COVID Fudge Factors

[Mina]

The excess deaths will be counted over years

I agree. There's a lot of evidence, for example, that those who had severe COVID had a high probability of various resulting issues that could boost their mortality rates for the rest of their lives (like arteriosclerosis, or auto-immune disorders). Even some people who had mild or asymptomatic COVID wind up with ailments that seem to be popping up more often among the previously infected, which could statistically boost mortality.

a lot of these kids will never recover, they have been harmed for life.

Yes. A lot of those kids needlessly lost parents, due to overly lax public health policies. Growing up without those parents will put the kids at a disadvantage for life. Then there's also the brain shrinkage that's related to COVID. It's not clear how transient that is, but you could literally have a generation of kids with lower IQ's than the last generation because of those infections.

Unfortunately, standardized testing ground to a halt with COVID, so it's tough to say what impact it's having on kids, and where it's worst. I think there are a lot of people assuming the worst impacts are going to be in the places that shut down schools the longest, and that's possible. But, it's also possible that it'll be the opposite -- that the bigger risk to kids wasn't a period of home schooling, but more lasting disadvantages from harm done by the infections, and loss of parents and grandparents, such that the places the locked down less wind up having kids take a bigger hit. We just don't know at this point.

 

[Mina]

numbers were overstated in an attempt to scare people into doing useless things so that it would seem as if the state was "doing something" about it.

This is too often how things work on debate sites like this: people simply assert things they'd like to be true. I could, of course, simply respond with the exact opposite naked assertion:

"Numbers were understated in an attempt to lull people into a false sense of confidence so that they'd be more likely to expose themselves to pointless dangers in order to keep the economy growing."

Those kinds of dueling assertions get us nowhere. That's why the excess death data is so useful, because it actually MEASURES what happened, rather than just asserting what we'd like to think happened.

We know as a FACT that mortality rates shot up severely during the pandemic -- about 17% above the number that were expected to die based on pre-pandemic mortality rates, nationwide. We know as a FACT that increase involved significantly more extra deaths than can be accounted for strictly by those that various states were willing to acknowledge were caused by COVID.

There are two basic theories to explain that gap:

(1) COVID killed a lot more people than the official counts acknowledged, because on average there were pressures to under-count.


(2) There were other systemic reasons that officials innocently missed a lot of COVID-caused mortality (e.g., delayed mortality associated with COVID-caused ravages to the body, but only after a person was COVID negative, so the COVID link was missed).

(3) The pandemic killed a lot of people indirectly (e.g., people dying at higher rates of gunshots, because overworked ER doctors, exhausted by COVID, were making dumb mistakes that got patients killed).

I don't have data that could tease out how much each of those things factored in. But what I can look into is a fourth potential explanation that ended up not being true: that it was the anti-COVID methods themselves that boosted excess deaths (e.g., lockdowns, or vaccines). Since the excess mortality was highest in places with lower vaccination rates and less strict anti-COVID measures, that's clearly not what happened. It was something about the pandemic itself driving up COVID, rather than us overreacting to it.

States differed simply because they have always differed in how they collect data.

But, again, that's where the excess death data is so great. It is one of the few areas where all the states collect data almost exactly the same way. There's no debate about whether a given body is dead or not. Counting corpses is easy -- the number of judgement calls there are statistically insignificant (e.g., an exceedingly rare case where you're deciding when to declare a long-missing person dead). Very nearly every single person who dies in a state is counted and reported up the same way. So, when we see that, say, Arizona's mortality rate spiked 27% since the pandemic started, while Massachusetts's spiked 5%, that means thousands of extra corpses in Arizona. Arizona may insist on saying almost none of those were COVID deaths, but one way or the other, the pandemic caused a vast spike in mortality there.

 

[Mina]

Once again you cancelled your own argument out.

You misunderstood. Try rereading. Good luck!

 

[Celticguy]

This is too often how things work on debate sites like this: people simply assert things they'd like to be true. I could, of course, simply respond with the exact opposite naked assertion:

"Numbers were understated in an attempt to lull people into a false sense of confidence so that they'd be more likely to expose themselves to pointless dangers in order to keep the economy growing."

Those kinds of dueling assertions get us nowhere. That's why the excess death data is so useful, because it actually MEASURES what happened, rather than just asserting what we'd like to think happened.

We know as a FACT that mortality rates shot up severely during the pandemic -- about 17% above the number that were expected to die based on pre-pandemic mortality rates, nationwide. We know as a FACT that increase involved significantly more extra deaths than can be accounted for strictly by those that various states were willing to acknowledge were caused by COVID.

There are two basic theories to explain that gap:

(1) COVID killed a lot more people than the official counts acknowledged, because on average there were pressures to under-count.


(2) There were other systemic reasons that officials innocently missed a lot of COVID-caused mortality (e.g., delayed mortality associated with COVID-caused ravages to the body, but only after a person was COVID negative, so the COVID link was missed).

(3) The pandemic killed a lot of people indirectly (e.g., people dying at higher rates of gunshots, because overworked ER doctors, exhausted by COVID, were making dumb mistakes that got patients killed).

I don't have data that could tease out how much each of those things factored in. But what I can look into is a fourth potential explanation that ended up not being true: that it was the anti-COVID methods themselves that boosted excess deaths (e.g., lockdowns, or vaccines). Since the excess mortality was highest in places with lower vaccination rates and less strict anti-COVID measures, that's clearly not what happened. It was something about the pandemic itself driving up COVID, rather than us overreacting to it.



But, again, that's where the excess death data is so great. It is one of the few areas where all the states collect data almost exactly the same way. There's no debate about whether a given body is dead or not. Counting corpses is easy -- the number of judgement calls there are statistically insignificant (e.g., an exceedingly rare case where you're deciding when to declare a long-missing person dead). Very nearly every single person who dies in a state is counted and reported up the same way. So, when we see that, say, Arizona's mortality rate spiked 27% since the pandemic started, while Massachusetts's spiked 5%, that means thousands of extra corpses in Arizona. Arizona may insist on saying almost none of those were COVID deaths, but one way or the other, the pandemic caused a vast spike in mortality there.

if you wish to respond to my observation you should respond to ALL of it.

or not, and be boring.

 

[Mina]

if you wish to respond to my observation you should respond to ALL of it

No, I shouldn't. I should respond to the part I'm interested in. However, since you whined, I'll accommodate your hurt feelings and address the one part I didn't speak to already:

CDC knew from the start that it was just going to have to play itself out. Thats why their initial stance was that masks were of no value and that the goal should be "flatten the curve". The "curve" being the volume of people in some form of care at the same time. Nobody thought a vaccine was attainable in any quick way.

Yes, the CDC initially gave a bad steer on masks. At the time, they were worried about there being a run on those masks which would result in them not being available for healthcare workers, who needed them the most. So, they said misleading things to try to keep others from buying up masks. I criticized that at the time and don't defend it now. In a pandemic, people need to be able to trust public health officials, so well-meaning lies for some short-term public health benefit are disastrously stupid.

As for "flattening the curve," that was an initial focus and continues to be a focus during periods when there's a local surge that can overwhelm hospitals. Mortality rates per infection are going to be higher when you reach those critical volumes, so spreading things out helps.

However, there's a second advantage to efforts that delay infection: over time, we can make the disease less and less deadly per infection. Even if we hadn't succeeded in getting vaccines so fast, that would be true. Doctors are just much better at treating COVID now than they were when it was new. They don't, for example, rush to put people on ventilators now -- they use proning and supplemental oxygen. They also have monoclonal antibodies and a bunch of other medicines they now know work well, that either didn't exist at the start, or that weren't known to be effective treatments. And they know what kinds of stuff DOESN'T work, too, so they don't burden the patient's system with garbage that is basically expensive snakeoil. We also have widespread testing now, so that people identify infections earlier and can deal with them faster.

For all those reasons, per-infection death rates would be much lower today even if we didn't have the vaccines. Throw in the vaccines, and they're much lower. So, those methods to slow the spread of the virus through the population paid huge dividends, even if eventually we get to the point where everyone has had it. That's part of why experts immediately spotted the idiocy of a Swedish-style attempt to just let the virus spread so as to reach herd immunity fast. That approach comes with a much higher overall death toll, by front-loading the risk, when infections are deadlier.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

I think the Covid deaths were way over reported. If someone died in a car wreck, if they were positive it was counted as a Covid death. I think hospitals also got kick backs for Covid patients.

Wrong. Re-read Mina's post again. She takes the bias out of it with numbers. Do you understand what "excess mortality" even means?

 

[gfm7175]

Every state counts COVID deaths differently.

They each have different methods for generating random numbers.

A few report something as a COVID death if the dead person was COVID positive and COVID might have contributed to the death. So, they end up over-counting. Far more states err on the side of exclusion, by declining to report a COVID death unless it's very clear the death would not otherwise have occurred. So, they end up under-counting.

All 48 states are overcounting. So are the oligarchies of DC and NY, as is the dictatorship of CA.

Because of that, I've instead relied on excess death figures. Before COVID, the CDC was very good at predicting how many people would die in a particular state over a particular time simply by projecting forward past mortality rates, so comparing their pre-pandemic projected deaths with the actual death counts, you can get a pretty good feel for how many COVID has killed in each state.

What you can also do with that data is figure out how much a particular state has been "overcounting" or "undercounting," simply by comparing the number of excess deaths in the state to the number of COVID deaths they've counted.

So, for instance, if the CDC predicted 5,000 people would die in a state during a given year, based on pre-pandemic mortality trends, and 6,000 actually died, then that's 1,000 excess deaths. If the state reported 500 COVID deaths, that suggests they probably were undercounting by half, and their "COVID Multiplier" would be 2 (1,000/500). If, on the other hand, they reported 2,000 COVID deaths, that suggests they were probably overcounting and their multiplier would be 0.5 (1,000/2,000).

Here's the multiplier for each state, for the twelve months ending the last week of April:

Vermont 3.30
Oregon 1.79
Alaska 1.63
Utah 1.50
West Virginia 1.49
Arizona 1.47
Washington 1.46
Delaware 1.41
New Mexico 1.39
Virginia 1.38
California 1.38
Maine 1.35
Montana 1.35
Colorado 1.34
Georgia 1.33
North Carolina 1.32
Arkansas 1.30
Louisiana 1.26
Mississippi 1.26
Alabama 1.26
Nevada 1.25
Idaho 1.24
Florida 1.24
Connecticut 1.24
Tennessee 1.21
Texas 1.21
Michigan 1.20
Illinois 1.20
United States 1.19
Kentucky 1.17
Wyoming 1.13
Oklahoma 1.13
South Carolina 1.09
Wisconsin 1.09
Kansas 1.08
Minnesota 1.03
Missouri 1.01
Ohio 0.97
New York 0.96
Pennsylvania 0.96
Iowa 0.94
Indiana 0.92
New Hampshire 0.86
Hawaii 0.79
Nebraska 0.79
Maryland 0.72
South Dakota 0.70
New Jersey 0.60
North Dakota 0.58
Rhode Island 0.54
Massachusetts 0.38

Note, that doesn't mean that Vermont had the most COVID deaths or Massachusetts the least. It's just that Vermont undercounted the most and Massachusetts overcounted the most. You would need to apply the multiplier to their claimed COVID death count to get the "adjusted COVID death count."

So, using that data, if Arizona announced that 100 people in their state died of COVID in a given week, the real number would probably be closer to 147. If Maryland announced 100 died of COVID in that week, the real number would likely be closer to 72. They could be reporting the same thing, and yet COVID could actually be killing twice as many people in Arizona, simply because AZ tends to decide gray-area calls against calling something a COVID death and Maryland tends to go the opposite direction and err on the side of including it.

On average, as you can see, the national trend has been to underreport, with a 1.19 multiplier. So, when the CDC says 1,000 Americans died of COVID in a week, it's probably more like 1,190.

Made up numbers.

There are ZERO "COVID deaths", as COVID in and of itself does not kill. See the 'Cult of the Mask' link in my sig for more details on the COVID scam.

 

[gfm7175]

And I know people who tested positive for COVID and never got counted for it, because they tested at home.

Exactly, so it's just random numbers.

 

[Mina]

All 48 states are overcounting

What evidence do you see to support that assertion? Also, why 48?

Made up numbers.

No. These are simply calculations based on actual deaths in each state. While states come to really different results when making gray-area calls, like exactly what to list as a cause of death in a particular case, they are pretty consistent in deciding whether a given body is alive or dead. For years the CDC has collected the reports of how many people died in each state.... long before COVID. And before the pandemic, that data was remarkably consistent -- people would die at almost the same rate in each state from year to year. But with the pandemic death rates spike horrendously in this country, and particularly in right-wing areas like Arizona and Mississippi. Why do you think that is?

There are ZERO "COVID deaths", as COVID in and of itself does not kill

If you want to play semantic games, that's fine. In the same sense, being shot in the head won't kill you... it's the sudden loss of blood and gray matter through the hole it creates that kills you. And falling of the Empire State Building won't kill you -- it's when your insides spill out when you decelerate suddenly at the end that kills you. But the point is that a great many of those people would still be alive today if they hadn't contracted COVID. In fact, based on pre-COVID mortality rates, we would expect something like 1.1 to 1.2 million more Americans to be alive today.

 

[Mina]

Exactly, so it's just random numbers.

It isn't. Check the link yourself.

 

[gfm7175]

What evidence do you see to support that assertion?

Addressed in the later part of my response.

Also, why 48?

Addressing in the later part of my response. CA and NY are no longer republics.

No. These are simply calculations based on actual deaths in each state. While states come to really different results when making gray-area calls, like exactly what to list as a cause of death in a particular case, they are pretty consistent in deciding whether a given body is alive or dead. For years the CDC has collected the reports of how many people died in each state.... long before COVID. And before the pandemic, that data was remarkably consistent -- people would die at almost the same rate in each state from year to year. But with the pandemic death rates spike horrendously in this country, and particularly in right-wing areas like Arizona and Mississippi. Why do you think that is?

There are both more-so "left-wing" AND more-so "right-wing" areas within EVERY state, so your question is stupid.

If you want to play semantic games, that's fine. In the same sense, being shot in the head won't kill you... it's the sudden loss of blood and gray matter through the hole it creates that kills you. And falling of the Empire State Building won't kill you -- it's when your insides spill out when you decelerate suddenly at the end that kills you. But the point is that a great many of those people would still be alive today if they hadn't contracted COVID. In fact, based on pre-COVID mortality rates, we would expect something like 1.1 to 1.2 million more Americans to be alive today.

Not a semantic game. A gunshot to the head is the beginning of a clear causal chain of events that concludes with death. Same with falling off of a tall enough building. However, there is NO clear causal chain of events from COVID infection to death.

... "If they hadn't contracted COVID"... is just a religious belief on your part. You don't know what "would have" happened.

 

[gfm7175]

It isn't. Check the link yourself.

You just got done admitting that there are elements that are unknown, thus one can only guess at them...

 

[Mina]

Addressed in the later part of my response.

I didn't see it addressed. What specifically are you thinking of?

CA and NY are no longer republics.

How so?

There are both more-so "left-wing" AND more-so "right-wing" areas within EVERY state, [and] your question [made me feel] stupid.

Yes, there are various areas within states, and you see similar trends within those areas. For example, excess deaths are higher in conservative northern Maine than in the liberal southeast of the state. But that data isn't as solid (since severely ill people tend to travel to wherever the hospitals are in their state before dying), so I prefer to look at the state-by-state data.

Not a semantic game. A gunshot to the head is the beginning of a clear causal chain of events that concludes with death

Yes. In the same way, so is a COVID infection, for many who have died.

... "If they hadn't contracted COVID"... is just a religious belief on your part.

You do no appear to know what the word "religious" means.

You don't know what "would have" happened.

That's where the excess death data comes in. Here, to illustrate the point, we'll take it out of the COVID context so you can think more clearly. People who use crack cocaine are known to have higher rates of mortality than people who don't. That doesn't mean that you can prove any particular death by a crack user wouldn't have happened if not for the crack use. Even someone who keels over dead right of a heart attack right after a big hit on the crack pipe might, theoretically, have done the same thing anyway. But while it can't be proven in individual cases, you can compare crack users generally to those who don't use crack, and see the higher rates of death.

COVID is similar. It's often going to be hard to show that a given person would not have died if not for COVID. But we can compare the rates of death for those who got COVID and those who didn't, and draw conclusions. And on a state-by-state basis, we can look at how much the background mortality rate rose in some versus others during the pandemic, and it can tell us a lot about the effectiveness of pandemic policy in each.

 

[Mina]

You just got done admitting that there are elements that are unknown, thus one can only guess at them...

Check the link.

 

[gfm7175]

I didn't see it addressed. What specifically are you thinking of?

You're gonna have to learn how to read and comprehend English.

How so?

They both no longer abide by nor recognize the existence of their state constitutions. DC has done the same thing with regard to the federal constitution.

Yes, there are various areas within states, and you see similar trends within those areas. For example, excess deaths are higher in conservative northern Maine than in the liberal southeast of the state. But that data isn't as solid (since severely ill people tend to travel to wherever the hospitals are in their state before dying), so I prefer to look at the state-by-state data.

Be careful about editing the text within my quote in the manner that you did, as it might get you in trouble with the forum rules. It might be acceptable in this case because you put brackets around the words of mine that you changed, but just something to be aware of.

Yes. In the same way, so is a COVID infection, for many who have died.

As I said (and you left out in your quote), there is no clear causal chain of events from COVID infection to death.

You do no appear to know what the word "religious" means.

I do, actually. It is YOU who doesn't.

That's where the excess death data comes in. Here, to illustrate the point, we'll take it out of the COVID context so you can think more clearly. People who use crack cocaine are known to have higher rates of mortality than people who don't. That doesn't mean that you can prove any particular death by a crack user wouldn't have happened if not for the crack use. Even someone who keels over dead right of a heart attack right after a big hit on the crack pipe might, theoretically, have done the same thing anyway. But while it can't be proven in individual cases, you can compare crack users generally to those who don't use crack, and see the higher rates of death.

COVID is similar. It's often going to be hard to show that a given person would not have died if not for COVID. But we can compare the rates of death for those who got COVID and those who didn't, and draw conclusions. And on a state-by-state basis, we can look at how much the background mortality rate rose in some versus others during the pandemic, and it can tell us a lot about the effectiveness of pandemic policy in each.

Nope, you're just pretending that a bunch of random numbers somehow mean something.

Shit in = Shit out.

 

[gfm7175]

Check the link.

The link doesn't matter. Shit in = shit out.

 

[Hawkeye10]

I agree. There's a lot of evidence, for example, that those who had severe COVID had a high probability of various resulting issues that could boost their mortality rates for the rest of their lives (like arteriosclerosis, or auto-immune disorders). Even some people who had mild or asymptomatic COVID wind up with ailments that seem to be popping up more often among the previously infected, which could statistically boost mortality.




Yes. A lot of those kids needlessly lost parents, due to overly lax public health policies. Growing up without those parents will put the kids at a disadvantage for life. Then there's also the brain shrinkage that's related to COVID. It's not clear how transient that is, but you could literally have a generation of kids with lower IQ's than the last generation because of those infections.

Unfortunately, standardized testing ground to a halt with COVID, so it's tough to say what impact it's having on kids, and where it's worst. I think there are a lot of people assuming the worst impacts are going to be in the places that shut down schools the longest, and that's possible. But, it's also possible that it'll be the opposite -- that the bigger risk to kids wasn't a period of home schooling, but more lasting disadvantages from harm done by the infections, and loss of parents and grandparents, such that the places the locked down less wind up having kids take a bigger hit. We just don't know at this point.

You are either an idiot or a liar...70% of COVID deaths are 70 years old or older, they did not die on young kids. Closing schools was always at best idiotic but it looks more like the teachers are powerful, they did not want to work, and so the kids got fucked. We do know, the kids have been greatly harmed, and they were not doing very well even before COVID with our schools rotted out and because of helicopter parenting and broken families and mis use of tech and the constantly being injected with fear.

 

[Lightbringer]

You misunderstood. Try rereading. Good luck!

I grok better than you. Your entire shtick from the day you joined here is trying to play both sides in a futile attempt to appear non-partisan while making it clear you are partisan. Good luck with that.

 

[Mina]

You're gonna have to learn how to read and comprehend English

Your inability to defend your position is noted and your failures have been enjoyed.

Be careful about editing the text within my quote in the manner that you did, as [it hurts my overly delicate feelings and] it might get you in trouble with the forum rules.

They can ban me if they want.

As I said (and you left out in your quote), there is no clear causal chain of events from COVID infection to death.

Yet there definitely is. In many cases, the COVID infection leads to a very typical set of symptoms, including lungs filling up with fluids, which leads to suppurative pulmonary infection, which can lead to septic shock and multi organ failure.

I do, actually. It is YOU who doesn't.

What definition, specifically, are you using?

Nope, you're just pretending that a bunch of random numbers somehow mean something.

Statistically, we can demonstrate they're not actually random. Because we're working with such large numbers (the average state has well over six million residents) if excess deaths were happening randomly, we'd find almost no difference between the excess death level of one state and another..... the same as we'd find almost no meaningful difference from state to state in the share of people born on a Tuesday, for instance, or the share who have a "1" as the last digit of their social security number. When you have numbers in the millions random variation winds up only accounting for a tiny fraction of a percent of difference between two groups. Flip one coin 6 million times and a second coin 6 million times, and each will come up heads approximately 3 millions times, with any difference in the "heads" count between the two being a small fraction of a percent. Yet with excess deaths, we have some states with something like 3% and some with something like 27%. That isn't random. That easily exceeds the threshold for statistical significance (the threshold where random chance is no longer a reasonable explanation for variation).

 

[Mina]

You are either an idiot or a liar...70% of COVID deaths are 70 years old or older, they did not die on young kids.

You seem to have had trouble following my argument. Although COVID did kill a lot of kids (1,070, so far, in the US), my argument isn't based on COVID killing kids. It's about the question of whether non-lethal impacts on children might be great enough to outweigh whatever short-term educational advantage may have existed from keeping the kids doing in-person schooling through the worst of the pandemic. I don't know the answer to that, and neither do you. We're just guessing. But the non-lethal impacts we're talking about include health impacts on the kids themselves (if the disease was bad enough to outright kill over a thousand of them, one would expect far more than a 1,000 to have had serious negative health impacts that fell short of death, including the brain shrinkage that's been reported among COVID survivors). Even mild cases appear to impact the brain negatively:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/ja...re, researchers at,smell, and more brain size

Then there are the sociological/psychological impacts from sick or dead loved ones. Picture, for example, that a kid picks up COVID at school, infects a parent, and then the parent dies. An old enough kid will understand what happened and potentially feel a devastating level of guilt about it, which will have long-standing negative academic impacts.

So, that's why I'm eager to see what the standardized testing tells us, once that's available. My first guess is that places that shut down schools less had kids who lost less ground academically. But that's just a guess, and we could well learn the opposite.