The estimates of its toll vary pretty widely. That article says 675,000 dead in the US. If it lasted about a year (?) that would be about 1850 day in and day out. US population in 1918 was 100M-105M…? Yikes!
It’s scary, sure. But it is not generally true viruses top the list. A few days in a few places. Canada, clearly, is not the centre of this epidemic. About 700 Canadians die every day, maybe 250 from heart disease. We’ve had about 700 deaths blamed on the coronavirus, but this is a lower limit and it’s likely higher. So in Canada, I doubt coronavirus is the leading cause of death, in any age group. It’s probably in the top five for 80+.
Canada is not post-WW1 Philadelphia or among the most beleaguered places in Italy or New York. Pandemics are scary. But consider that the Plague lasted 120 years in Europe, killing 40-60%, and Y.pestis didn’t stick around at all outside the hosts and can easily be taken care of by antibiotics.
Okay, that’sd a valid question. And in truth these things are complex. As I am fond of pointing out, when peiople say “fifty thousand people die of flu every year in the USA” that really is not true.
However,
It is plainly obvious a lot of people are dying of COVID-19. We can argue the details all you want, but it’s fact that the death rate in hard hit places like New York is much, much higher than normal.
In time, statisticians will figure out roughly how much added mortality this caused. Right now what we know is that it’s a lot.
Given that it’s a lot, and this is a pandemic that has the potential to spread out of control, this graph illustrates the danger. The danger is not who died yesterday, it’s how many people can die tomorrow. There is the real, absolutely present threat that the pandemic could kill hundreds of thousands of people. If it spreads unchecked that is a thing that can happen. It grows FAST.
It’s very much like a fire. A candle is no big deal. If it falls over and sets a dish towel on fire, well, that’s a problem you can handle easily. If the fire spreads to the stove things are getting scary but you can still put that fire out. If it spreads up onto the wall and ceiling it’s going to burn the house down and kill anyone who can’t get out in ninety seconds. At every point of escalation it could have been controlled; it’s that it got out of control that caused the catastrophe.
Sounds about right. Keep in mind about 3 million people die in America every year, and a lot of those people who do die probably would’ve died soon anyway from heart attacks, strokes, lung disorders or cancer.
I noticed starting on about 3-30, about 1k people have been dying a day in the US from it.
Then around 4-6 starting it jumped to about 2k people a day.
Not sure if it’ll keep jumping to 4k a day, 8k a day, 16k a day, etc.
Some questions are valid , but the people ( not talking about you ) who are saying that the people with heart problems didn’t die of COVID-19 aren’t asking questions. They aren’t even saying it’s a subjective opinion - sure, the virus might not have killed that person if he didn’t have heart disease, but the heart disease might not have killed him that ( day/month/year) if it wasn’t was for the virus and deciding which caused death or whether it was the combination is subjective. There is a group of people who think that counting the corona virus as a cause of death should be a diagnosis of exclusion and the cause of death should never be attributed to COVID 19 if something else can explain death. These people do not allow for the possibility of contributing factors or the idea that someone might have two or more conditions that in combination caused the death although neither might have done so on their own at that point.
When finding a cause of death, the form gives plenty of room to determine main cause, secondary causes, contributing factors. Coronavirus is usually going to be on there if it is diagnosed or tested for. It’s still under diagnosed - not always suspected, tested for (especially early, or if tests unavailable) or (in rare cases, like trauma) relevant. But it’s not like dying of something complicated by several things with many contributing factors is anything new.
Now there’s a textbook case of how to mislead with statistics! The animation isn’t actually claiming that COVID has been the leading cause of death all the way since January. It’s claiming it for the last few days.
Clearly there weren’t more coronavirus deaths than heart disease or cancer in January or February, and not even for March. It will probably be neck and neck for April though, because once the per-day death rates get high, experience is showing they don’t come down very quickly.
The CDC is being very odd here. Indeed what they said is either deliberately missing the point or just not realising what the point is. The OP’s link is probably derived from the CDC’s numbers. It shows daily death rates by time. Not aggregated deaths from the start of the year.
Right now, today, Covid-19 is is probably the leading cause of death. Not for the year. But today. Unchecked it would take about another week for it to exceed all causes of death combined each day. Again that is for people dying today, not aggregated deaths since the start of the year.
Again, it is probably only a leading cause of death in a few specific places for the last few days or weeks only. Not top cause in most places, I would think.
That said, I watched it once and briefly, but it didn’t seem misleading. People do lie with statistics, but it is more common to lie without any mathematical basis.
There is one aspect of the animation that I think is probably confusing to people, if not actually misleading. That’s the way the numbers change smoothly within the course of a day. When what we have is (to use numbers from upthread) 1971 die on the 7th and 1941 on the 8th, the number should stay at 1971 all through March 7th, then jump to 1941 on March 8th and stay there till the ticker gets to March 9th.
Instead it has all those little intermediate steps where the graph smoothly falls back from one number to a lower number over the course of a day (or in other cases, gradually increases). Those intermediate points don’t actually mean anything, and probably shouldn’t be there. However, I don’t blame the animation maker for that too much, because probably whatever software he was using did that automatically, to make it look better
false. The article provides numbers that says its about the same as Heart Disease.
200,000 died from hearth disease in 3 months , that is 2000 a day.
the idea of comparing the total over the last three months is wrong, as it contains two months pre-outbreak. heart disease didn’t disappear and just suddenly reappear in the last month did it ? no. But the virus did appear in the last month … u know what I mean.
Apologies that this is a bit of a tangent, do how does one die from high blood pressure ( for 97 unfortunate people per day, according to the graphic)? I understand that hypertension can contribute to heart disease and stroke, but not how it can cause death directly?
This article does not in any way prove the graph wrong. You are confused as to the difference between how many people die in one day and how many have died in the entire year.
No they are not. Their statement, quoted in the post you are referring to, is not a response to that animation. It is a response to other statements floating around that COVID-19 is the leading cause of death for the whole year - which is false, but isn’t what the animation illustrates.
I’m not comfortable with this “would have died anyway” type of outlook. These are actual people. They have lives, families, friends, dreams, etc. We should not be talking about them like the sick, elderly, and disabled have less value to society than everyone else.
You don’t know that they would have died soon. Even if you make that assumption, they all deserve all the time they can get (or want to keep). If they die 6 months earlier from this disease because we (society) fucked up, in my mind that’s not an acceptable loss.
There are a number of datapoints now that show that not only the “vulnerable” get sick. Healthy people get sick. Kids get sick. Young and middle-aged people get sick. People in all of those groups get hospitalized and many of those people die or will have long-lasting recoveries or permanent disablement.
In my opinion, it is wrong to view the dead as “vulnerable” individuals who would have died anyway.
Unfortunately, since Trump put his thumb on the scale, the CDC has pulled data down from their site, and become less than transparent about the situation. I believe that most people are looking to other sources now for information on the numbers. Johns Hopkins is one. There are others. I can publish some links if anyone needs/wants them.