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The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

economist.com

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Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#31

Post by bmitc »

thatsamonad wrote: post #22
bmitc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention people who will refuse to get the vaccine, and those people are more likely to be carrying it anyway due to misbehavior.

> more likely to be carrying it anyway due to misbehavior I’m not sure about that. I’ve been pretty strict about physical distancing, mask wearing, and all of the other things necessary to help combat the spread of the virus. I’m also someone who gets a flu shot every year and I make sure my child is vaccinated. That being said - I am majorly skeptical about a vaccine being rushed through the approval process for pol…

I meant not getting the vaccine on the basis of someone not believing in the virus and/or vaccines in the first place.

Of course, I will also cautiously approach the first vaccine arrivals due to the nature of them being rushed.

Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#32

Post by mcgt »

thu2111 wrote: post #29
mcgt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm looking into this gap right now. In the US for example, deaths from dementia so far this year are much higher than the average for the past five years (up until ~Aug 15). There's also a not insignificant amount of notes saying deaths are being underreported in a lot of jurisdictions. Pretty much across the board jumps for most major causes of death. Haven't pulled in anything on suicides yet. Interestingly though…

Isn't it more likely that deaths from other kinds of respiratory diseases are being re-classified as COVID?

My thoughts were the same, but nothing I've seen (yet) would suggest that. Though deaths by dementia seem to be up far above the 5 year average (especially in the Southern US).

Total mortality up to Aug 15 is up at least 580k over the 5 year average from what I'm seeing right now, fwiw. Probably will post it here on HN once I've got everything tied together.

Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#33

Post by m0zg »

pedrocr wrote: post #28
m0zg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll see in another year. Truth of the matter is: C19 is endemic, and everyone will get it sooner or later, much like common cold. Another, more pernicious mistake people make is they assume we're out of the woods with this, whereas we'll never be out of the woods. Is it worth curing a headache by decapitation?

The 4000+ extra COVID19 deaths they've had are years of life lost even if in the end the same number of people die. And their economic downturn was no better either.

They may end up with _fewer_ deaths per million when all of this plays out in full over the next couple of years.

Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#34

Post by pedrocr »

m0zg wrote: post #33
pedrocr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4000+ extra COVID19 deaths they've had are years of life lost even if in the end the same number of people die. And their economic downturn was no better either.

They may end up with _fewer_ deaths per million when all of this plays out in full over the next couple of years.

I've yet to see any argument for why that would be, and your argument was that everyone was going to get it "sooner or later". At this point you're just conjecturing scenarios without an argument.

The actual metric to compare is years of life lost, not even total deaths, and thus getting it later is a benefit in itself, and gives you more chances of getting a vaccine before getting the disease, or just getting better treatments from what we've learned of the disease in the meantime.

Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#35

Post by m0zg »

pedrocr wrote: post #34
m0zg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may end up with _fewer_ deaths per million when all of this plays out in full over the next couple of years.

I've yet to see any argument for why that would be, and your argument was that everyone was going to get it "sooner or later". At this point you're just conjecturing scenarios without an argument. The actual metric to compare is years of life lost, not even total deaths, and thus getting it later is a benefit in itself, and gives you more chances of getting a vaccine before getting the disease, or just getting better…

But the key issue is, _who gets it first_. If older people get it first, you get what happened in New York and New Jersey. If young people get it first and you effectively isolate the old, then the number of cases doesn't matter - younger people aren't dying from C19. Unfortunately Sweden failed to protect their elderly - hence the body count. But they couldn't really do anything else, since they treat their constitution seriously, and it does not allow the restriction of freedoms.

There is no guarantee whatsoever that there _will_ be an effective and safe vaccine. There is no vaccine for any other coronavirus, and it's not for the lack of trying.

Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#36

Post by pedrocr »

m0zg wrote: post #35
pedrocr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to see any argument for why that would be, and your argument was that everyone was going to get it "sooner or later". At this point you're just conjecturing scenarios without an argument. The actual metric to compare is years of life lost, not even total deaths, and thus getting it later is a benefit in itself, and gives you more chances of getting a vaccine before getting the disease, or just getting better…

But the key issue is, _who gets it first_. If older people get it first, you get what happened in New York and New Jersey. If young people get it first and you effectively isolate the old, then the number of cases doesn't matter - younger people aren't dying from C19. Unfortunately Sweden failed to protect their elderly - hence the body count. But they couldn't really do anything else, since they treat their constitu…

We don't have a guarantee of a vaccine but we've already gotten better at both treating the disease and at defending ourselves from it. People and businesses didn't change their habits overnight. They're much more prepared now than before because of that extra time. And again, dying later rather than sooner is a benefit in itself.

Sweden has had 4000 extra people die early in the pandemic directly related to the strategy they chose. Treating that as "you just wait and see if it doesn't pay out in the end" is not an argument for why their strategy is better. And it's not true that there was any constitutional problem with doing lockdowns as they did do them. Just less because that's the strategy they chose.

Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#37

Post by adammichaelc »

Zacru wrote: post #23
adammichaelc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious why this is being downvoted. The CDC reported this a couple weeks ago. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fb... https://wgntv.com/news/coronavirus/new-cdc-report-shows-94-o...

My guess is because it's kind of misrepresenting the data. While it's technically true, most of those co-morbitities were things like respiratory failure or pneumonia. So while it's not an outright lie, it's also not a particularly insightful bit of information when presented without further explanation.

I don't understand how it's misrepresenting the data. :)

94% of COVID deaths had comorbidities, often serious. The average number of comorbidities is more than 2.

Can you clarify how this is misrepresenting the data?

Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#38

Post by Zacru »

adammichaelc wrote: post #37
Zacru wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is because it's kind of misrepresenting the data. While it's technically true, most of those co-morbitities were things like respiratory failure or pneumonia. So while it's not an outright lie, it's also not a particularly insightful bit of information when presented without further explanation.

I don't understand how it's misrepresenting the data. :) 94% of COVID deaths had comorbidities, often serious. The average number of comorbidities is more than 2. Can you clarify how this is misrepresenting the data?

>had co-morbidities, meaning other things that they also died from other than Covid 19

First, that is not what comorbidity means. From Wikipedia[0]: >In medicine, comorbidity is the presence of one or more additional conditions often co-occurring with a primary condition.

Second, most of the listed comorbidities that are significant factors for death are actually complications due to COVID-19. The number of people who die of spontaneous respiratory failure is basically zero.

>So the actual increase in deaths from 2019 to 2020 will probably be significantly lower than 3%.

This is assuming the other comorbidities would have lead to death in the absence of COVID-19. But that is not a reasonable assumption based on the CDC data. There are many kinds of comorbidities that people live with that don't usually cause sudden death. So if they didn't have COVID-19, they would almost certainly still be alive at the end of the year.

Since your conclusion doesn't follow from the data, claiming the data supports your conclusion is necessarily misrepresenting it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comorbidity

Re: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show

#39

Post by Zacru »

Zacru wrote: post #38
adammichaelc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how it's misrepresenting the data. :) 94% of COVID deaths had comorbidities, often serious. The average number of comorbidities is more than 2. Can you clarify how this is misrepresenting the data?

>had co-morbidities, meaning other things that they also died from other than Covid 19 First, that is not what comorbidity means. From Wikipedia[0]: >In medicine, comorbidity is the presence of one or more additional conditions often co-occurring with a primary condition. Second, most of the listed comorbidities that are significant factors for death are actually complications due to COVID-19. The number of people wh…

Sorry, I confused you and the author of the comment you replied to.
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