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Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

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Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#101

Post by pelasaco »

hervature wrote: post #65

As others have pointed out the death toll from COVID is truly astounding. Get your vaccines if you can. That being said, excess mortality is not purely from COVID. There are widely reported drops in treatment for various cancers [1,2,3]. The link between COVID and diabetes is also very complicated and will take years to figure out what happened. The grim bright side is that we've seemed to hit peak excess deaths and…

Isn't "total mortality due to COVID-19" different than "total mortality from COVID-19"? As I understand the cancer treatments were aborted due COVID-19, therefore, more person died due to COVID-19 but not necessarily from COVID-19... does it make sense?

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#102

Post by ojbyrne »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #60
ddingus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the people I know who died, did so after traveling to Florida where they did catch covid, return home and died 40 some days later on a ventilator. Maybe travel in and out of Florida is fluid enough to explain it to some degree.

> did so after traveling to Florida to catch covid uh, what? I don't understand why anyone would willingly try to catch a disease... (get your kids the chickenpox vaccine, don't do those chickenpox parties if those still exist. The vaccine drastically reduces the occurrence shingles later in life. I'm a bit envious that my younger sisters got it, but I got chickenpox as a child. Seeing it flare up in my dad every 18…

1. I think that was just poor phrasing by the parent.

2. There were some "get covid" parties at University of Alabama (probably others): https://abc3340.com/news/local/university-of-alabama-respond...

3. There are shingles vaccines: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/zostavax/in....

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#103

Post by whimsicalism »

hervature wrote: post #97
whimsicalism wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the former, if someone is actually willing to listen to evidence, you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death (~15).

I believe the counterargument is to that what is worse, 1/15 of the population losing 15 years or the entire population losing 1 year keeping in mind that 1 year in your prime is probably worth more than 1 year in your old age. These numbers are not COVID specific, just going off your ~15. For COVID numbers, even with 1M deaths, that would be 1/330 (US population) losing on average ~15 years vs. everyone losing almos…

Numerous problems.

1. The current death toll is with the existing lockdowns. There are good reasons to think that without (especially the early) lockdowns the death toll could have been way higher.

2. Being dead for 1 year cannot be equivalently compared to being socially distant for 1 year (not 2). Is that not obvious?

3. This is before we get into life long disability, etc. due to covid. I know someone whose parent had a covid caused stroke, essentially ending their existence as the person they were before.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#104

Post by symlinkk »

vkou wrote: post #86
yalogin wrote: post #49

For me its shocking that we as a population have become so numb to so much death around us. Wonder what it says about society in general. Would be fascinating to read any research reports on that aspect.

That's because our media has a gentleman's agreement to not show it to us. If the news were running 24/7 with reels of disaster porn - images of people dying in ICUs, or struggling to breathe and unable to get treatment, we'd have been taking this problem seriously last year. Instead, it's this abstract, sanitized problem that only happens to other people. What you don't see on the TV isn't real.

Which is why LiveLeak was so great, you got to see what death actually was.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#105

Post by hervature »

pelasaco wrote: post #101
hervature wrote: post #65

As others have pointed out the death toll from COVID is truly astounding. Get your vaccines if you can. That being said, excess mortality is not purely from COVID. There are widely reported drops in treatment for various cancers [1,2,3]. The link between COVID and diabetes is also very complicated and will take years to figure out what happened. The grim bright side is that we've seemed to hit peak excess deaths and…

Isn't "total mortality due to COVID-19" different than "total mortality from COVID-19"? As I understand the cancer treatments were aborted due COVID-19, therefore, more person died due to COVID-19 but not necessarily from COVID-19... does it make sense?

I think that's exactly the criticism of this paper. They are precisely saying "total mortality due to COVID-19" = "total mortality from COVID-19". From the paper:

> for now we assume that total COVID-19 deaths equal excess mortality

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#106

Post by mypalmike »

grawprog wrote: post #41

>the discrepancy between reported deaths and analyses of death rates compared to expected death rates, sometimes referred to as “excess mortality,” suggests that the total COVID-19 death rate is many multiples larger than official reports. So...not as many people died as we thought were going to so we're now just going to arbitrarily say any excess death was a covid death just to make sure the numbers look like what…

Comparison of expected versus actual outcomes is a reliable method to estimate the overall effect of a new input. Can you specifically point out how such analysis constitutes "shenanigans"?

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#107

Post by allturtles »

cronix wrote: post #95
mywittyname wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Is "pointing out" data considered downplaying? ~5% of deaths had "covid only" while the remaining 95% had other factors with the average having 4 other factors. From the CDC: > Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The number of deaths that mention one or more of the conditions indicated is shown for all…

Many of those 'additional causes" are things caused by COVID-19.

e.g. per that table, out of 560K deaths coded as COVID-19, 257K were also coded as "influenza or pneumonia". That's because Covid causes pneumonia.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#108

Post by timr »

newacct583 wrote: post #100
timr wrote: post #20

This 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…

Surely you'd agree that "2020 excess deaths are going to be predominantly covid" is a very reasonable hypothesis though, right? And you agree that "2020 has an extraordinarily high excess death rate", because that part is easily measured data, right? Basically: your response seems a bit nitpicky to me, which tells me that perhaps you're starting from a perspective where you're assuming the article is wrong and lookin…

> Surely you'd agree that "2020 excess deaths are going to be predominantly covid" is a very reasonable hypothesis though, right? And you agree that "2020 has an extraordinarily high excess death rate", because that part is easily measured data, right?

I don't know the answer, and neither do you. But given that the top-line is asserting that there are 900k excess deaths due to Covid, the choice of assumption here is not some minor detail. There are lots of other plausible alternative hypotheses.

Aassuming X, then building a model that shows X is true, is not validating a hypothesis.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#109

Post by nkozyra »

cronix wrote: post #95
mywittyname wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Is "pointing out" data considered downplaying? ~5% of deaths had "covid only" while the remaining 95% had other factors with the average having 4 other factors. From the CDC: > Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The number of deaths that mention one or more of the conditions indicated is shown for all…

> Is "pointing out" data considered downplaying? ~5% of deaths had "covid only" while the remaining 95% had other factors with the average having 4 other factors.

Is this a useful metric, though? If covid is the catalyst to cause death with preexisting conditions, is not covid the actual cause of death?

Covid in these cases is an acute condition that is the direct cause of death.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#110

Post by TameAntelope »

cronix wrote: post #95
mywittyname wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Is "pointing out" data considered downplaying? ~5% of deaths had "covid only" while the remaining 95% had other factors with the average having 4 other factors. From the CDC: > Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The number of deaths that mention one or more of the conditions indicated is shown for all…

Yes, it's considered downplaying to try and attribute these people's deaths to something that didn't kill them.

If the answer to the question of, "Would this person be alive were it not for COVID?" is "Yes", then COVID killed that person.

You should be able to be fragile and still survive, that isn't an excuse to let someone die.

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