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Of all the metrics we have mortality is the least likely to suffer from these problems: death is eminently measurable, and won’t be fudged by wishful thinking,
by KarlKemp 5y ago
Of all the metrics we have mortality is the least likely to suffer from these problems: death is eminently measurable, and won’t be fudged by wishful thinking, expectations, or placebo effects. Outright manipulation is hard, because you can just count the fresh graves in the cemetery to get a good estimate, because it’s is such an important event, and also because there are laws and a bureaucracy for measuring it. And it gets awfully close to what you really want, living long & happy. While it doesn’t measure happiness, every study on happiness shows that it is relatively resilient to changes in circumstances. Therefore, avoiding death is less of a proxy and more of a real thing than anything Google Anaytics will ever tell you.
- Jiro 5y agoIt's still fudgeable, because of things like whether everyone who dies while having Covid should count as a death from Covid.
- KarlKemp 5y agoYou should have been here last year, when it was still believable you had not heard of the excess death statistics: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm#dashboard https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm...
- dehrmann 5y agoThose still capture things like untreated cardiac episodes because someone was afraid to seek treatment. Accounting for these things is hard.
- majkinetor 5y agoIts IMO the most problematic one - you die for totality of stressors you carry, not just because of the Covid.