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Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

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Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#411
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anchoring like that is a problem when it's used to dismiss something: "Eh, more people die from fentanyl, so X isn't so bad" . Which disregards that X may be a new source of increased deaths, not to mention that when X == COVID, the methods needed to mitigate the risk are antithetical to a mindset of "it's no big deal" because that mindset pushes back against taking even some minimal precuations. So, anchoring can he…

>"Eh, more people die from fentanyl, so X isn't so bad" The increase in deaths is being driven by lockdown/social isolation so it looks more like medical triage. Who do you save, upperclass/baby boomers who generally don't have these problems or disenfranchised young?

>Who do you save, upperclass/baby boomers who generally don't have these problems or disenfranchised young? I guess we know the answer to that, not that anyone in the latter group had any doubt before we ran the experiment.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#412

> "The CDC weekly death counts, which reflect the information on death certificates and so have a lag of up to eight weeks or longer, show that for the week ending Nov. 6, there were far fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago – 195 verses 336 – but more deaths from other causes – 1,350 versus 1,319." So last year more covid deaths (particularly among the elderly), but while those numbers have de…

Within my brothers circle of friends / former friends etc, amongst those that participate in recreational drug use, there have been a crazy number of Fentanyl related deaths. They're all between the ages of 25 - 30. I can't help but wonder how much this has an impact.

At least the people you know are rational enough to admit it.

A tangential relative died a couple of months ago from a drug overdose. Her immediate family tells everyone she died from the COVID vaccine.

Apparently now it's a thing among families who can't come to grips with a drug death to blame the new vaccines. I wonder if this is where the conspiracy theorists get their ammunition.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#413

Another data point that the cure for the pandemic has been worse than the disease.

Well guess we have to build a time machine and run an A/B test where we don't do any of the COVID-19 measures to have a fair comparison, no?

It's called a long-term study. B is the placebo group. The Pfizer vaccine was rolled out after a two-month study instead of the usual 5-10 years. Slide 12 of this document [1] shows an increase in death following the Pfizer inoculation. The Pfizer vaccine is causing acute myocarditis in people under the age of 50. This is causing people to collapse months later when the heart is put under strain with seemingly no symptoms. But don't listen to me, I'm just a crazy conspiracy theorist. In fact, go ahead and trust science and get yourself a booster shot.

[1] https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads...

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m so sorry. My father-in-law has had his “elective” surgery to deal with a hernia cancelled twice due to hospital overcapacity, and all we can do is pray that Germany’s current restrictions will have kept the numbers low enough for his current appointment this week and likely follow up procedure to deal with tachycardia to happen. They’re not even talking about rescheduling the hernia surgery anytime soon - he’s ma…

I don’t disagree but I think we should also be demanding more capacity from our hospitals and maybe just maybe demanding actual universal healthcare. It’s so bizarre to me that that’s not even on the table but it’s because most just assume we have to have a for-profit medical system.

Hospitals build out capacity based on projections of need. So they look at the population of their catchment area, other hospitals, demographics of the locals, and calculate that they’ll need about X icu beds / maternity rooms etc etc and then build in a small overcapacity for surges.

If they routinely overbuilt then cost would go up even more. I think this approach is reasonable for any business,* whether private or public hospital.

The Covid surge isn’t something you can plan for, nor could you really build ICU capacity quickly enough for.

Also there’s a systems issue: the ICU pressure shouldn’t even exist to the degree it does as we have a “defense in depth”: vaccination. But for some reason people aren’t using that defense, which simply makes things worse for the rest of us.

* not getting into the cost issues in general, just addressing your specific comment.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#415
post #152

> "The CDC weekly death counts, which reflect the information on death certificates and so have a lag of up to eight weeks or longer, show that for the week ending Nov. 6, there were far fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago – 195 verses 336 – but more deaths from other causes – 1,350 versus 1,319." So last year more covid deaths (particularly among the elderly), but while those numbers have de…

It's strange that this article doesn't actually mention the number of deaths for each year. They only mention the 40% increase for the younger demographic and the source says "the increase in deaths represents huge, huge numbers". Let's assume deaths for older people haven't changed so the increase is entirely among the younger group. x: younger y: older 1.4x + y = 1350 x + y = 1319 0.4x = 31 x = 77.5 (younger 2020)…

It could be due to random perturbations in the small data size. Like if 10 people died last year, and 14 people died this year, deaths are up 40%, but the 4 extra deaths could be random. You'd have to look at a long trend to infer meaning from such small data. But I'm not sure how big the data is in this case.

Something similar happened in my town when I saw a huge-looking spike in a graph of covid deaths. But when I looked closer, deaths had spiked from 0 to 3 on a particular day, and the average is 0.3/day. So that crazy looking spike is probably meaningless over a longer time window.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within my brothers circle of friends / former friends etc, amongst those that participate in recreational drug use, there have been a crazy number of Fentanyl related deaths. They're all between the ages of 25 - 30. I can't help but wonder how much this has an impact.

Correct! “ The synthetic and highly addictive drug has claimed more lives than COVID-19, auto crashes, gun violence, cancer and suicide in the year 2020.” https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-deat...

A reminder: tobacco use kills 7x as many people every day, week, month, and year as opiates in the USA.

If opiate deaths are a problem, tobacco ones are a 7x larger problem.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#417
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m so sorry. My father-in-law has had his “elective” surgery to deal with a hernia cancelled twice due to hospital overcapacity, and all we can do is pray that Germany’s current restrictions will have kept the numbers low enough for his current appointment this week and likely follow up procedure to deal with tachycardia to happen. They’re not even talking about rescheduling the hernia surgery anytime soon - he’s ma…

I assume your opinion is "more vaccinated people => less load on hospitals", but this article hints it could be the opposite.

The article says no such thing, and in fact doesn’t even address that issue.

The closest is the following: “It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”

The person quoted isn’t commenting on hospitals at all. For example my uncle doesn’t have COVID on his death certificate but his doctor says that his case was simple enough that he could have been saved had he been able to be admitted.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#418
post #76
post #6

I'm actually surprised it is not higher. For 40-64 year old in the US, the annual chance of death is about half a percent (before covid) so a 40% increase is still a very low mortality rate. https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data/deathrates/index.php?stat...

I’m surprised it is as high as you claim! You’re saying that for that age group, in a given year, the chances are 1 in 200 of dying? That seems like pretty bad odds on something that is literally life and death.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html confirms that. In the US, it's about 1 in 400 for men at 40, 1 in 600 for women; at 50 it's 1 in 200 for men and 1 in 300 for women; and at 60 it's 1 in 90 for men, 1 in 150 for women. About 17% of US men, and 11% of US women, who make it to 40 are dead before 66. These are all pre-covid rates (from 02017).

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#420

> "The CDC weekly death counts, which reflect the information on death certificates and so have a lag of up to eight weeks or longer, show that for the week ending Nov. 6, there were far fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago – 195 verses 336 – but more deaths from other causes – 1,350 versus 1,319." So last year more covid deaths (particularly among the elderly), but while those numbers have de…

"1,350 versus 1,319"

Without knowing anything else, I seriously doubt that is statistically significant.

The normal pre-COVID ICU bed occupancy rate was somewhere near 57-82% (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3840149/). 54% is quite low. I suspect that the bar for getting into an ICU bed has been raised by the number of COVID patients.

BTW, Indiana has ~1,940 ICU beds (https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/indiana-releases-specific...). In numbers, that means

* ~173 are unoccupied,

* ~718 are occupied by COVID patients, and

* ~1048 are occupied by non-COVID patients.

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