4 ms·

> Is there international consensus on the statistical mapping between excess all-cause mortality, "with Covid" and "from Covid" deaths? International consensus

by danans 4y ago

> Is there international consensus on the statistical mapping between excess all-cause mortality, "with Covid" and "from Covid" deaths? International consensus isn't required. Scientific consensus is the best we can do, and per Occam's razor, COVID is the best explanation we have for the excess deaths. The articles I linked make that falsifiable claims. You are making unfalsifiable speculative statements and asking vague unrelated rhetorical questions about process. Please make a specific claim about what you think the cause of the excess deaths is, like "influenza" or "car accidents", "natural die off of a previous population bubble", or some combination thereof, and provide citations to studies and data to back it up, as people would be interested in learning about that.

walterbell 4y ago
Here's a recent (preprint) study, "Excess mortality in Germany 2020-2022", http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27319.19365 http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27319.19365 > The present study estimates the burden of COVID-19 on mortality. The state-of-the-art method of actuarial science is used to estimate the expected number of all-cause deaths in 2020 to 2022, if there had been no pandemic. Then the number of observed all-cause deaths is compared with this expected number of all-cause deaths, yielding the excess mortality in Germany for the pandemic years 2020 to 2022. > In 2020, the observed number of deaths was close to the expected number with respect to the empirical standard deviation. By contrast, in 2021, the observed number of deaths was two empirical standard deviations above the expected number. The high excess mortality in 2021 was almost entirely due to an increase in deaths in the age groups between 15 and 79 and started to accumulate only from April 2021 onwards. A similar mortality pattern was observed for stillbirths with an increase of about 11 percent in the second quarter of the year 2021. > Something must have happened in April 2021 that led to a sudden and sustained increase in mortality in the age groups below 80 years, although no such effects on mortality had been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic so far.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  Maybe when people started going back outside to do stuff? Did they account for the reduction in death in 2020 from other causes due to the lockdowns? Are you arguing no one really died from Covid but did die from the vaccines? Say what the heck you mean, Mr Bright, because you’re dancing around it like you’re on American idol or something.
  - throwaway13909 4y ago
  - walterbell 4y ago
    There's a 43-page paper above. Any sentences from that paper need clarification?
    - ok_dad 4y ago
      I’m not going to read a 43 page paper, but it seems like you’re just promoting FUD here because you don’t want to actually say anything other than to ddos us with 43 page papers.
      - walterbell 4y ago
        I'm sorry if you missed the last two years where this topic has been discussed at length on HN. Now, two years later, there has been enough time for data collection and structured analysis, so there's less need for real-time hot takes and we now have both hindsight and papers. If you're looking for opinion rather than papers, the HN comment archive will be happy to provide.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - danans 4y ago
      That's an interesting article, but it focuses exclusively on statistics from Germany, a country that had a pre-pandemic mortality rate 50% higher than the US (presumably due to an older population), and a COVID CFR half that if the US. Therefore it's not surprising that the pandemic's excess mortality signature isn't as clear there.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - 4y ago
spookthesunset 4y ago
> and per Occam's razor, COVID is the best explanation we have for the excess deaths. I don't buy that. It upsets me how people skirt around what should be a straightforward, reasonable question to answer. "Did people die with covid or from covid". Without knowing that, all you can do is look at shadows. What age bracket did these deaths come from? Does it line up with what we know about who is most at risk from covid? ... And even then, the demographics most at risk of covid are the same that are at risk for many, many other things too. And when we scared the living fuck out of people such that they stopped getting routine care a lot of deaths could start to occur. I've yet to hear any "expert" actually assert that the "official death count" is composed of only people who died as a direct result of covid. All I ever hear is people dancing around the issue. Which really ought to make one wonder about the statistics presented. After all Occam's Razor would suggest that the simplest course of action for these "experts" would be to assert that all deaths were "from covid"--they'd love to assert that. Yet they dont. Why is that? Hmmmmmm........
- hazmazlaz 4y ago
  Except it's not a straightforward answer at all. I'm not even in medicine and I can intuitively see how unclear the answer to that question could be. Take someone who is a lifelong smoker and gets COVID and dies from COPD/Chronic Respiratory Failure. What killed them, the COVID or the smoking? This is probably one of the most elementary examples of how complicated determining cause of death can be, I am sure there are many many more that someone who is a professional in that field could cite.

by danans 4y ago

walterbell 4y ago

Here's a recent (preprint) study, "Excess mortality in Germany 2020-2022", http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27319.19365 http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27319.19365 > The present study estimates the burden of COVID-19 on mortality. The state-of-the-art method of actuarial science is used to estimate the expected number of all-cause deaths in 2020 to 2022, if there had been no pandemic. Then the number of observed all-cause deaths is compared with this expected number of all-cause deaths, yielding the excess mortality in Germany for the pandemic years 2020 to 2022. > In 2020, the observed number of deaths was close to the expected number with respect to the empirical standard deviation. By contrast, in 2021, the observed number of deaths was two empirical standard deviations above the expected number. The high excess mortality in 2021 was almost entirely due to an increase in deaths in the age groups between 15 and 79 and started to accumulate only from April 2021 onwards. A similar mortality pattern was observed for stillbirths with an increase of about 11 percent in the second quarter of the year 2021. > Something must have happened in April 2021 that led to a sudden and sustained increase in mortality in the age groups below 80 years, although no such effects on mortality had been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic so far.

ok_dad 4y ago
Maybe when people started going back outside to do stuff? Did they account for the reduction in death in 2020 from other causes due to the lockdowns? Are you arguing no one really died from Covid but did die from the vaccines? Say what the heck you mean, Mr Bright, because you’re dancing around it like you’re on American idol or something.
- throwaway13909 4y ago
- walterbell 4y ago
  There's a 43-page paper above. Any sentences from that paper need clarification?
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    I’m not going to read a 43 page paper, but it seems like you’re just promoting FUD here because you don’t want to actually say anything other than to ddos us with 43 page papers.
    - walterbell 4y ago
      I'm sorry if you missed the last two years where this topic has been discussed at length on HN. Now, two years later, there has been enough time for data collection and structured analysis, so there's less need for real-time hot takes and we now have both hindsight and papers. If you're looking for opinion rather than papers, the HN comment archive will be happy to provide.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - danans 4y ago
    That's an interesting article, but it focuses exclusively on statistics from Germany, a country that had a pre-pandemic mortality rate 50% higher than the US (presumably due to an older population), and a COVID CFR half that if the US. Therefore it's not surprising that the pandemic's excess mortality signature isn't as clear there.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- 4y ago

spookthesunset 4y ago

> and per Occam's razor, COVID is the best explanation we have for the excess deaths. I don't buy that. It upsets me how people skirt around what should be a straightforward, reasonable question to answer. "Did people die with covid or from covid". Without knowing that, all you can do is look at shadows. What age bracket did these deaths come from? Does it line up with what we know about who is most at risk from covid? ... And even then, the demographics most at risk of covid are the same that are at risk for many, many other things too. And when we scared the living fuck out of people such that they stopped getting routine care a lot of deaths could start to occur. I've yet to hear any "expert" actually assert that the "official death count" is composed of only people who died as a direct result of covid. All I ever hear is people dancing around the issue. Which really ought to make one wonder about the statistics presented. After all Occam's Razor would suggest that the simplest course of action for these "experts" would be to assert that all deaths were "from covid"--they'd love to assert that. Yet they dont. Why is that? Hmmmmmm........

hazmazlaz 4y ago
Except it's not a straightforward answer at all. I'm not even in medicine and I can intuitively see how unclear the answer to that question could be. Take someone who is a lifelong smoker and gets COVID and dies from COPD/Chronic Respiratory Failure. What killed them, the COVID or the smoking? This is probably one of the most elementary examples of how complicated determining cause of death can be, I am sure there are many many more that someone who is a professional in that field could cite.