4 ms·

> As others have pointed out, mortality counts were wildly off due to many factors, including how death certificates were filled out (died with covid v/s died f

> As others have pointed out, mortality counts were wildly off due to many factors, including how death certificates were filled out (died with covid v/s died from covid). This has never really been shown to be that accurate considering the excess deaths from the averages every year. You’re ignoring an inconvenient fact.

claytongulick 4y ago
Which inconvenient fact am I ignoring? I took screen shots almost daily of all-cause mortality stats through the lockdown. The entire time it tracked pretty close to the expected linear increase that we see year over year with an aging population, with the exception of a bump in April that was almost exclusively New York City. Given the reported quality of care issues that drove a lot of that, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. I also saw a sudden jump in these numbers right at the end of the year. Could have been completely legitimate due to delays in reporting, but for some reason the CDC refuses to release anonymized data sets that would allow independent analysis. Which is highly abnormal. Additionally, all-cause mortality measures don't do a good job of indicating covid deaths, necessarily. Many deaths were due to delays of care for critical conditions. I experienced this myself, and was fortunate to not have become a statistic. We had deaths of despair, and we have several conflicting studies about those. We also have a significant (maybe majority) number of the deaths attributed to covid being a six to twelve month acceleration of death for those who were at end of life, especially the elderly with comorbidities. While sad, it's not quite the terrifying tragedy that the numbers without nuance present. It will be interesting to see if 2022 and 2023 see a concomitant dip in expected mortality. I also spent countless hours hunting down source data (as much as was available) understanding how Covid ID was generated for cross region case tracking, data collection methodology and evaluting transmission studies and models. I saw massive revisions of numbers post-investigation in several counties, such as Collin county in TX. If there's one thing we know for sure, it's that the data is a collosal mess. If you spend any time digging into the data collection methods and how reporting was happening you'd see this for yourself. FWIW, my background is in healthcare logistics, data analysis and technology. So if you are aware of some facts that I'm ignoring, I'd love to understand them.
- xcrunner529 4y ago
  The data is easy to find. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-covid?country=USA~RUS~MEX~BRA~IRN~PER https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-... I wonder what happened in 2020 and beyond that so many more died? It must just be the weather
  - claytongulick 4y ago
    When you've spent the time that I have looking into the source and methodology behind that data, rather than just spending 30 seconds googling, please let me know. But here, I'll save you some time. Those pretty graphs you're linking to use the HMD database as the primary source through Feb 2021. Take a look at how the HMD database derives it's numbers [1]. Now we can discuss the issue in rational, educated terms. [1]https://www.mortality.org/File/GetDocument/Public/Docs/MethodsProtocolV6.pdf https://www.mortality.org/File/GetDocument/Public/Docs/Metho...
    - xcrunner529 4y ago
      Ah an attempt to appeal to authority with no proof of any credentials. That’s when you know you lost.
      - claytongulick 4y ago
        All cause mortality for US source NVSS: 2018 - 2,839,205 2019 - 2,854,838 2020 - 3,383,729 Expected deaths for a given year are based on a combination of factors such as the population age, and function fitting previous trends. It would have been around 2.9 million for 2020. So the raw excess death count for 2020 is somewhere south of 500k. Many of these deaths were due to covid directly. The vast majority of which were people already at end of life, very elderly and with significant comorbidities. We're still doing research on how many of these excess deaths were due to downstream effects of covid interventions, such as lack of access to care, deaths of despair, etc... Also, when researching all cause mortality in 2020 and 2021 make sure to take into account fentanyl, which has exploded during those years and account for over 100,000 deaths in 2021 alone.

claytongulick 4y ago

Which inconvenient fact am I ignoring? I took screen shots almost daily of all-cause mortality stats through the lockdown. The entire time it tracked pretty close to the expected linear increase that we see year over year with an aging population, with the exception of a bump in April that was almost exclusively New York City. Given the reported quality of care issues that drove a lot of that, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. I also saw a sudden jump in these numbers right at the end of the year. Could have been completely legitimate due to delays in reporting, but for some reason the CDC refuses to release anonymized data sets that would allow independent analysis. Which is highly abnormal. Additionally, all-cause mortality measures don't do a good job of indicating covid deaths, necessarily. Many deaths were due to delays of care for critical conditions. I experienced this myself, and was fortunate to not have become a statistic. We had deaths of despair, and we have several conflicting studies about those. We also have a significant (maybe majority) number of the deaths attributed to covid being a six to twelve month acceleration of death for those who were at end of life, especially the elderly with comorbidities. While sad, it's not quite the terrifying tragedy that the numbers without nuance present. It will be interesting to see if 2022 and 2023 see a concomitant dip in expected mortality. I also spent countless hours hunting down source data (as much as was available) understanding how Covid ID was generated for cross region case tracking, data collection methodology and evaluting transmission studies and models. I saw massive revisions of numbers post-investigation in several counties, such as Collin county in TX. If there's one thing we know for sure, it's that the data is a collosal mess. If you spend any time digging into the data collection methods and how reporting was happening you'd see this for yourself. FWIW, my background is in healthcare logistics, data analysis and technology. So if you are aware of some facts that I'm ignoring, I'd love to understand them.

xcrunner529 4y ago
The data is easy to find. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-covid?country=USA~RUS~MEX~BRA~IRN~PER https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-... I wonder what happened in 2020 and beyond that so many more died? It must just be the weather
- claytongulick 4y ago
  When you've spent the time that I have looking into the source and methodology behind that data, rather than just spending 30 seconds googling, please let me know. But here, I'll save you some time. Those pretty graphs you're linking to use the HMD database as the primary source through Feb 2021. Take a look at how the HMD database derives it's numbers [1]. Now we can discuss the issue in rational, educated terms. [1]https://www.mortality.org/File/GetDocument/Public/Docs/MethodsProtocolV6.pdf https://www.mortality.org/File/GetDocument/Public/Docs/Metho...
  - xcrunner529 4y ago
    Ah an attempt to appeal to authority with no proof of any credentials. That’s when you know you lost.
    - claytongulick 4y ago
      All cause mortality for US source NVSS: 2018 - 2,839,205 2019 - 2,854,838 2020 - 3,383,729 Expected deaths for a given year are based on a combination of factors such as the population age, and function fitting previous trends. It would have been around 2.9 million for 2020. So the raw excess death count for 2020 is somewhere south of 500k. Many of these deaths were due to covid directly. The vast majority of which were people already at end of life, very elderly and with significant comorbidities. We're still doing research on how many of these excess deaths were due to downstream effects of covid interventions, such as lack of access to care, deaths of despair, etc... Also, when researching all cause mortality in 2020 and 2021 make sure to take into account fentanyl, which has exploded during those years and account for over 100,000 deaths in 2021 alone.