April 6th, 2020 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
I am seeing an increasing number of people on social media pointing to the weekly CDC death statistics which show a unusually low number of total deaths for this time of year, when one would expect the number to be increasing from COVID-19. But what most people don’t realize is that this is an artifact of the late arrival of death certificate data as gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
This first came to my attention as a tweet by some researchers who were using the CDC weekly death data in a research paper pointing out the downturn in deaths in early 2020 and had to retract the paper because of the incomplete data problem. A disclaimer at the CDC website points out the incomplete nature of recent data. While they say that the new totals could be adjusted either upward or downward, it appears that the adjustments are almost always upward (i.e. recent data have a low bias in reported deaths).
As a first attempt to possibly correct for this under-reporting problem, I downloaded the data two weeks in a row (approximately March 30 and April 5, 2020) to examine how the recent data changes as new death certificate data are obtained. I realize this is only one week’s worth of changes, and each week would provide additional statistics. But the basic methodology could be applied with additional weeks of data added.
I first use the 4.5 years of reported weekly death data to compute an average seasonal cycle in deaths, with the slow upward trend included (red line in the following figure). Also shown are the total deaths reported on 2 successive weeks, showing the increase in reported deaths from late reports coming in.
Although it is not obvious in the above plot, there were new deaths reported as much as 1 year late. If we use the difference between the two successive weeks’ reports as an estimate of how many new reports will come in each week as a percentage of the average seasonal cycle, and sum them up for 52 weeks, we can get a rough estimate of what the totals will look like a year from now (the blue line in the following figure).
The blue line shows behavior quite close to that seen last year at this time. Keep in mind that Week 10 is only through early March, at which point there were only 30 COVID-19 deaths reported, which is too small a number to show up on these plots. I’m posting this as just a suggestion for those who want to analyze recent weekly death data and make some sense out of it.
It is also of interest how bad the 2017-18 flu season was compared to this season. I’m sure many medical people are aware of this, but I don’t recall it being a huge news story two years ago.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
China started the early intubation with high PEEP protocol, and the world followed based on their bad information. How many ICU patients have died because the treatment they received likely caused the ARDS doctors were trying to prevent? I suspect quite a few.
https://rebelem.com/rebel-cast-ep79-covid-19-trying-not-to-intubate-early-why-ardsnet-may-be-the-wrong-ventilator-paradigm/
A very impotant advice ! Thanks for sharing. Read that yesterday in an other thread here on WUWT.
Good news.
It appears in the US the death total will be much less than the predicted 200,000 to 250,000 by the fall with social distancing and isolation.
The US model assumptions were purposely pessimistic to give high predicted total number of cases and deaths to help motivate people to isolate distancing.
The ‘models’ told us that the deaths for covid by the fall with isolation would be 200,000 to 250,000 and without isolation would be as high as 2 million.
The models assumed only 50% of the population would isolate and follow social distancing.
The economy is a different question. Unemployment numbers are not real time and hence lag reality. It is estimated that the current real US unemployment is roughly 13% and will reach 30% by the fall.
https://www.breitbart.com/health/2020/04/07/cdc-director-coronavirus-death-toll-will-be-much-much-much-lower-than-projected/
HOST: Are throwing those kind of numbers out actually helpful because what they do is scare the hell out of everyone to social distance? Is that the purpose?
DR. REDFIELD:
…. As you pointed out, those models that were done, they assume only about 50 percent of the American public would pay attention to the recommendations.
In fact, what we’re seeing is a large majority of the American public are taking the social distancing recommendations to heart.
And I think that’s the direct consequence of why you’re seeing the numbers are going to be much, much, much lower than would have been predicted by the models.
“The official US Covid19 projections so far have overestimated hospitalisations by a factor of 8, ICU beds needed by a factor of 6.4, and ventilators needed by a factor of 40.5”
Who hopes for and believes in models is hopeless and religious so far it concerns climate and corona ones.
William
You said, “It appears in the US the death total will be much less than the predicted 200,000 to 250,000 by the fall with social distancing and isolation.” If that is the case, then the models were wrong. All along we have been told that the social distancing wasn’t to keep people from getting infected, but, rather, slowing down the RATE of transmission so that hospitals could prepare for the expected peak. Over the long haul, about the same percentage of people are expected to become ill as ‘herd immunity’ is achieved. Flattening the curve will save some lives if the hospitals are adequately prepared by the time the peak arrives.
It depends how low we can get the infection rate after isolation.
We had no choice about isolating. If we had not isolated, the death total would have been around 2 million.
If we had a treatment so most sick people got better there would be less fear of getting sick.
Trump must have a lucky star and this might be a very big deal.
It appears Trump was correct hydroxychloroquine given to people just as they start showing covid symptoms drastically reduces the virus’s ability to attack cells.
https://www.breitbart.com/health/2020/04/07/donald-trump-gets-millions-of-hydroxychloroquine-pills-from-india/Regards, we are going to be forced restart our economy.
William
Without a vaccine, our best bet for reducing infections is to confer herd immunity.
Some of the early model estimates were as high as 2,000,000. However, they are backing off on those numbers. See Middleton’s recent article: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/07/wildly-exaggerated-chicom-19-models-are-driving-policy-decisions/
Most sick people DO get better. The current death rate is around 1%, not much different from seasonal flues.
A must see from one of the top epidemiologists in the world the social distancing will eventually kill more because we are delaying immunity from common but severe flu everybody will get this virus as its a common flu virus like all the other SARS eventually 99% will not even know it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg. Sweden is the successful test. I strongly suggest that people that may be experts in mathematics/physics do not indulge in virus disease butof course its a free country and i will defend tgheright to say even if you are 100% wrong (not this post or Dr Spencer unrelated)
Sweden has a lower infection rate [measured] than the US but a higher death rate/million population.
A variation of Succesful ?
You are not looking at infection rate you are looking +ve testing rate. Don’t confuse the stats with the infection. Until you look at how testing is done and availability of tests, you should NOT be comparing one country to another competitively.
“The latest figures from a special report by the German Robert Koch Institute show that the so-called positive rate (i.e. the number of test positives per number of tests) is increasing much more slowly than the exponential curves shown by the media and was only around 10% at the end of March, a value that is rather typical for corona viruses. According to the magazine Multipolar, there can therefore be „no question of a dangerously rapid spread of the virus“.
Professor Klaus Püschel, head of forensic medicine in Hamburg, explains about Covid19: „This virus influences our lives in a completely excessive way. This is disproportionate to the danger posed by the virus. And the astronomical economic damage now being caused is not commensurate with the danger posed by the virus. I am convinced that the Corona mortality rate will not even show up as a peak in annual mortality.“ In Hamburg, for example, „not a single person who was not previously ill“ had died of the virus: „All those we have examined so far had cancer, a chronic lung disease, were heavy smokers or severely obese, suffered from diabetes or had a cardiovascular disease. The virus was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. „Covid-19 is a fatal disease only in exceptional cases, but in most cases it is a predominantly harmless viral infection.“
In addition, Dr. Püschel explains: „In quite a few cases, we have also found that the current corona infection has nothing whatsoever to do with the fatal outcome because other causes of death are present, for example a brain haemorrhage or a heart attack. Corona in itself is a „not particularly dangerous viral disease“, says the forensic scientist. He pleads for statistics based on concrete examination results. „All speculations about individual deaths that have not been expertly examined only fuel anxiety.“ Contrary to the guidelines of the Robert Koch Institute, Hamburg had recently started to differentiate between deaths „with the“ and „by the“ coronavirus, which led to a decrease in Covid19 deaths”
The highest grow we had on February 28th with 52.7 %, 42.9 % March 1st.
On March 30st we had an 11.3 % increase and 66,125 cases, that day, the gouvernement declared the “High Risk” situation.
Strange, US deaths seem to be highly correlated with colder temperatures. Cold leads to more deaths (rhetorical)?
That’s why we MUST stop global warming 🙂
Dr Spencer, Thank you for the essay.
be afraid!!-
great article-
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/04/02/what-caused-the-black-death/
This is a common data artifact and a way we dealt with it was to date each event by when it was *reported*, for the weekly reports. Then after the end of the reporting year we’d issue a report which dated them by event date, always clearly labelling each report lest they be confused.
A general principle of passive antibody therapy is that it is more effective when used for prophylaxis than for treatment of disease. When used for therapy, antibody is most effective when administered shortly after the onset of symptoms. The reason for temporal variation in efficacy is not well understood but could reflect that passive antibody works by neutralizing the initial inoculum, which is likely to be much smaller than that of established disease (5). Another explanation is that antibody works by modifying the inflammatory response, which is also more easily achieved during the initial immune response, a stage that may be asymptomatic (6). As an example, passive antibody therapy for pneumococcal pneumonia was most effective when administered shortly after the onset of symptoms, and there was no benefit if antibody administration was delayed past the third day of disease (7).
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/138003
This might help clear up some of the confusion.
In CDC’s guidance to Doc filling out Death Certs, they state this: “In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as “probable” or “presumed.”
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/vsrg/vsrg03-508.pdf
Given the likely errors in testing (the current RT-PCR test is qualitative) it will be some time before we figure out who died “from” Wuhan Acquired Respiratory Syndrome (WARS) and who died “with it”.
https://www.questdiagnostics.com/home/Covid-19/HCP/QuestIVD/
Also note that we don’t really know how specific this test is yet. At least I have found nothing published on that yet.
Finally, if it is true that a large percentage of those infected never show any symptoms, this will be seen as the greatest government and media induced disaster in human history.
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1375
I cant predict the outcome, death wise, but I can predict that by the time this is over when all of the enquiries , apportioning of blame and all of the data has been mined we will be living on Mars. The mere mention of Wuflu will trigger death in some. I of course will not be alive to be added to the statistics , thanks be.
1 Apr: LifeSite News: Problematic definition of ‘COVID-19 death’ may be inflating death rate, leading to draconian lockdowns
By Robert L. Kinney III
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/problematic-covid-19-death-definition-may-be-inflating-death-rate-effecting-draconian-lockdown-measures
CNN tried to interpret CDC’s Guidance rather differently? note more CDC tweaking “underway”:
6 Apr Updated 7 Apr: CNN: US coronavirus death count likely an underestimate. Here’s why
By Jacqueline Howard; Arman Azad, Wes Bruer, Christina Maxouris and Dakin Andone contributed to this report
Also, deaths due to Covid-19 “may be misclassified as pneumonia deaths in the absence of positive test results, and pneumonia may appear on death certificates as a comorbid condition,” the CDC noted, adding that “analyses to better understand and quantify reporting delays” for Covid-19 deaths and “related causes” are underway. In March, the CDC introduced a new code to accurately capture mortality due to Covid-19 on death certificates.
With that code, the CDC noted that Covid-19 “should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.”…
‘There will be a lot of death’…
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/06/health/us-coronavirus-death-count-cdc-explainer/index.html
CDC’s “Covid-19 Alert” of 24 Mar is linked in LifeSite article, and includes:
– Should “COVID-19” be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?
COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. –
however, WaPo, like CNN, wants to inflate the count, it seems. WaPo also quotes Lipsitch who spread the story (initially via WaPo) that up to 70% of the global population could get infected, then lowered his forecast in a tweet!
5 Apr: WaPo: Investigations: Coronavirus death toll: Americans are almost certainly dying of covid-19 but being left out of the official count
By Emma Brown, Beth Reinhard and Aaron C. Davis; Jacqueline Dupree, Abigail Hauslohner, Dalton Bennett and Lena H. Sun contributed to this report
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said…
The CDC has launched an effort to use national data on illnesses, hospitalizations and death certificates to estimate covid-19 infections and deaths…
Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, said there are probably some people dying with covid-19 who are not dying of covid-19. Such misattribution is a problem for any cause of death, he said, but it is a minor issue that is “swamped by the opposite problem: deaths that are caused by covid but never attributed, so the death count is underestimated.”…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/coronavirus-death-toll-americans-are-almost-certainly-dying-of-covid-19-but-being-left-out-of-the-official-count/2020/04/05/71d67982-747e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html
Noah Feldman (of Trump Impeachment notoriety), Professor of Law at Harvard Law School,
begins by asking Lipsitch about his claim in WaPo that up to 70% of the world population cold get infected. Lipsitch says that was roughly correct, but he should have said of the “adult population” (what a difference!) and that he was making amends! doesn’t say where or how, and his initial claim continued to spread via MSM:
AUDIO: 25M49S: 28 Feb: Deep Background with Noah Feldman: The Coronavirus Isn’t Going Away
Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, predicts that between 40 to 70 percent of adults in the world will become infected with the coronavirus
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/pushkin-industries/deep-background-with-noah-feldman/e/67663436
original claim:
22 Feb: WaPo: Coronavirus outbreak edges closer to pandemic status
Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch estimates that 40 to 70 percent of the human population could potentially be infected by the virus if it becomes pandemic…The estimated death rate attributed to covid-19 — roughly 2 in 100 confirmed infections — may also drop over time as researchers get a better understanding of how widely the virus has spread…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-outbreak-edges-closer-to-pandemic/2020/02/21/03afafc0-5429-11ea-9e47-59804be1dcfb_story.html
Lipsitch still pushing his original claim on 2 March:
2 Mar: CBS: Coronavirus may infect up to 70% of world’s population, expert warns
by Jim Axelrod
CBS News spoke to one of the country’s top experts on viruses, Marc Lipsitch from Harvard University, who cautions that 40-70% of the world’s population will become infected — and from that number, 1% of people who get symptoms from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could die…
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-infection-outbreak-worldwide-virus-expert-warning-today-2020-03-02/
different story:
3 Mar: Tweet: Marc Lipsitch
Because I am now less certain of where the R0 will end up (and how it may vary geographically) I am going to revise downward the range of outcomes I consider plausible to 20%-60% of adults infected. This involves subjectivity about what range of R0 may turn out to be true.
https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464?lang=en
some people seem eager for a massive death count.
I think the graphs, regardless what they say about covid show clearly that death comes calling in winter big time
Whatever the cause I look forward to global warming
The number of covid-19 dead is significant in Italy and Spain only.
You should check their weekly statistics.
Anywhere else the number of covid-19 dead is much lower than the normal dead.
Let us keep these numbers low.
More people stay home, less people on the road, fewer automobile accidents = fewer deaths.
However, more people stay home, more enjoyment of some afternoon delight = population explosion in 9 months.
8 Apr: Fox News: Birx says government is classifying all deaths of patients with coronavirus as ‘COVID-19’ deaths, regardless of cause
by Louis Casiano
The federal government is classifying the deaths of patients infected with the coronavirus as COVID-19 deaths, regardless of any underlying health issues that could have contributed to the loss of someone’s life.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, said the federal government is continuing to count the suspected COVID-19 deaths, despite other nations doing the opposite…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/birx-says-government-is-classifying-all-deaths-of-patients-with-coronavirus-as-covid-19-deaths-regardless-of-cause
I’ve often noticed that when our US gov speaks to us through media about things like this it seems to me more trying to scare us to death than to inform us.
In other words, lots of bluster that often turns out to be nothing-burger.
Keep in mind, in recent years flu deaths are held down by broad vaccinations, though effectiveness seems to vary by year.
Flu might actually be much worse than this appears relative to the Xirus, considering how well we already know the former.