That sounds like a pretty wild conspiracy theory. Any basis for this belief?
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There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
341–350 of 489 posts
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#342Have we completely lost our ability to report at responsible scientists/engineers? There are no units on the y-axis of the subject graphs. Also 7m == 7 meters. 7M == 7 million. There are no legends for the color coding. This is absolutely the worst, most ambiguous (hence most confusing) presentation of data I have ever witnessed in my 20nyear career as an engineer. If the author can't at least present evidence for th…
Because it fits the narrative. Many people even on HN believe that a slightly misleading presentation is justified if it helps the greater cause. They forget that the price for that is erosion of trust, so when next time a really scary version of the virus shows up, people will dismiss "the scientists" because they fudged the numbers and misrepresented the data last time.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#343Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#344This has me a bit confused: I look at the stats on cases and deaths per capita across various U.S. states, including California (which was very locked down, at least in theory) and Florida (which was flippant towards risks of contagion), and many states in between. The per capita cases+deaths are nearly identical across many states with very different approaches. This left me really wondering which measures were and…
Assessing mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID‐19
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s why overall excess deaths are a better measure. You really can’t game them.
Not really. Excess deaths certainly are not entirely caused by the virus, so you still need to try to subdivide them somehow, which is once again a ripe opportunity for "gaming" / creative statistics.
But if you assume the main thing special about this year was the virus and strategies aimed at mitigating it, you can still compare overall outcomes between jurisdictions. If tight lockdowns decrease COVID deaths but increase other deaths enough to compensate then they didn’t achieve anything. It would be valuable to know the exact breakdown but you don’t have to.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
GP means in the US, where there was a 24% spike in roadway deaths per miles driven. Here's some more details: "The nonprofit National Safety Council estimates in a report issued Thursday that 42,060 people died in vehicle crashes in 2020, an 8% increase over 2019 and the first jump in four years. Plus, the fatality rate per 100 million miles driven spiked 24%, the largest annual percentage increase since the council…
He should have specified that, because we're talking global here. A 24% spike in the US is absolutely insane.
Remember, the 24% number is "deaths per miles driven", so it has 2 (potentially related) trends driving it: much fewer miles driven and more accidents overall.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#347Holy cow. This does massively underline how important the work of things like COVAX are in getting equitable global access to vaccines. We still need billions more doses manufactured, distributed and administered - it could take years and cost a fortune - and we should not lose our urgency or our focus.
Pfizer is projecting 250 million doses per month by December.
It will take years still at that rate, but they also have been doing a reasonable job of meeting and then increasing their projections.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about China itself?
China might be fine, or it might not be. But only a fool would trust CCP numbers.
There are a large number of Western people in China for business reasons, and major Western countries have diplomatic offices throughout China. The US has a Consulate General post in Wuhan itself.
That gives the West an independent source of information about what is going on in China. China can still fudge the numbers, but those independent observations place a limit on how far China can fudge without getting caught.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still, the vast majority of cases in California have been in the metropolitan areas that have also had the strongest restrictions.
Except these surrounding towns act as virus reservoirs for the large cities. That limits the effectiveness of restrictions. The “become COVID-19 carriers to own the libs” strategy kinda worked.
> strategy kinda worked.
Their man lost so it kinda didn't.
Re: There have been 7M-13M excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sincerely, I don't know. Almost all of the at risk population here has had at least a first shot. But the situation in Ontario has been pretty bad the past few weeks. But I don't follow the science closely enough. I hope they're making the right call, because it's really hard on the kids. I'm just glad my own little guy is not of school age yet, and in fact is young enough to be mostly oblivious to the whole thing.
Conveniently skipping over the occupied ICUs. How do you not know that our medical system was overwhelmed or that the rise in cases only reversed after we shut down schools both times in the last 4 months?
Surely that wasn’t the only tightened restriction or change in behavior during the case surge, though?
There are a lot of confounding variables in these analyses. It’s going to take years to tease them apart, and we may never truly know for certain in some cases.