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The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

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Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#101

Post by rualca »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #85
fpgaminer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If _everyone_ wore masks and followed very basic guidelines, the virus would be dead in the water and we could go about living mostly normal lives. People could visit their loved ones, say goodbye to the terminally ill, work, have outdoor dining, see drive in movies. Scarce little impact on quality of life. Instead vast swathes of the U.S. and other countries flout even the most basic precautions making it impossible…

Extripating the virus completely from the population, and keeping it out through total physical isolation of that population from the rest of the world, is a tall task. The question of whether it's an achievable or practical goal to pursue needs to be answered before that is made the objective, and the lifting of lockdown restrictions is made conditioned on the goal being reached. Anyone advocating that as the goal f…

> Extripating the virus completely from the population, and keeping it out through total physical isolation of that population from the rest of the world, is a tall task.

The goal is not to erradicar the disease. The goal is to take basic measures so that it's incidence and transmission rate are kept low.

Spain achieved that during the first wave, where in a matter of weeks they managed to get the fatality rate from hundreds per day to the single digits, even achieving days without covid-related deaths.

If the disease is contained, we not only avoid the chance of being infected but we also have a shot at normality.

If the disease is not contained and allowed to ravage the world then all we get is the despair of having people dying left and right while hospitals are saturated far beyond capacity and unable to respond to any need.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#102

Post by rualca »

thedrbrian wrote: post #86
fpgaminer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If _everyone_ wore masks and followed very basic guidelines, the virus would be dead in the water and we could go about living mostly normal lives. People could visit their loved ones, say goodbye to the terminally ill, work, have outdoor dining, see drive in movies. Scarce little impact on quality of life. Instead vast swathes of the U.S. and other countries flout even the most basic precautions making it impossible…

> As the statistics are showing we've seen a massive dropoff in cold/flu related deaths Is that not because we’ve stopped recording cold/flu deaths and started labelling them all as corona virus deaths?

Please keep your absurd conspiracy theories to yourself. You do no good to anyone or anything by intentionally spreading bullshit and false information.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#103

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

bagacrap wrote: post #89
mcguire wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a bunch of non-COVID deaths were COVID related. This is why you look at all-cause mortality---where in the US/UK at least, things look worse, not better.

Some of the excess deaths this year were due to the way we handled covid and not the disease itself. Suicides are up. Medical care is being skipped or postponed (cancers are not found as early). So no, I don't think you can look at all cause mortality and say that any excess means the lockdown should be stricter.

Most of those excess deaths won't show up this year.

In general, it takes longer than nine months to go from cancer screening to death.

We don't actually know that suicides are up, because the data is yearly (which is a problem we should probably solve).

All cause mortality is a rough number, but it's the only one that will eventually allow us to measure the impact of the pandemic in a few years.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#104

Post by wahern »

bagacrap wrote: post #89
mcguire wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a bunch of non-COVID deaths were COVID related. This is why you look at all-cause mortality---where in the US/UK at least, things look worse, not better.

Some of the excess deaths this year were due to the way we handled covid and not the disease itself. Suicides are up. Medical care is being skipped or postponed (cancers are not found as early). So no, I don't think you can look at all cause mortality and say that any excess means the lockdown should be stricter.

Suicides are easy to identify.

There's no reason to believe that cancers missed in the past 8 months would have appreciably immediate consequences as there's not much that can be done about late stage cancers. Plus, like suicide, cancer deaths are obvious and I haven't seen any substantial increase in those numbers.

Finally, studies from just a couple of months ago studying cardiovascular disease deaths showed that there's been a decrease in those deaths. It's hypothesized that deaths from early intervention (e.g. bypass surgery) have been avoided, and the expected increase from untreated disease is still further out. Even if deaths from untreated CVD are finally upon us (post study period), it wouldn't substantially effect mortality numbers from the previous 8-month period.

In other words, it's easy to subtract these things from all-cause mortality. But AFAIK doing so doesn't significantly change the numbers.

Furthermore, there's little reason to doubt the potential lethality of COVID-19, given the hard and indisputable CFRs and IFRs from Italy, New York, and Wuhan, all of which occurred during a very short period of time, and largely before significant mitigations were put into place. Thus, while mortality rates clearly vary across different regions, there's little reason to believe that this fact alone disputes the inherent lethality of COVID-19, but rather reflects environmental (including social) differences across regions and across time, and thus little reason to believe that mortality increases elsewhere are principally the result of anything but COVID-19.

The sun may never come up tomorrow. Aliens might land and wipe us out in the next hour. You might spontaneously quantum teleport to Alpha Centauri while reading this reply. These are all possibilities. But possibilities aren't probabilities; they're two different things. Merely suggesting that something is possible does not refute the probable likelihood of an alternative. Conflation of those is what makes FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) seem credible to the naive or wanton contrarians.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#105

Post by rualca »

Veen wrote: post #72
mcguire wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in Sweden. Life expectancy has gone from 77.4 to 81.3 for men since 2000. It does go up every year except for 2014/2015 (80.4 to 80.3). https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...

Interestingly, in the UK the average age of people who die from coronavirus (82.4) is slightly older than the average age of people dying of other causes (81.5). https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/average-age-of-coronaviru...

Why, think about it.

Covid deaths are practically concentrated on age groups over 65 years old.

People dying from other causes aggregate multiple causes which, due to the aggregation, are spread out over the whole age range.

Due to the pyramid shape of the population distribution (they call it population pyramid for a reason) then the median and the mean are shifted towards the base/younger age groups.

Hell, if a disease affected mankind in a way that killed everyone uniformly, the average age of people dying would be around 30 years old.

The way you presented your conclusion implies that dying from covid actually extends your life, which is absurd.

Instead, it just reads that it kills older people disproportionately, and the older you are the more likely you are of dying from it.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#106

Post by mjbeswick »

CogentHedgehog wrote: post #5

Key point: > The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 6 November 2020 was 14.3% higher than the five-year average. But it is good to know that the measures to control COVID-19 are also suppressing flu and pneumonia (though not enough to make up for COVID-19 mortality).

It's still very subjective. The thing is that people that are dying of COVID-19 would very likely have died in the new few years, so if you compare deaths over the the last few years to a previous time period their would be very little difference.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#107

Post by TacoLeader »

rualca wrote: post #102
thedrbrian wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the statistics are showing we've seen a massive dropoff in cold/flu related deaths Is that not because we’ve stopped recording cold/flu deaths and started labelling them all as corona virus deaths?

Please keep your absurd conspiracy theories to yourself. You do no good to anyone or anything by intentionally spreading bullshit and false information.

Of course Mr Political officer. We all shall do as the Politburo wishes.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#108

Post by tonyedgecombe »

bagacrap wrote: post #89
mcguire wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a bunch of non-COVID deaths were COVID related. This is why you look at all-cause mortality---where in the US/UK at least, things look worse, not better.

Some of the excess deaths this year were due to the way we handled covid and not the disease itself. Suicides are up. Medical care is being skipped or postponed (cancers are not found as early). So no, I don't think you can look at all cause mortality and say that any excess means the lockdown should be stricter.

Suicides are up.

The evidence for that is quite weak.

From https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352

Overall, the literature on the effect of covid-19 on suicide should be interpreted with caution. Most of the available publications are preprints, letters (neither is peer reviewed), or commentaries using news reports of deaths by suicide as the data source.

Re: The number of people dying is not the same as in any other year

#109

Post by redis_mlc »

rualca wrote: post #102
thedrbrian wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the statistics are showing we've seen a massive dropoff in cold/flu related deaths Is that not because we’ve stopped recording cold/flu deaths and started labelling them all as corona virus deaths?

Please keep your absurd conspiracy theories to yourself. You do no good to anyone or anything by intentionally spreading bullshit and false information.

> Please keep your absurd conspiracy theories to yourself.

This really gets old.

A lot of hospitals are deliberately mis-reporting all deaths as corona-related if there are government corona subsidies available.

And US hospitals know that reporting ventilator-related deaths is an invitation to a lawsuit.

The fact that you stifle debate without any actual knowledge is disgusting.

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