5 ms·

The random hypothesis was made by OP, who inferred that the 45% increase in deaths is due to Covid-19. I would guess a lot of that 45% is due to Covid, but how

by freyr 5y ago

The random hypothesis was made by OP, who inferred that the 45% increase in deaths is due to Covid-19. I would guess a lot of that 45% is due to Covid, but how much would be a guess, and I suspect OP is just guessing too. Overdoses are historically one of the leading causes of death among people in this age range, and we’re also setting records for overdose deaths this year [0], but that gets no almost coverage compared to Covid. I think it’s reasonable to keep in mind that overdoses could also be contributing to that 45% uptick, unless we have evidence to the contrary. [0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/opioid-crisis-2021-insys-kapoor-sackler-purdue-record-deaths/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/opioid-crisis-202...

hamburglar 5y ago
A really useful exercise you can do for yourself (I did it) is to download the CDC total US deaths data and plot each of the past 7 years as lines on an x axis that goes from week 1 to week 52 of the year. Keeping in mind that this graph does not take cause of death into account, you will note two striking features: 1) the death curves for the 5 years up to and including 2019 are extremely similar, with the exception that you can tell they are overall slightly elevated one winter by a particularly bad flu season (I think it was end of 2017 / beginning of 2018). And 2) 2020 and 2021 have very large Covid-surge-shaped excess death bumps that imply an incredibly strong correlation between Covid and the deviation in deaths from “normal” years. And if you find the delta between a “normal” year and the ones with the Covid-shaped bumps in it, it matches up extremely closely with the numbers CDC is also reporting as “Covid-related deaths.” In order to say that a significant number of these are drug and suicide deaths, you’d also have to be positing a theory that drug and suicide deaths are also for some reason elevating themselves in precise timing with the Covid surges. I’m not going to claim this is impossible, but it does seem extremely far fetched to me, and I suspect seeing the data laid out like I describe would probably make you abandon your theory. (Edit: using ‘your theory’ colloquially here. I know you havent posited any specific theory here, but your line of reasoning and skepticism is clear) Edit to add: I actually don’t doubt that excess drug and suicide deaths are partially responsible for general elevated death numbers. Lockdowns, isolation, job losses, etc are all certainly driving some of this. But these are slow and steady drivers, not ones that rise and fall precisely with the number of Covid cases, which takes me to the conclusion that they are in the noise compared to Covid itself. (And the CDC death categorizations happen to agree with that)
- cpitman 5y ago
  For anyone who wants to see this data without running the numbers themselves, the CDC has a dashboard showing total weekly deaths per week over the last several years, the trend line, and the obvious significant increases over the last couple years. They update it weekly, but it takes a couple weeks for the data to become accurate (the recent weeks have always been an undercount while reporting catches up). For interpretation, the orange line is average expected deaths for that week, and you'd expect weekly deaths to cluster around that. Red is the "upper bound threshold", ie deaths over this are way out of the norm. You can also switch the dashboard to "Excess deaths with and without COVID-19", which shows the same bar chart but with reported covid deaths stacked on top of non-covid reported deaths. It makes it clear that (1) excess deaths line up very well with reported deaths and (2) the US has done an overall good job of reporting covid deaths, outside of some probable undercounting at the very start. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
- freyr 5y ago
  That’s a good suggestion. Here are the excess deaths for 25-44 year olds: https://imgur.com/a/b4Pobrh https://imgur.com/a/b4Pobrh There’s definitely a significant rise in excess deaths among 25-44 year olds coinciding with the Delta peak in August/September. Something interesting though: In the Covid “valley” of June/July, when Covid-related deaths were at a record low nationally, 25-44 year olds still had a ~35% increase in excess deaths. I’d expect a drop in excess deaths close to prepandemic levels if they were being driven mainly by (short-term) Covid effects during that time. It seems like the baseline death rate increased independently of number of active Covid cases. Covid deaths were accompanied by a steady increase in overdose deaths starting in early 2019 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm), rising from from 68k to 97k over the course of the pandemic. I don’t have time at the moment to do the math, but I’d suspect most of the increase we’ve seen in the past year is due to Covid, but with the increase in overdoses and other causes contributing much than noise since 2019. This could explain the higher death rate that persisted throughout the summer.
  - nl 5y ago

by freyr 5y ago

hamburglar 5y ago

A really useful exercise you can do for yourself (I did it) is to download the CDC total US deaths data and plot each of the past 7 years as lines on an x axis that goes from week 1 to week 52 of the year. Keeping in mind that this graph does not take cause of death into account, you will note two striking features: 1) the death curves for the 5 years up to and including 2019 are extremely similar, with the exception that you can tell they are overall slightly elevated one winter by a particularly bad flu season (I think it was end of 2017 / beginning of 2018). And 2) 2020 and 2021 have very large Covid-surge-shaped excess death bumps that imply an incredibly strong correlation between Covid and the deviation in deaths from “normal” years. And if you find the delta between a “normal” year and the ones with the Covid-shaped bumps in it, it matches up extremely closely with the numbers CDC is also reporting as “Covid-related deaths.” In order to say that a significant number of these are drug and suicide deaths, you’d also have to be positing a theory that drug and suicide deaths are also for some reason elevating themselves in precise timing with the Covid surges. I’m not going to claim this is impossible, but it does seem extremely far fetched to me, and I suspect seeing the data laid out like I describe would probably make you abandon your theory. (Edit: using ‘your theory’ colloquially here. I know you havent posited any specific theory here, but your line of reasoning and skepticism is clear) Edit to add: I actually don’t doubt that excess drug and suicide deaths are partially responsible for general elevated death numbers. Lockdowns, isolation, job losses, etc are all certainly driving some of this. But these are slow and steady drivers, not ones that rise and fall precisely with the number of Covid cases, which takes me to the conclusion that they are in the noise compared to Covid itself. (And the CDC death categorizations happen to agree with that)

cpitman 5y ago
For anyone who wants to see this data without running the numbers themselves, the CDC has a dashboard showing total weekly deaths per week over the last several years, the trend line, and the obvious significant increases over the last couple years. They update it weekly, but it takes a couple weeks for the data to become accurate (the recent weeks have always been an undercount while reporting catches up). For interpretation, the orange line is average expected deaths for that week, and you'd expect weekly deaths to cluster around that. Red is the "upper bound threshold", ie deaths over this are way out of the norm. You can also switch the dashboard to "Excess deaths with and without COVID-19", which shows the same bar chart but with reported covid deaths stacked on top of non-covid reported deaths. It makes it clear that (1) excess deaths line up very well with reported deaths and (2) the US has done an overall good job of reporting covid deaths, outside of some probable undercounting at the very start. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
freyr 5y ago
That’s a good suggestion. Here are the excess deaths for 25-44 year olds: https://imgur.com/a/b4Pobrh https://imgur.com/a/b4Pobrh There’s definitely a significant rise in excess deaths among 25-44 year olds coinciding with the Delta peak in August/September. Something interesting though: In the Covid “valley” of June/July, when Covid-related deaths were at a record low nationally, 25-44 year olds still had a ~35% increase in excess deaths. I’d expect a drop in excess deaths close to prepandemic levels if they were being driven mainly by (short-term) Covid effects during that time. It seems like the baseline death rate increased independently of number of active Covid cases. Covid deaths were accompanied by a steady increase in overdose deaths starting in early 2019 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm), rising from from 68k to 97k over the course of the pandemic. I don’t have time at the moment to do the math, but I’d suspect most of the increase we’ve seen in the past year is due to Covid, but with the increase in overdoses and other causes contributing much than noise since 2019. This could explain the higher death rate that persisted throughout the summer.
- nl 5y ago