4 ms·

"stated" is an interesting choice there, especially when using "recorded" a few words later. It reads as being a bit untrusting of the COVID death numbers.

hammock 4y ago
Are the covid death numbers trustworthy? (honest Q)
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  They're probably low, if anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercounting_of_COVID-19_pandemic_deaths_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercounting_of_COVID-19_pand... The chart on https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm shows all cause deaths before and during the pandemic; there's an extremely clear difference, and it coincides closely with the spikes in COVID cases we've seen. This method of reporting avoids all the complexities around "died with COVID" vs "died of COVID", people who never get tested before dying, etc.
  - hammock 4y ago
    >it coincides closely with the spikes in COVID cases we've seen. Aren't there about 100 other confounders that could be in the mix there
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Which of them do you propose would cause the American public (and others worldwide; we see excess deaths increased everywhere, whether they required masking or closed schools or did very little to mitigate) to suddenly start dying in significantly higher numbers - again, of any cause - for the last two years - and especially so at the same time large COVID waves are occurring?
      - flutas 4y ago
        > Which of them do you propose would cause the American public (and others worldwide; we see excess deaths increased everywhere, whether they required masking or closed schools or did very little to mitigate) to suddenly start dying in significantly higher numbers - again, of any cause - for the last two years - and especially so at the same time large COVID waves are occurring? I can give one example, which happened to my dad... "Sorry, we have to reschedule that surgery to remove the tumor because we're anticipating a covid spike and need the bed availability." Repeat until he died due to cancer spreading.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        That sort of thing is relatively trivial to tease out of the stats, because in addition to excess deaths we have per-disease statistics as well. See the chart about 2/3 down on https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid-19-continues-to-be-a-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s-in-june-2021/#Average%20daily%20deaths%20in%20the%20United%20States,%20by%20cause%20(2020%20-%20Present) https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid-19-continues..., titled "Average daily deaths in the United States, by cause (2020 - Present)". We don't see a massive spike in other causes of death (including cancer, which is a flat line at ~1,600/day throughout), and no one's likely to misidentify a cancer or heart attack death on a death certificate. There are certainly cases like your dad's, where delayed screenings and treatment had individual impacts, but none of the stats available to us show this explaining a meaningful amount of the 1.3M excess deaths observed.
      - hammock 4y ago
        Does it matter which?
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        It does if you can’t think of any that would demonstrably cause 1.3M excess deaths in the US, yes.
    - joshuahedlund 4y ago
      If it was one general noisy correlation, I would agree. But there are multiple spikes that go up and down and match almost precisely with the multiple waves of covid, persisting through many shifts in other factors (like downstream effects of different levels of lockdown) with almost no change in the trends for all other deaths beside it. It's about as close of a correlation as you can ever hope for with real-world data.
  - clnq 4y ago
    An article was published in Nature a few days ago saying the actual number of COVID deaths could be around 2.75x higher than officially reported numbers. We might be underestimating deaths by many millions worldwide. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04138-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04138-w

hammock 4y ago

Are the covid death numbers trustworthy? (honest Q)

ceejayoz 4y ago
They're probably low, if anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercounting_of_COVID-19_pandemic_deaths_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercounting_of_COVID-19_pand... The chart on https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm shows all cause deaths before and during the pandemic; there's an extremely clear difference, and it coincides closely with the spikes in COVID cases we've seen. This method of reporting avoids all the complexities around "died with COVID" vs "died of COVID", people who never get tested before dying, etc.
- hammock 4y ago
  >it coincides closely with the spikes in COVID cases we've seen. Aren't there about 100 other confounders that could be in the mix there
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Which of them do you propose would cause the American public (and others worldwide; we see excess deaths increased everywhere, whether they required masking or closed schools or did very little to mitigate) to suddenly start dying in significantly higher numbers - again, of any cause - for the last two years - and especially so at the same time large COVID waves are occurring?
    - flutas 4y ago
      > Which of them do you propose would cause the American public (and others worldwide; we see excess deaths increased everywhere, whether they required masking or closed schools or did very little to mitigate) to suddenly start dying in significantly higher numbers - again, of any cause - for the last two years - and especially so at the same time large COVID waves are occurring? I can give one example, which happened to my dad... "Sorry, we have to reschedule that surgery to remove the tumor because we're anticipating a covid spike and need the bed availability." Repeat until he died due to cancer spreading.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        That sort of thing is relatively trivial to tease out of the stats, because in addition to excess deaths we have per-disease statistics as well. See the chart about 2/3 down on https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid-19-continues-to-be-a-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s-in-june-2021/#Average%20daily%20deaths%20in%20the%20United%20States,%20by%20cause%20(2020%20-%20Present) https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid-19-continues..., titled "Average daily deaths in the United States, by cause (2020 - Present)". We don't see a massive spike in other causes of death (including cancer, which is a flat line at ~1,600/day throughout), and no one's likely to misidentify a cancer or heart attack death on a death certificate. There are certainly cases like your dad's, where delayed screenings and treatment had individual impacts, but none of the stats available to us show this explaining a meaningful amount of the 1.3M excess deaths observed.
    - hammock 4y ago
      Does it matter which?
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        It does if you can’t think of any that would demonstrably cause 1.3M excess deaths in the US, yes.
  - joshuahedlund 4y ago
    If it was one general noisy correlation, I would agree. But there are multiple spikes that go up and down and match almost precisely with the multiple waves of covid, persisting through many shifts in other factors (like downstream effects of different levels of lockdown) with almost no change in the trends for all other deaths beside it. It's about as close of a correlation as you can ever hope for with real-world data.
- clnq 4y ago
  An article was published in Nature a few days ago saying the actual number of COVID deaths could be around 2.75x higher than officially reported numbers. We might be underestimating deaths by many millions worldwide. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04138-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04138-w