We were supposed to get up to 2 ½ million dead in the USA alone
People say exactly this a lot and what are we supposed to take away from it? That they're disappointed? Some of them (present company excepted I guess) are simply too stupid to understand how projections work in the early stages of an unprecedented event; the others may be maliciously misrepresenting the projections as some sort of promise but I can't imagine what the goal there would be. Certainly not simple political polarization, scoring points during a crisis? No. Must be disappointment.
He said you need to wait a year or so, which is ridiculous.
I'd say it is also ridiculous that the death data aren't automatically sent to the CDC or equivalent in most countries as soon as they are recorded, but that's a different discussion.
Like i said, half a point. A couple of months should bring the death toll up to date. Ridiculous or not, that's reality. And again it will only bring the numbers up, not down.
Yes the numbers are going up regardless of how they are presently counted. We were supposed to get up to 2 ½ million dead in the USA alone when this started according to the first models. Again, this is just in the starting phase. Using only the data to date for basing final conclusions is not sound practice. Sure as hell ain't scientific ... it's more like tossing spaghetti at the wall. Like spaghetti, the longer you cook it, the more will stick to the wall.
The metadata are important. Maybe some places can't get all the information but anything that you can document on how the case was diagnosed, immediate causes like lung failure, stroke, etc. where the death occurred - home, hospital, street, etc.
And yeah that is stuff that can be poured over for years to come.
I am curious as to how these things are counted.
For instance, my 97 year old aunt died on what would have been her 75th wedding anniversary.
Of Alzheimer's. Not just with. How is that registered?
The collection of this information varies widely within the USA. It can depend on the cause of death, the state, what kind of facility sometimes. Different states can have different rules as to who this stuff should be directly reported to. The CDC is just a clearinghouse of information given to it. Some things are required to be reported to it, others are voluntarily provided. The first place to search would be the state in which she passed. You could also contact the Alzheimer's Association for more information.
The metadata are important. Maybe some places can't get all the information but anything that you can document on how the case was diagnosed, immediate causes like lung failure, stroke, etc. where the death occurred - home, hospital, street, etc.
And yeah that is stuff that can be poured over for years to come.
I am curious as to how these things are counted.
For instance, my 97 year old aunt died on what would have been her 75th wedding anniversary.
Of Alzheimer's. Not just with. How is that registered?
He said you need to wait a year or so, which is ridiculous.
I'd say it is also ridiculous that the death data aren't automatically sent to the CDC or equivalent in most countries as soon as they are recorded, but that's a different discussion.
Like i said, half a point. A couple of months should bring the death toll up to date. Ridiculous or not, that's reality. And again it will only bring the numbers up, not down.
When we decide who we'll count among the COVID deaths. Apparently there is some push to exclude....
The metadata are important. Maybe some places can't get all the information but anything that you can document on how the case was diagnosed, immediate causes like lung failure, stroke, etc. where the death occurred - home, hospital, street, etc.
And yeah that is stuff that can be poured over for years to come.
He said you need to wait a year or so, which is ridiculous.
I'd say it is also ridiculous that the death data aren't automatically sent to the CDC or equivalent in most countries as soon as they are recorded, but that's a different discussion.
Like i said, half a point. A couple of months should bring the death toll up to date. Ridiculous or not, that's reality. And again it will only bring the numbers up, not down.
When we decide who we'll count among the COVID deaths. Apparently there is some push to exclude....
He said you need to wait a year or so, which is ridiculous.
I'd say it is also ridiculous that the death data aren't automatically sent to the CDC or equivalent in most countries as soon as they are recorded, but that's a different discussion.
Like i said, half a point. A couple of months should bring the death toll up to date. Ridiculous or not, that's reality. And again it will only bring the numbers up, not down.
It is not too soon to calculate excess deaths because there is a very well established baseline. I'm sure the health wonkies could even put confidence limits on it as a function of month of the year or whatever else you want to factor in. Once you have that monthly expected value, it is simply a function of the number of deaths in that period. Deaths have to be reported to the government so add them up and subtract the expected value. Sure there may be some minor adjustments and even a little tweaking like coroners offices excluding deaths if the person was from out of state, but that will make little difference to the totals. This is probably the easiest to track indicator of the effects of the virus.
If you want to attribute deaths to the pandemic you do need to factor in the large reduction in auto accidents and crime, as I mentioned previously. That makes your Covid death rate much higher.
Kurtster has half a point or so: it takes time for deaths to make it into CDC statistics. Covid deaths in big city hospitals are reported fairly quickly these days, others can take weeks. There is no standard reporting procedure from state to state and county to county. This lag will tend to make the excess deaths number larger rather than smaller.
Good point on the drop in other causes of death, but the two big ones (heart disease and cancer) dwarf the rest. If anything those will rise as people avoid treatment to stay away from hospitals.
Long term we could also see an impact on suicide rates driven by unemployment, but again these numbers are small compared to the Covid death toll.
He said you need to wait a year or so, which is ridiculous.
I'd say it is also ridiculous that the death data aren't automatically sent to the CDC or equivalent in most countries as soon as they are recorded, but that's a different discussion.
If you want meaningful numbers to make accurate assessments as well as determinations for future events, then yes absolutely, you need to wait for a complete annual cycle. Actually the numbers should be drawn from the entire cycle of this Pandemic, from its beginning to its end, however long that is. If you want to make fanciful claims in an internet discussion, then pick your poison timeline. We are only several months into this. We have no idea how this ends or when it ends, yet.
We survive this one day at a time and with 14 day blocks, that start anew everyday we survive. We will only be able to understand this only after it has run its course.
I currently have a meaningful 14 day block running that started when I got my first haircut since this began, on Friday and put myself into an unknown contact environment for potential exposure. I will not be sweating bullets until two weeks since this past Friday, but it is a time stamped marker. My first at real risk situation since this began.
It is not too soon to calculate excess deaths because there is a very well established baseline. I'm sure the health wonkies could even put confidence limits on it as a function of month of the year or whatever else you want to factor in. Once you have that monthly expected value, it is simply a function of the number of deaths in that period. Deaths have to be reported to the government so add them up and subtract the expected value. Sure there may be some minor adjustments and even a little tweaking like coroners offices excluding deaths if the person was from out of state, but that will make little difference to the totals. This is probably the easiest to track indicator of the effects of the virus.
If you want to attribute deaths to the pandemic you do need to factor in the large reduction in auto accidents and crime, as I mentioned previously. That makes your Covid death rate much higher.
Kurtster has half a point or so: it takes time for deaths to make it into CDC statistics. Covid deaths in big city hospitals are reported fairly quickly these days, others can take weeks. There is no standard reporting procedure from state to state and county to county. This lag will tend to make the excess deaths number larger rather than smaller.
Good point on the drop in other causes of death, but the two big ones (heart disease and cancer) dwarf the rest. If anything those will rise as people avoid treatment to stay away from hospitals.
Long term we could also see an impact on suicide rates driven by unemployment, but again these numbers are small compared to the Covid death toll.
He said you need to wait a year or so, which is ridiculous.
I'd say it is also ridiculous that the death data aren't automatically sent to the CDC or equivalent in most countries as soon as they are recorded, but that's a different discussion.
It is not too soon to calculate excess deaths because there is a very well established baseline. I'm sure the health wonkies could even put confidence limits on it as a function of month of the year or whatever else you want to factor in. Once you have that monthly expected value, it is simply a function of the number of deaths in that period. Deaths have to be reported to the government so add them up and subtract the expected value. Sure there may be some minor adjustments and even a little tweaking like coroners offices excluding deaths if the person was from out of state, but that will make little difference to the totals. This is probably the easiest to track indicator of the effects of the virus.
If you want to attribute deaths to the pandemic you do need to factor in the large reduction in auto accidents and crime, as I mentioned previously. That makes your Covid death rate much higher.
Kurtster has half a point or so: it takes time for deaths to make it into CDC statistics. Covid deaths in big city hospitals are reported fairly quickly these days, others can take weeks. There is no standard reporting procedure from state to state and county to county. This lag will tend to make the excess deaths number larger rather than smaller.
Good point on the drop in other causes of death, but the two big ones (heart disease and cancer) dwarf the rest. If anything those will rise as people avoid treatment to stay away from hospitals.
Long term we could also see an impact on suicide rates driven by unemployment, but again these numbers are small compared to the Covid death toll.
kurtster wrote: It is not too soon to calculate excess deaths because there is a very well established baseline. I'm sure the health wonkies could even put confidence limits on it as a function of month of the year or whatever else you want to factor in. Once you have that monthly expected value, it is simply a function of the number of deaths in that period. Deaths have to be reported to the government so add them up and subtract the expected value. Sure there may be some minor adjustments and even a little tweaking like coroners offices excluding deaths if the person was from out of state, but that will make little difference to the totals. This is probably the easiest to track indicator of the effects of the virus.
If you want to attribute deaths to the pandemic you do need to factor in the large reduction in auto accidents and crime, as I mentioned previously. That makes your Covid death rate much higher.
kurtster wrote: I'm reminiscing how this is my second Mystery Deadly disease. The first was in the early 80s when Haitians, homosexuals, heroin abusers, and hemophiliacs (See the "4H" thing that people used to identify who was at risk?) all started getting these weird infections, like Mycobacterium avium. What the hell is going on? How is it spread? Did it really come from someone having sex with a monkey, as was the rumor?
As we were figuring it out I was in the county hospital in Oakland, standing over a bed in the ICU, putting headphones on a young man on a ventilator, who was unconscious. I'd made him a tape of the new Paul Simon, Hearts and Bones, leaving off the first song, Allergies, which included Paul exclaiming "I CAN'T BREATHE!" Figured that song didn't need to be on the tape...
And I noticed my hair was getting puffed up periodically. I was leaning over the ventilator exhaust and every one of his breaths was blowing in my face. Was I doomed? Who the hell knew? No one did, at that point. Of course, back then, AIDS was a swift death sentence. Now, it's been controlled although it's still a bad thing.
That's where we are now. Something horrible is happening, and people are happy to pronounce that we KNOW what its nature is (like we KNEW it was Haitians!) but really, until this is a bit in our rear view, we won't be sure.
I can understand the frustration, but if what you say is true, B)how do you explain the "excess deaths" number, which IIRC is much higher in every country than the officially reported COVID-19 deaths? Excess deaths excludes what we can normally expect from other causes.
A) The whole epidemic was definitely unprecedented in our lifetimes. Then again, our lifetimes are very short in the grand scheme of things.
It also seems strange that the epidemic just seems to be slipping away, at least where I live. Even taking the most optimistic numbers from the serology surveys (that the number of people who have developed antibodies is anything up to 85 times the number of official cases) we would still only have 20% of the population exposed to it, yet now we lift lock-down and it is still not resurging (yet).
What I suspect from all the material posted here (thanks mostly to Miami) is that there will be no herd immunity nor any vaccine and that the antibodies will wane after a few months allowing reinfection further down the road.. that all points to a second wave of the epidemic come winter at the latest, so we will be back to flattening the curve and some kind of social distancing. Welcome to the new normal.
A) This is my 3rd Pandemic. Not unprecedented in my lifetime.
First one, the Asian Flu in 1957 - 58. 2 million dead globally. Did not get this one.
Hong Kong Flu 1968 - 69. 1 million dead globally. I actually had this flu. One of the first in the USA to get it in September 1968.
CV 19 currently underway. Currently 347,613 global deaths. This number will grow of course, but there are also many wrongly attributed deaths, at least in the USA. Hard to say what the final toll will be. Watch out as it goes unchecked through Brazil into primitive places where there is no running water to wash hands with for openers. There might be many asterisks with the final number.
B) It is way too soon to calculate excess deaths. We will have to wait a year or so to learn that number. It requires looking back through the whole time this takes to run its course and figuring out the total deaths over that time span and then beginning backing out the expected normal deaths, to see what is left. Then we will also have to determine the number of deaths due to despair. We are only just beginning counting. To claim any specific figure at this point in time is simply ridiculous. To make any statements based on how many excess deaths we have now is even more ridiculous.
My guess is the actual infection number is much higher, maybe 10 times as high, as what we're being told. This is likely because most people don't have symptoms and aren't being tested, so they're not in the number. This is good news because it means the actual mortality rate is much lower than we think. Maybe 0.01%. This would be comparable to the flu. Then subtract all those who died as a result of other factors like obesity, heart disease, old age, lung disease, diabetes, etc. Now covid doesn't look nearly as bad. Also the elevated overall death number could be the result of the lockdown, not the virus. How many are suffering from depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, unemployment, loneliness, all because of this lockdown. How many couldn't get healthcare because of all this? IMO the lockdown is what's killing us. And I'm no right-winger. I normally despise fox news. And I despise Trump.
I am with you to a certain extent, the issue is that without some of even the most basic support of all of us in the general public to use common sense with practicing proper social distancing and yes wearing mask as a basic sign of civil courtesy to lessen the chances each of us has in actually making contact with our moisture output as a matter of a new public societal discourse and yes, norm, we could be able to properly resume most businesses without adding undue stress to our health care system. Whilst at the same time using common sense and more strictly adhering to shelter in place suggestions if you are in a high risk category, age, pre existing conditions and so forth. No matter what the government response is, in times of such overwhelming crisis that transcend the norm, it will ultimately be that a response, a response to how we collectively respond to the task. Again, none but ourselves.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
May 25, 2020 - 9:48am
davidharper wrote:
The smog has disappeared from the sky in some cities and the sky is blue and the rivers are running clean for the first time in recent memory. All because of the shut-down of industry and air travel and auto traffic. Fish can be seen in the canals of Venice. That hasn't been seen in decades. Maybe this virus is natures way of accomplishing this. And getting rid of a lot of us. I've always thought that sooner or later the planet would have some natural mechanism to deal with us. There's an island of plastic trash the size of Texas floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Whales are swallowing it and dying. The polar ice caps are melting. Maybe the earth is smarter than we are.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
May 25, 2020 - 9:44am
NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
All good points and there is some truth in them. Possibly the "hit it early, hit it hard" approach did come at a greater social cost than was necessary.
However, those countries that did pursue a rigorous early response performed way better than those that initially ignored the threat so there can be no discussion about the effectiveness of the lock-down. I agree that the actual case fatality rate is almost certainly inflated. The serology surveys also support that. But it still doesn't equate with seasonal flu. Firstly, because this epidemic is on top of any seasonal flu and secondly, it is novel and hits certain portions of the population really really hard. The rationale behind the lock-down was primarily to prevent health systems from getting overwhelmed by a sudden influx of these at-risk patients.
I agree, too, that we are learning there are many cases of persons that were asymptomatic, or at least mild cases, which would mean the mortality rate would be lower.
It would seem logical to me, though, that if we had not had stay-at-home restrictions, along with hammering the need for social distancing, masks, hand washing, and sanitizing, that the rate of infection and the number of deaths would have been much worse. Assuming that to be true, I would not equate this with the seasonal flu in terms of severity â even recognizing that we have vaccines available for the flu.
The smog has disappeared from the sky in some cities and the sky is blue and the rivers are running clean for the first time in recent memory. All because of the shut-down of industry and air travel and auto traffic. Fish can be seen in the canals of Venice. That hasn't been seen in decades. Maybe this virus is natures way of accomplishing this. And getting rid of a lot of us. I've always thought that sooner or later the planet would have some natural mechanism to deal with us. There's an island of plastic trash the size of Texas floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Whales are swallowing it and dying. The polar ice caps are melting. Maybe the earth is smarter than we are.
I think it's because we/they stumbled into it without consistent info. First: don't worry, you're not from China. Then: don't worry, you're afebrile. Then: don't worry, you're not coughing. Then: well, you have no symptoms but that means nothing.
First: let Washington state and New York be a warning - we're all doomed! Then: well, maybe not. Maybe not everywhere, and maybe not everyone.
Except for the kids with Kawasaki? And toes with chilblains? And the 30-yr-olds with thrombotic strokes? WTF is this thing doing to people that we still don't recognize?
And, lacking some competent national medical infrastructure, and adding in the horrible confusion from everyone (EVERYONE) on the internet expressing what they "know" even though, as I pointed out above, no one really knew anything...the only thing that could've happened was chaos.
