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That's what he is attempting to imply is a massive overcounting in the data, but additional conditions that people point out as COVID deaths also having are mos

by xkjkls 5y ago

That's what he is attempting to imply is a massive overcounting in the data, but additional conditions that people point out as COVID deaths also having are mostly caused by COVID-19. Oh, they died of viral pneumonia after contracting COVID-19; pretty sure they would be in a different scenario had they not caught COVID-19.

fastball 5y ago
The problem is we don't know, and "both sides" don't seem willing to admit that. What I can guarantee is that of those 95% who died with COVID, some percentage of them would have died anyway, under almost identical circumstances, except without COVID. However, it is also true that some of those people would have lived if they hadn't contracted COVID, even though COVID was not the "direct" cause of death. For how much longer, who knows. But certainly not when they did. In other words: the people saying we should only be counting the 5% direct deaths are wrong, and the people that say we should be counting all 100% who had COVID as deaths from COVID are... also wrong.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  We can use deaths-above-replacement (among other things) to determine how many more people died than normal from all causes, and then whittle down the obviously-not-from-contracting-covid deaths from there. The submission goes into very specific detail about how they did this, and they account for many of the potential confounders related to doing this analysis. I believe we can be much more precise than you're giving us credit for in determining if contracting COVID was the direct cause of someone's death, even with comorbidities. To be totally honest, when I see someone say, "we can't ever be totally sure" I nearly wholly discount that opinion, because it's very cheap to proffer, almost always true, and of very little value.
  - fastball 5y ago
    It is of immense value to say this when you have people in this very thread saying we might as well count everyone who had COVID as a death from COVID. Also one of us is confused, and I don't think it is me. From what I've gleaned from this article, the 900,000 figure is not (as you say) "determining if contracting COVID was the direct cause of someone's death", but rather trying to figure out how many people would have died if this had been a "normal" year, i.e. if we could go to a parallel universe and make COVID never exist. This is absolutely not the same thing, as such a scenario will also count deaths as a result of our response to the virus as a death "due to the virus". This is my impression as they seem to be including things like suicide (criteria "c") and people who died because people with actual COVID were taking up hospital beds (criteria "b").
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      "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." I think this is the correct way to think about this problem, as it is likely to be an underestimate, rather than an overestimate. In other words, counting suicides probably doesn't matter, as the number is very low. The paper says as much: "The main potential increases in excess mortality due to deferred care and increases in drug overdose and depression are hard to quantify at this point or are of a much smaller magnitude." The paper overall goes into very great detail about what was and wasn't included and why, which is vastly more rigorous than what you seem to be presenting, which is effectively throwing up your hands and saying, "we'll never know!"
- xkjkls 5y ago
  Just because we don't know exactly doesn't mean we aren't able to create good estimates. We don't know how many people die of any disease. But if you have a large enough dataset, and analyze it well, you can make good determinations of the approximate scale of each factor. The paper linked in this article does that, and concludes approximately 900,000 died of COVID who would not otherwise.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Two different ideas are being conflated here. One is the OP's idea, "deaths due to COVID". This idea is "how many people would have died if COVID had never existed". However, what a lot of people hear when you say "deaths due to COVID" is "this is the number of people that died as either a direct or indirect result of having COVID in their system". But that is not the 900,000 number being cited. It is made even worse by the HN headline, which is "death toll from COVID", which even more strongly implies the above.

by xkjkls 5y ago

fastball 5y ago

The problem is we don't know, and "both sides" don't seem willing to admit that. What I can guarantee is that of those 95% who died with COVID, some percentage of them would have died anyway, under almost identical circumstances, except without COVID. However, it is also true that some of those people would have lived if they hadn't contracted COVID, even though COVID was not the "direct" cause of death. For how much longer, who knows. But certainly not when they did. In other words: the people saying we should only be counting the 5% direct deaths are wrong, and the people that say we should be counting all 100% who had COVID as deaths from COVID are... also wrong.

TameAntelope 5y ago
We can use deaths-above-replacement (among other things) to determine how many more people died than normal from all causes, and then whittle down the obviously-not-from-contracting-covid deaths from there. The submission goes into very specific detail about how they did this, and they account for many of the potential confounders related to doing this analysis. I believe we can be much more precise than you're giving us credit for in determining if contracting COVID was the direct cause of someone's death, even with comorbidities. To be totally honest, when I see someone say, "we can't ever be totally sure" I nearly wholly discount that opinion, because it's very cheap to proffer, almost always true, and of very little value.
- fastball 5y ago
  It is of immense value to say this when you have people in this very thread saying we might as well count everyone who had COVID as a death from COVID. Also one of us is confused, and I don't think it is me. From what I've gleaned from this article, the 900,000 figure is not (as you say) "determining if contracting COVID was the direct cause of someone's death", but rather trying to figure out how many people would have died if this had been a "normal" year, i.e. if we could go to a parallel universe and make COVID never exist. This is absolutely not the same thing, as such a scenario will also count deaths as a result of our response to the virus as a death "due to the virus". This is my impression as they seem to be including things like suicide (criteria "c") and people who died because people with actual COVID were taking up hospital beds (criteria "b").
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    "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." I think this is the correct way to think about this problem, as it is likely to be an underestimate, rather than an overestimate. In other words, counting suicides probably doesn't matter, as the number is very low. The paper says as much: "The main potential increases in excess mortality due to deferred care and increases in drug overdose and depression are hard to quantify at this point or are of a much smaller magnitude." The paper overall goes into very great detail about what was and wasn't included and why, which is vastly more rigorous than what you seem to be presenting, which is effectively throwing up your hands and saying, "we'll never know!"
xkjkls 5y ago
Just because we don't know exactly doesn't mean we aren't able to create good estimates. We don't know how many people die of any disease. But if you have a large enough dataset, and analyze it well, you can make good determinations of the approximate scale of each factor. The paper linked in this article does that, and concludes approximately 900,000 died of COVID who would not otherwise.
- fastball 5y ago
  Two different ideas are being conflated here. One is the OP's idea, "deaths due to COVID". This idea is "how many people would have died if COVID had never existed". However, what a lot of people hear when you say "deaths due to COVID" is "this is the number of people that died as either a direct or indirect result of having COVID in their system". But that is not the 900,000 number being cited. It is made even worse by the HN headline, which is "death toll from COVID", which even more strongly implies the above.