That there is a real disease killing people is beyond question. That the disease is a pandemic that requires lockdowns and social distancing is not beyond question. Here are a few important questions to ask about the excess death figure:
1. What calculation is used to determine the excess deaths? From what I have read it is comparing 2020 data to an average of the last five years. But are you aware that the number of deaths usually increases in the US from 25k to as many as 86k per year? Over the last five years (2013-2018, I could not find 2019 data), the average increase in the number of deaths in the US is 48,422. If we assume this average increase would have occurred in 2020 with or without CV19, we can take 48k from the number above, which brings the excess death number down to 152k.
Link to US death toll figures: https://247wallst.com/special-report...u-were-born-2/
2. What if the increase in deaths this year would have been on the high end, what if the US death toll would have increased by 86k, as it did between 2014 and 2015? An excess death number of 112k is significant, but not quite as significant as 200k. The question to answer is whether or not there is a way to determine what the 2020 death toll would have been without CV19? I am not sure we can possibly get at that number but some ideas as to how to get there might include looking at the increase in population - more people equals more deaths. We could also look at indicators such as the severity of the flu season going into 2020 (I recall reading it was particularly severe prior to the focus shifting to CV19). We could also consider population age, overall health, overall poverty, and whatever else is known to contribute to mortality rates.
3. How many of the excess deaths have been caused not by people being infected by the disease but by the collateral damage of the disease - postponed medical procedures, lack of access to medical care, increased poverty, increased suicides, increased homelessness, etc. These deaths should be subtracted from the excess death rate in regards to counting as CV19 infection deaths. We need to look at the increase in deaths due to heart attacks, organ failures, etc, things that may have been preventable had medical care been available. These numbers may be hard to come by because many of these deaths are being reported as CV19 deaths.
4. How many deaths were avoided due to the conditions that came about due to the lockdowns? For example, it has been stated that there have been substantially fewer road/traffic related deaths because there were fewer people on the roads. These deaths that did not occur could be added back into the total count.
The point I hope to make clear is that you cannot simply take the raw number of excess deaths and assume they are all attributable to death by CV19 infection.
Principal
Results 1 to 10 of 7634
Thread: Covid-19
Threaded View
-
10-05-2020, 05:08 AM #11
- Join Date
- Mar 2008
- Posts
- 496
Last edited by principal; 10-05-2020 at 05:14 AM.
Bookmarks