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>Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. Most of the downplaying I've seen has revolved around the idea that those who died would have

>Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. Most of the downplaying I've seen has revolved around the idea that those who died would have, "died anyway" from some other ailment or that hospitals are finding any reason they can to attribute deaths to covid. So, while you have a great argument, I doubt you'll change any minds because those who disagree flat out reject your premise.

whimsicalism 6y ago
For the former, if someone is actually willing to listen to evidence, you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death (~15).
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death That's practically inviting them to cite back the average life lost from the 1918 flu. If you're trying to counter someone who's downplaying Covid that is probably not something you should invite them to do.
  - AnotherGoodName 6y ago
    That's fine though. If they point out that COVID is merely in the same order of magnitude but not objectively worse than Spanish Flu then the point that COVID should not be downplayed has been won.
  - Revery42 6y ago
    I believe there are a significant amount of these people that won't actually argue that just because the Spanish flu was worse in this way that the Covid pandemic isn't a problem.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    As the other poster said, if that's the argument you're resorting to, I would say you've already lost. I've found it is helpful to count by equivalent number of deaths to something that the person has actually experienced, as it is way too easy to brush away deaths that occurred in 1918. For instance, it's as if you took the number of years of life lost in 9/11 and multiplied it by 120.
  - xkjkls 6y ago
    Is the point here to argue that the Spanish Flu was worse? Yes, it was. But I think someone crying, "This is the worst pandemic in 100 years", sounds like they are pretty on the money.
- mettamage 6y ago
  ^ This is my argument as well. I also translate every probability to sequential coin tosses.
- Revery42 6y ago
  And for the latter, you can cite excess mortality rates. Good example of the asymmetry of bullshit here.
- hervature 6y ago
  I believe the counterargument is to that what is worse, 1/15 of the population losing 15 years or the entire population losing 1 year keeping in mind that 1 year in your prime is probably worth more than 1 year in your old age. These numbers are not COVID specific, just going off your ~15. For COVID numbers, even with 1M deaths, that would be 1/330 (US population) losing on average ~15 years vs. everyone losing almost 2 years now. It's emotionally tough to pick a policy when you are condemning one group to statistical death, but you still have to try and be objective. My personal opinion is that we'll be writing books about the "the lost generation" in 10 years about children currently in school.
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
    > or the entire population losing 1 year Except we didn't lose a year. A lot of us actually kind of liked the last year. Many got to work from home and discovered it was a lot less stressful than commuting into an office every day, for example. I have a feeling that some of us are going to recall the last year with a bit of nostalgia in the future.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      All available data is showing that this past year has been detrimental to poor students. Imagine trying to learn on an old phone, using a cellular internet connection in a bedroom you share with your sister. So, while I'm glad you enjoyed your year at home -- the focus here was on the impact on students.
      - nonameiguess 6y ago
        That isn't true. The parent comment said the "entire population" lost a year of their lives. K-12 students are about 17% of the US population, not all of it.
      - UncleOxidant 6y ago
        It hasn't been detrimental for all students. Some have thrived. https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=some-students-have-taken-to-remote-learning-theyre-thriving-in-fact-COVID-coronavirus https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=some-students-have-taken-to...
- anoncake 6y ago
  Then multiply it with the death rate.
- nradov 6y ago
  The studies that I've seen on years of life lost per COVID-19 death all appeared to suffer from co-morbidity bias, particularly around obesity and related metabolic disorders. We know those conditions seriously increase the risk of COVID-19 death. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html And they also reduce life expectancy on their own even without COVID-19. Being obese cuts life expectancy by about 7 years. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12513041/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12513041/ So the actual average YLL is probably a little less than 15. I don't blame the researchers for this bias. The detailed data to correct for it generally isn't available so they're doing their best with what they have.
sweezyjeezy 6y ago
I think it's kind of unlucky in some ways that Covid affected the old/unhealthy so disproportionately. I feel like we would have responded in a much more assertive and effective way had that not been the case. More people who were not in the risk groups would (ironically) have been saved, and we'd be a lot further on the road to recovery. Not a lot of young people know a huge amount of people in the risk groups, it's easy to dismiss if it hasn't affected someone you know.
- arto 6y ago
  "It's only grandma."
- altcognito 6y ago
  “Good news” the variants, b117 and p2 are more likely to infect younger populations.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  We would have reacted more assertively because that would have been a much bigger problem. We're lucky it was this way.
  - philosopher1234 6y ago
    You give us too much credit. Hold the size of the problem constant and spread the effects to more demographics. I guarantee there would have been a bigger response. We’re not that rational.
  - sweezyjeezy 6y ago
    I didn't necessarily mean a bigger death count, just a more equally distributed one (like the Spanish flu). I think the end outcome could have been better for all demographics, and the world would be further on the road to recovery. With Covid it was easy people to think it wasn't really a big deal, it reduced the appetite and compliance necessary to keep the pandemic contained.
- shortstuffsushi 6y ago
timr 6y ago
"Most of the downplaying I've seen has revolved around the idea that those who died would have, "died anyway" from some other ailment or that hospitals are finding any reason they can to attribute deaths to covid." The authors of this are doing exactly the same thing, but from the other direction: > Given that there is insufficient evidence to estimate these contributions to excess mortality, for now we assume that total COVID-19 deaths equal excess mortality. For the reasons presented in this section, we believe that this is likely an underestimate. This is all simply noise. The way we'll find out the answer to this question is when someone pulls the death certificates for 2020, and actually tabulates the percentage directly caused by Covid. It will happen, but this work isn't it.
- altcognito 6y ago
  No, because without tests, doctors didn’t uniformly attribute deaths correctly to covid, and often the official causes of death even in cases of cancer are often “pneumonia” or sepsis, or organ failure — the literal thing that killed them at the moment of death, not the cause of the symptom that overwhelmed the body.
  - timr 6y ago
    You are making an assumption that all (or even just the majority) of excess deaths are because of this. Moreover, we know that there are examples of the opposite: deaths where Covid was on the certificate as a contributing factor, but not the primary cause. These aren't hard to find. An 85 year-old with congestive heart failure and late-stage cancer and Covid reflects the modal situation here. It isn't some theoretical event -- it's incredibly common.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - pixl97 6y ago
      Right, and those happen at a pretty regular rate every year. If we suddenly have 50k+ more congestive heart failure cases, or 50k less, we can tell that in the statistics.
kyrra 6y ago
The problem is that there are financial implications for a state saying they have covid deaths. From some of US covid relief packages, the more covid deaths a state had, the more money they get. As well, you get the over-the-top cases where someone that dies of a gunshot is included in the covid death count[0]. Some states have tried to do better by breaking it down a little finer. Like Colorado provides[1] a breakdown down by confirmed vs probable. But the data here is still not great. [0] https://www.kmov.com/news/colorado-coroner-calling-out-how-state-classifies-covid-19-deaths/article_297e3550-4131-11eb-9f01-ffe3e11d0f46.html https://www.kmov.com/news/colorado-coroner-calling-out-how-s... [1] https://covid19.colorado.gov/data https://covid19.colorado.gov/data
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > As well, you get the over-the-top cases where someone that dies of a gunshot is included in the covid death count[0]. ? It's incredibly clear by looking at Colorado's numbers, there was no misclassification at all. Definitely mistakes have been made, but this isn't even an example of one. Your comment is bizarre. The same case you're criticizing is from the state you go on to praise in the next sentence. These, unequivocally, have never been included in "death by covid" counts. > financial implications for a state saying they have covid deaths Yes, but there are also immense legal, financial, and political implications for lying about covid deaths. There is no evidence of this happening on a widespread scale.
  - grumpyautist 6y ago
    Prior to April 2020 the diagnostic criteria for a covid death required 0 testing whatsoever. Combine that with financial incentives to record something as covid, and the lack of other income for hospitals as patients wouldn't come for minor things and elective operations were cancelled and you have a perfect storm for bad data
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Not going to keep arguing about this, but there are a huge number of different ways we can confirm that our counts are roughly accurate. There are obvious signals in total excess death counts indicating the number of deaths due to covid, we can do retrospective random testing of early classified covid deaths. There is no evidence of some systematic conspiracy or anything of the sort. I encourage you to consider that you might be engaging in motivated reasoning.
cronix 6y ago
Is "pointing out" data considered downplaying? ~5% of deaths had "covid only" while the remaining 95% had other factors with the average having 4 other factors. From the CDC: > Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The number of deaths that mention one or more of the conditions indicated is shown for all deaths involving COVID-19 and by age groups. For over 5% of these deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 4.0 additional conditions or causes per death... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
- allturtles 6y ago
  Many of those 'additional causes" are things caused by COVID-19. e.g. per that table, out of 560K deaths coded as COVID-19, 257K were also coded as "influenza or pneumonia". That's because Covid causes pneumonia.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    Adding to this, pneumonia is merely inflammation of the (aveoli in the) lungs and it is almost always caused by some external factor, such as infection or illness.
- nkozyra 6y ago
  > Is "pointing out" data considered downplaying? ~5% of deaths had "covid only" while the remaining 95% had other factors with the average having 4 other factors. Is this a useful metric, though? If covid is the catalyst to cause death with preexisting conditions, is not covid the actual cause of death? Covid in these cases is an acute condition that is the direct cause of death.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  Yes, it's considered downplaying to try and attribute these people's deaths to something that didn't kill them. If the answer to the question of, "Would this person be alive were it not for COVID?" is "Yes", then COVID killed that person. You should be able to be fragile and still survive, that isn't an excuse to let someone die.
rsynnott 6y ago
If that was the case, you wouldn't expect abnormal excess deaths, though.
mrwh 6y ago
The "well they had comorbidities" argument does rather miss that after middle age that's true of pretty much everyone. Or to take me as an example: I have asthma. That probably counts as a comorbidity, so if I die of covid, should that count as a covid death or not? I'm 42, I can reasonably expect another 42 years of life. Most chronic illnesses don't kill you.
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  > I have asthma. That probably counts as a comorbidity, so if I die of covid, should that count as a covid death or not? I've actually seen some people with Asthma may have possibly survived because of certain Asthma medications that may do something to block covid, I can't remember the study, but if you're on that specific med, maybe that helped? I'm > 400 lbs (690 in 2012), I'm 41, I survived having it. Except for long-covid which was a bitch.
mcguire 6y ago
That's one reason to look at excess mortality. The number of people who would have "died anyway" this year would be pretty similar to the number who died last year.

whimsicalism 6y ago

For the former, if someone is actually willing to listen to evidence, you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death (~15).

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death That's practically inviting them to cite back the average life lost from the 1918 flu. If you're trying to counter someone who's downplaying Covid that is probably not something you should invite them to do.
- AnotherGoodName 6y ago
  That's fine though. If they point out that COVID is merely in the same order of magnitude but not objectively worse than Spanish Flu then the point that COVID should not be downplayed has been won.
- Revery42 6y ago
  I believe there are a significant amount of these people that won't actually argue that just because the Spanish flu was worse in this way that the Covid pandemic isn't a problem.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  As the other poster said, if that's the argument you're resorting to, I would say you've already lost. I've found it is helpful to count by equivalent number of deaths to something that the person has actually experienced, as it is way too easy to brush away deaths that occurred in 1918. For instance, it's as if you took the number of years of life lost in 9/11 and multiplied it by 120.
- xkjkls 6y ago
  Is the point here to argue that the Spanish Flu was worse? Yes, it was. But I think someone crying, "This is the worst pandemic in 100 years", sounds like they are pretty on the money.
mettamage 6y ago
^ This is my argument as well. I also translate every probability to sequential coin tosses.
Revery42 6y ago
And for the latter, you can cite excess mortality rates. Good example of the asymmetry of bullshit here.
hervature 6y ago
I believe the counterargument is to that what is worse, 1/15 of the population losing 15 years or the entire population losing 1 year keeping in mind that 1 year in your prime is probably worth more than 1 year in your old age. These numbers are not COVID specific, just going off your ~15. For COVID numbers, even with 1M deaths, that would be 1/330 (US population) losing on average ~15 years vs. everyone losing almost 2 years now. It's emotionally tough to pick a policy when you are condemning one group to statistical death, but you still have to try and be objective. My personal opinion is that we'll be writing books about the "the lost generation" in 10 years about children currently in school.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  > or the entire population losing 1 year Except we didn't lose a year. A lot of us actually kind of liked the last year. Many got to work from home and discovered it was a lot less stressful than commuting into an office every day, for example. I have a feeling that some of us are going to recall the last year with a bit of nostalgia in the future.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    All available data is showing that this past year has been detrimental to poor students. Imagine trying to learn on an old phone, using a cellular internet connection in a bedroom you share with your sister. So, while I'm glad you enjoyed your year at home -- the focus here was on the impact on students.
    - nonameiguess 6y ago
      That isn't true. The parent comment said the "entire population" lost a year of their lives. K-12 students are about 17% of the US population, not all of it.
    - UncleOxidant 6y ago
      It hasn't been detrimental for all students. Some have thrived. https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=some-students-have-taken-to-remote-learning-theyre-thriving-in-fact-COVID-coronavirus https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=some-students-have-taken-to...
anoncake 6y ago
Then multiply it with the death rate.
nradov 6y ago
The studies that I've seen on years of life lost per COVID-19 death all appeared to suffer from co-morbidity bias, particularly around obesity and related metabolic disorders. We know those conditions seriously increase the risk of COVID-19 death. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html And they also reduce life expectancy on their own even without COVID-19. Being obese cuts life expectancy by about 7 years. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12513041/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12513041/ So the actual average YLL is probably a little less than 15. I don't blame the researchers for this bias. The detailed data to correct for it generally isn't available so they're doing their best with what they have.

sweezyjeezy 6y ago

I think it's kind of unlucky in some ways that Covid affected the old/unhealthy so disproportionately. I feel like we would have responded in a much more assertive and effective way had that not been the case. More people who were not in the risk groups would (ironically) have been saved, and we'd be a lot further on the road to recovery. Not a lot of young people know a huge amount of people in the risk groups, it's easy to dismiss if it hasn't affected someone you know.

arto 6y ago
"It's only grandma."
altcognito 6y ago
“Good news” the variants, b117 and p2 are more likely to infect younger populations.
klmadfejno 6y ago
We would have reacted more assertively because that would have been a much bigger problem. We're lucky it was this way.
- philosopher1234 6y ago
  You give us too much credit. Hold the size of the problem constant and spread the effects to more demographics. I guarantee there would have been a bigger response. We’re not that rational.
- sweezyjeezy 6y ago
  I didn't necessarily mean a bigger death count, just a more equally distributed one (like the Spanish flu). I think the end outcome could have been better for all demographics, and the world would be further on the road to recovery. With Covid it was easy people to think it wasn't really a big deal, it reduced the appetite and compliance necessary to keep the pandemic contained.
shortstuffsushi 6y ago

timr 6y ago

"Most of the downplaying I've seen has revolved around the idea that those who died would have, "died anyway" from some other ailment or that hospitals are finding any reason they can to attribute deaths to covid." The authors of this are doing exactly the same thing, but from the other direction: > Given that there is insufficient evidence to estimate these contributions to excess mortality, for now we assume that total COVID-19 deaths equal excess mortality. For the reasons presented in this section, we believe that this is likely an underestimate. This is all simply noise. The way we'll find out the answer to this question is when someone pulls the death certificates for 2020, and actually tabulates the percentage directly caused by Covid. It will happen, but this work isn't it.

altcognito 6y ago
No, because without tests, doctors didn’t uniformly attribute deaths correctly to covid, and often the official causes of death even in cases of cancer are often “pneumonia” or sepsis, or organ failure — the literal thing that killed them at the moment of death, not the cause of the symptom that overwhelmed the body.
- timr 6y ago
  You are making an assumption that all (or even just the majority) of excess deaths are because of this. Moreover, we know that there are examples of the opposite: deaths where Covid was on the certificate as a contributing factor, but not the primary cause. These aren't hard to find. An 85 year-old with congestive heart failure and late-stage cancer and Covid reflects the modal situation here. It isn't some theoretical event -- it's incredibly common.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Right, and those happen at a pretty regular rate every year. If we suddenly have 50k+ more congestive heart failure cases, or 50k less, we can tell that in the statistics.

kyrra 6y ago

The problem is that there are financial implications for a state saying they have covid deaths. From some of US covid relief packages, the more covid deaths a state had, the more money they get. As well, you get the over-the-top cases where someone that dies of a gunshot is included in the covid death count[0]. Some states have tried to do better by breaking it down a little finer. Like Colorado provides[1] a breakdown down by confirmed vs probable. But the data here is still not great. [0] https://www.kmov.com/news/colorado-coroner-calling-out-how-state-classifies-covid-19-deaths/article_297e3550-4131-11eb-9f01-ffe3e11d0f46.html https://www.kmov.com/news/colorado-coroner-calling-out-how-s... [1] https://covid19.colorado.gov/data https://covid19.colorado.gov/data

whimsicalism 6y ago
> As well, you get the over-the-top cases where someone that dies of a gunshot is included in the covid death count[0]. ? It's incredibly clear by looking at Colorado's numbers, there was no misclassification at all. Definitely mistakes have been made, but this isn't even an example of one. Your comment is bizarre. The same case you're criticizing is from the state you go on to praise in the next sentence. These, unequivocally, have never been included in "death by covid" counts. > financial implications for a state saying they have covid deaths Yes, but there are also immense legal, financial, and political implications for lying about covid deaths. There is no evidence of this happening on a widespread scale.
- grumpyautist 6y ago
  Prior to April 2020 the diagnostic criteria for a covid death required 0 testing whatsoever. Combine that with financial incentives to record something as covid, and the lack of other income for hospitals as patients wouldn't come for minor things and elective operations were cancelled and you have a perfect storm for bad data
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Not going to keep arguing about this, but there are a huge number of different ways we can confirm that our counts are roughly accurate. There are obvious signals in total excess death counts indicating the number of deaths due to covid, we can do retrospective random testing of early classified covid deaths. There is no evidence of some systematic conspiracy or anything of the sort. I encourage you to consider that you might be engaging in motivated reasoning.

cronix 6y ago

Is "pointing out" data considered downplaying? ~5% of deaths had "covid only" while the remaining 95% had other factors with the average having 4 other factors. From the CDC: > Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The number of deaths that mention one or more of the conditions indicated is shown for all deaths involving COVID-19 and by age groups. For over 5% of these deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 4.0 additional conditions or causes per death... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

allturtles 6y ago
Many of those 'additional causes" are things caused by COVID-19. e.g. per that table, out of 560K deaths coded as COVID-19, 257K were also coded as "influenza or pneumonia". That's because Covid causes pneumonia.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  Adding to this, pneumonia is merely inflammation of the (aveoli in the) lungs and it is almost always caused by some external factor, such as infection or illness.
nkozyra 6y ago
> Is "pointing out" data considered downplaying? ~5% of deaths had "covid only" while the remaining 95% had other factors with the average having 4 other factors. Is this a useful metric, though? If covid is the catalyst to cause death with preexisting conditions, is not covid the actual cause of death? Covid in these cases is an acute condition that is the direct cause of death.
TameAntelope 6y ago
Yes, it's considered downplaying to try and attribute these people's deaths to something that didn't kill them. If the answer to the question of, "Would this person be alive were it not for COVID?" is "Yes", then COVID killed that person. You should be able to be fragile and still survive, that isn't an excuse to let someone die.

rsynnott 6y ago

If that was the case, you wouldn't expect abnormal excess deaths, though.

mrwh 6y ago

The "well they had comorbidities" argument does rather miss that after middle age that's true of pretty much everyone. Or to take me as an example: I have asthma. That probably counts as a comorbidity, so if I die of covid, should that count as a covid death or not? I'm 42, I can reasonably expect another 42 years of life. Most chronic illnesses don't kill you.

gremlinsinc 6y ago
> I have asthma. That probably counts as a comorbidity, so if I die of covid, should that count as a covid death or not? I've actually seen some people with Asthma may have possibly survived because of certain Asthma medications that may do something to block covid, I can't remember the study, but if you're on that specific med, maybe that helped? I'm > 400 lbs (690 in 2012), I'm 41, I survived having it. Except for long-covid which was a bitch.

mcguire 6y ago

That's one reason to look at excess mortality. The number of people who would have "died anyway" this year would be pretty similar to the number who died last year.