Yes, that’s an example of two that shouldn’t be counted, but the evidence is that COVID cases are, if anything, undercounted. If you look at excess deaths this year in the US not including COVID, there are lots of them.
So these two dead people are proof of a conspiracy to inflate Covid-19 deaths?
What are you saying, that any death in 2020 above what was expected is evidence the person died of covid? Oh my.
Please quote where I’ve said that. Thanks!
ETA: Here’s the CDC’s take on it: Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19
Yes, I know. Here’s the part you want to make sure you consider:
Finally, the estimates of excess deaths reported here may not be due to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. The pandemic may have changed mortality patterns for other causes of death. Upward trends in other causes of death (e.g., suicide, drug overdose, heart disease) may contribute to excess deaths in some jurisdictions. Future analyses of cause-specific excess mortality may provide additional information about these patterns.
Moderator Warning
That is clearly not what the poster meant, and you very surely know that. Taking into account your history in this forum, I consider that trolling. This is an official warning. Do not misrepresent a post again.
Colibri
QZ Moderator
Well – and with apologies to the moderator, as I’m trying to get to the bottom of the post, not to paint it as something it’s not – what did you mean by ‘evidence’? You said, as I understand it, that excess deaths this year not attributed to covid are evidence that covid is undercounted. The CDC, as shown, mentions that there could be other reasons for those deaths.
What I’m trying to get at here is, what are the standards for ‘evidence’? What are the standards for proof? If a phenomenon can be explained by Cause B, how can it be taken as evidence of Cause A?
I don’t know if we’re talking past each other here, because it seems clear enough that there is reason to believe there are deaths caused by knock-on effects, as the CDC mentions is a possibility, and that covid death counts in the US are not exactly being minimized China-style. It seems to me that the question of how the real and true death count compares to the reported count is still a matter of uncertainty, as the poster who suggested the numbers might be ‘manipulated’ gets to, and that all the data need to be weighed carefully before determining what exactly it is they are ‘evidence’ of.
Apologies to you as well, if I interpreted your post in a way you did not mean it. What I’m trying to do is work out the logical implications of what your post would otherwise mean.
I wrote on Mar. 30: “When confronted with a problem it seems useful and sensible to me to assume the worst possible outcome as a working hypothesis. So number 7 it is.” Number seven being “over 1 Million”, I guess the USA has done better than I expected. Still I don’t feel like congratulating nobody. My two countries of residence, Germany and Belgium, are doing much worse all of a sudden the first one (well, no, not out of a sudden: that was predictable) and have had a terrible year the other one. This is not over yet, not by a long stretch.
PoppaSan said the numbers were manipulated and mentioned two deaths that were attributed to COVID-19 that should not have been. I said that, in fact, COVID cases were undercounted and pointed to the massive numbers of excess deaths that point to some significant undercounting. I didn’t say how many there were, but I’ll go out on a limb and assert that there were more than two excess deaths that should have been attributed to COVID-19 and weren’t, given the many thousands of excess deaths last year.
Well, what proportion of excess deaths are presently being estimated as due to covid? I don’t know, off the top of my head, but it feels like it’s closer to 90% than to 50. If it’s 90% that are chalked up to covid at the moment, it doesn’t seem obvious to me that the other 10% are in part mischaracterized. Given what we’ve been reading about missed cancer screenings, heart problems not being caught, and the like, a 90/10 split of the destruction brought about by the pandemic doesn’t seem absurd.
I don’t really know what you’re arguing here. I think it’s less than 90% due to COVID infection directly, although there are some significant numbers of excess deaths that are COVID. There are secondary effects of people dying from other causes due to missed screenings, like you say. There may also be fewer road deaths and other accidents from people staying home, although drunk driving is probably also down.
I’m trying to get to the bottom of your claim, which was that if you look at excess deaths in 2020 that are not attributed to covid, you will find lots of them, and that’s evidence that covid is undercounted.
So I’m asking what proportion is ‘lots of them’, how does that proportion compare to what you might expect, given those secondary effects, and if the proportion is not significantly more than what you’d expect, where is the ‘evidence’ that they were misclassified?
All I was saying to that other poster was that the two deaths that counted as COVID (which weren’t) are small compared to the excess deaths caused by COVID that weren’t counted that way. According to this for example, Illinois (the first on the list) had 19,200 excess deaths. If even 1% of those were caused by undiagnosed COVID-19, that’s 192 deaths in Illinois, which is (by my calculations) greater than 2.
That’s my claim. That’s it. Your question about what percentage of excess deaths is caused by COVID is by definition unanswerable, since these were deaths not classified by COVID deaths.
Here’s another article, this one about probable missed COVID deaths in Texas early in the pandemic.
Here’s another one about excess pneumonia deaths in the UK early in the pandemic.
I’m confident that missed COVID-19 deaths is greater than 2.
I’m done doing your research.
Well, but you also said you had evidence of that. Or, as I understood it, you said that the very fact that ‘lots of’ non-covid excess deaths existed was evidence of that. And you seem to be implying here that it’s enough to move the needle.
Look, it’s something like 350,000 deaths at the moment that are attributed to covid. If it’s reasonable to think that there could be one death due to the ‘secondary effects’ we talked about for every nine covid deaths – or, again, a 90/10 split – then we’d be looking at 35,000 excess deaths that we think are rightfully attributable to things besides contracting the virus, for ~385,000 excess deaths overall. How many excess deaths are they presently estimating for 2020? I just found CDC reports from October that at that time were attributing around two-thirds of excess deaths to covid, but at that time it was around 200,000 covid deaths out of around 300,000 excess deaths overall. If that ratio has held, then we’d now be over 500,000 excess deaths overall, and I don’t think we were ever projecting to hit it quite that high.
And just be clear, I’m talking about net effects, not individual cases like two missed here and two missed in the other direction there.
I think you’re confused. The excess deaths are in excess of COVID deaths. There have been 350k deaths (minus 2) actually due to COVID, and ALSO another bunch of excess deaths not attributed to COVID but may have been due to COVID. For example, there were a lot of pneumonia deaths early in the year, some of which (greater than 2, I imagine) were probably due to COVID.
“Counting deaths takes time, and many states are weeks or months behind in their reporting.”
This alone is a reason why the January 1 number Tamerlane cited is too low.
So here you are again, pulling figures out of your backside in order to support asn argument that you are tailoring to your agenda.
Not one part of your statement has any reliable information whatsoever - again you are deliberately attempting to mislead.
Here’s a report from the CDC in October, taken today from their website and not from my backside:
Here’s the summary:
Summary
What is already known about this topic?
As of October 15, 216,025 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported in the United States; however, this might underestimate the total impact of the pandemic on mortality.
What is added by this report?
Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths occurred from late January through October 3, 2020, with 198,081 (66%) excess deaths attributed to COVID-19. The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25–44 years and among Hispanic or Latino persons.
What are the implications for public health practice?
These results inform efforts to prevent mortality directly or indirectly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, such as efforts to minimize disruptions to health care.
My first guess of 90/10 was based on the number of 350,000 or so covid deaths at the end of the year and the earlier projections I’d read that we’d see around 400,000 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019. I’ve seen those numbers in print.
But sure, the 400,000 estimate may have been wrong. It may have ended up at more like 80/20, which would be 350,000 excess deaths due to covid and 90,000 or so from other causes, for around 440,000 excess deaths. If the CDC’s published ratio from October held throughout the remainder of the year, then it would be 350,000 from covid, around 175,000 from other causes, for 500,000+ excess deaths overall. Could be. I don’t think anyone has published an official estimate yet. But even when they do, it doesn’t at all change my argument. The numbers are there, even if they are just estimates, to illustrate all facets of the situation. That is their purpose, even if their magnitude varies.
So in despersate haste to cover your lack of research, you backfill with 3 month old data?
Since then we have had a further one and a half waves, along with a new variant that is more infectious - historical information is interesting but is no longer relevant to the current situation.
If this new variant becomes more widespread, and there are indications this is happening, then things change very dramatically.
To give an example, look at the UK which around late December appeared to be flattening the rise and perhaps even bringing the infection rate down - however the new variant is now responsible for up to 2/3rds of all infections whereas the more worldwide variant is actually declining relative to the total UK infection rate - given that this information is 2 days old and is already becoming out of date, this woulds suggest that anything you are quoting from early October is going to be much further out of relevance - but hey, why let facts get in the way.
What does this later data suggest? well this version has the capacity to raise the R number by 0.7 in the UK - and that is with the current regime of controls, we are aware that the reproduction rate also depends partly on how social interactions are managed.
This variant has been discovered in the US and EU already, it takes time like any exponential growth curve to develop to an avalanch - this is the time that those areas have to implement effective controls - failure to do so will be bad - but if the US maintains its fractured policy it will be disaster.
It is a race to produce and innoculate populations before that period of - relative - grace before the new variant takes off. Lose it and infections in the US could rise quite easily to double and triple the current high rates, how it will affect mortality is not yet fully understood but UK mortality figures that are just emerging suggest a major increase in the absolute number, but not in the percentage numbers of infection/mortality.
No, this misses the point I was trying to make, and it’s clear that I’m not doing a good job explaining it, for which I apologize. Let me back up and try it again, more simply.
The question we were talking about, and that it was said I misrepresented another poster’s views on, was whether excess deaths not attributed to covid is evidence that covid is undercounted. My claim was that these two hypothetical scenarios, for the sake of argument, illustrate two very different potential realities:
Scenario A
Excess deaths attributed to covid: 350,000
Excess deaths not attributed to covid: 350,000
Total excess deaths: 700,000
Percent due to covid: 50%
Scenario B
Excess deaths attributed to covid: 350,000
Excess deaths not attributed to covid: 50,000
Total excess deaths: 400,000
Percent due to covid: 87.5%
I argue that Scenario A would seem to be good prima facie evidence that covid deaths were being undercounted, given that I don’t think anyone has tried to make a case that non-covid deaths caused by the pandemic are on the same level as covid deaths.
But further, Scenario B would seem not to support the argument that the mere existence of non-covid excess deaths means that covid is undercounted, because 50,000 deaths from secondary effects does not seem out of line with expectations.
If both those things are true, then the next step would be to ask which scenario more closely matches the number of excess deaths we had in 2020 – is it 700,000 or 400,000?
The earlier estimates I’d read were much more in line with the latter than the former. If the number of excess deaths in 2020 actually is 400,000, and we allow for 50,000 from secondary effects (or even unrelated causes altogether, like an ongoing opiod epidemic), then where are the misattributed covid deaths supposed to be coming from?