Covid-19

[Salt USMC]

Not really touched on by the media, because it doesn't fit their narrative. But this was hidden away and starting to get tweeted about on COVID-19 deaths.

COVID-19 Provisional Counts - Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics

Huh, interesting that most of the additional causes of deaths were respiratory diseases. Like, you know, how someone might die of "Respiratory failure" after contracting a respiratory virus?

Or if we're talking about circulatory diseases, interesting that someone could possibly suffer, I don't know, cardiac arrest exacerbated by a respiratory virus?

Yeah, "doesn't fit their narrative." Sure.

 

[Deleted member 15200]

The US now has ~183,392 - 245,305 excess deaths for this year. That's pretty much all that needs to be said on the matter.

 

[Deleted member 15200]

Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19

 

[Ooh-Rah]

The US now has ~183,392 - 245,305 excess deaths for this year. That's pretty much all that needs to be said on the matter.

Actually....for those of us playing along at home. What does this mean? (to you)

 

[ThunderHorse]

The US now has ~183,392 - 245,305 excess deaths for this year. That's pretty much all that needs to be said on the matter.

Disagree with this premise, considering 94% of the deaths related had on average 2.6 comorbities, it's likely many of these people would have died without COVID-19 showing up from China.

 

[Deleted member 15200]

Excess deaths are by definition deaths beyond what would normally be expected for the same time period. In other words if covid19 did not exist we would predict that 185-245k fewer people would be dead.

In other words, Covid is responsible for many thousands of deaths that otherwise would not occur during the same time period.

94% of deaths having comorbidity does not mean Covid is not responsible. It means that most people who die from Covid had other health issues. Those health issues can vary widely from people already on their deathbed to relatively common ailments like diabetes etc.

To say those people would have died anyway is by definition wrong. Excess deaths is deaths beyond normal expectations. Everybody will die, but without Covid roughly ~180-245k fewer people would have died this year so far.

As for how to tackle Covid from a policy perspective, well, frankly I'm mixed on it. It's a very difficult problem to handle and I'm not envious of the policy makers who have to try. But to say it is an inconsequential illness is pretty disrespectful to those ~200k and their families.

 

[Devildoc]

Excess deaths are by definition deaths beyond what would normally be expected for the same time period. In other words if covid19 did not exist we would predict that 185-245k fewer people would be dead.

In other words, Covid is responsible for many thousands of deaths that otherwise would not occur during the same time period.

94% of deaths having comorbidity does not mean Covid is not responsible. It means that most people who die from Covid had other health issues. Those health issues can vary widely from people already on their deathbed to relatively common ailments like diabetes etc.

To say those people would have died anyway is by definition wrong. Excess deaths is deaths beyond normal expectations. Everybody will die, but without Covid roughly ~180-245k fewer people would have died this year so far.

As for how to tackle Covid from a policy perspective, well, frankly I'm mixed on it. It's a very difficult problem to handle and I'm not envious of the policy makers who have to try. But to say it is an inconsequential illness is pretty disrespectful to those ~200k and their families.

Until I stop seeing articles like "man dies in motorcycle accident, COVID blamed," and such BS I'll look at that data with, apologies to Elvis, a suspicious mind.

No doubt it has caused deaths but those numbers are just a shell game of statistics.

 

[ThunderHorse]

Excess deaths are by definition deaths beyond what would normally be expected for the same time period. In other words if covid19 did not exist we would predict that 185-245k fewer people would be dead.

In other words, Covid is responsible for many thousands of deaths that otherwise would not occur during the same time period.

94% of deaths having comorbidity does not mean Covid is not responsible. It means that most people who die from Covid had other health issues. Those health issues can vary widely from people already on their deathbed to relatively common ailments like diabetes etc.

To say those people would have died anyway is by definition wrong. Excess deaths is deaths beyond normal expectations. Everybody will die, but without Covid roughly ~180-245k fewer people would have died this year so far.

As for how to tackle Covid from a policy perspective, well, frankly I'm mixed on it. It's a very difficult problem to handle and I'm not envious of the policy makers who have to try. But to say it is an inconsequential illness is pretty disrespectful to those ~200k and their families.

You do know people who've been murdered have been counted as COVID-19 deaths? Right? More than a few links in this thread. Comorbidities is only part of the data.

Me, I'm just gonna keep working on my fitness, eating good food, taking my vitamins. Time to live.

 

[Hungry_Dog]

Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the US, every year we're looking at several hundred thousand deaths. To me this means in this Nation we have a general health problem and should come to no surprise to anyone that with a roll of the dice many are effected when our homeostasis of Route 44 cups of Brawndo and pro-stress cultures are agitated.

 

[SpongeBob*24]

Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the US, every year we're looking at several hundred thousand deaths. To me this means in this Nation we have a general health problem and should come to no surprise to anyone that with a roll of the dice many are effected when our homeostasis of Route 44 cups of Brawndo and pro-stress cultures are agitated.

It's got what plants crave!!!!!

 

[Deleted member 15200]

@Devildoc That's not valid though because you're confusing mis-attirbution of deaths to covid with the concept of excess deaths. I'm not saying every single person who died above expectation did so because of Covid, but when you look at these numbers:

Deaths and Mortality

Data are for the U.S.

• Number of annual deaths: 2,813,503

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:

• Heart disease: 647,457
• Cancer: 599,108
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
• Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
• Diabetes: 83,564
• Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf

It paints a clearer picture. Particularly, it says that Covid directly and indirectly has almost certainly become the 3rd leading cause of death in this country for 2020.

I'll add the CDC's own words for further clarity on my point:

"Weekly counts of deaths from all causes were examined, including deaths due to COVID-19. As many deaths due to COVID-19 may be assigned to other causes of deaths (for example, if COVID-19 was not mentioned on the death certificate as a suspected cause of death), tracking all-cause mortality can provide information about whether an excess number of deaths is observed, even when COVID-19 mortality may be undercounted. These estimates can also provide information about deaths that may be indirectly related to COVID-19. For example, if deaths due to other causes may increase as a result of health care shortages due to COVID-19."

One instance of a cyclist dying being mislabeled is just statistical noise. When excess deaths are on the magnitude of 200k, they're not relevant.

 

[Devildoc]

@PineTree , covid-related numbers have been skewed since March. There's zero way to make any meaningful interpretation of the numbers.

Maybe suicide is up. Maybe people piercing their brains picking their nose are up. Maybe there is correlation and not causation. "Directly and indirectly." Give me a fucking break. They don't know.

Edited my post. I appreciate you may not agree with what I posted, and I likewise appreciate that you post resources and site your background. My frustration comes from having dealt with this since February in a medical capacity where I've been dealing with data and COVID. My institution was so disillusioned with the data from CDC and WHO and pretty much started ignoring their numbers by the end of March, beginning of April, going on our own internal data and that of a consortium between us and a couple other nearby hospitals and universities.

 

[compforce]

tracking all-cause mortality can provide information about whether an excess number of deaths is observed, even when COVID-19 mortality may be undercounted.

What about overcounted?

Some of the nation’s leading public health experts are raising a new concern in the endless debate over coronavirus testing in the United States: The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.

Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.

If this is accurate (I'd love to hear @Devildoc 's take on this) then those numbers are highly inflated, just like all of the COVID numbers have been. There are multiple accounts of healthcare professionals sending in samples that weren't actually swabbed and having positive results come back. Now this article is suggesting that between 70-80+ % of the positives may be due to the process of testing rather than the prevalence of the virus. How do we reconcile these?

 

[amlove21]

Man, I hate to be the positivity police here- but again, this is the type of shit I do like.

@PineTree this is just me as a dude. Please explore our vetting page. If you’re able to get vetted, that would be dope. PM me if you need anything.

Nothing to add, carry on.

 

[Deleted member 15200]

@Devildoc The main reason I posted about excess deaths in the first place is that it is specifically not a covid measurement. It's just an overall measurement of how many more people are dying than normal. If the number of excess deaths were a lot lower and could be reasonably attributed to other causes I would 100% agree with you. As has been pointed out on this thread, covid testing has a lot of issues and data has been hard to get a handle of.

But, I challenge you to come up with a better reason to explain why between 100k-250k Americans are dead who normally wouldn't be.

 

[SpitfireV]

Disagree with this premise, considering 94% of the deaths related had on average 2.6 comorbities, it's likely many of these people would have died without COVID-19 showing up from China.

I think it's pretty likely 100% of those people will have died anyway.

 

[Blizzard]

The US now has ~183,392 - 245,305 excess deaths for this year. That's pretty much all that needs to be said on the matter.

As previous posts indicate, there's plenty that can be said. The virus certainly is serious. But, again, we also need to keep some additional perspective...

That's ~7% increase in over previous years death totals, with most of the deaths occurring in older populations. Then we have the issues presented by others above when it comes to data quality. But perhaps more importantly, rates appear to be falling back to early outbreak levels, at least for now. While it's too early to say for certain, it would appear the gap/elevated death level is unlikely to continue.

 

[Hungry_Dog]

Something I haven't seen mentioned here, and if appropriate correct me if I'm wrong- is the misalignment (I would like a better word for it) of care in the beginning as we fully didn't understand publicly what we were dealing with. There are many articles citing the increase deaths in NY in patients put on ventilators; there was a huge stink about getting them etc; how do we know for certain, at least in this context, some of the deaths weren't caused BECAUSE of the ventilators for example. You can find many articles citing the danger of using ventilators in the first place, let alone when placed in care for a virus not fully understood.

Our lab here over the summer saw a massive increase coagulation testing(because of the noted Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation), inflammatory testing, and I believe we are part of the trial in using treated platelets in a therapeutic manner. Not to mention (anecdotally) that the IR peeps I've spoken to see blood clots within the lungs of patients that have tested negative for covid-19.

The ventilators for example are just one venue that could have contributed to issues within patients, I'm not going to get into pharmaceuticals because that's not my lane. I just feel it's important to note that we are obviously more informed now, and at least on the ground, everyone is doing their best. Covid isn't some monolothic thing that indiscriminately kills on its own, but there are a multitude of layers of causes for why excess deaths are the way they are ONLY looking at healthcare itself; fake counts or not.

Just my .02

 

[Devildoc]

More food for thought:

Per CDC, 6% of the 161,392 COVID deaths died from COVID as a 'standalone' (or 0.0000296% of the US population); the other 94% had 2 or greater comorbidities. 90% were over age 55.

A fly in the ointment in NC: 11% are under age 18, with 4 deaths (unknown if comorbidity).

Regarding additional deaths, the boomers are now really hitting their stride; 13% of the US pop is over 65. The US census reported in 2017 a growing 'bubble' of deaths that is not going to peak until the mid-2020s. I would think that a part of the death rate is simply from old age.

 

[Blizzard]

I'm curious to get an update on the Sturgis rally.

So many people were up in arms about it. No social distancing or masking. It's been 15/16 days since it wrapped up. Last I heard, they were 100+ (possibly as many as 160) cases in 8 states that could traced back to the rally; one serious that I know of and no deaths. There were reportedly 460,000 attendees. If we run with 160 out of 460K, that's only a .03% transmission rate!

Between this and the riots, there should have a lot of data to work with. Does it really support the ridiculousness we're going through? !