Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

www150.statcan.gc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 139 posts

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#51

Post by graeme »

tptacek wrote: post #7
amatecha wrote: post #3

Ah, this is the perfect summary to explain to people when they ask "why are you still wearing a mask? COVID is over" or similar queries invalidating my caution around this virus. Worth noting is it was the 4th-leading cause of death in 2020 and 2021. Not sure why this is being downvoted into oblivion, as I regularly get some hassle from people about my strict adherence to wearing a mask indoors around people, and the…

People shouldn't bother you about wearing a mask, or bother storekeepers who request patrons mask, but a reason to push back on state-mandated masking isn't that COVID isn't serious (it clearly is), but rather that the empirical evidence for masking, especially vs. the new strains, is quite weak

>the empirical evidence for masking, especially vs. the new strains, is quite weak

If you're wearing an N95 or KN95 the filtration efficacy is quite high. Most of the mask studies looked at whether mask policies lowered covid.

If you wear a mask in class but then take it off in the cafeteria or outside of school, the mask no longer has an effect.

If, however, you wear a mask with high filtration efficacy while outside of the house, that's a different story. To my knowledge we have no challenge trial of people wearing such a mask when exposed to an infectious agent.

It is folly to ignore the physical mechanism of such masks when reasoning about them, and defaulting to only considering the studies we have, which simply cannot measure efficacy when the mask is worn.

This study on parachutes is a good analogue: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#53

Post by wk_end »

seattle_spring wrote: post #8

Since it’s inevitable for someone to pop in and breathlessly claim these numbers are falsely inflated, here’s some light reading in preparation: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debunking-the-fal... https://www.aha.org/news/blog/2020-11-02-aha-continues-debun... https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2020/11/07/how-covid... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2772693 https://www.factcheck.org…

Just took a quick glance but these appear to be about the US, whereas this post is about Canada. Am I missing something?

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#54

Post by transcriptase »

chownie wrote: post #22
transcriptase wrote: post #6

[flagged]

If you're going to make these claims could you source them?

Ok

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6212510

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6624173

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/coronavirus/2022/3/2/1_5801...

There are plenty more articles about it. This isn’t a Covid denier conspiracy theory or antivax narrative, it was widely reported on throughout 2022 that people were operating under very different definitions of what counts and that some provinces/networks/hospitals/physicians were erring on the side of caution and calling everything short of suicide a Covid death. Quite a few revised their numbers once the media covered it, which is good, but whether that was only reflected on dashboards or was revised downstream I’m not entirely sure.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#55

Post by Eumenes »

wk_end wrote: post #49
Eumenes wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the same thing in regards to how the CDC lumps suicide into "gun violence" deaths but don't blame sleeping pills, ropes, driving cars off bridges, or whatever OTC drug one can buy to reach the same conclusion. Weaponizing data is a government statisticians job.

Admittedly I'm just guessing here, but I strongly suspect that suicide by OTC drugs are indeed counted as drug overdoses by government statisticians, which seems like it would be the correct analogy?

Looks like they only have a certain set of drugs related to overdose deaths

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

> Drug overdose deaths are identified using underlying cause-of-death codes from the Tenth Revision of ICD (ICD–10): X40–X44 (unintentional), X60–X64 (suicide), X85 (homicide), and Y10–Y14 (undetermined). Drug overdose deaths involving selected drug categories are identified by specific multiple cause-of-death codes. Drug categories presented include: heroin (T40.1); natural opioid analgesics, including morphine and codeine, and semisynthetic opioids, including drugs such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and oxymorphone (T40.2); methadone, a synthetic opioid (T40.3); synthetic opioid analgesics other than methadone, including drugs such as fentanyl and tramadol (T40.4); cocaine (T40.5); and psychostimulants with abuse potential, which includes methamphetamine (T43.6). Opioid overdose deaths are identified by the presence of any of the following multiple cause-of-death codes: opium (T40.0); heroin (T40.1); natural opioid analgesics (T40.2); methadone (T40.3); synthetic opioid analgesics other than methadone (T40.4); or other and unspecified narcotics (T40.6). This latter category includes drug overdose deaths where ‘opioid’ is reported without more specific information to assign a more specific ICD–10 code (T40.0–T40.4) (4,5). Among deaths with an underlying cause of drug overdose, the percentage with at least one drug or drug class specified is defined as that with at least one ICD–10 multiple cause-of-death code in the range T36–T50.8. Two additional categories were added based on CDC’s Opioid Overdose Indicator Support Toolkit (6): drug overdose deaths involving natural, semi-synthetic, or synthetic opioids, including methadone (T40.2–T40.4); drug overdose deaths involving natural and semi-synthetic opioids, and methadone (T40.2–T40.3). These new categories, which are a combination of existing categories, are not displayed on the default figure to facilitate ease of display of the main drug categories, but are accessible through the drop-down box that allows for selection of specific drug categories.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#56

Post by graphe »

Animats wrote: post #11

Current stats for US:[1] Hospital admissions are up to 3x the August-September low. Deaths are way down, though. The vaccines really do work against deaths, and the newer variants are less lethal. Understanding of long COVID at the cellular level is just beginning, but there is progress.[2] [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklyhospi... [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278…

> The vaccines really do work against deaths, and the newer variants are less lethal.

Non sequitur with no evidence. New variants being less lethal is the only consideration. Sweden famously had no lockdown, and the total death rate (feb2020-nov2023) is 25,590 despite no vaccines and no lockdown when it was most lethal.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#57

Post by naasking »

amatecha wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People shouldn't bother you about wearing a mask, or bother storekeepers who request patrons mask, but a reason to push back on state-mandated masking isn't that COVID isn't serious (it clearly is), but rather that the empirical evidence for masking, especially vs. the new strains, is quite weak

Well, first off I'm going to say "citation needed", but secondly, I haven't had a single transmissible illness since I started wearing KN95 whenever I'm around people indoors. This includes going to crowded markets, trans-continental flights, a recent concert... Of course, wearing some flimsy loose thing that barely even covers your face (like those "surgical" masks that are typically handed out) is certainly going t…

> I haven't had a single transmissible illness since I started wearing KN95 whenever I'm around people indoors

You mean you haven't gotten ill since you started being hyperparanoid about getting ill? Sure, that's not really surprising. Tying the result specifically to the masking itself is still speculative though, as would be generalizing your specific case to the whole population, eg. as you say, "decently fitting N95" is probably key, but how many are going to be that vigilant?

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#58

Post by tptacek »

graeme wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People shouldn't bother you about wearing a mask, or bother storekeepers who request patrons mask, but a reason to push back on state-mandated masking isn't that COVID isn't serious (it clearly is), but rather that the empirical evidence for masking, especially vs. the new strains, is quite weak

>the empirical evidence for masking, especially vs. the new strains, is quite weak If you're wearing an N95 or KN95 the filtration efficacy is quite high. Most of the mask studies looked at whether mask policies lowered covid. If you wear a mask in class but then take it off in the cafeteria or outside of school, the mask no longer has an effect. If, however, you wear a mask with high filtration efficacy while outsid…

N95 vs. KN95 seems like an instructive example: people equate the two based on the effectiveness of the filtering media, but the salient difference is in the attachment mechanism --- most KN95s are ear-loops, and don't achieve especially tight coverings (similarly: the reuse concerns about N95s are less that the filter media can't be "recharged" or whatever, but rather that the elastic gives out).

At any rate: masks as worn in the real world seem pretty performative, for a variety of reasons.

If you're wearing them carefully, that's great, and I appreciate it. Nobody should be messing with you regardless.

You can look epidemiologically at this stuff and see that states with laxer regulations fared pretty well in the early COVID years, and appear to have fallen off only with the introduction of vaccines, which really seem like the high-order bit of COVID control.

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#59

Post by seattle_spring »

wk_end wrote: post #53
seattle_spring wrote: post #8

Since it’s inevitable for someone to pop in and breathlessly claim these numbers are falsely inflated, here’s some light reading in preparation: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debunking-the-fal... https://www.aha.org/news/blog/2020-11-02-aha-continues-debun... https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2020/11/07/how-covid... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2772693 https://www.factcheck.org…

Just took a quick glance but these appear to be about the US, whereas this post is about Canada. Am I missing something?

Are you suggesting that Canada’s numbers are inflated, even though they match US numbers which are not inflated?

Re: Covid-19 3rd leading cause of death among Canadians in 2022

#60

Post by xeckr »

lukev wrote: post #9
graphe wrote: post #5

The number by COVID is 19,716. Euthanasia is absent on here but is 13,241 for context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada

Regardless of one's opinions on if MAID is a good idea, it seems unfair to regard it as a "cause of death". Wouldn't that be more correctly attributable to the underlying condition?

If someone shoots themselves, the proximal cause of death is "self-inflicted gunshot wound", not "depression".
Post reply on HN