Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The recent CDC update contains some interesting insights. The big news being discussed is the following statement:
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.
I’m a data junkie. So I downloaded the data to see what I could find out. Here’s the biggest news I found:
Figure 1. Stacked area chart showing deaths by age group from February 1st to August 26th 2020. It is divided into: deaths not involving COVID-9 (light blue), deaths where COVID-19 is a “co-morbidity” with other diseases (dark blue), and deaths from COVID-19 alone (red)
The light blue area is all of the deaths that did not involve COVID.
The dark blue area at the bottom represents the deaths of people with one or more other diseases or conditions who had COVID as a co-morbidity. It goes from 0.2% of all deaths for infants, and steadily increases with age to stabilize at about 9% of all deaths for all ages over 65. Some of these diseases and conditions are the result of COVID, and some are unrelated to COVID.
Fun fact. A total of 4,758 of the deaths in the dark blue area are from “Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events” with COVID as a co-morbidity. So this includes e.g. the guy in Florida who died from a motorcycle accident and tested positive for COVID … clearly the category shown in dark blue includes both deaths with COVID as well as deaths from COVID.
The thin red area at the top, scarcely wider than a line?
That’s all of the deaths from COVID by itself. It’s tiny because most of the time, COVID either causes other diseases, as when someone presents with COVID and then gets pneumonia as well, or because COVID is often non-causally associated with other diseases and conditions.
The takeaway message? Even with the old and ill, deaths with COVID plus deaths from COVID are less than ten percent of all deaths. For those under fourteen years old, it’s less than one percent of all deaths. For infants, 0.2%.
Here’s another look at the CDC data. Here are the deaths from the most frequent diseases where COVID-19 is listed as a co-morbidity.
Figure 2. Deaths from diseases where COVID-19 is a co-morbidity.
I note that on average the people who died had more than two underlying conditions, plus COVID. And while a goodly number of some categories like respiratory diseases assuredly result from an initial COVID infection, things like obesity, cancer, heart conditions, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes clearly are not caused by COVID. We have a mix of deaths with, and deaths from, COVID.
How much of this is from COVID and how much is with COVID? Unfortunately, here’s no way to tell from the data at hand. If I were forced to guess I’d say two-thirds to three-quarters are deaths from COVID, and one-third to one-quarter are just deaths with COVID, but that’s a guess. If so that would mean that COVID has caused about six percent of all deaths of people over 65, decreasing with age down to a tenth of one percent among infants.
Next move? End the hugely costly lockdowns. I just published a post here on WUWT discussing a study of how the lockdowns have cost millions of years of productive life. We need to stop locking people down, accept the occasional flareups, and get America back to work.
My best to everyone,
w.
As Always: When you comment please quote the exact words that you are discussing so we can all understand who and what you are referring to.
This fine post underscores that the CDC et al. missed the boat. The way to control and epidemic has always(well, at least since Roman times) been by requiring the SICK to quarantine at home with their families.
Except maybe for the Medieval plague there are always many fewer people infected and it is much easier to ask them to segregate themselves than it is to try and pick and choose among the healthy and try and decide who is “necessary” to allow to continue working. Completely disrupting the lives of healthy people through “lockdowns” did prove highly counterproductive- lost wages, cabin fever, confusion, anger, apparently more diseases other than the virus, and a huge disruption of the economy.
Philo
You said, in part, “… requiring the SICK to quarantine at home with their families.”
What about the fairly large asymptomatic (or very mild) percentage who are the equivalent of Typhoid Mary, or who will soon show symptoms but haven’t yet begun to do so?
During historic times there was no way to determine if someone was carrying a pathogen until they presented with symptoms. Thus, there was no real way to determine if someone was a threat. Indeed, in early times, before the theory of germs was thought of, people didn’t even suspect that those who looked and acted healthy might be a danger to others.
That my friend is what it comes down to, testing. Accurate, quick, inexpensive. It reminds me of some project managers and we had to remind them: “Fast, Cheap & Good Quality. Pick 2.”
The testing itself is now turning out to be a gong show in its own right.
there is a way to tell how many deaths are “from” and how many are merely “with” COVID. We need to look at “excess deaths”. In absence of other major catastrophes – the Asian hornets didn’t quite kill people – any excess deaths will be caused by COVID.
Of course, somebody who died in March 2020 instead of Oct 2020 because they also had the virus would count towards “from” rather than “with”. So at the end of the year we may see negative excess deaths, and then we’ll know the real numbers.
I don’t know whether this fits with this whole thread but here it is anyway, have fun:
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/science-deniers-delaying-herd-immunity-costing-lives
Michigan is going back over death certificates and “updating” Covid deaths daily with “record check” deaths.
I don’t know how legit this is but how can we trust numbers when you can go back and change the category of why someone died at anytime.
Hmmm…. kinda like temperature records, eh?
Busy day over at ZeroHedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/its-game-changer-new-who-backed-research-finds-cheap-steroids-reduce-covid-19
Steroids treating a respiratory disease is a no brainer. I wonder what they did in NYC, just throw them on ventilators and fill out the death certificates in advance?
I had to take a second look and agree that the red line should have been at the bottom so the graph could be more easily understood.
“One of the signals that can trigger pathogenic behavior is hypoxia, which often occurs under forced ventilation.”
First let me stress that by the CDC&P and the WHO I am a “High Risk” for Every Known Respiratory Pathogens. Chronic Bronchitis, Diabetes Mellitus, Perifial Arteries Disease, Atherosclerosis Cardiovascular Disease, Obesity, High Blood Pressure. With every one of those conditions Hypoxia is created and Hypoxia becomes the Underlying Condition that causes the Cellular Degradation of every organ of the body by the insufficient Oxygenation of the Plasma and Red Blood Cells required to maintain healthy organs.
All Respiratory Pathogens cause Hypoxia by blocking the Capillaries of the Lungs from exchanges of Inhaled Oxygen into the Bloodstream and Carbon in the Bloodstream cannot Exchange normally with Oxygen to create Carbon Dioxide to be exhaled thereby causing Carbon to build up in the Bloodstream and in our organs, that both thickens the blood as the Red Blood Cells lacking Oxygen become sticky and clotting occurs and Carbon and Carbon Dioxide levels become toxic in the Bloodstream because they’re not being exhaled. This “thickening of the blood” reduces how Oxygen gets into Organ Tissues causing the deterioration of every organ.
Therefore, Hypoxia is the actual “Cause of Death” of every Respiratory Pathogens “by” and “with” every Underlying Comorbitity Organ Failure attributed to the Respiratory Pathogens.
It is important to note that NONE of the CDC stats are counting actual deaths.
The CDC is counting “ICD codes” reported on Death Certificates sent to them by various reporting localities.
See my long-ago essay: “What Are They Really Counting?”
UN WHO issued two ICD codes for Covid:
“An emergency ICD-10 code of ‘U07.1 COVID-19, virus identified’ is assigned to a disease diagnosis of COVID-19 confirmed by laboratory testing.
An emergency ICD-10 code of ‘U07.2 COVID-19, virus not identified’ is assigned to a clinical or epidemiological diagnosis of COVID-19 where laboratory confirmation is inconclusive or not available.
Both U07.1 and U07.2 may be used for mortality coding as cause of death. See the International guidelines for certification and classification (coding) of COVID-19 as cause of death following the link below.”
Further, WHO issued guidelines which state:
“A- RECORDING COVID-19 ON THE MEDICAL CERTIFICATE OF CAUSE OF DEATH — COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death.”
It is UNTRUE to day only 6% of reported Covid deaths are caused by Covid alone — as many pundits have been saying. That misrepresents the data from the CDC.
We simply do not know how many deaths are caused primarily by Covid ….
The CDC is not reporting Real Deaths — they are reporting about reports about deaths….ICD codes on death certificates. Localities have been instructed by CDC to report Covid deaths similarly to WHO guidelines.
Because of the reporting guidelines, we may never know the truth about Covid deaths.
Hi Kip – An excellent point. Isn’t it amazing that the numbers we are bombarded with daily are almost impossible to interpret because of the lack of context? They never tell us the colour of the bears.
What exactly is a ‘case’? Is it any positive PCR test after 37-40 cycles? Why don’t they provide information on the quantity of viral proteins in the tests? My understanding is that this should be automatically recorded and the information is crucial to understanding what is going on – low levels may have several causes, but generally suggest low chance of infectivity, while high levels indicate the person is likely infective and should be quarantined. Instead we seem to be given a one size fits all number.
Why have there been very few, and those small scale, attempts to use testing to obtain a statistically valid estimate of virus penetration into communities?
Why is Australia still doing 50-60 thousand PCR tests a day (about 6,400,000 to date) more or less haphazardly (criteria have constantly changed) for a total positive rate of 0.4% (and without Victoria it would be near 0.2%)?
I think those people who misread the CDC Table 3 can be forgiven. I found it very confusing. Why is diabetes (25,936) five times higher than obesity (5,614)? I thought obesity and diabetes went hand in hand and almost everyone in the US was obese. What could covid possibly have to do with dying from “Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events”?
Anyway, I’m just ranting on, but thanks for your comment and reminder not to take a table of numbers at face value.
please look at the death counts from Auschwitz.!!
The great job you did here with Korea gives me confidence.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/13/the-math-of-epidemics/
“You can see why the Gompertz Curve is used to describe epidemics—it’s a very good fit to real-world epidemiological data. And because any given Gompertz Curve ends up at some maximum value that it doesn’t exceed, it also allows us to estimate the part of the curve that hasn’t happened yet. So far, there have been some 7,362 cases in South Korea. The Gompertz Curve estimates that the final total will be on the order of some 8,100 cases or so. ”
they are at something like 20K
“Although the uncertainty in this one is greater, it looks at present like the final total of deaths in South Korea will be on the order of one hundred, give or take.”
they are over 300.
modelling ain’t easy, now is it?
The deaths from covid in the US ( 180K+) are not out of line with what other countries are experiencing.
that is, other unhealthy populations.
Steve, you are once again trying out your discredited LIE about my Korea prediction. I specifically said it had huge uncertainty and that it was a very early look. Despite the fact that I’ve had to tell you that again and again, over and over you have brought it up to try to discredit me.
Bro, all your endless sniping at me does is ruin YOUR reputation. You keep trying to bite my ankles but you’re not tall enough. Here’s a protip.
Nobody but you gives a damn that my original back of the envelope guess for Korea deaths, hedged about with warnings of large uncertainties, was a hundred and the actual number is three hundred. Other people predicted two million deaths in the US, and unlike my prediction, their prediction actually caused immense pain, suffering, and death. How about you go stalk them instead of me, and get on their case about their predictions?
I guess I must be living rent free in your head. This is easily the sixth time or more that you’ve tried this same pathetic argument. I had to mute you on Twitter because of your endless ugly attacks, and if I could do the same here, I sure would.
Come back when you want to discuss the issues. Your endless attacks on me have turned into some kind of really, really creepy internet stalking. Get a life, get a grip, stop stalking me, forget I exist. You are a decent scientist, perhaps even a gifted one … but personally you are one of the most unpleasant jerkoffs I’ve every met, and you stalking me all the time over the same meaningless nonsense is just bizarre.
w.
write your congressman
Why? It’s not necessary. Who wants to live like that? Better yet reject the imperative that something needs to be done. Everything’s going to be alright.
https://www.rapidtests.org/
Now compare Covid-19 against Flu epidemics, where co-diseases are often present as well. You will find the Covid-19 is far worse than any recent Flue epidemic. I had initially predicted it would be about the same as a severe Flu epidemic (not the Spanish Flu epidemic, but more recent ones) based on the data I had. It now appears I under-estimated Covid-19 by a factor of 1.5 to 2. I did accurately predict the unstoppable spread as the disease was just too incestuous, our borders too porous (especially through air-flights) and the world started too late.
It would have been much worse if we had not slowed it down. I know this is a serious point of pain for many to admit, but the shutdown DID slow the spread down. Had hospitals been over run with the sick, the fatalities would be much higher. So the lock down was not pointless or without results – it just hurt a lot of people.
Was it worth it? Now that is the really difficult question to answer based on one experience. Had we allowed the disease to spread unchecked, many more would have died but we would have the pandemic past us by now. Had the death rates risen to far a huge panic would have started that crashed the economy anyway – no one seems to consider this point. The cost to the economy, people’s jobs, their lives…hard to calculate but steep. Less people dying in accidents, more people dying through suicide.
The real lesson to be learned here is to be prepared for the next outbreak. It was a crime that national stockpiles had been depleted (on purpose) and never replaced. Our dependence on China has now been underlined in red ink. And the economy is moving closer to many people working at home – a huge win for them and efficiency. The CDC stands out as woefully unprepared despite their huge budget. The WHO stands out as a corrupt and useless organization which was bullied by China.
If we really want to know the impact of a disease, we need to have a federal system of reporting deaths in a common consistent manner designed to be data mined. Let’s get this started now so that the next outbreak can be studied better and faster.
Where is the data on Multiple comorbidities? Sometime about 5 months ago I read data that as the number of Comorbidities went up the number of deaths went up and the numbers for lower ages also increased.
Keep in mind COVID19 IS caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)! The of death probability approaches 100% when the person has Pneumonia when acquiring COVID19 and also if a person acquires COVID19 and then acquired Pneumonia! There are also many diseases that when a person over 65 acquires them their probability of living more than a few months is less than 1%. When these people are in a nursing home or hospice or any other facility not assuring that they are isolated, quarentened, prevented from the only link to COVID in improper healthcare!any possible contact of COVID19 THEY WILL DIE., How, why, is this blamed on COVID? The only link to COVID is popor health care. Worse since these facilities are paid by MediCare they receive a bonus if the person acquires or is diagnosed with COVID19.
Based on this data I’ve heard some say there’s no pandemic – it’s all a lie. But this data simply confirms what we knew from the early days that people with certain health conditions and higher age are at higher risk. The fact that so many died with just Covid should be eye-opening to all, rather than the other way around. We had as many die just from Covid than all the deaths with all conditions in mild to moderate flu seasons. Also, CDC data shows about 3.5 years of data on expected versus excess deaths. There is a very real spike in excess deaths during this health event.
And death is not the only outcome – many are experiencing damaged organs, ischemia, resurgence of symptoms, chronic fatigue etc.
This reminds me of AIDS, wherein they took other diseases such as TB, and if a person tested positive for HIV, listed the death as an AIDS death. Without HIV, the person simply died of TB. This was done with a host of ailments to make it appear as though AIDS was rampant and spreading. In fact, there has never been scientific proof that HIV causes AIDS.
That had to have been the template for COVID. SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated or purified, that is, proven to exist. In this regard, it is a close cousin of HIV>
Correctly filled out forms for cause of death should never give covid as the cause of death. The 6% of forms listing just covid was incorrectly filled out. It should be 0%. The cause of a covid death is always a comorbidity caused by covid.
Sorry, not impressed.
Jan, I’ve never understood this argument. Why can just about every other disease under the sun cause death, but not COVID?
w.
Willis – A disease is what the word implies – your body is ill at ease. I think you are confounding a microbe that causes a disease with the disease itself. SARS-2 seems to cause mostly respiratory disease with pneumonia leading – and pneumonia is usually complex: Whatever causes the initial infection is soon joined by a host of opportunists, everything from influenza viruses to bacteria, and then the body gets into the act with an out of control immune response. What results is damage to organ systems and eventual death. A death certificate should record these reasons, e.g. death due to renal failure resulting from Covid-related pneumonia aggravated by Type 2 Diabetes. People don’t just drop dead from Covid, they take an average of four weeks to die from or with it. Anyway, that is my understanding.
How would SARS-2 alone, or Yersinia pestis for that matter, kill on its own? The only way I can think of is a cytokine storm or the like – essentially an autoimmune malfunction like anaphylactic shock. I’m sure there were some otherwise healthy people, as Joel O’Bryan says, who died from SARS-2 – but there should have been some other factor listed, e.g. heart failure due to thrombosis. Even deaths resulting from gunshots get that kind of information. So, a death certificate with only covid listed seems suspect to me.
Doesn’t really matter, though, because this 6% figure is spurious – it doesn’t say what everyone seems to think it says. Nothing in the table actually says what people think it is saying – see Kip Hansen’s comment. Cheers, DaveW
Dear Willis, I almost always greatly enjoy your writings. I also think that shutting down the economy is a very bad idea. But any conclusions from the 6% are not warranted in my opinion.
Dr. Seheult explains the form that is sent to the CDC here:
Thanks, Jan. As I said in the head post of the 6%:
“That’s all of the deaths from COVID by itself. It’s tiny because most of the time, COVID either causes other diseases, as when someone presents with COVID and then gets pneumonia as well, or because COVID is often non-causally associated with other diseases and conditions.”
w.
PLEA OF THE ELDERS
PLEASE, DO NOT STOP LIVING BECAUSE OF US. GO ON WITH YOUR LIVES, YOUR WORK, YOUR EDUCATION, YOUR RECREATION. WE KNOW THE RISKS. WE WILL TAKE PRECAUTIONS. IT PAINS US TO SEE OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN LIVING LIKE PRISONERS WITH NO RIGHTS IN WHAT WAS THE FREEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. UNPRECEDENTED RESTRICTIONS OF A POPULATION WITH VERY REAL SIDE EFFECTS WORSE THAN THE VIRUS…IT MUST STOP. NEVER AGAIN.
The problem is, there are relatively few deaths directly from Covid, it’s nearly always as an ‘underlying cause’. It’s just the way the death certificates are structured, as a guess between what is proximal of itself, versus what is underlying.
Say someone drowns. Did the water kill them? No, lack of oxygen to the brain killed them. Let’s say they were obese and didn’t have good lung capacity, this makes them more likely to drown. Let’s say they had lung disease and couldn’t flap their arms strong enough to get to the surface, this makes them more likely to drown as well. Let’s say their blood oxygen capacity was poor which makes them more likely to drown. But in each case, the water doesn’t kill them, their lung capacity didn’t kill them, the softly flapping arms didn’t kill them, their poor blood capacity didn’t kill them, the lack of oxygen to the brain killed them, with the underlying cause in all cases being the water. People can die though, from excess water, which causes cells to stop functioning, but this is rare. So for simple drownings, what percentage were killed by water as an underlying cause? 100%. What percentage were killed by water directly? 0%. (Unless they drank water in excess, which is again, very rare). Similar with the Covid 19 virus, but it’s even more complicated because sometimes they are in fact killed by lung disease as well as other direct Covid effects, or by heart trouble as well as other direct Covid effects.
The death certificates with someone with Covid will have guestimated variations in possible factors, because of the way they are structured, and because of human inability to accurately know the causes.
Different viruses also have variable effects with regards to other disease causing opportunists -some easily allow other disease causers to exploit and kill, whilst others seldom do, and may attack the body’s organs directly. Covid 19 is somewhere in the middle , it attacks organs directly, but also exploits the body’s weaknesses to allow other diseases to kill, much like AIDS which only kills when other viruses , bacteria, fungii, and cancers take advantage. AIDS has barely any effect on the body of itself, it simply allows other diseases to come in and kill. Covid does both, like flu and others, it kills both by itself as well as through other opportunists, but mostly through other opportunists. It’s good at exploiting weaknesses, which some viruses barely do at all. Rabies kills on its own, so does say, snake venom. These don’t usually kill by allowing other murderers to take over. But Covid19 and flu often do.
There is some argument that even the Black Death wasn’t even the main killer at the time, some argue there were hitchhikers going along for the ride that may have caused a good proportion of the deaths, something like viral pneumonia simply exploiting those who already had the Black Death, but only after they got it. In other words, the Black Death could have been 2,3 or more major diseases operating in tandem. Maybe it caused 45% of deaths directly, but viral pneumonia and 3 others caused the other 55%.
Confused? Look at excess deaths. If a virus allows other killers to come in, ultimately it’s the same -people will die regardless of the ‘first cause’. AIDS kills 100% of the time through other opportunists. Covid might be something around 90% by other opportunists, at a wild guess. Perhaps 10% of the time it attacks organs leading directly to death on its own. But the death certificate writers won’t know this.
The best way to look at the data is excess deaths, because of the difficulty in getting any real consistency or accuracy in the death certificate data, and because different diseases have variable effects on other disease causing opportunists hitchhiking along for the ride, as well as natural demographic variations ( more obese, younger population, etc).
From the article: “How much of this is from COVID and how much is with COVID? Unfortunately, here’s no way to tell from the data at hand.”
That’s the bottom line as of now. We need more data.
Died *with* the Wuhan virus, or died *from* the Wuhan virus? That is the question. But what does it mean?
I think the question to ask of people with co-mobidities is, would they have died anyway, within the timeframe of the Wuhan virus infection (three to five weeks), from a co-morbidity?
If their underlying health condition would not have caused their death except for the complication of acquiring the Wuhan virus infection, then I would have to say in that case that the Wuhan virus was the cause of death, if the death would not have happened otherwise, within the timframe of a Wuhan virus infection.
We need more data.
One grave policy mistake, I think, was “lockdown” of the healthy population. In previous times a local measles epidemic would bring out many QUARANTINE: Measles. Quarantine the sick, not the healthy. There was no need to change that kind of policy, and no evidence that locking down the healthy people is more effective than quarantining the sick. It did have the side effect of nearly causing another Great Depression and cause much grief among healthy people with loss of freedom, loss of wages, loss of jobs, depression, anger, frustration, and many bad side effects.
While the President didn’t push hard for lockdowns following “scientific” advice he help them be implemented, once. The results have been uniformly bad. No one can point to any success in curbing the epidemic by this unproven policy.
In Fig.2 the fraction of deaths with obesity as a co-morbidity is much less than the level of obesity in the overall population. This would seem to suggest that obesity must actually afford a significant protection?
Thanks, Walter, good to hear from you. Since other studies have shown greater obesity co-morbidity, my guess is that many physicians list actual diseases first, and then if they get around to it, lifestyle conditions like smoking or obesity.
But who knows? The data are a mess. Not blaming anyone, the data is coming in from overstressed doctors, each of whom has their own priorities and patients, wants to list important co-morbidities first, and doesn’t like filling out death certs … it’s bound to be messy.
w.
I agree. In everything to do with CV-19 uncertainty and confusion prevails along with the proverbial muddle of lies, damned lies and statistics.