Guest essay by Eric Worrall
There is a significant unaccounted for spike in excess US deaths this year, deaths which have not been attributed to Covid-19. Yale researchers believe a lot of the deaths are misdiagnosed Covid.
Yale Study Suggests COVID Death Toll In US Has Been “Substantially Undercounted”
by Tyler Durden Sat, 07/04/2020 – 19:55
A new study from Yale University published in JAMA Internal Medicine seems to suggest that the number of U.S. deaths that have occurred as a result of the coronavirus have been “substantially undercounted”.
Recall, we have recently published two studies suggesting that the infection rates of Covid-19 were substantially higher months ago than many people thought. A Penn State study found that the initial infection rate may have been 80 times quicker than we first thought and a Stanford study showed that the media case fatality rate for those under 70 years old could be as low as 0.04%.
The new Yale study took data from the National Center for Health Statistics and compared the number of excess U.S. deaths from any causes with the reported number of weekly deaths from Covid-19 during the period of March 1 to May 30, according to CNBC. Those numbers were then compared to the year prior.
…
“The 781,000 total deaths in the United States in the three months through May 30 were about 122,300, or nearly 19% higher, than what would normally be expected, according to the researchers. Of the 122,300 excess deaths, 95,235 were attributed to Covid-19, they said. Most of the rest of the excess deaths, researchers said, were likely related to or directly caused by the coronavirus.“
…
Read more: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/yale-study-suggests-covid-death-toll-us-has-been-substantially-undercounted
The abstract of the study;
July 1, 2020
Estimation of Excess Deaths Associated With the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States, March to May 2020
Daniel M. Weinberger, PhD1; Jenny Chen, BS2; Ted Cohen, MD, DPH1; et al
Key Points
Question Did more all-cause deaths occur during the first months of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States compared with the same months during previous years?
Findings In this cohort study, the number of deaths due to any cause increased by approximately 122 000 from March 1 to May 30, 2020, which is 28% higher than the reported number of COVID-19 deaths.
Meaning Official tallies of deaths due to COVID-19 underestimate the full increase in deaths associated with the pandemic in many states.Abstract
Importance Efforts to track the severity and public health impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States have been hampered by state-level differences in diagnostic test availability, differing strategies for prioritization of individuals for testing, and delays between testing and reporting. Evaluating unexplained increases in deaths due to all causes or attributed to nonspecific outcomes, such as pneumonia and influenza, can provide a more complete picture of the burden of COVID-19.
Objective To estimate the burden of all deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States from March to May 2020.
Design, Setting, and Population This observational study evaluated the numbers of US deaths from any cause and deaths from pneumonia, influenza, and/or COVID-19 from March 1 through May 30, 2020, using public data of the entire US population from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). These numbers were compared with those from the same period of previous years. All data analyzed were accessed on June 12, 2020.
Main Outcomes and Measures Increases in weekly deaths due to any cause or deaths due to pneumonia/influenza/COVID-19 above a baseline, which was adjusted for time of year, influenza activity, and reporting delays. These estimates were compared with reported deaths attributed to COVID-19 and with testing data.
Results There were approximately 781 000 total deaths in the United States from March 1 to May 30, 2020, representing 122 300 (95% prediction interval, 116 800-127 000) more deaths than would typically be expected at that time of year. There were 95 235 reported deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 from March 1 to May 30, 2020. The number of excess all-cause deaths was 28% higher than the official tally of COVID-19–reported deaths during that period. In several states, these deaths occurred before increases in the availability of COVID-19 diagnostic tests and were not counted in official COVID-19 death records. There was substantial variability between states in the difference between official COVID-19 deaths and the estimated burden of excess deaths.
Conclusions and Relevance Excess deaths provide an estimate of the full COVID-19 burden and indicate that official tallies likely undercount deaths due to the virus. The mortality burden and the completeness of the tallies vary markedly between states.
Read more: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2767980
Before you dismiss this as alarmism, Lord Monckton came to a similar conclusion in April, with his analysis of UK excess deaths.
Respiratory distress is not the only way Covid-19 can kill people. In some cases it causes extreme blood clotting disorders, leading to strokes and heart failure, which likely creates confusion in some cases about the true cause of death. Canadian actor Nick Cordero survived Covid, but his leg was amputated because doctors couldn’t control Covid related blood clotting in his extremities.
Thankfully recent confirmation of the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine provides renewed hope we can bring this awful disease under control.
[Addendum from Charles]
Eric missed this very very important sentence found in the limitations section:
The number of excess deaths reported herein could reflect increases in rates of death directly caused by the virus, increases indirectly related to the pandemic response (eg, due to avoidance of health care), as well as declines in certain causes (eg, deaths due to motor vehicle collisions or triggered by air pollution). Further work is needed to determine the relative importance of these different forces on the overall estimates
of excess deaths.
In simpler terms, with all elective surgery cancelled for months, the delays in heart valve surgery, stent surgery, cancer surgery etc., might be the cause of the increase in deaths and they haven’t a clue if that’s the case or not.
I’m reminded of Donald Rumsfield:
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.“
“With all elective surgery cancelled for months, the delays in heart valve surgery, stent surgery, cancer surgery etc., might be the cause of the increase in deaths” And those who should know, DO KNOW that COVID “cases” ARE inflated, and the way it’s done, and why!
Oh no ! It’s worse than we previously thought ! ( Where have I heard that before ? )
So the key of this paper’s conclusion seems to be the spurious assumption that 2019 was for some undeclared reason the “normal” year against which all excess deaths should be calculated.
Maybe the fact that 2019 was an unusually low flu year and that the flu season is still active in March may be part of their problem.
The blatantly false assumption that any one arbitrarily chosen year can be taken as the reference for “normal” should have been picked up instantly by any peer reviewer.
Sadly, all science seems to be driven by headline grabbing attention seekers and funding grafters these days.
Go get them, Greg! Another glaring omission in the explanations is a lot of the population under “social spacing for dummies” (quarantine) severely restricted their activity but did not only not change their diet but added snacking on top of it. Many studies show being overweight and sedentary is a lethal combination. I personally exchanged walking 3 hours around a golf course for throwing a ball for my dogs in the back yard, with me lasting about 15 minutes, then going inside for a snack. Trying to be scientific with a lot of unknown and uncontrollable variables is complicated, and apparently beyond the capabilities of Yale.
Add to that increased consumption of alcohol for some.
To be honest I doubt that eating and drinking changes, which probably are common would have time to affects stats. That’s the kind of habit which is long term bad for health, not likely to kill you in a month or two.
As the article pointed out, those who had pre-existing health conditions who were not getting proper treatment and where either ejected from hospital or refused admission and treatment are the real issue here.
This “study” attempting to spuriously declare these excess mortalities to COVID related, is either an attempt to exonerate the medical profession as a whole from gross negligence of non-COVID patients or just pump up the corona virus hysteria.
There is NOTHING in the simplistic statistical juggling act which shows any grounds for attribution to COVID-19, or undercounting thereof.
Liquor stores were originally considered non-essential under Chile’s “total quarantine” rules, but that was soon changed.
Comparing excess deaths to 2019 isn’t valid, since last year’s toll was anomalously low, due to higher flu season mortality in 2018.
My son who works in law enforcement on a rural reservation, saw a spike in drug deaths, one COVID death. The counting of deaths and as to why is a joke.
“The blatantly false assumption that any one arbitrarily chosen year can be taken as the reference for “normal” should have been picked up instantly by any peer reviewer. ”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2768086
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2767980?resultClick=1
It’s easy to learn they didn’t use one year.
Study used previous 5 years’ data as a baseline for comparison and saw a higher rate.
Testing and infection rates may be unhelpful or irrelevant, but seems pretty hard to argue with excess death data.
Large scale fraud is underway? Somehow, secretly coordinated throughout the thousands of counties in the US, each one is generating fake death certificates.
Russian interference?
Incompetence? Suddenly public health clerks nation-wide and world-wide are misfiling all the birth certificates?
Averages are useful, but what is the significance of the variation?
Is it truly exceptional, or are we being fooled by normal variability?
To Peter W:
Variability is either here or there. I use it all the time. Is it hot today, is gas cheaper this week, is my kid tall for his age? Of course it’s significant for the months considered. Will it continue going forward, I dont know. Early on I was adamant it was offsetting other death by old age mechanisms, but a raw number of death higher than normal for any reason means something is going on. Why assume it’s not covid? Maybe it averages out over three years, maybe not. But NY still has 20 or 30 fold the death rate of many other states not so thouroughly and earlier exposed. That’s a lot of dying to catch up to.
Whether the study properly considered that variability could be assessed by looking in to the methodology if one cared to spend the time.
But why bother, just haul out the strawman for hanging as Greg did.
“So the key of this paper’s conclusion seems to be the spurious assumption that 2019 was for some undeclared reason the “normal” year against which all excess deaths should be calculated.”
No, it’s Greg’s assumption that is spurious. A false, fast and lazy critique dumped into the conversation. Easily refuted by the plain language in the study.
Don’t forget increased stress
Did anyone ascertain the increase of deaths from cancelling “elective” (aka mostly non COVID-19) procedures for the past several months? Wouldn’t that explain much of the increase in deaths this year?
Actually, the Yale study seems to be an answer to this article in the British Medical Journal:
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
Note: Dated 13 May 2020 vs Yale 4 July 2020. Meaning it took about four+ work weeks to cobble together similar data but to obfuscate “causes” to scream out “COVID under reported”.
The point is that “all cause mortality”, even when labeled using a statistically questionable term of “excess deaths”, within a given period is as good as it gets with observational data. The fact that there is an increase in all cause mortality compared to prior years that is not explainable by the current database means either:
1. the diagnosis are indeed under counting COVID
Or, the more probable, given how numerous prior reports/reviews found over reporting
2. the political/economic agenda(s) is finding ways to continue the hysteria
Compare a similar timeline with statins. A clinical trial that measured arterial plague found statin users had increased plague equal to or greater than non-statin users. In about 30-60 days a “study” came out concluding, “Yes, But…” statins created “better” plague because it was more “stable” thus “healthier”. No mention statins were promoted, for decades, to reduce plague through the mythical reason of “reducing artery-clogging cholesterol”.
cedarhill
I presume you mean “plaque” and not “plague.”
double speak in spades for sure. and Don R had a case
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” D. Rumsfeld et al
And there are unknown knowns – the things we think we know, but don’t understand correctly.
Someone doesn’t understand statistics. Comparing one year’s excess death to the mean for the annual excess deaths, which is likely a noisy year-to-year measure, doesn’t inform us very much of whether any one year is an outlier. That is why Variance (or standard deviation) is so important.
If I have a class of 20 students and I give an exam and the mean score for the class is 85 of out 100 possible points tells me nothing really without the variance as well in considering any one student’s performance. Was the variance 2 points or 20 points? If I told you all the students got exactly 85 and that was also the mean (average), you immediately know either I wrote a poor test or all the students cheated and got the same question(s) wrong.
I think it was just a bad flu year.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
Notice that they are listing anyone with Covid-19 and influenza or pneumonia as a coronavirus death. Flu deaths alone are only 6,479 since February but should be around 15,000-30,000. Any excess deaths not accounted for are probably flu deaths from those that couldn’t get into the hospital or chose not to due to this coronavirus madness.
You have a very good point.
A few real scientists have already stressed that the “flu season” does not start in March; instead, it starts (or rather, it can start, depending on the weather each year) several months before (where I live, some years it started in November!). So, comparing “flu” between years should focus on a larger period.
I think that “studies” like this one, focusing on “March to May”, are nothing more than simply surfing the wave of alarmism: the methodology is questionable and the temporal limits established make all the work and its conclusions pure nonsense.
Robert W. Turner
July 5, 2020 at 12:08 am
The trick is that this novel CV infection disease is an influenza.
It is blamed and stigmatized because in this last flu season, the old age group had a very very bad impact from Robert W. Turner
July 5, 2020 at 12:08 am
The trick is that this novel CV infection disease is an influenza.
It is blamed and stigmatized beca the seasonal influenza-flu epidemic (which went under the Pandemic umbrella)… well considerably very very bad in the first world countries.
That (the old “guys”) is the last group, or the last part of the herd, to generally usually be hit by the main force of the seasonal diseases.
Meaning, this time, the latest group to the “novel corona virus “party””.
Kinda missed the train there.
Weird, as for the given severity and fatality impact as it happened,
as that not supposes to be the case…not in the way it happened.
unless the clause of IDS (Immuno-Dificiency Syndrome) considered.
A condition with very very high potential to cause high severity and fatality, by causing huge damages to the weakest(s) point in the body of the unfortunate… like paralysis, blood clotting, collapse of organs, extreme fatigue in consideration of all bodily functions, “”boiling” of the brain” etc…you name it.
where the main sign is extreme overall fatigue…
and in consideration of wrong treatment, due to wrong diagnoses mostly,
the severity will top up max and fatality will go through the roof.
(yes most possible the wrong diagnoses is the culprit, of this madness and global insanity going “viral”)
This novel corona virus has not caused such severity and fatality, as it being full Pandemic, and showing no such impact in the other two main age groups, which it has impacted earlier than the third age group… especially the young and very young.
Most probably even has boosted the overall immunity of this other two groups in the herd, prior to the epidemic swing-back from the very damaged third age group in the “herd”…
What am trying a say here;
All the mess, highly possible due to what may be called HIDS, Herd Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome.
Where a part, a group in the herd is suffering considerably an IDS condition.
A very serious condition. Very much so.
And this is not a natural condition… due to simply natural factors.
Wrong diagnoses. Yes. Very much so.
Wrong diagnoses in consideration of a critical crisis of IDS, very very very bad,
TERRIBLY BAD.
(bordering criminal, very much so)
cheers
Please learn to write
And you learn to keep your ugly mouth tightly locked… criminal…
World-wide, CV-19 seems to be on track with the seasonal flu death-count:
“Influenza remains one of the world’s greatest public health challenges. Every year across the globe, there are an estimated 1 billion cases, of which 3 to 5 million are severe cases, resulting in 290 000 to 650 000 influenza-related respiratory deaths.”
Source: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/11-03-2019-who-launches-new-global-influenza-strategy
(Note the date on the WHO article: 11 March 2019. Well before CV-19 reared it’s ugly head.)
Yes. It was a very bad flu year. The media don’t report H1N1 deaths that were very strong in February and March. Why did they suddenly drop off the map? And flu killed hundreds of children, while COVID19 did not. H1N1 is the flu strain they scared us about 10 years ago, but not a peep about it this year. H1N1 was not the only flu going around that kill people.
RWT
Hunh? Other columns separate and attempt to sub-categorize, and parse those very distinctions.
But there’s been more death. More raw death. Period. Why fight that truth? Why work so hard to blame everything else except the obvious? Sure, public policy may have been poorly thought out or executed. Argue for better.
The huge jump in US firearm background checks for Mar thru Jun. Should we not assume those represent more sales against previous years? Find reasons to explain it away?
Are the un-employment numbers to be dis-regarded as well?
Indeed. Figure 1 in this article shows a standard deviation in British excess deaths of something like 20ish percent. (read from a graph by my poorly calibrated eyeballs) Assuming American data is similar, it’s nonsense to talk about 28% of misdiagnosed coronavirus.
‘Excess death’ becomes meaningful when the base number is large and is exceeded by nearly 100% or more. In some countries, like Ecuador and Brazil, the undertakers are overwhelmed to the extent that you know the official figures woefully understate the case.
28%. Give me a break. That number is far too precise and, as far as I can tell, isn’t that far off one standard deviation. As many others have pointed out, there are far too many lurking variables (confounding variables if you prefer) to say anything meaningful.
Given the financial incentives and attention paid to COVID – I find that large of an unaccounted for number hard to believe. Were we missing some in Dec and Jan, sure – but after that I’d assume we were overcounting. Won’t the pathology reporting get sorted out in the next few months, why model this, wait for actuals.
My favorite commie wrote, “28%. Give me a break. That number is far too precise…”
I agree. Such claimed statistics need to be reported with some sort of confidence intervals.
He continued, “…and, as far as I can tell, isn’t that far off one standard deviation.”
Could be. I don’t know.
Before that, he wrote, “Figure 1 in this article shows a standard deviation in British excess deaths of something like 20ish percent… it’s nonsense to talk about 28% of misdiagnosed coronavirus.”
Here’s Figure 1:
_England_and_Wales_28_December_2019_to_1_May_2020_Fig1.png)
It does appear that the breadth of the shaded-diagonal-lines range averages around 20-30% of the total number of deaths. Unfortunately, just what that represents doesn’t appear to be mentioned (though I didn’t read carefully). It might represent SD, or it might simply be the best and worst years of the last five.
However, those two “percentages” are of different things. The “20ish percent” is some sort of estimate of the year-to-year variation in total deaths. The “28%” is a percentage of known coronavirus deaths, only, which is a smaller number.
That means the “20ish percent” is actually a bigger number than the “28%”, which certainly supports your belief that the “28%” Yale figure is far too precise.
However, when you read the article to which you linked (thank you, BTW!) , you see that they mention quite a few details which also suggest that coronavirus deaths are under-reported. For example:
Lower standards of eldercare during the epidemic, and/or perhaps depression due to isolation from loved ones, could explain some of those deaths. But “an increase of 52.2% on the five-year average” is awfully large to be explained that way. My guess is that many, if not most, were undiagnosed coronavirus cases.
What’s worse, Yale University is named after an infamous merchant and slave trader, Elihu Yale and funded partially by him. Burn it down, everything in it and everything that’s come from it.
“baseline .. adjusted for time of year, influenza activity, and reporting delays.” I love science! They discard reported cause of death, and work with “adjusted” data – homogenization did not yet make it to Yale.
Ahem! I was born there, but it wasn’t my fault, and I left as soon as I was able. Please don’t burn me down.
But do burn down the Yale Climate Forum, please. It is a fount of climate propaganda, and very heavily censored to suppress dissent.
The kids in the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies are presumably getting Climate Movement indoctrination rather than real education. They should all demand refunds.
I think the first sentence needs revision. It says:
“Yale researchers believe a lot of the deaths are misdiagnosed Covid.”
I don’t think that’s what you meant. I think it should say:
“Yale researchers believe a lot of Covid deaths are misdiagnosed as being due to other causes.”
That said, I agree with Charles, that it is easy to come of with long lists of other factors which could plausibly affect the death rate. Some of them are indirectly caused by Covid, and others completely unrelated. So I’d take the study’s conclusion with a dose of salt.
Oops.
s/first sentence/second sentence/
I’d say excess death is hard one to tell. We have less infectious and vehicle deaths and more from other causes. Stress is certainly one.
Yes suicides for one supposedly have gone way up in the US.
“In simpler terms, with all elective surgery cancelled for months, the delays in heart valve surgery, stent surgery, cancer surgery etc….”
Cancer surgery is elective? When my bladder cancer returned (it hasn’t in almost 3 years), it was important to deal with as soon as possible to prevent it from growing through the bladder wall and entering the blood stream. Had (past tense} a friend that ignored blood in the urine (and a bladder cancer diagnosis) and quite rapidly died from blood cancer.
“Elective” is anything that can be scheduled – i.e., you weren’t just wheeled into the ER or trauma center.
Charles didn’t quite go far enough, either. Excess death rates are going to be elevated for quite a while; I’m figuring at least for the entire year, and possibly next year.
The US has the best health care system in the world, but we don’t have doctors, surgeons, and other specialists just laying around idle, either. Even past residency (the most grueling part of becoming a full-fledged doctor), the typical professional is doing fifty or sixty hours a week. With them actually being idled by this hysteria, a large backlog of procedures is growing by the day.
We are seeing what the “Green Revolution” will do to us – and we are also going to see what a “National Health Care System” will do to us.
One can hope that enough people pay attention.
what evidence is there that the US has the best health care system in the world? It is certainly
good but it fails a lot of people and is excessively expensive. Plenty of other countries spend less
per capita on healthcare and have longer life expectancies. Not only that in recent years the
average life expectancy in the US has been failing suggesting that health care system is failing in some important aspects. Infant mortality rates in the USA are also a lot higher than other OECD
countries.
Not a lot of evidence at all Izaak. In Oz we have a semi public system, i.e. private health is available if you can afford it or need a quick procedure for which you can afford to or are willing to pay for but there is a public system to which anyone can turn and then normal triage applies. I recently had (triple bypass) open heart surgery under our public system which included admission, pre tests, angiogram, air ambulance to a major hosptital, surgery and recovery followed by physio classes and follow up specialist review. I was seen by the same specialists I would have been under a private treatment and the hospital support left nothing to be desired frankly, well except for the banality of the food. Although the system is under some pressure it functioned and that was in a State where it is particularly stressed due to an older population.
All that said, as a country, we pay about half that which the USA does on health so go figure. Our government is able to negotiate massive bulk purchase deals for a whole range of pharmaceuticaals which are then made available under a ‘Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme’. When you distill the thinking down it is no different to the Government providing roads and other community infrastrucure, a legal and regulatory system, police and military etc, i.e. hardly ‘socialism’ let a lone communism, just common sense.
Its all a bit Christian if you ask me, doing unto others, helping your neighbour etc.
Nothing is free in Aus and it s a fallacy to think otherwise. We have public and private providers (Which are fed in to the public system anyway) but there is always a cost. You can chose to pay for private care, with a reduced medicare levy, or pay your full medicare levy and go public. At least in Aus (And NZ) treatment is provided, the bill is talked about later, unlike America.
One of the most powerful bits of plastic you can carry in your wallet in Aus is a MediCare card.
cheers and yes if its non urgent or youre rural you do wait a while ,
but when you really need it.
its there and it works well for the majority
I only had a 3mth wait for ablation for A fib, be around same for private too
I received a “409 error” when I posted this, I didn’t expect it to actually get posted.
You keep trying to equate christianity with socialism. They are as different as night and day. The first is a matter of a kind, willing heart, the second is a matter of violent coercion. Maybe your christianity is the latter.
+ Alpha and Omega.
All health care is paid for one way or another. In Aus, we have private health companies that funnel “customers” through the public system. We also have a medicare levy of about 1.5% of income, so it all gets paid for some way or other. NOTHING is free in Australia.
BUT, in Australia (And NZ) you are treated first and the bill is worked out later unlike America. In Australia, carrying a medicare care card is probably the most powerful bit of plastic you can carry in your wallet.
and until the mega usa insurers moved in our health funds WERE affrdable!
as were the diagnostics suport now they got bought up as are gp clinics its looking grim
medicare levy is excellent and affordable . unlike monthly premiums Ive seen for usa.
and our refusal to accept the pharmas bluster does a huge good for scripts.
the claims that mericans pay more due to them having to provide cheap tto aus canada etc is crap
they just have utter control over govt via supply in usa
the meds for the majority are made OS in cheaplabour china india poland iteland and sth america peurto rica etc no matter what damned brand is on em
Of course we all pay for it eventually, via taxes, levies or directly. The issue is which is the most effeicient way to deliver a system of comparable quality. I did not pay a cent for my ‘public system’ procedures over and above my Medicare Levy (which is just a dedicated tax). Never talked about the bill for my heart surgery or the lead up procedures or the follow up stuff. I am sure the specialists charged their usual fee or a special rate agreed between them and the public system which is as it should be. As it happens my cousin is a specialist, a professor of orthodaedics who has his own practice but does a lot of work at a large public hospital and I suppose at other places also. Its a hybrid system if you like, efficient but with access to top shelf expertise, as it should be . Not sure what your point is Patrick.
I’ve worked in both Oz and the US. In Oz I had private insurance and could get in to see the doctor with ease. Those without private were looking at waiting months for simple tests. The technology was not as advanced in OZ as in the US (but not by much) but the main difference came in the pocket book at the end of the fiscal year. June 30th sucks in Oz.
Yes, I could get in immediately and there was very little to the bill, but my federal taxes were probably double/triple what I pay in the US. When you look at how much discretionary income I had after paying taxes and necessary bills, it was much greater in the US. Great enough to pay the difference in insurance payments plus some. That is, until Obamacare was dumped on us. Then my monthly insurance bills would have more than tripled including an outrageous deductible. I chose not to get insurance and went bare for several years. Once Obamacare was instituted, Oz looked pretty good.
Now I have Medicare and my monthly costs are manageable. But the US is going into deep debt (non)funding Medicare. If the taxes for Medicare were ever to match the usage, I’d be paying Oz rates in taxes.
“SMS July 5, 2020 at 6:13 am
I’ve worked in both Oz and the US. In Oz I had private insurance and could get in to see the doctor with ease. Those without private were looking at waiting months for simple tests.”
That’s because you were thrust in front (Queue jumping) those in the pubic system waiting. And then here comes a “private paying” customer, jumping the queue that I have already paid for.
We used to have much better and more affordable health care, but then Obamacare happened.
Izaak:
This is a non sequitur. Declining life expectancy (LE) could be for any number of reasons, e.g., the AIDS epidemic caused a brief decline in US life expectancy in the early ’90’s.
This is false. Life expectancy in the US began to increase in 2019, reversing a brief period of decline that began in 2013:
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy
The decline from 2013 was negligible. In 2013 LE was 78.91 and today is 78.94. The decline in LE was not due to any failure in the health care system (hence your non sequitur), but rather, as a result of both legal and illegal drug abuse:
“WASHINGTON — Life expectancy increased for the first time in four years in 2018, the federal government said Thursday, raising hopes that a benchmark of the nation’s health may finally be stabilizing after a rare and troubling decline that was driven by a surge in drug overdoses.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/us/us-life-expectancy.html
Don’t forget the US murder rate and drug deaths lower the life expectancy statistic.
A lot of kids don’t even make it to 18.
Yes, there will be a long tail of enhanced death for years. The delaying of routine mammograms alone will probably cost 10’s of thousands of lives, if not more.
Interestingly enough, the excess deaths are now negative.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
Look at percent of expected deaths. A value of 100 means the expected number relative to prior years. This was above 100 for a while and recently has dropped well below 100. This tells me that most of the China virus fatalities were people at EOL anyway.
The UK excess deaths are back at expected averages as of mid June.
A fairly safe assumption about a new serious disease is that it will kill off people who are currently close to death, but who might perhaps have survived another 6 months to a year if they had not fallen ill.
We should therefore expect that the death rates over the next 6 months to a year will be quite a bit lower than expected, as all the people who would normally have died during this period had already died at the start of it.
Thank you RB and co2isnotevil (others).
Observations are all//
!
Co2-
“…excess deaths are now negative.”
“expected death…has dropped well below 100…”
There’s a blue box on the page you linked to
“Death counts are delayed…”
Wait a month to compare those numbers.
An unaccounted factor In the all cause death statistics is that people experiencing what in other years lull have been routine and survivable health issues were denied access to care or out of COVID fear delayed treatment. We now see our critical care wards filled with these patients, people who could have avoided achealth crisis if there had been normal access to care over the last 4 months
It will probably end up an average year when all is said and done.
“…they haven’t a clue if that’s the case or not.”
It’s blatantly clear to me that “they” don’t have a clue as to the actual, real world, numbers of deaths FROM COVID-19. None what so ever. Every death is being attributed to COVID-19, one case in Australia was attributed to COVID-19 but actually turned out not to be the case.
Don’t forget that George Floyd in Minneapolis was counted as a COVID-19 death. He tested positive at autopsy.
Yeah, he also tested positive for 3 different narcotics. He also spent at least 5 10 month terms in gaol! I think, apart from his death, COVID-19 was the least of his worries.
George Floyd was working in Christian ministries, and had had stayed out of trouble for a long time. His last offense was in 2007. The drugs in his system could have been because he was self-medicating due to his COVID-19 illness.
Meth and Fentanyl are strange things to treat COVID with. Those are more indicative of someone with a habit trying to use one to mask the effects of the other.
Perhaps. But my understanding is that large doses of common decongestants or other drugs can cause false-positives for meth — and large doses of decongestants and pain killers would not be surprising in a someone self-medicating for COVID-19.
“OweninGA July 5, 2020 at 6:44 pm
Meth and Fentanyl are strange things to treat COVID with. Those are more indicative of someone with a habit trying to use one to mask the effects of the other.”
Exactly! Dave Burton is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for an excuse. We all know what “self-medicating” actually means.
“Dave Burton July 5, 2020 at 5:51 pm
George Floyd was working in Christian ministries,…”
Your point? Most of the nastiest people I have ever known were “Christians”.
Your experience is the opposite of mine, Patrick.
That’s why prison ministries are so successful at preventing recidivism. If a man gives his life to Christ, it doesn’t end the old temptations, but it does give him a powerful Ally to resist them.
You’re just making that up. Pls, don’t do that. George Floyd was not counted as a COVID-19 death.
COVID-19 sometimes has neurological effects, so it is possible that it affected his behavior, thereby indirectly contributing to his death. But the simple fact is that he was murdered by a former coworker. That was his cause of death, not COVID-19, which is why that former coworker, officer Derek Chauvin, is charged with murder, and why George Floyd is not included in the deaths attributed to COVID-19.
Surely at least a few deaths with other causes have been erroneously attributed to COVID-19, but is is certain that there were many more COVID-19 deaths erroneously attributed to other causes, especially during the early part of the epidemic. The net effect of incorrect diagnoses is certainly an under-count of COVID-19 deaths, though I would take the Yale numbers with a dose of salt.
We all know that Ghislaine Maxwell’s pending suicide will be counted as a COVID related death.
Some of the deaths are of older persons with co-morbidity who would have died in a few weeks or months anyway. So conclusions cannot be drawn so fast.
The first three deaths attributed to COVID-19 here in NSW, Australia, were all in the same nursing home and were all over 90 years of age with comorbidity issues.
Yeah but Patrick our numbers are so low (just 104 total deaths at the time of posting) it is hardly surprising that they are dominated by the most vulnerable in the community. What else would you expect. I imagine such people dominate annual flu/cold related deaths also year in, year out. The issue is do we take no practical action to prevent such deaths, i.e. old people? If not then why not leave them out in the bush to die of ‘natural causes’? The morality is about the same.
Bringing the entire economy of a nation to a halt because of a few deaths! Why don’t we shutdown the economy for deaths as a result of other infectious diseases, or cancer, or road smashes?
Patrick asked, “Why don’t we shutdown the economy for deaths as a result of other infectious diseases, or cancer, or road smashes?”
Because cancer and road smashes are not communicable diseases. Measures to stop the spread of contagious diseases would not be very effective against cancer and road smashes.
The solution to the COVID-19 epidemic is not to ignore it, but to do what the countries which have successfully stopped have done: use intensive testing and contact-tracing to find and quarantine the carriers of the disease, to stop them from spreading it.
Until then, lock-downs, “social distancing,” etc. are stopgap measures, which help slow the spread of the disease.
“Dave Burton July 6, 2020 at 3:07 am
…deaths as a result of other infectious diseases…”
Missed that bit huh?
“The solution to the COVID-19 epidemic is not to ignore it, but to do what the countries which have successfully stopped have done: use intensive testing and contact-tracing to find and quarantine the carriers of the disease, to stop them from spreading it.”
As we know with plenty of examples that disprove contact-tracing and “quarantine” your statement is complete bollox.
“Until then, lock-downs, “social distancing,” etc. are stopgap measures, which help slow the spread of the disease.”
Again, we know this is complete bollox.
Patrick wrote, “…we know…”
“It’s not the things you don’t know that are the problem, it’s the things you know that aren’t so.”
– Will Rogers (paraphrased; also sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, Josh Billings, or Satchell Paige)
This study is trying to attribute almost 100% of the excess deaths of the period starting march 1st to COVID-19. This is clearly an exaggeration.
Usually, at most 70% of the excess deaths can be attributed to the main epidemic at any given time of the year. That is because, when an epidemic strikes and hospitals are overwhelmed, all other indicators (emergency admission, cancer tests, kidney tests, etc) drop under the normal during these periods.
In the US there were 122 300 excess deaths, during this period, thus, there are about 85 000 of them that can be attributed to COVID-19.
So, unless the people that made the study consider that having fewer cancer tests saves lives, they should consider their calculations.
Covid 19 – 30x as bad as flu in 4 months in California.
An article Feb 1st 2020 on how scary the Flu season was in California.
https://patch.com/california/studiocity/double-barreled-flu-season-slams-california-deadliest-week
They had 211 deaths from flu since the start in October, 2019 – 4 months.
They have now had 6,331 Covid 19 deaths (Worldometers July 4th, 2020) since the start of Covid 19 in March, 2020 – 4 months – 30x flu and it keeps on going at about 60 deaths a day for the last month without much sign of going down soon.
This is not a hoax, it is not a lie, it is not insanity to lockdown, it is not a conspiracy.
Overall hospitalizations for laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 in California have declined from 3.2 per 100,000 population at their peak on April 18 to .6 last week. Are people dying at home in greater numbers?
Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19-Associated Hospitalizations
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_3.html
(See: “Display by Weekly Rate” and “Surveillance Area, California)
Bill Parsons, I’m not exactly sure what you are suggesting but I’ll give it a go.
I am not an expert at all, I’m just doing the math.
Are the death statistics for California from the CDC correct or are the hospitalization statistics from the CDC correct or are they both correct?
Firstly, I don’t have any reason to disbelieve the death statistics.
Secondly, I don’t see any inconsistency between the two sets of data.
Hospitalizations becoming death statistics are delayed by days to weeks.
There were hospitalizations, based on your link of roughly 2 per 100,000, (20 per million) for about eight weeks before that, staying pretty steady, that is about 790 people, (39.5 million population x 20) 60 deaths each day from that number is quite conceivable. If the 0.6 from last week is accurate and continues on the same path, that is excellent and hopefully the death rate will be coming down soon.
That of course, does not make past deaths disappear and so the 30x rate of flu deaths until now, in a comparable time frame, can’t be magicked away.
Spain just announced since June 1 their hospitalization rate has dropped from 25% to 8% and the asymptomatic rate is 60%. The average age has also dropped to 50.
Looks to me if you fall into the susceptible group CV19 is an unmitigated disaster, but if you are a healthy individual it is in a lot of cases a bad cold at worst. This disease is like none other we have encountered. It says a lot about adopting healthy lifestyle choices and consequences of not doing so.
For many allowing yourself to become obese or years of inactivity was an early death sentence. The same holds for the elderly with the consequences of aging. Unfortunately it took months to really get to know how CV19 works. We now know and it is time to get back to living. It isn’t going away but we can cope.
‘This disease isn’t like none other we have encountered’
Uh huh.
Do share your ‘findings’ of the 380-400+ trillion non-lethal viruses inundating every mm of space inside each & every one of our bodies.
Smh.
What a silly statement on your part!
Enough with the ignorant chicken littling routine.
The fact of the matter is the percentage of people who’ve had, who currently have or will have rona is ~ 100%.
Hundreds of years of virology data tell us inasmuch.
“..This disease is like none other we have encountered…”
1 – It’s like no other we have encountered in that its genome is different to current diseases
2 – It’s very similar to most flus in its transmission and impact on the human body.
3 – Some of its genetic sequences are the same as HIV.
Pick any one…
“This disease is like none other we have encountered”
We’ve encountered diseases like this repeatedly, i.e., sweeping up all manner of disease under one infectious diagnosis, including numerous iatrogenic deaths.
As far as therapeutic treatments go, I’m far from accepting HCQ as efficacious for COVID-19 progressing to a severe case. The use of dexamethasone treatment for serious COVID-19 patients with ARDS though likely has considerable merit to continue its use and study.
As far as actor Nick Cordero’s case goes, I’d guess he has an inherited genetic blood clotting issue or something similar going on for his particular case.
For example my genetic profiling from 23&me tells me I’m at slight risk for thrombophilia with a variant genotype at what they call the F2 allele
“Hereditary Thrombophilia
Hereditary thrombophilia is a predisposition to developing harmful blood clots. These harmful blood clots most commonly form in the legs and can travel to the lungs. This test includes the two most common variants linked to hereditary thrombophilia.”
According to my report from 23&me, I have one variant (that is, I’m heterozygous on 1 of my two parental copies carries a snip) of a mutation on one of my prothrombin gene, a G to A nucleotide substitution (single nucleotide polmorphism, snip) at position 20210 that slightly elevates my risk of clotting.
Now I have no idea what Mr Cordero’s situation is regarding predisposing risk factors, but think its a pretty safe guess to think there may be one for him given his age and the severity of clotting issues he was reported to have in the disease.
“As far as actor Nick Cordero’s case goes, I’d guess he has an inherited genetic blood clotting issue or something similar going on for his particular case.”
According to the doctor(s), it was 100% iatrogenic.
Genetic testing for susceptibility is not routinely done in clinical cases.
These genetic test results of susceptibility loci on gnes are based on large scale population studies for Genome Wide associations with Disease (GWAD). The underlying mechanism is frequently unknown, especially with SNIPs, on how the alter finely tuned prtein-protein interactions at the molecular medicine/biochemistry level.
Frequently genetic testing offers no relevant information to treatment in the immediate acute clinical care setting. That is because simply knowing someone carries a slightly elevated risk (say for clotting or cancer, etc) doesn’t imply 100% penetrance in the phenotype for that individual, and thus does not alter any short-term immediate treatment strategy for the doctors. The doctors are going to monitor thrombin levels, platelet levels, liver panels tests and watch for clotting in any hospitalized patient now with COVID-19. They will treat as appropriate as signs and symptoms arise in each individual. As they should.
ECMO machines cause clotting independent of genetic factors. It’s a function of their mechanics for which the machines have to be monitored constantly. Even then clots are not uncommon.
While the claim of surging cases is believable because of more tests, the claim of surging deaths is not supported by increased hospitalizations which would should logically precede them.
CDC’s Covid-network of 14 states shows a steady decline in hospitalizations since the disease peak in April to the week of June 27 (last week). Click on “overall” in the interactive map. Overall, during that time, U.S. hospitalizations have declined from 10.5 to 2.5 per 100,000.
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_3.html
Datat from these “Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19-Associated Hospitalizations” should be more reliable than any claims about death rates. “CARES” money is distributed to proven coronavirus hot spots, and hospitals must be especially vigilant about nosocomial spread within their premises. Their incentive would be to estimate high on both hospitalizations AND deaths.
“Excess deaths” has always seemed liked fertile ground for fictional extrapolations unlike the hard data of actual admissions to hospitals.
Media subscribe to the “Why let a perfectly good crisis go to waste?” mindset. So too, it seems, JAMA.
Different time periods, the study is March to May which is before the current surge in cases.
As well a lot of Covid deaths don’t occur in hospital, which could be a seniors home or even at home. The unusual pnuemonia which can be missed because a person can talk or move can mask that they are near death from very low oxygen levels in blood, if they go to sleep they may never wake without having any medical treatment. It was exactly this situation which nearly ended the life of British PM Boris Johnson.
Don’t know where you get “March to May”.
If you use my link, you have to set several parameters on the interactive site: survey area (full network), display by (weekly) rate, age selection (overall). Do it right and you’ll see the decline of hospitalizations since the virus peaked in April. Hospitals are admitting one fourth the number of Covid-proven cases as of last week. Several conclusions you apparently were unable to draw on your own:
In April, hospitals were willing to count any new admission as a Covid-19 case. Since testing became readily available, they don’t do that. Most hospitals were never overwhelmed, but the few that were in April, are now in need of business and accepting anyone with symptoms. The argument that more people are now dying at home or in nursing homes is specious. Testing across states is more prevalent than it was at the virus peak. My mother’s facility (still clear of cases, thank God), can test for virus at its first signs, get near-immediate results, and (unlike the idiotic policies in New York) will immediately hospitalize any senior positives, where they stay until
they are cleared to move to isolation facilities.
I’m aware of the “happy hypoxia” phenomenon. But you should provide a link if you believe there are more home / senior facility deaths now than in April?
I read it in the lead, did you even read any of it ?
“The new Yale study took data from the National Center for Health Statistics and compared the number of excess U.S. deaths from any causes with the reported number of weekly deaths from Covid-19 during the period of March 1 to May 30
Its now 6 July, and surges only began 2-3 weeks back, eg Texas daily deaths bottomed out around Jun 1-10th before rising again ( mask wearing should reduce deaths per day in the next 2 weeks)
Read the lead again, the addendum just says what I said about changes in hospitalization rates and lesser deaths from other causes
Let’s be honest.
There have been many deaths caused by ChiCom 19.
There have been many deaths caused by Lockdown.
My guess is that the latter will eventually be seen to be even more than the former.
The number of excess deaths reported seems very likely to have been caused by increases in the rates of death directly caused by the exaggerated lockdown responding to covid-19 virus, which have prevented many treatments and surgical procedures. These deaths are directly related to the chaotic pandemic response. The number of under-diagnosed covid-19 deaths is probably balance by the over-diagnosed deaths due to covid-19 which have been required to justify the chaotic lockdown measures.
The general covid-19 political response is best described as “Don’t just sit there, Panic!”
Elective surgery is exactly that, non urgent. All those really needing surgery will probably have got it. There are always people who die waiting for elective surgery, as often they can have complex co morbidities that shorten their lives.
Meantime the numbers killed in road accidents will be way down, those killed in work accidents down and not least due to better hand washing and social distancing the numbers who die from influenza and realted pneumonia will be down as well.
Just raising the issue of delayed medical treatments over looks other ways lives have been saved, people die during surgery as well as given a longer life.
One of the problems has been medical establishments, certainly in the UK, having far to definite an idea of how the disease presents. For months the NHS said that if you don’t have the cough, you don’t have Covid. Eventually they accepted what the rest of the world had long known and dropped that. There are a whole raft of symptoms some of which you will get, some you won’t. There is no slam dunk on it, the damn thing wanders around and does what it does. Add to that some people get it and it is all over in a fortnight, others the symptoms come and go for three months. That is another problem, “When you have had no symptoms in the past 14 days” from the NHS, except that many people, especially middle aged and older, have quite long periods of no symptoms and then it returns. As long as it doesn’t get into the lungs it’s just a feverish cold.
I am not sure how doctors can do reliable clinical diagnosis under these circumstances.
The morning before my last physical my wife was watching one of those “Mystery Illness” TV shows. The woman had gone to eight different doctors over five years trying to find out what was wrong with her. Finally, after spending months on the internet she found something that matched everyone of her symptoms and seemed like a diary of her progression of the problems she was having. With that story fresh in my mind I asked my physician, whom I have seen for over 30 years, how often this happens. he responded – “Much more often than you think. You realize that 50% of the doctors are in the bottom half of their class and the last group offered a job. Those in the upper quartile are in private practice making much better salary than those in the typical clinic or hospital staff.” I said, “The doctors in the show reminded me of the typical “Backyard Mechanic, trying different medicines, like they tried different parts, in hopes of finding a cure.” He responded, – “I have seen many doctors like that in my career.”
“Respiratory distress is not the only way Covid-19 can kill people.”
No, it also kills people because the commit suicide from being imprisoned in their own homes when they didn’t commit any crime, by being beaten to death by their own spouse, and simply from losing hope all for the future.
I read, somewhere, that a nurse took three new swabs out of the container, and sent them to the CDC. Guess what, sport fans, they ALL came back said by the CDC, to be COVID-19. Is this underestimating the cases of COVID-19.
And what about Washington state announcing they had called murders, suicides, and vehicle related deaths as COVID-19?
And what about the hospital in New York state that announced that it was going to call ALL deaths as COVID-19, because it would get more federal tax dollars? It was going through hard times and needed the money.
Read the comments at the ZeroHedge article – they repeats most, if not all, of what I posted
If you can’t provide any valid links to back any of this up, it’s just “something you read somewhere”, and will be ignored.
do you know what the internet is? do you know how use a search engine? or do yo have to be spoon feed?
These Yale researchers need to check out the Chinese Covid-19 reported death figures, I am sure that the Chinese Communist Party would give them a guided tour and a grant if their conclusions match the Party line..
Yale is in trouble as the founder owned slaves. SJWs are not happy with them right now.
Has anyone looked at H1N1 flu deaths in 2019/2020?
Some people say that H1N1 his year in /US was very bad, worse than the 2009 epidemic.
And it was not widely reported by Fauci or others.
Does anybody have a link to the US mortality rate by month in 2019? The cdc webpage has a graph and it is difficult to determine the numerical value. My rough estimate of the death rate in March, April, and May is around 740,000 and if the study found 781,000 death during that period the excess is not 122,000 but around 40,000.
“41 yr old Broadway Actor Nick Cordero had his leg amputated after Covid-19 caused a blood clot”
What a lie. The doctors said the ECMO machine he was hooked to caused the clot (which ECMOs frequently do)). Do I have to post the link again?
Looking at an increase in excess deaths without considering the normal variability in the death rate is just silly.
hey is this flu over yet? weather’s kinda hot isnt this flu thing done yet?
Gosh I remember a day back in feb when USA cases were at 68…..
and nobody would listen.. at WUWT
Hey they are having fun in Texas
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/505889-texas-hits-new-record-of-coronavirus-caseshttps://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/505889-texas-hits-new-record-of-coronavirus-cases
ridem cowboy dave… woohoo.
On excess deaths..
ya.
Do ypu know how flu deaths are counted?
they are not.
they are estimated using excess death data amongst other things
When it is all said an done and god is done sorting out the winners from the losers there will be plenty of
time to bring out your dead and do a proper estimate.
Oh.
It’s not the flu.
In about 20 days you will know more.. maybe 30 days since youngster last longer on vents.
some last 60 days..
any way, wait a month or so and see where deaths are. how many cases a day now?
50K?
how about them gompertz curves , haha. folks stopped drawing those.
Oh
https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-ignores-risk-coronavirus-floats-120014485.html
Back in Feb IT WAS ALREADY KNOWN from a study in guangdong that this was true
fascinating study of a resturant.
heck Korea knew this, HK knew this, China knew this.
Positive results from flawed covid tests don’t equate to illness. No one without symptoms is ever tested for flu, but now every mother’s son is tested for covid without good reason; and of course some are testing positive, which idiots like yourself equate with illness (cases). Apply the same rule to flu and it would be the same.
In Texas they are testing everyone coming into the hospital==no matter why they came in So yes, lots of reported cases, many having nothing to do with the covid. Actual hospitalizations are down, and the ceo of one Houston hospital stated that the media was creating an unfounded scare.
As for the ventilator stuff Mosh–it has been shown that being put on the ventilator is essentially a death sentence, and i\I don’t believe that is part of the treatment protocol any longer.
Wonder how many overdose, suicides, etc associated with the lockdown are listed as covid deaths??
More than one homicide has been.
“it has been shown that being put on the ventilator is essentially a death sentence”
Ventilators cause severe covid: rhythmic mechanical force (air pressure) on alveoli > mechanotransduction > out-of-control immune response > hyper inflammation> multiple organ failure > death
Lungs respond to hospital ventilator as if it were an infection
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718172835.htm
“It’s not the flu. In about 20 days you will know more.. maybe 30 days since youngster last longer on vents.
some last 60 days..”
You’re right, it’s not the flu. Subtract the deaths caused by ventilators and toxic drugs and it’s probably less deadly. If flu patients were intubated and poisoned as frequently as covid patients have been, we would see the same mayhem and death.
I doubt your prediction will hold true because doctors everywhere are recognizing that ventilators are causing much of the morbidity and mortality, and are reducing their use. That’s the kind of policy change that will save lives, as opposed to your stupid approach of trying to influence politicians.
Learn to type.
” youngster last longer on vents”, there’s near zero chance of healthy youngsters dying from this virus.
In the UK excess deaths are back below the 5 year average, any real lockdown/distancing went out the window weeks ago.
All the indications are that the fatality rate of this virus is less than some flu viruses. It has barely affected life expectancy, tiny compared to the improvements over the last few decades.
Averaged out over a year or 2 it won’t even be a blip in the mortality figures (we had less deaths than normal from flu this winter so it mopped up those and some other low hanging fruit).
The vast majority of deaths are elderly/infirm with limited life left. Care home deaths are a fair proportion of total UK deaths, but those same deaths are a fraction of total care home deaths – because believe it or not, people in care homes are about due to die regardless.
In Texas over 80s make up 41% of deaths. Only 6% are under 50. ZERO child deaths.
However, Texas had 15 confirmed pediatric flu deaths last season.
“heck Korea knew this, HK knew this, China knew this.” Don’t dare to mention Taiwan.
At your expense, yes:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/25/climate-explainer-if-humans-had-not-contributed-to-greenhouses-gases-in-any-way-at-all-what-would-the-global-temperature-be-today/#comment-3029634
I ended up with a 5% compressed fracture of lumbar 12 “becuz of COVID”. Let me explain: I’m 75. I wanted a large screen TV that my relative had. They were on lockdown and could not help me move this large screen. So, when I was moving it into my apartment with the help of my 13 yr old grandson, I tripped.
That’s how stupid this whole thing is.
It’s the seasonal flu, guys!
BTW confirmed by X-rays and a CAT at the VA
BTW, does anyone trust Yale, the epi-center of Skull & Bones?
It’s like trusting Fauci
Hmmm
Is nobody accounting for the shutting down of schools and leaving kids to their drug addict welfare queen home lives? How many kids lost their lives for the sake of people with one foot in the grave? What is really maddening to me is nobody has compared flu vs covid deaths of younger than 40…….the flu out kills in these age groups, why the drastic difference in response? Our govt.s and businesses are run by old people who obviously care a lot more for themselves than their grandkids! The first “ME” generation, a pathetic bunch that lost every “war” starting with vietnam, while losing at home to stop the “war”…..the first generation raised by the TV…..a generation watched as more regulation and debt was created than ALL generations before them COMBINED…Not all of them are bad, I know, but as a whole compared to their parents….pathetic. They leave my generation in extreme debt so they can mooch their spent SS checks, and Medicare/medicaid for a few more years, and with the responsibility of getting our freedoms back which will take massive overhauls from coast to coast.
We absolutely know for a fact that China Wuhan deaths are being inflated:
https://www.westernjournal.com/washington-inflates-covid-19-numbers-includes-gunshot-victims-among-deaths/
“might be the cause of the increase in deaths and they haven’t a clue if that’s the case or not”
And we won’t know the “causes of death” for another 2-3 years. The CDC only lists 2012-17 and has 2018 in “preliminary” status. Suicides up? Accidents down? Does it balance? We won’t know for 2-3 years. Until then we have total deaths to work with.
“The number of excess all-cause deaths was 28% higher than the official tally of COVID-19–reported deaths during that period. ”
Why are they comparing a real number (total deaths) to a fake number (covid-19 deaths)? Yoram Lass (formerly director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Health) gave an interview and said the following:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/22/nothing-can-justify-this-destruction-of-peoples-lives/
“Mortality due to coronavirus is a fake number”
and
“The only real number is the total number of deaths – all causes of death, not just coronavirus”
The total death data from the CDC for weeks 1 to 22 in 2020: West Virginia is missing week 22 and North Carolina is missing weeks 20, 21 & 22. Data was downloaded 2020-06-29. I’ll update as the data is updated.
For 2020 the USA has a year to date “excess death” rate about 10.1% (124,419) higher than the previous 4 year average for weeks 1 to 22. To put that in perspective the 2017-18 influenza season was just over 7% compared to the previous 4 years.
A “Monthly” view is also available for each state & month. You can view the rise and fall of excess deaths for the country as a whole or on a state by state basis. This should help see the effects of re-opening.
For the entire USA: January -0.3; February 0.7; March 4.6; April 33.3; May 11.6
So April was the worst month. The data is still far to incomplete to run June’s numbers and get any meaningful results.
The script and all related files are here if you want to kick the tires:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fh9x5fngmfbeiiu/AAAH-OtOMqiY_R9qqG6YccCRa?dl=0
Shoddy work. They forgot to refer to it as the Trump Virus.
As in “Trump Virus Deaths Worse Than Thought“ subtitle “Callous Trump Golfs at Luxury Estate”
“The non-partisan group Democratic National Committee announced results today…”
I know no one who has had the disease for sure. One daughter had all the symptoms back in December 2019.
There has been a successful “flatten the curve” campaign. No reports I know of (except the NY situation) where a hospital has been unable to accommodate patients arriving at the ER door.
It is a coronavirus. No vaccine has ever been successfully developed for any other coronavirus.
Herd immunity is what ends each and every virus if it ends.
Year over year 5-yr moving average death counts may be used to judge the total impact of the situation. It is a better estimate of a typical year than simply using 2019 as the base.
I’m sure you are all giddy with delight that you can do your part in continuing the hysteria about the CV. We all realize the seriousness of this illness and feel anguish for those affected. But your “Yale study” is nothing more than fantasy driven hyperbole. You’d do better trying to explain the infield fly rule to a herd of yaks.
My husband and I recently had a consult with a specialist. He had been following my husband after an inner carotid artery dissection last June after a seatbelt accident caused symptoms of a TIA. Because of this, my husband has had CTs and MRIs every three months since last June as well as other tests to rule out related issues like heart disease. In January a CT and MRI showed the dissection was entirely healed. In March, the night before he was supposed to have his final test, he had a lateral pons stroke. It was mild as such things go and he has made a near complete recovery. The specialist said that with all the CTs and MRIs he had, we know there is nothing there to explain the March stroke. He doesn’t drink, smoke, use illicit drugs, and he has no issues with his arteries. He does have hypertension but it is well controlled. His heart is in a condition better than most men 30 years younger than him. (He is 76.) There is simply no reason at all for him to have had this stroke. We were both sick with a mild weird “flu” in the days before the stroke. My husband also had “COVID toes” which at the time was attributed to the blood thinners he was on for the dissection. The specialist told us it is becoming apparent that COVID was hitting through our population in Manitoba at far higher rates last March than anyone suspected at the time. We had an exceptionally bad “flu” this winter. Because of this there were strict limits on visits to nursing home and strict protocols to prevent respiratory illnesses and control them if they appeared in the homes. (These worked BTW so there’s no excuse for the outbreaks that occurred in other places. Manitoba had no nursing home outbreaks of either flu or COVID.) The testing criteria for the virus was so narrow during March that there was simply no way to diagnose it unless you got fever cough and had a direct connection to Wuhan. Therefore the specialist’s conclusion was the stroke my husband had was probably due to COVID but we will never know for sure simply because even if we have an antibody test and it is positive, we will not know for sure if that was the cause. And he told us he saw a lot of this sort of thing and heard of a lot more from his colleagues. Therefore, I am inclined to think there are a lot of unreported cases and it has caused an increased number of deaths, many of which were sudden and unexpected hearts attacks and strokes. In the case of my husband, if a 76 year old has a stroke, it’s considered just an unfortunate part of aging. If he had not had the dissection and all the previous imaging done, no one would ever have suspected it might have been caused by COVID.
All we know is lots of folks have excess deaths but mine would be excessive and I need tenure to to study that.
correlation is not causation … science 101 … which they ignore …
Just a matter of time for something like this to get funded & come out in the lying media. Worse than we thought & all that.
Deaths from Covid-19 and deaths by other causes that are the consequence of the police response to Covid-19 are not the same thing, of course. The “excess deaths” attributable to the policy response are the fault of… the policy response. Sorting out the excess deaths will be highly politicized by more or less any scientist old enough to have had a political opinion in 2020. So it might be another 30 years before we get an honest assessment.
Covid-19 is certainly a novel disease. Among its other characteristics, it apparently jumped from animals to humans, and is capable of jumping to yet other animals other than the source. Where things get even more interesting, the first reported case of a zoo tiger in the US being infected. Obviously, the tiger was forcibly kept under ‘quarantine,’ and socially distanced from the general public. Even its caretaker probably got closer than 6 feet rarely if ever. So, just how is this disease transmitted? Why are so many individuals in packing plants infected? There is a lot about this disease that we still don’t understand!
The only novel thing about this illness that I can point to with certainty is the unrestrained and early use of ventilators as primary treatment. That practice originated in China, was replicated in Italy and beyond, but was flagged as inappropriate in most cases my astute doctors in Italy (Gattanoni), NYC (Kyle-Sidell) and Germany (Voshaar, quote below), at least.
https://archive.is/KX5IQ#selection-4609.23-4621.63
Indoors.
The tiger might have been accidentally fed infected meat.
FROM THE PAPER:
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/06/22/scitranslmed.abc1126
How do we know? – We really don’t, given the unreliability of tests, the variations in death attribution, the given mass bias to hype only case numbers.
So what, the researcher just assumes that because the test is negative for influenza, it’s COVID? The line of reasoning here seems to have a big gap in it being filled by bias in favor of COVID. Consider that the diagnostic accuracy of influenza swabs is often overestimated by clinicians. The CDC notes that rapid influenza testing has a sensitivity ranging from approximately 50% to 70% — meaning that in up to half of influenza cases, the flu swab results will still be negative, according to https://epmonthly.com/article/accurate-rapid-flu-tests/#:~:text=The%20diagnostic%20accuracy%20of%20influenza%20swabs%20is%20often,the%20flu%20swab%20results%20will%20still%20be%20negative.
As COVID-19 often presents with similar symptoms to influenza, existing surveillance networks in place for tracking influenza could be used to help track COVID-19.
This sentence seems ridiculous, given that it follows the first assuming that a negative influenza test from someone presenting with influenza-like symptoms automatically implies COVID. Maybe it simply implies that this is one of those 50% false negatives for an influenza test.
I did not read past these sentences.
Theres specific test ( various) for Covid 19 . Millions are tested for this disease and return positive results. No test is 100% reliable but not to the extent you claim – without evidence. Autopsy’s show the causes of death in more detail.
So, I’m wondering … are my kidney stones I had 6 weeks ago that put me in the hospital for 4 days also COVID-related ?
If they were concerned they would have tested you for Covid , or you could have asked for one.
Kidney Stones arent caused by Covid infection, trust me your doctors know much more about your illnesses than you want to accept.
COVID-19 also caused lockdowns. How many of these excess deaths are due to that. Enquiring minds want to know
Some background information on how Covid messes up blood clotting (h/t Nick) – from Roger Seheult, MD of https://www.medcram.com
Yeah, well I know quite a lot about blood clotting given my blood condition. So I take a grain of salt with that video. O positive seems to be less of an issue with COVID.
Looks like Cordero died earlier today, apparently of COVID-19 complications.
Here is an interesting article, Coronovirus: Why everyone was wrong
https://archive.is/8rLzi#selection-203.0-203.35
The question people should be asking is why did so many people who were fit except they had Alzheimers disease end up dying? Quite simply, Alzheimers shouldn’t affect lung or heart function. The answer comes from an observation in France that a large number of patients who died were dyhrated. In other words, they were not getting drink, and almost certainly if they weren’t being given water, they were not being given food or generally cared for. Now, ask youself why so many died in care homes where the poorly paid staff were scared witless by the scare stories of killer covid flu and the owners almost certainly kept well away from anyone unfortunate enough to catch covid flu. Add to that the lack of post mortems, the inability of relatives to go and visit and find out what was going on and the way doctors signed off death certificates without seeing patients.
Now ask yourself what happens when medics are so scared of patients that they will not even sit in the same room with them, and in turn patients are so scared of medics that they will not go into see them, combined with endless vile gov propaganda to not “burden” the under-worked tik-tok filming health services. The answer is a tsunami of under-diagnosis, missed treatments and a surge in non-covid-flu deaths from cancer, heart, kidney, mental health etc. patients- many of whose deaths will then be falsely attributed to COVID.
The simple truth, is that like the climate, if we hadn’t had the means to test for COVID-flu, then we wouldn’t have got the tsunami of fear and thus the tsunami of additional deaths and there would have been almost nothing to see and it would almost certainly have come and gone with very few people noticing, … or at worst, a few quick news articles about “unseasonal flu” causing a few “problems” with hospitals being very “busy”. None of the terror, very few alzheimer’s patients would die, and there would be very few additional deaths from heart, cancer, kidney, mental health patients.
Indeed, it may well have been like a normal flu winter BEFORE vaccines. Before vaccines stopped the grim reaper taking her annual crop of people near to death and instead, this time she had to wait till an entirely new flu bug called covid to get her excessive crop. The only reason covid may have been so “bad”, is because flu vaccines had been so good at keeping alive people who otherwise would have died in the previous few winters.
Well, once something becomes the next “all important” thing, “let me glue myself to this all-important thing, and gimme funds, too” is to be expected.
Besides, a pandemic is like war, in that it allows to write off almost anything.
I recommend that anyone interested in the attribution of deaths to Covid-19 should look carefully at the data on excess mortality Jan 2015 to June 2020 provided in the form of interactive graphs and maps at https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps The data for the last few weeks are provisional and subject to adjustment as final figures are reported.
The data comes from official figures for most countries in western Europe, although from the largest country (Germany) only 2 of the 16 federal states are included: Berlin (the capital, so urban) and Hessen (mixed rural and urban, including Frankfurt city). In a general way the data must be relevant to an assessment of the situation in USA and elsewhere.
Several countries/territories show no obvious peak in mortality in the first half of 2020 higher than the fairly regular winter peaks in previous years: Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany (the 2 states shown), Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway and Portugal.
However other countries in W Europe show distinct mortality peaks centred on March and April 2020: Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK (all 4 constituent countries). The peaks are alarmingly high in Belgium, France, Netherlands, Spain, England and Scotland. These are countries which have particularly high incidence of recorded cases of Covid-19. It is clear that something out of the ordinary has happened in these countries in late winter/early spring 2020.
What proportion of the excess deaths in W Europe can be attributed directly to Covid-19 is uncertain; many deaths may be due to factors such as diversion of hospital resources to Covid-19 treatment, avoidance and cancellation of hospital treatment by members of the public worried about contracting the infection, or adverse effects of the various lockdown procedures adopted such as insufficient access to sunlight, fresh air and outdoor exercise. And there may be totally unrelated causes of death. But I think it would be foolhardy to ignore the evidence from this type of relatively complete and reliable data.
Other causes can be increased, since hospitals were not working like they used to.
Other causes can also be reduced, since quarantine reduced other infectious diseases and other risks of interaction.
So it’s “average +unknown#1 -unknown#2”.
We see Cases per day(somewhat useful) and total cases (always going up….scary) , but why don’t they ever show Deaths per day ?
These are the people that have died because of the Lockdowns!!!!!!!!!
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT HAVE DIED BECAUSE OF THE LOCKDOWNS!!!
LOCKDOWNS KILL!!!!!
Excess Deaths = Lockdown Deaths.
The first time I heard the term “excess death” was back in 2017 in association with the Puerto Rican death count resulting from Hurricane Maria. The Puerto Rican government initially stated that about 64 people had died.
Now, if you remember, this storm was touted by those pushing the Climate Change agenda to be the prototype of all future Hurricanes. In other words, they wanted to give the impression that all future hurricanes would be category 5s and kill thousands of people and cause billions of dollars-worth of damage, and it was to be the new norm. The problem was, the death toll from this particular storm was only 64, and that didn’t fit with the pre-storm hysteria and message.
Something had to be done. Enter the Excess Death Count.
You can read all about what happened here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Maria_in_Puerto_Rico
They eventually raised the Death Toll resulting from Hurricane Maria to approximately 3,000 citing excess deaths.
As a former professional data analyst, I believe that the concept of the “Excess Death Count” is the most useless, ill-conceived, manipulative, and convoluted matrix ever devised. You can apply it to absolutely anything you want.
They only way the Excess Death matrix could possibly have any value would be as an alert. Excess deaths are merely the number of deaths that are above the average number of deaths. If there is an above average number of deaths, a legitimate scientist would go out and investigate as to why, not simply state that it was caused by this or that thing.
Ever since Hurricane Maria, I could see that the Excess Death matrix was going to be a tool of manipulation by the Left-Wing. The Left-Wing is using the Excess Death matrix to fear-monger, that’s all. I knew they would.
Note the timestamp on this article I wrote:
http://protocriteria.com/index.php/2020/05/05/excess-death-warning/
If the Left-Wing can use the Excess Death matrix to inflate the COVID-19 death toll, I can use the Excess Death matrix to indicate the number of Lockdown Deaths.
The truth is, I have absolutely no respect for the matrix at all. It’s a bunch of hot air.
When the CDC report the expected deaths are near 100%, there is no justification for lockdowns or other restrictions by government. Early on, there was concern the death rate from COVID19 was very high, but it turns out to be just a little worse than flu, with mostly the same demographics of deaths. 50% are over 75, 10% are under 50, and 1% are under 30. Almost no children died of COVID19, but hundreds died of flu this year. There is no reason to close or restrict schools, restaurants, or anything else except maybe nursing homes and hospital wings dealing with elderly patients.
To prevent more deaths this Fall, we need to develop group immunity (I refuse to call people a herd). That means letting the virus run through about 80% of the population. Summertime is protective because sunlight exposure to skin generates vitD and that helps regulate the immune system. Cytokine shock is more common among people who are vitD deficient.
More serological testing will help us determine the extent of SARS-CoV2 exposure, and let us make better policy decisions. There are good serological tests, and many not so good. It is important to identify which ones work correctly and use those.
The rate of death from COVID-19 was a computer based prediction.
Regardless of the death toll, I predict that COVID 19 will magically disappear the day AFTER the presidential election.