How do we know excess deaths are caused by more people dying from covid-19?
It’s not an increase in car wrecks or accidental deaths. Suicides are likely up but not nearly enough to account for the numbers. It’s a simple process of elimination plus the fact that numerous (poor) people die at home without seeking treatment.
1 Like
There seem to be a fair number of extra variables making this a very abnormal time to easily pin excess deaths predominantly on covid-19 deaths.
1 Like
Name some that haven’t been accounted for that are sufficiently large to explain the excess deaths.
Don’t forget to consider both the direct and indirect evidence.
The direct evidence is the death certificates.
The indirect evidence is the excess mortality.
They point to the same conclusion, which makes the CDC’s case for 190,000 COVID-19 deaths well-supported.
Peace,
Chris
5 Likes
if they are one and the smae that would indeed be excellent evidence
but i haven’t seen anyone make that connect
it is normally left as an exercise for the reader to assume there is a strong connection
i think it would be interesting if the researchers with access to the data did such an analysis
i am not saying it is necessarily a bad assumption
but as scientists we should always be checking our assumptions and not relying on intuition to draw our conclusions
In this very thread we have seen that the CDC estimate of COVID-19 deaths is 190k and the excess mortality estimate is 200k.
I invited you to name significant confounds, but you were unable to suggest anything.
Dan Eastwood already posted a CDC analysis in post #28
In view of the 190,000 cemetery plots that have been dug, I do not find vague references to unknown confounding factors to be helpful, much less convincing.
Peace,
Chris
4 Likes
I deal with “Competing risks” data on a regular basis in survival analysis (not Bayesian, but it could be). The question here is how to evaluate one risk factor (like covid) in the presence of other risk factors. Briefly stated, if risk factor B kills a person before risk factor A kills them, this doesn’t mean they were not at risk from factor A.
That analysis assumes that cause of death can be accurately attributed, which is at the heart of the question here. For patients already in poor health if can be difficult to attribute cause. From what I see in medical data, cause is generally attributed to the factor that is the greatest risk at the time. For instance, if a patient with heart disease gets hit by a bus, you don’t attribute the cause to heart disease. For a patient with diabetes that gets COVID and dies, COVID would likely be attributed, because diabetes doesn’t kill people quickly.
9 Likes
that is definitely more convincing
i just think there can be a more granular comparison, since it seems like all the data is out there
i would do it myself if i know how to get the datasets
i think my questioning just comes down to my own skeptical nature and wanting to have more dots connected in order to believe something
or rather i believe covid-19 is indeed serious, but i just need some kind of data security blanket for some reason 
at the very least so i can more effectively debunk the conspiracy theorists
Right. Which is why “COVID-19 didn’t kill him, pneumonia did” is kind of ridiculous.
Heart disease creates problems that would become significant problems if the person is infected with a pathogen, virus or bacteria. It is not unrelated as a bus.
And the same goes for diabetes. While diabetes type 2 doesn’t kill the person, it too creates significant medical problems that can make an infection serious and deadly.
2 Likes
great point, this is like AIDS where it doesn’t kill the person, but weakens the immune so really minor diseases kill the person, yet they are said to die from AIDS
so, if an AIDS patient catches covid-19 and dies from pneumonia, what killed them: AIDS, covid-19 or pneumonia?
it looks like a lot more is needed in this analysis before we can clearly delineate the real threat of covid-19
at least we need more public datasets so we citizen scientists can answer the questions the professionals don’t have time for!
1 Like
There is a lot of confusion. There is no clear situation so it makes it difficult even someone with some biological sciences to make any assessment without a lot of work surfing for information on the net. An ordinary, non-science educated person would have to feel totally lost.
You see here: Dr. Fauci weighs in on 6M US coronavirus cases, deaths and comorbidity l GMA - YouTube Dr Fauci insists that anyone who died with covid 19 died of covid 19 without taking into account of the differences between a healthy person and one who has a huge health disadvantage.
Flu Cases Near 30 Million in the US, CDC Reports
February 29, 2020
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated 29 million influenza (flu) cases have reached the US in the 2019-2020 season.
So far, there have been 16,000 flu-related deaths documented during the US influenza season.
An estimated 142,670 lung cancer deaths in 2019 in the United States. 38% of them died of respiratory failure (from infection/pneumonia due to infection) That means about 53,000 or so died of an infection owing to underlying lung cancer.
The figures don’t add up. The flu figures can’t possibly include the lung cancer patients that died with/of flu.
And then we have the waters muddied by whether we include infection rates or only case rates. Cleveland Clinic Provides Blood Management Strategy Innovation during COVID-19
Assessing COVID-19 Mortality
Finally there is this guy, Dr. Andrew Kaufman M.D. He is a psychiatrist but nonetheless had to have finished medical school. He can’t be illiterate in the field as to not be able to make good assessments and criticisms.
He is pointing to heaps wrong, including the testing. What are they testing for? And he sees a political agenda. - YouTube
And you can see from the comments this video seems is censored.
1 Like
Interesting, according to that video at the 54 minute point the states are incentivized to inflate covid-19 numbers. They get only $5000 for normal pneumonia deaths, but up to $39,000 for someone with covid-19 on ventilator. I think this is the USA Today article referenced in the video, and the article states the claim is true as far as they can tell. Of course, according to the article, no one actually inflates covid-19 numbers to take advantage of this incentive, so no need to worry.
Here’s a Snopes on the same claim, a bit more hesistant.
We therefore rate this claim “Mixture.” While it seems plausible that Medicare disbursements to hospitals treating COVID-19 patients could be in the range given by Jensen in the Fox News interview (if those patients are covered by Medicare), we found no evidence to support Jensen’s assertion that “Medicare has determined” that hospitals will be paid $13,000 for patients with COVID-19 diagnoses or $39,000 for COVID-19 patients place on ventilators.
Another fascinating claim made by the video is that hospitals are specifically told not to get a coroner’s report for covid-19 deaths, whereas it is normal practice for all other deaths, especially when there is an epidemic. It’s because we already know they died of covid-19 so no reason to expend more effort 
This is why death certificates have multiple lines. Doctors are not required to make these definitive assessments about “what REALLY killed” someone. If you would have been alive today had you not caught COVID-19, then COVID-19 was a cause of your death. If it robs you of years of life, it’s a threat.
5 Likes
Right! Well put.
1 Like
Then how do we really know the true toll of covid-19?
Are you asking about death certificates? Or about general CDC reasoning?
. Here’s a CDC discussion on how to fill one out. Each cause is listed chronologically, with the amount of time it affects the person.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/blue_form.pdf
Here is another post on how to count Covid in general, per CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/about-us-cases-deaths.html
Here is a Zdogg video (about 10 min) on over- and under counting.
https://zdoggmd.com/excess-death-rate/
Thanks.
2 Likes
The clinical criteria seem really broad. It seems like someone can be diagnosed as having covid-19 if they are just coughing and the person is in a high risk demographic, i.e. elderly. Hopefully no one takes advantage of this to bring in more government money.
From your links:
A probable case or death is defined by one of the following:
- Meeting clinical criteria AND epidemiologic evidence with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19
- Meeting presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence
- Meeting vital records criteria with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID19
Clinical Criteria
At least two of the following symptoms: fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, new olfactory and taste disorder(s)
OR
At least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing
OR
Severe respiratory illness with at least one of the following:
- Clinical or radiographic evidence of pneumonia, OR
- Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
AND
No alternative more likely diagnosis
Epidemiologic Linkage
One or more of the following exposures in the 14 days before onset of symptoms:
- Close contact** with a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19 disease; OR
- Close contact** with a person with:
- clinically compatible illness AND
- linkage to a confirmed case of COVID-19 disease.
- Travel to or residence in an area with sustained, ongoing community transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
- Member of a risk cohort as defined by public health authorities during an outbreak.
We can’t, because ‘the true toll’ isn’t an actual thing – it’s an abstraction. The same goes for most causes of death. What we can do is estimate the number of people who were infected and as a result died sooner than they would have had they not been infected, and we can estimate the number of excess deaths caused by the pandemic. This number includes people who died directly from COVID-19, but also all the people who either lived or died who wouldn’t have done so had the pandemic not been occurring.
6 Likes
now that’s a vague criterion if i’ve ever heard one!