4 ms·

CDC reports of historical Covid deaths drop by 70k to correct “coding error”

13 points by verisimi 5y ago

ggm 5y ago
my bet is that you drop the count by another ~70% You think by now, we could stop with this kind of rhetorical question. A 10% correction which makes data align better with surplus mortality is fine. Arguing that 70% of the data don't deserve to be counted as covid deaths when we have surplus mortality and that's even taking a bad flu season into account (we haven't had 700k deaths from flu since 1920) I want to be super rude: is this guy both numerate and logical because .. I have my doubts. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortality-p-scores-projected-baseline?tab=chart&country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortali... For comparison, excess mortality due to a bad flu period:87,000 deaths, 1957-1960 (3 year window) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/331197 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/33119... So 2020 alone, 470,000 excess deaths in the USA. If you want to revise covid mortality down 70%, supply a rational basis for the surplus deaths.
- csee 5y ago
  70k not 0.70.
  - ggm 5y ago
    Did you read the article? I quoted it above: the 70k is the CDC revision which the author lambasts and says he thinks a 10% revision could well be "hiding" (my words) a 70% revision.
- Proven 5y ago
- listenallyall 5y ago
  The story here is not one guy's opinion of what the real numbers might be. The real story is the confirmation that CDC has significantly revised child fatalities from Covid downwards, and instead of announcing it widely (to temper fear), they quietly added a vague footnote to their data, with the hope that nobody would notice the revision.
refurb 5y ago
It's going to be fascinating seeing how this who episode was handled once the dust settles.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Any facts will be buried in layers of historian's justifications and prejudices. See for example "When did the USA know about German Death Camps in ww2?" ... People were disregarded when they tried to tell others what was happening, and they're still called conspiracy theorists and spies for having done so.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Not directly linked but the number of weird substack posts I see here prompts this thought: Feels like any publishing system that takes a 10% cut on subscriptions is going to naturally trend towards the production of spam. Is there any clever workarounds for this? Some kind of distributed trust network? Some game theoretic way to constrain a business to only produce socially useful content?
yucky 5y ago
The error would probably have been caught sooner if the CDC had not been intentionally hiding data from the public for so long.. Blue Team source - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/covid-cdc-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/covid-cdc-data.htm... Red Team source - https://nypost.com/2022/02/22/cdc-withholding-covid-data-over-fears-of-misinterpretation/ https://nypost.com/2022/02/22/cdc-withholding-covid-data-ove...

13 points by verisimi 5y ago

ggm 5y ago

my bet is that you drop the count by another ~70% You think by now, we could stop with this kind of rhetorical question. A 10% correction which makes data align better with surplus mortality is fine. Arguing that 70% of the data don't deserve to be counted as covid deaths when we have surplus mortality and that's even taking a bad flu season into account (we haven't had 700k deaths from flu since 1920) I want to be super rude: is this guy both numerate and logical because .. I have my doubts. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortality-p-scores-projected-baseline?tab=chart&country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortali... For comparison, excess mortality due to a bad flu period:87,000 deaths, 1957-1960 (3 year window) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/331197 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/33119... So 2020 alone, 470,000 excess deaths in the USA. If you want to revise covid mortality down 70%, supply a rational basis for the surplus deaths.

csee 5y ago
70k not 0.70.
- ggm 5y ago
  Did you read the article? I quoted it above: the 70k is the CDC revision which the author lambasts and says he thinks a 10% revision could well be "hiding" (my words) a 70% revision.
Proven 5y ago
listenallyall 5y ago
The story here is not one guy's opinion of what the real numbers might be. The real story is the confirmation that CDC has significantly revised child fatalities from Covid downwards, and instead of announcing it widely (to temper fear), they quietly added a vague footnote to their data, with the hope that nobody would notice the revision.

refurb 5y ago

It's going to be fascinating seeing how this who episode was handled once the dust settles.

h2odragon 5y ago
Any facts will be buried in layers of historian's justifications and prejudices. See for example "When did the USA know about German Death Camps in ww2?" ... People were disregarded when they tried to tell others what was happening, and they're still called conspiracy theorists and spies for having done so.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Not directly linked but the number of weird substack posts I see here prompts this thought: Feels like any publishing system that takes a 10% cut on subscriptions is going to naturally trend towards the production of spam. Is there any clever workarounds for this? Some kind of distributed trust network? Some game theoretic way to constrain a business to only produce socially useful content?

yucky 5y ago

The error would probably have been caught sooner if the CDC had not been intentionally hiding data from the public for so long.. Blue Team source - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/covid-cdc-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/covid-cdc-data.htm... Red Team source - https://nypost.com/2022/02/22/cdc-withholding-covid-data-over-fears-of-misinterpretation/ https://nypost.com/2022/02/22/cdc-withholding-covid-data-ove...