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Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
11–20 of 387 posts
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#12This is anecdotal at best, but when my grandfather passed last May from COVID, his death certificate did not record the cause of death as COVID. He tested negative twice after his month long bought with it, but only lived for another few weeks until dying of respiratory failure. We were told that because he was not testing positive at the time of death, his cause of death could not be recorded as COVID. I thought cau…
Gets manipulated in the other direction too: financial incentives nudge hospitals to assign coronavirus as a cause of death if you had it when you died, even if it wasn't what actually killed you. I don't know if it's as blatant as "died in a car crash of coronavirus," but enough of my medical friends have mentioned it that I believe there's truth to it.
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#13It looks like Florida is two shades "better" than California in the diagram, which would put the total Florida death rate as better than California. That would be interesting because Florida did almost no lockdown.
How could that be?
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#14This is anecdotal at best, but when my grandfather passed last May from COVID, his death certificate did not record the cause of death as COVID. He tested negative twice after his month long bought with it, but only lived for another few weeks until dying of respiratory failure. We were told that because he was not testing positive at the time of death, his cause of death could not be recorded as COVID. I thought cau…
Medicare pays out 20% more to the hospital if a patient is Covid-19 positive. So there's actually a strong financial incentive to report every possible Covid-19 case in the US.
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#15In absolute number terms it's more deaths in total in the USA than the Spanish Flu (675k deaths total since it began), HIV (700k deaths total since it began) or any other pandemic. Population has increased so the US did lose a smaller percentage of population but on the other hand Spanish Flu didn't have a vaccine to stop it one year in. Hopefully enough of the population takes the vaccine now to stop this. Note this…
It was #3 in 2020 even though widespread testing only started in March. Seriously frightening stuff. Imagine if we went from zero heart disease or zero cancer deaths to present numbers in the span of one year...
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#16In absolute number terms it's more deaths in total in the USA than the Spanish Flu (675k deaths total since it began), HIV (700k deaths total since it began) or any other pandemic. Population has increased so the US did lose a smaller percentage of population but on the other hand Spanish Flu didn't have a vaccine to stop it one year in. Hopefully enough of the population takes the vaccine now to stop this. Note this…
>Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this.
Most of the downplaying I've seen has revolved around the idea that those who died would have, "died anyway" from some other ailment or that hospitals are finding any reason they can to attribute deaths to covid.
So, while you have a great argument, I doubt you'll change any minds because those who disagree flat out reject your premise.
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#17The organization that published these numbers apparently a. Doesn't know how to use certbot and b. Is primarily funded by organizations who are anything but impartial on the subject
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#18It looks like Florida is two shades "better" than California in the diagram, which would put the total Florida death rate as better than California. That would be interesting because Florida did almost no lockdown. How could that be?
Florida aggressively locked down visitor access to nursing homes pretty early on, which is where the vast majority of deaths happen.
Wearing masks on beaches and in restaurants etc may slightly impact the case count but really doesn't impact mortality in the same way that an outbreak in a care home does.
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#19In absolute number terms it's more deaths in total in the USA than the Spanish Flu (675k deaths total since it began), HIV (700k deaths total since it began) or any other pandemic. Population has increased so the US did lose a smaller percentage of population but on the other hand Spanish Flu didn't have a vaccine to stop it one year in. Hopefully enough of the population takes the vaccine now to stop this. Note this…
To add to this, looking strictly at deaths, neglects the long term affects and people with severe but none-fatal cases. Not to mention the capacity issues associated with Covid.
"cAsE fAtAliTy rAtE iS oNlY 1%" is a horrible metric to base any policy off of.
Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19
#20This isn't a "study", it's a statistical model. It reflects the assumptions put into it. To wit:
> Our analysis follows four key steps. First, for all locations where weekly or monthly all-cause mortality has been reported since the start of the pandemic, we estimate how much mortality increased compared to the expected death rate....Second, based on a range of studies and consideration of other evidence, we estimate the fraction of excess mortality that is from total COVID-19 deaths as opposed to the five other drivers that influence excess mortality. Third, we build a statistical model that predicts the weekly ratio of total COVID-19 deaths to reported COVID-19 deaths based on covariates and spatial effects. Fourth, we use this statistical relationship to predict the ratio of total to reported COVID-19 deaths in places without data on total COVID-19 deaths and then multiply the reported COVID-19 deaths by this ratio to generate estimates of total COVID-19 deaths for all locations.
And, what, you may ask, are the biases of the models' authors with regards to the percentage of excess mortality due to Covid itself? Excellent question:
> Deaths that are directly due to COVID-19 are likely underreported in many locations, particularly in settings where COVID-19 testing is in short supply. Most excess mortality is likely misclassified COVID-19 deaths.
> Given that there is insufficient evidence to estimate these contributions to excess mortality, for now we assume that total COVID-19 deaths equal excess mortality. For the reasons presented in this section, we believe that this is likely an underestimate.
As someone who has now spent the better part of his life creating statistical models, when you assume something is true, your model is likely to confirm your assumptions.
This is why statistical models are worthless without prospective validation. If you haven't shown that your assumptions are correct for the future, you're just making castles in the sky.