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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

#231

Post by maerF0x0 »

nonameiguess wrote: post #207
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…

If you're going to get super utilitarian about it, strict years of life lost is not the best measure. As nearly all of human history proved out, very young children, especially infants, are particularly easy to replace. It's losing people in the prime years that really hurts a society, why for instance the US Civil War and the two World Wars were so terrible, where huge regions lost a majority of 20-40 year old men.…

interestingly i take it more from an intergenerational contract that at some point it's the duty of the old to senesce and optimize for the good of subsequent generations.

As I understand it this intergenerational contract used to be quite strong as people would see that previous generations invested in them and as a pay it forward sort of mechanism, they would in turn pay it forward to generations that proceed them .

I suppose there was some "take care of me when I'm old" in the intergenerational contract too, but I understood that as secondary to the propagation aspect...

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#233

Post by maerF0x0 »

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…

see my comment here for a different angle than just pure utility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080048

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#234

Post by mrwh »

mywittyname wrote: post #16
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #2

In 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.

The "well they had comorbidities" argument does rather miss that after middle age that's true of pretty much everyone.

Or to take me as an example: I have asthma. That probably counts as a comorbidity, so if I die of covid, should that count as a covid death or not? I'm 42, I can reasonably expect another 42 years of life. Most chronic illnesses don't kill you.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#235

Post by grumpyautist »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #223
grumpyautist wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about what I said was "conspiracy bs"? These are the organizations that fund the group. They are invested in vaccine sales, and some of them have very questionable ethics. Again from Wikipedia:

"Public-sector workers and academics public health have criticized GAVI, and other global health initiatives (GHIs) with private-sector actors, saying that they have neither the democratic legitimacy nor the capacity to decide on public health agendas. Private donors often find it easier to exert influence through public-private partnerships like GAVI than through the traditional public sector. There is also criticism that staff at GHIs are often recruited directly from elite educational institutions, and have no experience in health care systems, especially those in poorer countries. Some WHO officials have privately criticized GAVI for infringing and weakening the WHO's mandates"

And that is just a small portion of the issues with that organization. GAVI is an organization that promotes sales of the industry's newest vaccines, not promoting vaccination as a whole.

"In 2012, the first MSF "The right shot" report criticized GAVI for focussing on funding expensive new vaccines and neglecting to give children cheap old ones. "Twenty percent of the world’s children aren’t even getting the basic vaccines", MSF's vaccine policy adviser said.[11] MSF criticized the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a WHO global collaboration of which GAVI is listed as a leader, as flawed for failing to help those 20%, which is some 19 million children.[28]"

And this is just complaints against one of the organizations.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#237

Post by tester756 »

grumpyautist wrote: post #36
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…

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

>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

why?

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#238

Post by klyrs »

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…

> keeping in mind that 1 year in your prime is probably worth more than 1 year in your old age.

I keep seeing statements like this, and I must disagree. My mom's retired, nearly 80, and having an absolute blast living her life. At her prime, she was the primary wage-earner, had two kids, and never had a moment to herself. Her quality of life now is much better than when she was "in her prime". She's got a bunch of friends in the same boat.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#239

Post by antibuddy »

teachingassist wrote: post #220
antibuddy wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed (late summer last year) that especially age group 25-44 is/was affected in the US with a +25% (excess) mortality YoY. It is not entirely unusual that diseases affect different countries differently; However I found it peculiar.

I suspect this is the same in other countries. 25-44 year olds don't usually die (typical mortality is approx 0.1%), so +25% represents a relatively small number in absolute terms.

At least in Germany[0] and Sweden I found nothing like that.

[0]: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoel...

edit: I found no English version unfortunately, but at least the Excel file which is easier to work with.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#240

Post by rhino369 »

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…

Korea didn't have national lockdowns and I don't think China did either. Vietnam's lock-downs were all harsh, but extremely short (2 weeks).

The common denominator in all covid success cases seems to be an effective and strong contract tracing and quarantine protocol. That is the tried and true method used to defeat outbreaks.

If you have a good contract tracing program, a short-hard lockdown can be used to delay the outbreak while your tracers find and isolate the infected.

But without an effective contract tracing program (and I'm not talking about some bullshit smartphone app, but public health contract tracers with the power to actually do something), the lockdown is just a delay tactic.

Even if we got down to 0 cases in April 2020 in the USA, the virus would work its way back in within weeks, if not days. Without a tracing program that works, we'd be back to ten thousand cases in a few months.

All those countries have tight border controls. We get hundreds of thousands of illegal border crosses ever year. We'd have to deploy the military along the Mexican border and probably Canada too.

I don't think a single state has really tried to ramp up contract tracing efforts to the required levels.

And Australia had a several month long lockdown to get defeat a relatively small, isolated breakout. The bigger the outbreak the longer the lockdown is needed. And the longer the lockdown, the less severe it can realistically be. I accepted "don't have any social visits" for 6 weeks, but I wouldn't comply if they asked for 6 months. You can close factories for a couple weeks, but not for 6 months.

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