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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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.