4 ms·

“Underlying cause” can literally be anything though. People with mild asthma that absolutely wouldn’t have died from a cold may have caught COVID and died.

roughly 5y ago
Yeah, there’s this kind of general sentiment of “oh well they had heart disease, they were gonna die, so COVID just killed them quicker” - my dude, we’re all dying, most of us still prefer it not happen sooner than it would otherwise.
- benmmurphy 5y ago
  It could matter. It just depends on how cheap your intervention is. If your intervention is cheap then you intervention will be worth pursuing even if it's saving people who will only live on average a couple more years. If your intervention is very expensive then it might not make much sense.
tablespoon 5y ago
> “Underlying cause” can literally be anything though. People with mild asthma that absolutely wouldn’t have died from a cold may have caught COVID and died. Also it's relatively uncommon to be able to attribute a bad result unambiguously to a single thing. For instance most human-error disasters are the result of a cascade of mistakes, and the omission of any one could have prevented the disaster.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  This is true. The problem is that if COVID is anywhere in the cascade, the death gets recorded as being entirely because of COVID.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > This is true. The problem is that if COVID is anywhere in the cascade, the death gets recorded as being entirely because of COVID. That's not a problem if your goal is to determine the effects of the COVID variable (or the effects on interventions on it), which is what most people are trying to do with these statistics. Trying to discount deaths other than those entirely attributable to COVID in public discourse is really just a propaganda tactic to downplay COVID. It's not something you'd do if your goal was anything else.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      But we don't do the same for any other cause of death. For example, we don't track "obesity deaths". Are we downplaying literally every other cause of death in the world?
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > But we don't do the same for any other cause of death. For example, we don't track "obesity deaths". Are we downplaying literally every other cause of death in the world? So? Maybe a deadly pandemic disease is different than obesity and shouldn't be treated exactly the same.
        josephcsible 5y ago
        It seems like circular logic to use the fact that a disease is called "deadly" to justify more lax standards for counting deaths caused by it.
somenameforme 5y ago
The data tables they provide information on exactly what the conditions were. The top several (which make up the wide majority overall) are: - Diabetes - Chronic lower respiratory diseases - Hypertensive diseases - Diseases of the urinary system - Ischaemic heart diseases - Symptoms signs and ill-defined conditions - Dementia and Alzheimer's disease - Heart failure and complications and ill-defined heart disease The "symptoms signs and ill-defined conditions" is described here [1]. Basically signs and symptoms of other issues but for which there was no diagnosis made or available. That was marked as one of the preexisting condition(s) for 17.4% of the 65+ years old cohort, and 1% of the 0-64 years old cohort. [1] - https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/R00-R99 https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/R00-R99

roughly 5y ago

Yeah, there’s this kind of general sentiment of “oh well they had heart disease, they were gonna die, so COVID just killed them quicker” - my dude, we’re all dying, most of us still prefer it not happen sooner than it would otherwise.

benmmurphy 5y ago
It could matter. It just depends on how cheap your intervention is. If your intervention is cheap then you intervention will be worth pursuing even if it's saving people who will only live on average a couple more years. If your intervention is very expensive then it might not make much sense.

tablespoon 5y ago

> “Underlying cause” can literally be anything though. People with mild asthma that absolutely wouldn’t have died from a cold may have caught COVID and died. Also it's relatively uncommon to be able to attribute a bad result unambiguously to a single thing. For instance most human-error disasters are the result of a cascade of mistakes, and the omission of any one could have prevented the disaster.

josephcsible 5y ago
This is true. The problem is that if COVID is anywhere in the cascade, the death gets recorded as being entirely because of COVID.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > This is true. The problem is that if COVID is anywhere in the cascade, the death gets recorded as being entirely because of COVID. That's not a problem if your goal is to determine the effects of the COVID variable (or the effects on interventions on it), which is what most people are trying to do with these statistics. Trying to discount deaths other than those entirely attributable to COVID in public discourse is really just a propaganda tactic to downplay COVID. It's not something you'd do if your goal was anything else.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    But we don't do the same for any other cause of death. For example, we don't track "obesity deaths". Are we downplaying literally every other cause of death in the world?
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > But we don't do the same for any other cause of death. For example, we don't track "obesity deaths". Are we downplaying literally every other cause of death in the world? So? Maybe a deadly pandemic disease is different than obesity and shouldn't be treated exactly the same.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        It seems like circular logic to use the fact that a disease is called "deadly" to justify more lax standards for counting deaths caused by it.

somenameforme 5y ago

The data tables they provide information on exactly what the conditions were. The top several (which make up the wide majority overall) are: - Diabetes - Chronic lower respiratory diseases - Hypertensive diseases - Diseases of the urinary system - Ischaemic heart diseases - Symptoms signs and ill-defined conditions - Dementia and Alzheimer's disease - Heart failure and complications and ill-defined heart disease The "symptoms signs and ill-defined conditions" is described here [1]. Basically signs and symptoms of other issues but for which there was no diagnosis made or available. That was marked as one of the preexisting condition(s) for 17.4% of the 65+ years old cohort, and 1% of the 0-64 years old cohort. [1] - https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/R00-R99 https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/R00-R99