19/statistik-och-analyser/bekraftade-fall-i-sverige/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb... In the link "Ingång för Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox m.fl." it says: > Statistiken visar antalet personer med bekräftad covid-19 som avlidit, oavsett dödsorsak. Translated: > The stats shows the number of deaths with confirmed Covid-19, regardless of cause of death.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    That's the example everyone always brings up, and even if it's true, do you think there are a huge portion of people with COVID who are dying in car accidents? That seems very unlikely to make a significant difference in the figures, and for a new virus that is spreading very quickly and isn't yet well-understood, it's probably worth using a definition that errs slightly (but probably not significantly) on the inclusive side.
    - Y-bar 6y ago
      Car accidents were just the clearest example I could think of. At https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/statistik-om-covid-19/statistik-over-antal-avlidna-i-covid-19/ https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/... they do calculate the difference: > Av dessa har 90 procent (5 514 av 6 128) laboratoriebekräftad covid-19 enligt Folkhälsomyndighetens databas över smittade. 90% are due to Covid 19. 10% not. Edit: I misunderstood, tsimionescu has corrected me, thanks!
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        That is not in any way what that 90% means. > "Of these, 90 percent (5,514 out of 6,128) have laboratory-confirmed covid-19 according to the Swedish Public Health Agency's database of infected people." That is 90% of: > The statistics show the deceased where the underlying cause of death was covid-19, according to the cause of death certificates received by the National Board of Health and Welfare. So in 10% of cases, the doctors were sure enough that the cause of death was Covid19 to write a legal document certifying it, even though they didn't order laboratory work to confirm with 100% certainty. This could mean many things, from medical malpractice (doctor lied on a legal document) to simple common sense (patient is husband of person with confirmed case, died of clear Covid19 symptoms). But there is no way to read that 10% number as meaning what you claimed. In fact, if a person were hit by a car, confirmed Covid19 positive, died of their wounds on their way to hospital, and got a death certificate claiming they died of Covid19, they would be part of 90% number, NOT part of the 10% number.
    - beaner 6y ago
      Car accidents in specific are probably small, but they're representative of similar catastrophic events that will lead to death anyway, that would still be marked as covid. The most common of which is simply old age. Certainly covid causes death in some people, that's indisputable. But If you catch it in your last 2 weeks while you're on your death bed anyway, it's not really clear that covid even accelerated it. The death die with covid more often not only because it probably accelerates some old peoples' deaths, but because this very population is undergoing its end-of-life process anyway, and are going to die whether or not they have it.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Is that relevant? How many people happen to have some other acute terminal illness/accident AND Covid at the same time? Also, do you imagine this is different for Influenza deaths or TB deaths? If anything, Covid-19 deaths are much more accurately counted than deaths from any other major disease, which are often just estimates.
    - Y-bar 6y ago
      10%, see my other reply. Which is why I think excess mortality seems like the best high-level number to look at.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        That 10% from your other comment has no relationship to Covid19 deaths vs people dying of unrelated causes who happen to be Covid19 positive.
- dx87 6y ago
  I think the point is that the comorbidities aren't mentioned when talking about COVID deaths. The statistics are being presented as though it's random chance who dies from it, instead of it being reported as something that primarily kills people who already have other health issues, like obesity. It would probably make people less anxious if we were told that people without existing issues have a lower chance of dying or hospitilization.
nemothekid 6y ago
For anyone who is skeptical of the statistics, the response is to ask them to explain excess deaths. In America there are over 200k excess deaths; if not COVID, then why did so many more people die?
- minkzilla 6y ago
  Preface: I believe the pandemic is real and covid is deadly. People argue that increases in death could also be attributed to suicide, deteriorating health from mental hardship of stress and quarantine, and people not seeking medical treatment they need because they are scared of covid or because they cannot afford it with so much unemployment. I think the last one holds some water. I know of one person in my hometown who chose not to go to the hospital because he was scared of covid and ended up dying of a heart attack.
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    A lot of clinics are doing "video only" visits. These are not nearly sufficient to accurately diagnose a patient. A good deal of clinical visits is assessing the overall manner and appearance of a patient. This can't be done remotely. Nor can BP, EKG, O2 or any other basic diagnostic tools be done remotely. Minor things that could be detected in a normal office visit are missed and turn into things which can kill.
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    If the US were to get the epidemic under control, then those people would be able to go to the hospital without fearing CoVID-19.
    - minkzilla 6y ago
      I think they could also go to the hospital right now. But I think that needs to be communicated; some sort of message telling people “Covid is serious but so are a lot of other health issues if you think you need medical help get it!”
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
aplummer 6y ago
You don't die from these co-morbidities suddenly in the 2 weeks you have covid - but for the covid. This amounts to a baseless conspiracy theory against doctors that accurately understand and record the cause of death. Blunt trauma in a car accident is not being recorded as covid.
- geewee 6y ago
  That's different from country to country. In Denmark hospitalizations are counted as covid hospitalizations for example, even if you arrive due to e.g. a broken leg, but you have covid. Not sure about deaths though.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Of course they are counted as Covid hospitalizations, because they requires the same special care as all other Covid cases - you can't just put a Covid-infected patient in the regular orthopedics ward, you need to quarantine them and all the staff that comes into contact with them. Also, I doubt the amount of people suffering from broken legs are really skewing those Covid numbers. Most people sick enough to require hospitalization while also infected with Covid will have much higher risks of Covid-related symptoms as well.
    - geewee 6y ago
      Certainly it makes sense when talking about hospital capacity - but it does give a bit of a skewed impression when you're looking at the hospitalizations re: cases. You'd be surprised. Around 1/7th of the covid hospitalizations in Denmark[0] are hospitalized for "other reasons" - where covid is not the primary factor - I'd say that is significant. [0] - https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/braekket-ben-fylder-i-centralt-coronatal-hver-syvende-er-indlagt-af-andre-grunde https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/braekket-ben-fylder-i-cent... (link only in danish, sorry)
- nsxwolf 6y ago
  In Illinois, it's pretty cut and dry: ""If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone who's listed as a COVID death doesn't mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of the death." Dr. Ezike outlined." -- Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of Illinois Department of Public Health
acqq 6y ago
Let's make it clear: if your relative has some illness and is expected to live with that illness for years, but gets Covid and dies right now, do you consider that a Covid death? If not, why? Also, if you get Covid and you end up with permanently damaged health, as it is documented time and again, would you keep your skepticism? What will you say if somebody tells you that you anyway had some precondition, even if you weren't aware? And are you aware how big percentage of the U.S. population has one or more risk factors?
sixothree 6y ago
Would a person with diabetes or asthma have _died_ from those conditions if they were not infected? I believe you are making an incredibly disingenuous argument here.
- beaner 6y ago
  My argument is not disingenuous at all. Rather, I think you're being assumptive. I'm not talking about the case where a person's prospects are that they'll live for quite some time. I'm talking about the case where somebody is already essentially on their death bed for cancer, for heart problems, for fatal car injuries or shootings, or even other viruses, who are going to die imminently anyway.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > I'm talking about the case where somebody is already essentially on their death bed for cancer, Are you additionally claiming that this makes up some significant percentage of total covid deaths? Like, if 2% of the deaths due to covid are indeed people who were going to die anyway, but may or may not have died a week earlier due to covid, well 1. They may have died a week earlier due to covid. Whose place is it to judge that? (there are measures that try to take into account loss of livable years, but they agree that Covid is pretty terrible) 2. Who cares if the estimate is off by a few percent? So concern about this overcounting is predicated on an assumption that some significant number of people are on death's door already, and that basically only those people are dying of covid. Most covid-deaths are of people under 85 years old, and even an 85 year old has a life expectancy of 6 years though, so that seems unlikely.
    - Kranar 6y ago
      40% of COVID-19 related deaths are from people in LTC facilities [1] where the median life expectancy is 21 months (average is 29 months). Now that doesn't mean we should entirely downplay the risk here, but there are alternative solutions that can allow us to take care of the vast majority of people who are seriously at risk from COVID-19 without absolutely ruining the economy and harming the majority of people's way of life in a manner that may very well be irreparable for a decade, if not longer. [1] https://covidtracking.com/data/longtermcare https://covidtracking.com/data/longtermcare
modzu 6y ago
all of the replies to this comment misunderstand the point. if you get hit by a bus and have covid, you are still counted as a "covid death" in the statistics, at least in my province, because there isnt a simple means to separate the two
- pwinnski 6y ago
  You might be misunderstanding the point. Many people have chosen to promote the lie that the vast majority of COVID deaths can be dismissed using this reasoning, rather than a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. They ignore the overwhelming "excess deaths" number and pretend that unless a person had COVID and COVID alone listed, with no co-morbidity, it doesn't count, and therefore 99+% of COVID deaths aren't COVID at all. This is, of course, not true, as the excess deaths numbers clearly demonstrate. If anything, we're under-counting COVID.
  - ravitation 6y ago
    > Many people have chosen to promote the lie that the vast majority of COVID deaths can be dismissed using this reasoning, rather than a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. This is comically illustrated by the examples being used... Hit by a bus? Hospice patients with weeks to live? The truth is that the typical comorbidities, that have a noticeable effect on the actual total number of deaths, are things like obesity, hyptertension, and diabetes... Things that literally will not kill an otherwise healthy adult in the same time period as COVID-19.
    - beaner 6y ago
      The biggest comorbidity by far is old age, which definitely will imminently kill those it affects on its own.
      - ravitation 6y ago
        I mean... No, it won't... Being 75+ doesn't kill someone in weeks like COVID-19 does...
tshaddox 6y ago
Isn't this exactly how all death statistics of all diseases and conditions work? People with other conditions are presumably more likely to die from some given condition. And, of course, every cause of death is really just causing the person to die earlier than they would have otherwise died.
legerdemain 6y ago
At this point it's becoming pretty clear that the world will not see such a definition. It is in the interest of governments to exercise control over people by calling anything and anything a Covid "case" and a Covid "fatality." The numbers go up and down and up again at the convenience of government policymakers. LIBERATE MICHIGAN!
dr_dshiv 6y ago
I think we can make our own decisions on that provided we can get US data on deaths in a simple csv file with age, gender, race, state and comorbidities. Does anyone know where to find a dataset like this?
- hnuser847 6y ago
  This is exactly what you're looking for: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
jmull 6y ago
I think this should put you concerns to rest: Excess deaths in the United States were at 299K as of October 15. What’s your explanation for this, if it isn’t Covid? https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm6942e2_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm...
- legerdemain 6y ago
  Literally any other explanation would suffice! For example, the lockdowns put stress on Americans, exacerbate depression and anxiety, worsen health conditions associated with sedentary lifestyles, and keep people out of healthful bars and restaurants where they could consume a more diverse diet and nourish their psychological need for social interaction.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    It would. But than you have the official COVID deaths which match the excess deaths quite neatly. So why not just accept what numbers are clearly telling us?
    - josephcsible 6y ago
      You're missing the point. The point is that some of the excess deaths were caused by Covid, and the rest were caused by the lockdown, and the numbers are intentionally being skewed to make all of the lockdown deaths look like Covid deaths. This obviously leaves the total of excess deaths the same.
      - oblio 6y ago
        How do you explain excess deaths not during periods of lockdown? Also not in the US where Covid-19 is for some reason a political talking point? :-)
        josephcsible 6y ago
        What state/region and specific timeframe do you have in mind? Weren't lockdowns instituted in most places before recorded deaths got really high?
Tepix 6y ago
In the city i live in in Germany they do differentiate between "death by covid" and "ill with covid but other cause of death". Ask your city to do the same. (FYI the total numbers so far are 25 deaths by Covid-19 and 14 deaths by other additional causes)
GuB-42 6y ago
There are people who die from Covid and are not counted, there are people who die of something else and are counted as Covid deaths. And there are cases it is ambiguous, for example they may have recovered from Covid (negative PCR) but died later from complications. You will never have precise statistics, however, excess mortality for all causes more or less matches Covid deaths, so the numbers are roughly correct. Worth noting that there are indirect effects. For instance because of the overworked health system, some completely unrelated diseases may not be treated as well, causing extra deaths. On the other hand, lockdowns may lower the risk of accident, transmission of other diseases, and even the nasty effect of pollution. But the general idea is that these deaths are real.
- misiti3780 6y ago
  Where can I find the data to see excess mortality?
  - rwcarlsen 6y ago
    I use https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm for the U.S. and https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ has a bit of european data.
    - misiti3780 6y ago
      thanks!
- josephcsible 6y ago
  > excess mortality for all causes more or less matches Covid deaths, so the numbers are roughly correct. This doesn't follow. It just means that the number of falsely-claimed Covid deaths is roughly equal to the number of deaths caused by the lockdowns, not that either of those numbers are small.
  - oblio 6y ago
qwerty1234599 6y ago
The average person doesn't die within 30 days. If a covid-positive person dies after testing positive, it's pretty obvious what the cause of death is.
Viliam1234 6y ago
I am in favor of having better definitions and statistics, but frankly, there will be a lot of people skeptical of Covid no matter what happens.
nostromo 6y ago
I’d like to see reporting on healthy years of life lost. During the worst of the HIV epidemic, we saw people in their 30s dying left and right. Malaria kills mostly young children. All lives are valuable and worth fighting for, but it does seem that these losses are fundamentally worse than COVID. If we would count healthy years of life lost, rather than raw number of deaths, I think that would be more apparent.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  A human life is a human life. If you start assigning values, you'll quickly go down bizarre paths. Old people still have a right to a free and healthy life.
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    If this is what our decision-makers believe, then why isn't there a lockdown every winter to stop flu deaths?
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Because we have grown accustomed to the flu, it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. People can even get vaccinated, and we try to vaccinate as many as we can every year - not an option we have with Covid19. A new disease with unpredictable long-term effects, that kills at least twice as many people as the flu despite unprecedented preventive measures is bound to cause more alarm. Remember that regions hit early and unprepared were carting dead people by the truck load, most notably in Northern Italy. If we didn't have lockdowns and other measures, that would have continued and escalated all over the world - we would have probably easily had 10 million or more dead just this year if we had treated this just like a flu.
      - umvi 6y ago
        > it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. Over what timeframe? Novel viruses come but once per century, flu kills consistently year after year after year, always mutating to escape eradication... and the flu deaths pile up to astronomical heights over the decades
JamisonM 6y ago
Do we really do need to address what constitutes a proper Covid death? We can accurately project case numbers to hospitalizations and then to deaths as a rough approximation. Who frankly cares if the exact number of COVID deaths are being recorded properly when much of the western world is running out of hospital capacity. Really, who cares? Don't quibble over bullshit, move on to stuff that matters.
- beaner 6y ago
  Wasn't there a period where there were actually a lot of hospitals closing, because they were too empty, because we had kicked everyone out anticipating a huge covid hospitalization wave that never came? What's the status on that, now?
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    The status is that the wave has now come in most of North America. You clearly have a connection to the Internet so you must know this, I am not sure what you are on about here.
    - beaner 6y ago
      What's the status with hospitals? That was the question. Are they closing? How many have already closed? Are they at full capacity? Are they projected to get to full capacity? Are people with nonessential surgeries still being pushed out? Who else, if any, is also still being pushed out? Etc. You answered a question that wasn't being asked.
      - JamisonM 6y ago
        The status with the hospitals is that the ICU's are filling up or full. Nonessential surgeries were brought back in after the 1st wave didn't develop in the size and strength expected and are now getting pushed back or cancelled because this wave is overwhelming the system. But you can just read the news and see that this is what is happening so I don't understand why you are asking it in the first place. (The risk of permanent hospital closures & bankruptcies in the USA was about losing revenue from certain type of procedures because of COVID risks, but that's a separate issue that has little to do with this.) So again, why do you need to quibble over rounding errors in cause of death paperwork when the hospitals are filling up or full? Why? What's the point?

by beaner 6y ago

gchokov 6y ago

You included?

sb52191 6y ago

What do you mean by this? What unrelated causes are people dying from that aren't exacerbated by COVID? I've heard this argument before but it's never made sense to me. If you have AIDS, it's not the AIDS that kills you, it's the fact that AIDS weakened your immune system to the point that something else can kill you. But to say that AIDS wasn't paramount to killing the victim is just wrong. Seems to me like COVID is a similar situation...

Y-bar 6y ago
Not OP, but in the first half of this year (not sure if this is still the case, I have heard they have attempted to fix this): Anyone in Sweden who had been either diagnosed with Covid 19 and died of any cause, e.g. a traffic incident would be counted as a Covid death. Or if they died of any cause and the autopsy revealed Covid 19 it would also be counted as a Covid death. Edit, source: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utbrott/aktuella-utbrott/covid-19/statistik-och-analyser/bekraftade-fall-i-sverige/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb... In the link "Ingång för Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox m.fl." it says: > Statistiken visar antalet personer med bekräftad covid-19 som avlidit, oavsett dödsorsak. Translated: > The stats shows the number of deaths with confirmed Covid-19, regardless of cause of death.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  That's the example everyone always brings up, and even if it's true, do you think there are a huge portion of people with COVID who are dying in car accidents? That seems very unlikely to make a significant difference in the figures, and for a new virus that is spreading very quickly and isn't yet well-understood, it's probably worth using a definition that errs slightly (but probably not significantly) on the inclusive side.
  - Y-bar 6y ago
    Car accidents were just the clearest example I could think of. At https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/statistik-om-covid-19/statistik-over-antal-avlidna-i-covid-19/ https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/... they do calculate the difference: > Av dessa har 90 procent (5 514 av 6 128) laboratoriebekräftad covid-19 enligt Folkhälsomyndighetens databas över smittade. 90% are due to Covid 19. 10% not. Edit: I misunderstood, tsimionescu has corrected me, thanks!
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      That is not in any way what that 90% means. > "Of these, 90 percent (5,514 out of 6,128) have laboratory-confirmed covid-19 according to the Swedish Public Health Agency's database of infected people." That is 90% of: > The statistics show the deceased where the underlying cause of death was covid-19, according to the cause of death certificates received by the National Board of Health and Welfare. So in 10% of cases, the doctors were sure enough that the cause of death was Covid19 to write a legal document certifying it, even though they didn't order laboratory work to confirm with 100% certainty. This could mean many things, from medical malpractice (doctor lied on a legal document) to simple common sense (patient is husband of person with confirmed case, died of clear Covid19 symptoms). But there is no way to read that 10% number as meaning what you claimed. In fact, if a person were hit by a car, confirmed Covid19 positive, died of their wounds on their way to hospital, and got a death certificate claiming they died of Covid19, they would be part of 90% number, NOT part of the 10% number.
  - beaner 6y ago
    Car accidents in specific are probably small, but they're representative of similar catastrophic events that will lead to death anyway, that would still be marked as covid. The most common of which is simply old age. Certainly covid causes death in some people, that's indisputable. But If you catch it in your last 2 weeks while you're on your death bed anyway, it's not really clear that covid even accelerated it. The death die with covid more often not only because it probably accelerates some old peoples' deaths, but because this very population is undergoing its end-of-life process anyway, and are going to die whether or not they have it.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Is that relevant? How many people happen to have some other acute terminal illness/accident AND Covid at the same time? Also, do you imagine this is different for Influenza deaths or TB deaths? If anything, Covid-19 deaths are much more accurately counted than deaths from any other major disease, which are often just estimates.
  - Y-bar 6y ago
    10%, see my other reply. Which is why I think excess mortality seems like the best high-level number to look at.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      That 10% from your other comment has no relationship to Covid19 deaths vs people dying of unrelated causes who happen to be Covid19 positive.
dx87 6y ago
I think the point is that the comorbidities aren't mentioned when talking about COVID deaths. The statistics are being presented as though it's random chance who dies from it, instead of it being reported as something that primarily kills people who already have other health issues, like obesity. It would probably make people less anxious if we were told that people without existing issues have a lower chance of dying or hospitilization.

nemothekid 6y ago

For anyone who is skeptical of the statistics, the response is to ask them to explain excess deaths. In America there are over 200k excess deaths; if not COVID, then why did so many more people die?

minkzilla 6y ago
Preface: I believe the pandemic is real and covid is deadly. People argue that increases in death could also be attributed to suicide, deteriorating health from mental hardship of stress and quarantine, and people not seeking medical treatment they need because they are scared of covid or because they cannot afford it with so much unemployment. I think the last one holds some water. I know of one person in my hometown who chose not to go to the hospital because he was scared of covid and ended up dying of a heart attack.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  A lot of clinics are doing "video only" visits. These are not nearly sufficient to accurately diagnose a patient. A good deal of clinical visits is assessing the overall manner and appearance of a patient. This can't be done remotely. Nor can BP, EKG, O2 or any other basic diagnostic tools be done remotely. Minor things that could be detected in a normal office visit are missed and turn into things which can kill.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  If the US were to get the epidemic under control, then those people would be able to go to the hospital without fearing CoVID-19.
  - minkzilla 6y ago
    I think they could also go to the hospital right now. But I think that needs to be communicated; some sort of message telling people “Covid is serious but so are a lot of other health issues if you think you need medical help get it!”
salmon30salmon 6y ago

aplummer 6y ago

You don't die from these co-morbidities suddenly in the 2 weeks you have covid - but for the covid. This amounts to a baseless conspiracy theory against doctors that accurately understand and record the cause of death. Blunt trauma in a car accident is not being recorded as covid.

geewee 6y ago
That's different from country to country. In Denmark hospitalizations are counted as covid hospitalizations for example, even if you arrive due to e.g. a broken leg, but you have covid. Not sure about deaths though.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Of course they are counted as Covid hospitalizations, because they requires the same special care as all other Covid cases - you can't just put a Covid-infected patient in the regular orthopedics ward, you need to quarantine them and all the staff that comes into contact with them. Also, I doubt the amount of people suffering from broken legs are really skewing those Covid numbers. Most people sick enough to require hospitalization while also infected with Covid will have much higher risks of Covid-related symptoms as well.
  - geewee 6y ago
    Certainly it makes sense when talking about hospital capacity - but it does give a bit of a skewed impression when you're looking at the hospitalizations re: cases. You'd be surprised. Around 1/7th of the covid hospitalizations in Denmark[0] are hospitalized for "other reasons" - where covid is not the primary factor - I'd say that is significant. [0] - https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/braekket-ben-fylder-i-centralt-coronatal-hver-syvende-er-indlagt-af-andre-grunde https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/braekket-ben-fylder-i-cent... (link only in danish, sorry)
nsxwolf 6y ago
In Illinois, it's pretty cut and dry: ""If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone who's listed as a COVID death doesn't mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of the death." Dr. Ezike outlined." -- Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of Illinois Department of Public Health

acqq 6y ago

Let's make it clear: if your relative has some illness and is expected to live with that illness for years, but gets Covid and dies right now, do you consider that a Covid death? If not, why? Also, if you get Covid and you end up with permanently damaged health, as it is documented time and again, would you keep your skepticism? What will you say if somebody tells you that you anyway had some precondition, even if you weren't aware? And are you aware how big percentage of the U.S. population has one or more risk factors?

sixothree 6y ago

Would a person with diabetes or asthma have _died_ from those conditions if they were not infected? I believe you are making an incredibly disingenuous argument here.

beaner 6y ago
My argument is not disingenuous at all. Rather, I think you're being assumptive. I'm not talking about the case where a person's prospects are that they'll live for quite some time. I'm talking about the case where somebody is already essentially on their death bed for cancer, for heart problems, for fatal car injuries or shootings, or even other viruses, who are going to die imminently anyway.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > I'm talking about the case where somebody is already essentially on their death bed for cancer, Are you additionally claiming that this makes up some significant percentage of total covid deaths? Like, if 2% of the deaths due to covid are indeed people who were going to die anyway, but may or may not have died a week earlier due to covid, well 1. They may have died a week earlier due to covid. Whose place is it to judge that? (there are measures that try to take into account loss of livable years, but they agree that Covid is pretty terrible) 2. Who cares if the estimate is off by a few percent? So concern about this overcounting is predicated on an assumption that some significant number of people are on death's door already, and that basically only those people are dying of covid. Most covid-deaths are of people under 85 years old, and even an 85 year old has a life expectancy of 6 years though, so that seems unlikely.
  - Kranar 6y ago
    40% of COVID-19 related deaths are from people in LTC facilities [1] where the median life expectancy is 21 months (average is 29 months). Now that doesn't mean we should entirely downplay the risk here, but there are alternative solutions that can allow us to take care of the vast majority of people who are seriously at risk from COVID-19 without absolutely ruining the economy and harming the majority of people's way of life in a manner that may very well be irreparable for a decade, if not longer. [1] https://covidtracking.com/data/longtermcare https://covidtracking.com/data/longtermcare

modzu 6y ago

all of the replies to this comment misunderstand the point. if you get hit by a bus and have covid, you are still counted as a "covid death" in the statistics, at least in my province, because there isnt a simple means to separate the two

pwinnski 6y ago
You might be misunderstanding the point. Many people have chosen to promote the lie that the vast majority of COVID deaths can be dismissed using this reasoning, rather than a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. They ignore the overwhelming "excess deaths" number and pretend that unless a person had COVID and COVID alone listed, with no co-morbidity, it doesn't count, and therefore 99+% of COVID deaths aren't COVID at all. This is, of course, not true, as the excess deaths numbers clearly demonstrate. If anything, we're under-counting COVID.
- ravitation 6y ago
  > Many people have chosen to promote the lie that the vast majority of COVID deaths can be dismissed using this reasoning, rather than a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. This is comically illustrated by the examples being used... Hit by a bus? Hospice patients with weeks to live? The truth is that the typical comorbidities, that have a noticeable effect on the actual total number of deaths, are things like obesity, hyptertension, and diabetes... Things that literally will not kill an otherwise healthy adult in the same time period as COVID-19.
  - beaner 6y ago
    The biggest comorbidity by far is old age, which definitely will imminently kill those it affects on its own.
    - ravitation 6y ago
      I mean... No, it won't... Being 75+ doesn't kill someone in weeks like COVID-19 does...

tshaddox 6y ago

Isn't this exactly how all death statistics of all diseases and conditions work? People with other conditions are presumably more likely to die from some given condition. And, of course, every cause of death is really just causing the person to die earlier than they would have otherwise died.

legerdemain 6y ago

At this point it's becoming pretty clear that the world will not see such a definition. It is in the interest of governments to exercise control over people by calling anything and anything a Covid "case" and a Covid "fatality." The numbers go up and down and up again at the convenience of government policymakers. LIBERATE MICHIGAN!

dr_dshiv 6y ago

I think we can make our own decisions on that provided we can get US data on deaths in a simple csv file with age, gender, race, state and comorbidities. Does anyone know where to find a dataset like this?

hnuser847 6y ago
This is exactly what you're looking for: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

jmull 6y ago

I think this should put you concerns to rest: Excess deaths in the United States were at 299K as of October 15. What’s your explanation for this, if it isn’t Covid? https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm6942e2_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm...

legerdemain 6y ago
Literally any other explanation would suffice! For example, the lockdowns put stress on Americans, exacerbate depression and anxiety, worsen health conditions associated with sedentary lifestyles, and keep people out of healthful bars and restaurants where they could consume a more diverse diet and nourish their psychological need for social interaction.
- hef19898 6y ago
  It would. But than you have the official COVID deaths which match the excess deaths quite neatly. So why not just accept what numbers are clearly telling us?
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    You're missing the point. The point is that some of the excess deaths were caused by Covid, and the rest were caused by the lockdown, and the numbers are intentionally being skewed to make all of the lockdown deaths look like Covid deaths. This obviously leaves the total of excess deaths the same.
    - oblio 6y ago
      How do you explain excess deaths not during periods of lockdown? Also not in the US where Covid-19 is for some reason a political talking point? :-)
      - josephcsible 6y ago
        What state/region and specific timeframe do you have in mind? Weren't lockdowns instituted in most places before recorded deaths got really high?

Tepix 6y ago

In the city i live in in Germany they do differentiate between "death by covid" and "ill with covid but other cause of death". Ask your city to do the same. (FYI the total numbers so far are 25 deaths by Covid-19 and 14 deaths by other additional causes)

GuB-42 6y ago

There are people who die from Covid and are not counted, there are people who die of something else and are counted as Covid deaths. And there are cases it is ambiguous, for example they may have recovered from Covid (negative PCR) but died later from complications. You will never have precise statistics, however, excess mortality for all causes more or less matches Covid deaths, so the numbers are roughly correct. Worth noting that there are indirect effects. For instance because of the overworked health system, some completely unrelated diseases may not be treated as well, causing extra deaths. On the other hand, lockdowns may lower the risk of accident, transmission of other diseases, and even the nasty effect of pollution. But the general idea is that these deaths are real.

misiti3780 6y ago
Where can I find the data to see excess mortality?
- rwcarlsen 6y ago
  I use https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm for the U.S. and https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ has a bit of european data.
  - misiti3780 6y ago
    thanks!
josephcsible 6y ago
> excess mortality for all causes more or less matches Covid deaths, so the numbers are roughly correct. This doesn't follow. It just means that the number of falsely-claimed Covid deaths is roughly equal to the number of deaths caused by the lockdowns, not that either of those numbers are small.
- oblio 6y ago

qwerty1234599 6y ago

The average person doesn't die within 30 days. If a covid-positive person dies after testing positive, it's pretty obvious what the cause of death is.

Viliam1234 6y ago

I am in favor of having better definitions and statistics, but frankly, there will be a lot of people skeptical of Covid no matter what happens.

nostromo 6y ago

I’d like to see reporting on healthy years of life lost. During the worst of the HIV epidemic, we saw people in their 30s dying left and right. Malaria kills mostly young children. All lives are valuable and worth fighting for, but it does seem that these losses are fundamentally worse than COVID. If we would count healthy years of life lost, rather than raw number of deaths, I think that would be more apparent.

tsimionescu 6y ago
A human life is a human life. If you start assigning values, you'll quickly go down bizarre paths. Old people still have a right to a free and healthy life.
- josephcsible 6y ago
  If this is what our decision-makers believe, then why isn't there a lockdown every winter to stop flu deaths?
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Because we have grown accustomed to the flu, it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. People can even get vaccinated, and we try to vaccinate as many as we can every year - not an option we have with Covid19. A new disease with unpredictable long-term effects, that kills at least twice as many people as the flu despite unprecedented preventive measures is bound to cause more alarm. Remember that regions hit early and unprepared were carting dead people by the truck load, most notably in Northern Italy. If we didn't have lockdowns and other measures, that would have continued and escalated all over the world - we would have probably easily had 10 million or more dead just this year if we had treated this just like a flu.
    - umvi 6y ago
      > it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. Over what timeframe? Novel viruses come but once per century, flu kills consistently year after year after year, always mutating to escape eradication... and the flu deaths pile up to astronomical heights over the decades

JamisonM 6y ago

Do we really do need to address what constitutes a proper Covid death? We can accurately project case numbers to hospitalizations and then to deaths as a rough approximation. Who frankly cares if the exact number of COVID deaths are being recorded properly when much of the western world is running out of hospital capacity. Really, who cares? Don't quibble over bullshit, move on to stuff that matters.

beaner 6y ago
Wasn't there a period where there were actually a lot of hospitals closing, because they were too empty, because we had kicked everyone out anticipating a huge covid hospitalization wave that never came? What's the status on that, now?
- JamisonM 6y ago
  The status is that the wave has now come in most of North America. You clearly have a connection to the Internet so you must know this, I am not sure what you are on about here.
  - beaner 6y ago
    What's the status with hospitals? That was the question. Are they closing? How many have already closed? Are they at full capacity? Are they projected to get to full capacity? Are people with nonessential surgeries still being pushed out? Who else, if any, is also still being pushed out? Etc. You answered a question that wasn't being asked.
    - JamisonM 6y ago
      The status with the hospitals is that the ICU's are filling up or full. Nonessential surgeries were brought back in after the 1st wave didn't develop in the size and strength expected and are now getting pushed back or cancelled because this wave is overwhelming the system. But you can just read the news and see that this is what is happening so I don't understand why you are asking it in the first place. (The risk of permanent hospital closures & bankruptcies in the USA was about losing revenue from certain type of procedures because of COVID risks, but that's a separate issue that has little to do with this.) So again, why do you need to quibble over rounding errors in cause of death paperwork when the hospitals are filling up or full? Why? What's the point?