4 ms·

Surely you'd agree that "2020 excess deaths are going to be predominantly covid" is a very reasonable hypothesis though, right? And you agree that "2020 has an

Surely you'd agree that "2020 excess deaths are going to be predominantly covid" is a very reasonable hypothesis though, right? And you agree that "2020 has an extraordinarily high excess death rate", because that part is easily measured data, right? Basically: your response seems a bit nitpicky to me, which tells me that perhaps you're starting from a perspective where you're assuming the article is wrong and looking for holes to poke. Look, nothing about this paper's conclusions is surprising at all. At all. We all know true covid deaths are higher than reported, because all such metrics underreport, for all diseases (and frankly almost all causes of death). The only question is "By how much?". So you don't like 400k. What's your counter?

timr 5y ago
> Surely you'd agree that "2020 excess deaths are going to be predominantly covid" is a very reasonable hypothesis though, right? And you agree that "2020 has an extraordinarily high excess death rate", because that part is easily measured data, right? I don't know the answer, and neither do you. But given that the top-line is asserting that there are 900k excess deaths due to Covid, the choice of assumption here is not some minor detail. There are lots of other plausible alternative hypotheses. Aassuming X, then building a model that shows X is true, is not validating a hypothesis.
- grecy 5y ago
  > There are lots of other plausible alternative hypotheses. Please list them. We have data about deaths going back many decades. It's very safe to say that if in 2010 you made a prediction about the number of expected deaths in 2011, you would have been very close to the real number. Same if you had predicted the deaths for 2019 in 2018. Suddenly, after decades and decades of being almost perfect in your predictions, you would have been wildly wrong for the predicted number of deaths in 2020. After decades of predictability, there was a whopping 20% increase in 2020 [1]. How can you possibly say it wasn't caused by Covid? [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361
  - notahacker 5y ago
    And that's the very beginning. We also have plenty of time series data from effectively instituted lockdowns worldwide. Excess deaths rise prior to the lockdown, in line with but greater than reported COVID deaths. They continue rising until median COVID- time-to-death days after the start of lockdown. Then they fall, sharply, dipping below regular excess deaths (and tracking the fall in COVID deaths). That isn't a pattern that fits the "maybe some other factor like the lockdown itself caused the spike" hypothesis, and it is also the pattern that was predicted by the scientists advocating the lockdowns. Sure, some deaths are caused by lockdown, but the evidence suggests a pattern of the deaths which have been[1] caused by lockdown being [more than] netted out by normal deaths prevented by lockdown. Some days it's cold, and anthropogenic climate change models are just fancy math, but this doesn't make all climate hypotheses equally plausible [1]there's a plausible argument lack of medical attention during lockdowns and/or long term economic consequences may have a significant death toll in future, but that doesn't affect the "excess deaths reported during COVID have matched COVID spikes evidence
    - timr 5y ago
      Your claims of "vast time series data" would be more believable if you actually linked to some of it. It's interesting how you can't suspend your credulity to encompass the idea that there are alternative hypotheses for excess deaths, but you are more than happy to assert the existence of "vast datasets" to defend your own opinions. Here are a few plausible alternative hypotheses that actually have substantial backing evidence, which can be obtained with trivial googling: * Excess deaths due to missed treatments (we know this is happening, e.g. for cancer) * Excess deaths due to untreated acute medical emergencies (e.g. physicians in NYC noticed the curious phenomenon of heart attacks disappearing from ERs during the height of lockdown * Excess deaths due to drug and alcohol abuse (again, we know it's happening) I'm sure there are many others worth consideration. My point is not to assert that any of these are automatically true, but that they merit consideration, and anyone who doesn't fairly consider them is probably not engaged in good-faith debate.
    - thebruce87m 5y ago
      Not sure why I can’t reply to the person who replied to you - “timr” who is asking for data, but there is data here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
- the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
  > There are lots of other plausible alternative hypotheses. I would be curious which ones that would be.
  - timr 5y ago
    Sure, here's a much better treatment of the same subject: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-excess-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/covid-excess-mortality
    - newacct583 5y ago
      Which is an excellent article. I just fail to see how you think it's inconsistent with the numbers in the IHME story above or their methodology. Lots of these confounding factors are expressly enumerated. I mean, do experts like the authors of that OWiD article find the same fault with IHME that you do? Can you cite some making similar criticisms? Again, I get the distinct feeling that you're arguing with methodology here not because there's anything particularly suspicious with IHME at all, but because the conclusion (that the US is approaching 1M covid deaths, something that should surprise no one) is politically inconvenient.
      - timr 5y ago
        > I mean, do experts like the authors of that OWiD article find the same fault with IHME that you do? Can you cite some making similar criticisms? I don't know. I don't cross-check my thoughts with every "expert" in the world before I express them. I have expertise in this field; I can think for myself. > Again, I get the distinct feeling that you're arguing with methodology here not because there's anything particularly suspicious with IHME at all, but because the conclusion (that the US is approaching 1M covid deaths, something that should surprise no one) is politically inconvenient. You have no idea what my politics are. I am saying that this model reflects the assumptions used to create it. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not a validation of the assumptions -- it is a regurgitation of the assumptions.
nickff 5y ago
I think the critique is more that the 'study' is really just a complicated statistical restatement of the assumption, so it doesn't prove or even highlight anything new or interesting.
- newacct583 5y ago
  That's some kind of relativist argument I don't understand. Modelling and theory is an important part of science. We have something that is difficult to measure independently, so we build models to derive an explanation from things we can measure. And they did that. And the results line up with the hypothesis. I mean, duh. Usually hypotheses are right! You're right that it would be more interesting if it showed some kind of confounding effect or whatever. But it didn't. It turns out that the boring explanation seems like the right one: the anomalously high number of people who died of unexplained reasons in 2020 was just the giant global pandemic. Oh well.
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
You have deaths due to Covid directly, additonal deaths that come as a result of good policies, and additional deaths that come as a result of bad policies. It's disengenuous to say Covid is the cause if politicians used hamfisted responses that led to more deaths than necessary.
- newacct583 5y ago
  Sorry, what exactly is the mechanism for those policy deaths you're invoking? Can you cite the relevant study you're thinking of and explain why it's more convincing than people simply dying of a serious disease?

timr 5y ago

> Surely you'd agree that "2020 excess deaths are going to be predominantly covid" is a very reasonable hypothesis though, right? And you agree that "2020 has an extraordinarily high excess death rate", because that part is easily measured data, right? I don't know the answer, and neither do you. But given that the top-line is asserting that there are 900k excess deaths due to Covid, the choice of assumption here is not some minor detail. There are lots of other plausible alternative hypotheses. Aassuming X, then building a model that shows X is true, is not validating a hypothesis.

grecy 5y ago
> There are lots of other plausible alternative hypotheses. Please list them. We have data about deaths going back many decades. It's very safe to say that if in 2010 you made a prediction about the number of expected deaths in 2011, you would have been very close to the real number. Same if you had predicted the deaths for 2019 in 2018. Suddenly, after decades and decades of being almost perfect in your predictions, you would have been wildly wrong for the predicted number of deaths in 2020. After decades of predictability, there was a whopping 20% increase in 2020 [1]. How can you possibly say it wasn't caused by Covid? [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361
- notahacker 5y ago
  And that's the very beginning. We also have plenty of time series data from effectively instituted lockdowns worldwide. Excess deaths rise prior to the lockdown, in line with but greater than reported COVID deaths. They continue rising until median COVID- time-to-death days after the start of lockdown. Then they fall, sharply, dipping below regular excess deaths (and tracking the fall in COVID deaths). That isn't a pattern that fits the "maybe some other factor like the lockdown itself caused the spike" hypothesis, and it is also the pattern that was predicted by the scientists advocating the lockdowns. Sure, some deaths are caused by lockdown, but the evidence suggests a pattern of the deaths which have been[1] caused by lockdown being [more than] netted out by normal deaths prevented by lockdown. Some days it's cold, and anthropogenic climate change models are just fancy math, but this doesn't make all climate hypotheses equally plausible [1]there's a plausible argument lack of medical attention during lockdowns and/or long term economic consequences may have a significant death toll in future, but that doesn't affect the "excess deaths reported during COVID have matched COVID spikes evidence
  - timr 5y ago
    Your claims of "vast time series data" would be more believable if you actually linked to some of it. It's interesting how you can't suspend your credulity to encompass the idea that there are alternative hypotheses for excess deaths, but you are more than happy to assert the existence of "vast datasets" to defend your own opinions. Here are a few plausible alternative hypotheses that actually have substantial backing evidence, which can be obtained with trivial googling: * Excess deaths due to missed treatments (we know this is happening, e.g. for cancer) * Excess deaths due to untreated acute medical emergencies (e.g. physicians in NYC noticed the curious phenomenon of heart attacks disappearing from ERs during the height of lockdown * Excess deaths due to drug and alcohol abuse (again, we know it's happening) I'm sure there are many others worth consideration. My point is not to assert that any of these are automatically true, but that they merit consideration, and anyone who doesn't fairly consider them is probably not engaged in good-faith debate.
  - thebruce87m 5y ago
    Not sure why I can’t reply to the person who replied to you - “timr” who is asking for data, but there is data here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
> There are lots of other plausible alternative hypotheses. I would be curious which ones that would be.
- timr 5y ago
  Sure, here's a much better treatment of the same subject: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-excess-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/covid-excess-mortality
  - newacct583 5y ago
    Which is an excellent article. I just fail to see how you think it's inconsistent with the numbers in the IHME story above or their methodology. Lots of these confounding factors are expressly enumerated. I mean, do experts like the authors of that OWiD article find the same fault with IHME that you do? Can you cite some making similar criticisms? Again, I get the distinct feeling that you're arguing with methodology here not because there's anything particularly suspicious with IHME at all, but because the conclusion (that the US is approaching 1M covid deaths, something that should surprise no one) is politically inconvenient.
    - timr 5y ago
      > I mean, do experts like the authors of that OWiD article find the same fault with IHME that you do? Can you cite some making similar criticisms? I don't know. I don't cross-check my thoughts with every "expert" in the world before I express them. I have expertise in this field; I can think for myself. > Again, I get the distinct feeling that you're arguing with methodology here not because there's anything particularly suspicious with IHME at all, but because the conclusion (that the US is approaching 1M covid deaths, something that should surprise no one) is politically inconvenient. You have no idea what my politics are. I am saying that this model reflects the assumptions used to create it. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not a validation of the assumptions -- it is a regurgitation of the assumptions.

nickff 5y ago

I think the critique is more that the 'study' is really just a complicated statistical restatement of the assumption, so it doesn't prove or even highlight anything new or interesting.

newacct583 5y ago
That's some kind of relativist argument I don't understand. Modelling and theory is an important part of science. We have something that is difficult to measure independently, so we build models to derive an explanation from things we can measure. And they did that. And the results line up with the hypothesis. I mean, duh. Usually hypotheses are right! You're right that it would be more interesting if it showed some kind of confounding effect or whatever. But it didn't. It turns out that the boring explanation seems like the right one: the anomalously high number of people who died of unexplained reasons in 2020 was just the giant global pandemic. Oh well.

ErikVandeWater 5y ago

You have deaths due to Covid directly, additonal deaths that come as a result of good policies, and additional deaths that come as a result of bad policies. It's disengenuous to say Covid is the cause if politicians used hamfisted responses that led to more deaths than necessary.

newacct583 5y ago
Sorry, what exactly is the mechanism for those policy deaths you're invoking? Can you cite the relevant study you're thinking of and explain why it's more convincing than people simply dying of a serious disease?