Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19 • Hacker News Board

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#221

Post by Mountain_Skies » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

ojbyrne wrote: post #102

Teknoman117 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... .

2. No there weren't. That was a rumor that no one has been able to find a single shred of evidence for. Just because the local news repeated a rumor they heard from a student doesn't make it factual. It's beyond pathetic that so many in the national news media repeated this and is yet another example why they cannot be trusted. Sensationalism, be it in modeling or journalism, is absolutely destroying trust in institutions and the medical community. Want to know why so many distrust the vaccine? Look at your own post to understand why.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alabama-covid-19-party-students...

https://www.wired.com/story/covid-parties-are-not-a-thing/

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#222

Post by anoncake » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #110

cronix wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Alive when? Right now? By that logic the Spanish Flu has retroactively become quite harmless. The important question is, how much earlier did someone die because of Covid. 2 weeks of life just aren't worth as much as 50 years.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#223

Post by knowaveragejoe » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

grumpyautist wrote: post #167

akamaka wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain in more detail? Who are the biased organizations who funded this publication?

From Wikipedia: IHME receives core grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation[60] and the state of Washington. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Inter-American Development Bank; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health; Medtronic Philanthropy; and the National Institute on Aging have also contributed funding…

Dismayed to see this kind of conspiracy BS on HN.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#224

Post by username90 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #156

maerF0x0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. I admit I'm the morbid one in the group, memento mori and all. But I think the real stat we should track is years of lost life expectancy. That's the only statistic that makes sense when doing cross disease examinations. Not speaking specifically about covid, but more generally, something which primarily kills young people is much bigger deal than som…

YLL is a horrifying metric because it values someone who is 20 over someone who is 60. The only argument I can see for its "usefulness" as a statistic is if you want to imply that the old are less useful than the young. This kind of statement about the bare utility of a human life is the same statement that underlies a lot of how we have treated the disabled or those on welfare in the past. And it only makes sense if…

Here is a choice for you:

1. You get killed at 20.

2. You get killed at 60.

Which option would you choose?

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#225

Post by akamaka » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

grumpyautist wrote: post #167

akamaka wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain in more detail? Who are the biased organizations who funded this publication?

From Wikipedia: IHME receives core grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation[60] and the state of Washington. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Inter-American Development Bank; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health; Medtronic Philanthropy; and the National Institute on Aging have also contributed funding…

Thank you for the clarification.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#226

Post by zhaksbs » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #75

nostromo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHO has been consistent about being anti-lockdown during all of Covid. There's limited evidence they work more than a short-term delay tactic and cause tremendous harm.

Explain China, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, and Korea. Not all of those countries are islands (The UK is one, and you may note that it's not on the list.) But all of those countries instituted short, hard lockdowns, and relaxed them after bringing local cases to zero. Around here, we institute half-assed lockdowns, that are lifted when enough people complain about them (only to come back, as cases surge). Maybe t…

China literally welded people in their homes. They probably lied about their numbers.

New Zeland, and Australia had few cases when they did lock down, and are islands.

Korea has a very disciplined population compared to the West.

Really you should be comparing the US to Europe. The EU didnt do much better, but was far more draconian. Or within the states.

But anyway, i never know if people are serious when they propose the China or Australian model. Those were brutal and Im glad to be voting for a constitutional amendment next week to limit the governor's lockdown authority.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#227

Post by HideousKojima » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

bsimpson wrote: post #12

Teknoman117 wrote: post #4

This 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.

There's at least one example of that I'm aware of:

https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/fox-35-investigates-questi...

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#228

Post by morelisp » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

nathancahill wrote: post #74

grumpyautist wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and it's a suspect one at best. Personally I wouldn't trust a stastical model from someone who advertises that they own the book "how to lie with statistics" and obviously used it

I mean that book is basically required reading for Statistics 101. Doesn't everyone have a copy?

A comment from a high school math teacher concerning that book (which yes, was commonplace to read even decades ago, even among high school AP students) has stuck with me: "It's definitely possible to lie with statistics, but wait until you see how much you can get away with without them!"

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#229

Post by notahacker » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #175

timr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> There are lots of other plausible alternative hypotheses. Please list them. We have data about deaths going back many decades. It's very safe to say that if in 2010 you made a prediction about the number of expected deaths in 2011, you would have been very close to the real number. Same if you had predicted the deaths for 2019 in 2018. Suddenly, after decades and decades of being almost perfect in your predictions,…

And that's the very beginning.

We also have plenty of time series data from effectively instituted lockdowns worldwide. Excess deaths rise prior to the lockdown, in line with but greater than reported COVID deaths. They continue rising until median COVID- time-to-death days after the start of lockdown. Then they fall, sharply, dipping below regular excess deaths (and tracking the fall in COVID deaths). That isn't a pattern that fits the "maybe some other factor like the lockdown itself caused the spike" hypothesis, and it is also the pattern that was predicted by the scientists advocating the lockdowns.

Sure, some deaths are caused by lockdown, but the evidence suggests a pattern of the deaths which have been[1] caused by lockdown being [more than] netted out by normal deaths prevented by lockdown.

Some days it's cold, and anthropogenic climate change models are just fancy math, but this doesn't make all climate hypotheses equally plausible

[1]there's a plausible argument lack of medical attention during lockdowns and/or long term economic consequences may have a significant death toll in future, but that doesn't affect the "excess deaths reported during COVID have matched COVID spikes evidence

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#230

Post by hervature » Fri, May 07, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

xkjkls wrote: post #184

hervature wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but given all the debate about COVID, we still don't have a number and agree a 1-to-1 is ridiculous. Policy makers need a number to convert lost time to death time. What are they using? It seems one side is using infinite and the other side is using 1-to-1. As with everything, the answer probably is probably somewhere in between the extremes.

I don't think one side is using infinity. The issue here is that lockdowns, if done effectively, don't have to last for a full year. Look at Australia. Look at New Zealand. They managed to lock down for substantially less than a year, get the disease under control, and resume life mostly as normal. The US was not, but that also needs to be included in the tradeoff. It wasn't obvious that applying enough pressure woul…

I don't know how people compare two isolated islands that are multi hour flights to any other nation to the USA with a straight face. Think of the backlash at even proposing locking the Mexico border. Also, Australia and New Zealand just broke their travel bubble, I don't know if that still constitutes as a "short lockdown" if you haven't been allowed to leave your country the entire time.

> It wasn't obvious that applying enough pressure wouldn't have prevented the uncontrolled explosion that we now have to deal with.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but I think we agree. Nothing about this pandemic has been obvious.