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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

#331

Post by mcguire »

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.

That's one reason to look at excess mortality. The number of people who would have "died anyway" this year would be pretty similar to the number who died last year.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#332

Post by newacct583 »

fastball wrote: post #327
newacct583 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! So rather than try to puzzle out this undecidable proposition for nearly a million individual deaths, let's just look at aggregate statistics. Did more people die on the whole during the pandemic than we would normally expect? Does that line up with a model that they probably died from covid? And... that's exactly what the linked article is doing. And yeah, it turns out that all these people (on balance) wou…

The linked article seems to be including suicide as a death resulting from COVID, when the increase in suicides is far more likely to be caused by our response to COVID , not having COVID. It is definitely not only looking at whether people would have died sans covid in their system .

You think there were a half million excess suicides in the US due to our response to covid? Again, this is just nitpicking at an article that supports a (very obvious) conclusion you find politically inconvenient.

As to whether a suicide due to pandemic-induced depression "counts" as being "caused by the pandemic" or not, isn't exactly the kind of confounding effect you railed against above? Isn't the solution, again, to not demand that we micro-classify every death and simply look at the external effects we can measure?

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#333

Post by auser1443231 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #322

Compare 900k dead from COVID-19 (so far) to U.S. deaths in: - Vietnam[1]: 58 k - World War Two[2]: 407 k - World War One[3]: 117 k and due to the huge numbers of people in the U.S. who are refusing to get vaccinated, wear masks, or participate in social distancing, the U.S. deaths from COVID-19 are probably far from over. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_war [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II…

900k people did not die from COVID-19. This "model" is predicting deaths related to the response to COVID-19 (deaths to to increase drug usage, missed cancer screenings, etc.).

The second paragraph of the linked article clearly states this.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#334

Post by pbreit »

joshuamorton wrote: post #312
pbreit wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excess deaths could easily be attributed to non-covid factors like Alzheimer’s. Suggesting the US had 900k covid deaths is ridiculous. Only 1 of the 6 considered factors lists covid as a direct cause.

> Excess deaths could easily be attributed to non-covid factors like Alzheimer’s. Why would there suddenly be an 100% YoY increase in the number of Alzheimers deaths?

Hospitals and doctors were basically not handling any non-covid patients.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#335

Post by spekcular »

timr wrote: post #323
spekcular wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just ignorant of the relevant statistical methods, but how do you suggest models be validated prospectively ? All the model validation techniques I'm aware of come after the model is fit on the data (or a subset of it), like testing against a holdout set, or k-fold cross-validation, or checking R^2.

> testing against a holdout set Not just a holdout set -- a holdout set of prospective data , where you actually predict the future, blindly, and see how you do. Obviously, you have to wait a little while to gather such data before you make big claims with your model. Doesn't mean you get to skip it. It's not even clear to me that the authors did a cross-validation here, or even bothered to fit the free parameters of…

What is the mathematical difference between testing against a holdout set of data collected at the same time as the data used to fit the model, and a holdout set collected in the future? I'm in total agreement that avoiding, e.g., overfitting is a good thing – but what work is prospectivity doing here?

Also, if I understand correctly, none of the modeling done in standard texts such as Gelman et al.'s Bayesian Data Analysis involves prospective validation under your definition. Should we then classify the examples in that book as "mathematical fairy tales"? This seems like a fairly strict standard!

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#336

Post by TameAntelope »

fastball wrote: post #326
TameAntelope wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can use deaths-above-replacement (among other things) to determine how many more people died than normal from all causes, and then whittle down the obviously-not-from-contracting-covid deaths from there. The submission goes into very specific detail about how they did this, and they account for many of the potential confounders related to doing this analysis. I believe we can be much more precise than you're givin…

It is of immense value to say this when you have people in this very thread saying we might as well count everyone who had COVID as a death from COVID. Also one of us is confused, and I don't think it is me. From what I've gleaned from this article, the 900,000 figure is not (as you say) "determining if contracting COVID was the direct cause of someone's death", but rather trying to figure out how many people would h…

"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."

I think this is the correct way to think about this problem, as it is likely to be an underestimate, rather than an overestimate.

In other words, counting suicides probably doesn't matter, as the number is very low. The paper says as much: "The main potential increases in excess mortality due to deferred care and increases in drug overdose and depression are hard to quantify at this point or are of a much smaller magnitude."

The paper overall goes into very great detail about what was and wasn't included and why, which is vastly more rigorous than what you seem to be presenting, which is effectively throwing up your hands and saying, "we'll never know!"

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#337

Post by worik »

Awful.

So many commenters arguing about the accuracy of the statistical models used to reach the 900,000 dead figure.

Missing the terrible, tragic, point. Too many people have died (and too many been disabled - for each death about 10 get "Long Covid") It did not have to be like this.

This is/was a tragedy. There have been way too many deaths. Some places did much worse than others - perhaps it is time to start thinking about, and discussing that?

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#338

Post by rhino369 »

vkou wrote: post #272
rhino369 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They didn't have national lockdowns, and neither did the US. They had regional lockdowns early in the pandemic. The US... Had a patchwork of half-assed regional lockdowns, that came weeks late. > 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. The overwhelming majority o…

I’m not trying to blame illegal immigrants for our pandemic. They didn’t cause it and I really doubt they made it appreciably worse. Like you said, we didn’t even have restrictions on anyone.

But in my hypothetical where we got to where NZ and AZ are right now (no covid in the community), and quarantine controlled entries, uncontrolled border crossings would 1000% bring in new cases. My point is you need to seal your borders nearly 100% to pull off what NZ and Az do.

And some of it’s a law of large numbers issue. If there is a 1/10,000 chance covid makes it through border quarantine, then if we have 50X as many crossings, we’ll need 50X as many mini-lockdowns. At some point it becomes impractical.

I don’t think it’s fair to say “lockdowns work” when you really mean “lockdowns work at the very start of an outbreak when paired with a strong contract tracing, quarantine, and border sealing.”

I think there is a point of no return at which you cannot lockdown/trace your way back to zero because the virus is everywhere is large numbers.

Total speculation, but I think the US would have had to implement the NZ plan + military on the borders + internal restrictions on travel to different metro areas in Feb. 2020 to have really successfully avoided Covid.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#339

Post by worik »

neither_color wrote: post #254
vkou wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with the last point and I don't think it's a bad thing. I'm against lockdowns period. I'm not against vaccines, not against masks, but I don't want this administration, the last administration, or any other to have the power to put us on indefinite house arrest. This IS a hill I wont budge from. With China, we don't have enough information to make the claim that they under-reported deaths. If you CTRL-F China…

Golly. If that is a hill you will not budge from it may be a hill you die on.

All the cherry picking data in the world will not help you if you get sick.

I am really sorry that some abstract principal becomes a hill to die on.

Re: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19

#340

Post by joshuamorton »

pbreit wrote: post #334
joshuamorton wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Excess deaths could easily be attributed to non-covid factors like Alzheimer’s. Why would there suddenly be an 100% YoY increase in the number of Alzheimers deaths?

Hospitals and doctors were basically not handling any non-covid patients.

Alzeimer's currently doesn't have any effective treatments, so I'd repeat the question: how would the fatality rate from Alzheimer's double year over year?
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