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Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

maximumtruth.substack.com

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Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#31

Post by fabian2k »

nerdponx wrote: post #12
Mattasher wrote: post #5

Interesting analysis, though he mentions early on a huge issue with the analysis: > It does come with one major caveat: Because it counts ALL deaths, it cannot on its own disentangle deaths caused by Covid itself, impacts from the lockdowns themselves, impacts from vaccines, or unrelated death trends. Especially as time goes on, and we see the effects of missed cancer screenings, economic destruction, increased obesi…

Is it really a "caveat" when it entirely invalidates any attempt at causal analysis with this data? So much for "maximum truth". This is a nice data visualization exercise and descriptive analysis, but that's it.

There is plenty of other data that supports the assumption that the vast majority of deaths here is due to COVID. Not all causes of death here are equally plausible.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#32

Post by praestigiare »

Mattasher wrote: post #5

Interesting analysis, though he mentions early on a huge issue with the analysis: > It does come with one major caveat: Because it counts ALL deaths, it cannot on its own disentangle deaths caused by Covid itself, impacts from the lockdowns themselves, impacts from vaccines, or unrelated death trends. Especially as time goes on, and we see the effects of missed cancer screenings, economic destruction, increased obesi…

That is not an issue with the analysis as a whole, and indeed he addresses several of those points. It is an issue only with the excess deaths statistic. The data we have so far does not show a correlation between lockdowns and GDP, and tends to show a correlation between lockdowns and a reduction in excess deaths.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#34

Post by zdragnar »

boredumb wrote: post #27

>The United States was roughly around the global average. Contrary to the view of many conservatives, the deaths probably were caused by Covid itself, and NOT by lockdowns I feel like the common view by people who thought numbers were being artificially inflated was that they were counting people who died while having tested positive for covid being attributed to covid and not just 'the lockdowns' Fairly distinctly r…

> thought numbers were being artificially inflated was that they were counting people who died while having tested positive for covid being attributed to covid

This objectively happened. Anyone who was COVID positive was being counted as a COVID death. It happened to my friend's dad- COVID was listed as the cause of death on his death certificate, v even though it was nothing to do with any illness at all, but rather an accident.

This practice varied by state and tracking eventually broke out death with COVID vs death by COVID.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#35

Post by mlyle »

r721 wrote: post #29
leeroyjenkins11 wrote: post #4

It's interesting, I do have trouble using excess deaths and attributing it to covid though. I was in Honduras in the ultra poor mountain region in intibuca and the people there said the entire town got covid, but there was only one death. It's was a small town, but the area had well over 200 people. What did happen was that the government literally cut off access to the nearest city where people could get food, suppl…

>one death >over 200 people That's like ~ 0.5% IFR which is quite close to the widely cited 0.68% IFR estimation (from 2020, for the original strain): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33007452/

That's 0.5% fatality rate, not infection fatality rate. Likely "everyone" in the town didn't actually get it-- it may have been an overwhelming majority but probably some people lucked out.

So the anecdote shared is even closer to the center of the range of expectations than you imply :D

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#36

Post by mlyle »

jahnu wrote: post #13
readthenotes1 wrote: post #2

Sweden, which didn't lock down, also in the green.

The green on that map means they didn't fudge the numbers, not that having or not having a lockdown influences the number of excess deaths.

Though on the official case rate and excess mortality maps, it's dark pink/light red, which indicates they still did better than a whole lot of countries.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#37

Post by OrvalWintermute »

Probably the worst analysis possible that pushes a specific narrative.

I'll explain.

Excess Mortality from draconian government responses that caused job loss, depression, excess alcohol and drug deaths, suicides, mixed with adverse events, are just put into the wash, along with actual deaths, and deaths from incorrect medical interventions, as well as propensity towards bad outcomes from unhealthy populations

There is no story of nuance in this, and that is why this is over-averaged dog doo.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#38

Post by mlyle »

zdragnar wrote: post #34
boredumb wrote: post #27

>The United States was roughly around the global average. Contrary to the view of many conservatives, the deaths probably were caused by Covid itself, and NOT by lockdowns I feel like the common view by people who thought numbers were being artificially inflated was that they were counting people who died while having tested positive for covid being attributed to covid and not just 'the lockdowns' Fairly distinctly r…

> thought numbers were being artificially inflated was that they were counting people who died while having tested positive for covid being attributed to covid This objectively happened. Anyone who was COVID positive was being counted as a COVID death. It happened to my friend's dad- COVID was listed as the cause of death on his death certificate, v even though it was nothing to do with any illness at all, but rather…

> This objectively happened.

Sure.

As the article we're discussing states:

"In the US, the “fudge factor” is 1.13, which means our best guess is that 13% more Covid deaths took place than were officially reported.

For skeptics who can’t believe that deaths were under-counted: both things probably happened. A few cases were wrongly counted, but even more people may have died of Covid at home, without ever getting diagnosed."

> This practice varied by state and tracking eventually broke out death with COVID vs death by COVID.

Which involves a somewhat subjective, error-prone decisionmaking process. Early in the pandemic, when the vast majority of hospitalizations-with-COVID were due-to-covid, it made sense to just do the simple thing and assume COVID caused all the deaths. After the death rate fell and this became extremely confounding, it became important to make this somewhat subjective decision.

(e.g. a guy rolls up with a "heart attack" and is COVID positive. Is it due to COVID? SARS-CoV-2 both causes cardiac complications directly and can reduce blood oxygenation / increase heart workload, so heart attacks are more common with COVID infection).

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#39

Post by draw_down »

zdragnar wrote: post #34
boredumb wrote: post #27

>The United States was roughly around the global average. Contrary to the view of many conservatives, the deaths probably were caused by Covid itself, and NOT by lockdowns I feel like the common view by people who thought numbers were being artificially inflated was that they were counting people who died while having tested positive for covid being attributed to covid and not just 'the lockdowns' Fairly distinctly r…

> thought numbers were being artificially inflated was that they were counting people who died while having tested positive for covid being attributed to covid This objectively happened. Anyone who was COVID positive was being counted as a COVID death. It happened to my friend's dad- COVID was listed as the cause of death on his death certificate, v even though it was nothing to do with any illness at all, but rather…

Very eventually, yes. Specifically when larger covid death numbers stopped being politically useful.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#40

Post by cas14655 »

Sweden Age Adjusted Mortality 3rd January 2020 through 18th June 2021: -2.3%

Source: ONS

Not only did lockdowns fail, they were unnecessary and cruel and tyrannical. I sincerely hope that the responsible people will face justice that is just as harsh as the lockdown enforcement was.

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