5 ms·

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 doctor

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
- weaksauce 6y ago
  I'm sure the tens of deaths that happened like this really changed the statistics in a meaningful manner.
  - beaner 6y ago
    The point is that until it's well-defined, we don't actually know, so people will wiggle in doubt if they want to. Poor definitions enable people to present the data differently depending on their biases and agendas. We should want to prevent that not by grounds of "you're crazy," but by making the definitions non-interpretable.
- scottlamb 6y ago
  Does that come up a lot? How many people are currently in hospice in the state of Illinois with a few weeks to live? There have been a lot of excess deaths in 2020. It seems reasonable to guess those people died of either COVID-19 or our response to COVID-19 (eg reluctance to seek medical treatment). None of these mortality statistics are perfect, but given the fairly short window of a mild COVID-19 infection, it seems pretty reasonable as a first approximation to assume that if they had it when they died, they died from it. There might be some cases where this is wrong (died of severe trauma during a car wreck in which they were a passenger rather than a driver) or questionable (the hospice case) but how much do those really affect the overall numbers?
  - nsxwolf 6y ago
sorenjan 6y ago
The average time people live in care homes for elderly with extra care needs ("särskilt boende") is between six and nine months[0]. That's where most of the deaths happened at least in the spring. So most of the people in those homes would be dead now anyway, and if they died from covid or from something else while they had covid is up for debate. Edit: Maybe hospice is the best translation for särskilt boende. According to one investigation [1] among people who died outside of hospitals 15% died directly from covid, 70% had other comorbidities, and 15% died from something else while they had covid. [0] https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/40037/1/gupea_2077_40037_1.pdf https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/40037/1/gupea_2077_400... [1] https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/08/covid-19-oftast-inte-ensam-orsak-vid-dodsfall-bland-aldre/ https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/08/covid-19-...
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  So, your not arguing that people didn't die from Covid19, just that you think those people weren't expected to live for much longer? The implication being we shouldn't care so much because someone died only a year earlier? It seems reasonable to create a statistical analysis based on years of expected life lost -- but that still doesn't mean people aren't dying from Covid19. Aside, slightly tangential: Back in Feb/March BMJ had some controversy about UK government hiding excess Winter deaths in flu statistics. The implication being that the gov were taking more deaths over Winter and saying it was flu when in fact the deaths were more related to poverty (no heating, little food). Next thing we know people are saying Covid19 want a problem because it wasn't even as bad as flu (though at the time is was killing far more people as a proportion of those infected). Lies and statistics, and all that.
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    > So, your not arguing that people didn't die from Covid19, just that you think those people weren't expected to live for much longer? The implication being we shouldn't care so much because someone died only a year earlier? I don't think this is what they're saying. I think the point is that those people's actual times of death weren't far enough from their expected times of death given their preexisting conditions to be able to confidently say that they died of Covid, rather than just having died with it. In other words, that there's a good chance they would have died at the exact same time even without Covid.
berryworm 6y ago
Many many people die every day. If Covid is widespread, some are bound to have been infected with Covid. Are you sure car accidents are not recorded as Covid, because I've read claims to the otherwise several times. It may not matter what the doctors think, if there are policies in place, or financial incentives (extra money for treatment of Covid patients).
at_a_remove 6y ago
"Man who died in motorcycle crash counted as COVID-19 death in Florida: Report." I recall one similar in the UK. Meanwhile, in that area ... "Nearly one in 10 'virus deaths' was from other causes" according to the Telegraph. We have multiple standards for each country (if not smaller governmental units) and the standards have changed, the testing has changed, etc. Statisticians will be decades puzzling it all out. It's really only excess mortality we can count on right now.
- gregmac 6y ago
  The case you cite was from July 2020 and has been fixed [1]: > It does appear to the case, however, that a motorcyclist who was killed in a traffic accident also tested positive for COVID-19, and was initially listed among Florida’s COVID-19-related deaths. But officials from the Florida Department of Health said that person has since been removed from the count. I can't read the paywall'd Telegraph article but I think this [2] is the same: > The ONS looked at nearly 4,000 deaths during March in England and Wales where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate. In 91% of cases the individuals had other health problems. The most common was heart disease, followed by dementia and respiratory illness. On average, people dying also had roughly three other health conditions. So basically -- people's other health problems cause them to be more severely affected by a respiratory disease that has also been shown to affect the heart and brain [3]. That seems like an intuitive result, and the study backs it up. > It's really only excess mortality we can count on right now. The excess mortality will certainly show the bigger impact in the long term, but to imply COVID-19 death numbers are being artificially inflated or so grossly inaccurate that they're useless is irrational. [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-motorcyclist-covid-death/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-motorcyclist-covid... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52308783 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52308783 [3] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351#ad-mobile-top-container:~:text=Organ%20damage%20caused%20by%20COVID%2D19 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
  - at_a_remove 6y ago
    It's a good thing that I didn't imply they were being artificially inflated, then. Someone stated that vehicular accidents are not being reported as COVID-19; I found a counterpoint. And I do not doubt that it is one of many. That is all. It's science. Questioning the easy numbers is what you're supposed to do. You tear and kick at something that is "known" until you get sick of it and move on to something else. Similarly, we have just oodles of confounding factors for our statistics here and we should be acutely aware of it at every step. This is not a thing that rests.

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

weaksauce 6y ago
I'm sure the tens of deaths that happened like this really changed the statistics in a meaningful manner.
- beaner 6y ago
  The point is that until it's well-defined, we don't actually know, so people will wiggle in doubt if they want to. Poor definitions enable people to present the data differently depending on their biases and agendas. We should want to prevent that not by grounds of "you're crazy," but by making the definitions non-interpretable.
scottlamb 6y ago
Does that come up a lot? How many people are currently in hospice in the state of Illinois with a few weeks to live? There have been a lot of excess deaths in 2020. It seems reasonable to guess those people died of either COVID-19 or our response to COVID-19 (eg reluctance to seek medical treatment). None of these mortality statistics are perfect, but given the fairly short window of a mild COVID-19 infection, it seems pretty reasonable as a first approximation to assume that if they had it when they died, they died from it. There might be some cases where this is wrong (died of severe trauma during a car wreck in which they were a passenger rather than a driver) or questionable (the hospice case) but how much do those really affect the overall numbers?
- nsxwolf 6y ago

sorenjan 6y ago

The average time people live in care homes for elderly with extra care needs ("särskilt boende") is between six and nine months[0]. That's where most of the deaths happened at least in the spring. So most of the people in those homes would be dead now anyway, and if they died from covid or from something else while they had covid is up for debate. Edit: Maybe hospice is the best translation for särskilt boende. According to one investigation [1] among people who died outside of hospitals 15% died directly from covid, 70% had other comorbidities, and 15% died from something else while they had covid. [0] https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/40037/1/gupea_2077_40037_1.pdf https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/40037/1/gupea_2077_400... [1] https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/08/covid-19-oftast-inte-ensam-orsak-vid-dodsfall-bland-aldre/ https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/08/covid-19-...

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
So, your not arguing that people didn't die from Covid19, just that you think those people weren't expected to live for much longer? The implication being we shouldn't care so much because someone died only a year earlier? It seems reasonable to create a statistical analysis based on years of expected life lost -- but that still doesn't mean people aren't dying from Covid19. Aside, slightly tangential: Back in Feb/March BMJ had some controversy about UK government hiding excess Winter deaths in flu statistics. The implication being that the gov were taking more deaths over Winter and saying it was flu when in fact the deaths were more related to poverty (no heating, little food). Next thing we know people are saying Covid19 want a problem because it wasn't even as bad as flu (though at the time is was killing far more people as a proportion of those infected). Lies and statistics, and all that.
- josephcsible 6y ago
  > So, your not arguing that people didn't die from Covid19, just that you think those people weren't expected to live for much longer? The implication being we shouldn't care so much because someone died only a year earlier? I don't think this is what they're saying. I think the point is that those people's actual times of death weren't far enough from their expected times of death given their preexisting conditions to be able to confidently say that they died of Covid, rather than just having died with it. In other words, that there's a good chance they would have died at the exact same time even without Covid.

berryworm 6y ago

Many many people die every day. If Covid is widespread, some are bound to have been infected with Covid. Are you sure car accidents are not recorded as Covid, because I've read claims to the otherwise several times. It may not matter what the doctors think, if there are policies in place, or financial incentives (extra money for treatment of Covid patients).

at_a_remove 6y ago

"Man who died in motorcycle crash counted as COVID-19 death in Florida: Report." I recall one similar in the UK. Meanwhile, in that area ... "Nearly one in 10 'virus deaths' was from other causes" according to the Telegraph. We have multiple standards for each country (if not smaller governmental units) and the standards have changed, the testing has changed, etc. Statisticians will be decades puzzling it all out. It's really only excess mortality we can count on right now.

gregmac 6y ago
The case you cite was from July 2020 and has been fixed [1]: > It does appear to the case, however, that a motorcyclist who was killed in a traffic accident also tested positive for COVID-19, and was initially listed among Florida’s COVID-19-related deaths. But officials from the Florida Department of Health said that person has since been removed from the count. I can't read the paywall'd Telegraph article but I think this [2] is the same: > The ONS looked at nearly 4,000 deaths during March in England and Wales where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate. In 91% of cases the individuals had other health problems. The most common was heart disease, followed by dementia and respiratory illness. On average, people dying also had roughly three other health conditions. So basically -- people's other health problems cause them to be more severely affected by a respiratory disease that has also been shown to affect the heart and brain [3]. That seems like an intuitive result, and the study backs it up. > It's really only excess mortality we can count on right now. The excess mortality will certainly show the bigger impact in the long term, but to imply COVID-19 death numbers are being artificially inflated or so grossly inaccurate that they're useless is irrational. [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-motorcyclist-covid-death/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-motorcyclist-covid... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52308783 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52308783 [3] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351#ad-mobile-top-container:~:text=Organ%20damage%20caused%20by%20COVID%2D19 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  It's a good thing that I didn't imply they were being artificially inflated, then. Someone stated that vehicular accidents are not being reported as COVID-19; I found a counterpoint. And I do not doubt that it is one of many. That is all. It's science. Questioning the easy numbers is what you're supposed to do. You tear and kick at something that is "known" until you get sick of it and move on to something else. Similarly, we have just oodles of confounding factors for our statistics here and we should be acutely aware of it at every step. This is not a thing that rests.