Only 6% of covid-19 deaths were solely caused by it

[Libertarian666]

This place has become absurd to a degree that it's actually becoming somewhat entertaining....I love how the man advocating for a private judicial system and posting bitchute articles as truth is diagnosing mental illness. There is no bridging the gap anymore I'm afraid. The kooks in this country have garbled common sense to a degree that people now protest for the government to keep their commie hands off of their Medicare.

I decided this weekend to either keep doing this or stop posting, and mentally the only way I could justify continuing is to treat it as a diversion, vs. getting mad.

Off topic----

We were riding bikes around this weekend, and passed a house that had two signs in front:

0% Socialist
100% American

Got me thinking, what % actually are we socialist and people, (even some here!), are fine with it? Are services socialist, like fire and police? Public schools, roads, parks, libraries certainly seem to be socialist as well. Social security, medicare, unemployment ditto.

There is nothing more funny/frustrating to me as a Libertarian than seeing polls where people say the government is too big and too intrusive and spends too much and then the same people answering "yes" to should the government do more for education, creating jobs, helping the poor etc.
As much as it pains me to say it, I feel that most people who complain about socialism are complaining specifically about "welfare" and there is probably a decent amount of racism built in there. Because if you question them on anything else like social security or Medicare they will tell you "I worked for that!" with no understanding of what they actually paid in vs what they have gotten back.

My mother is a big anti government, stop giving my money to welfare queens person. But she never actually worked a private sector job in her life. She worked for a public school district for 30 years, retired at 50 and has drawn full salary and insurance since that time. In another 7 years she will have drawn a salary from them for longer than she actually worked there. What other job out there in the private sector would have given her that sort of retirement at that age? But lord don't call her a welfare queen!

Personally I am a pretty close to a pure Libertarian and I do not see any difference between food stamps, libraries, public television, National Endowment for the Arts or public schools. If the government is forcibly taking money for those services from citizens who do not use those services then it is "socialist" to me. Maybe not by pure definition of "socialism" but by the meaning most people accept these days.

Works for me.

[jalanlong]

I was just watching Tucker and he said that a tweet that Donald Trump shared referring to this information from the CDC was taken down because it was "misinformation".

Hopefully, I',m missing some of the details because it's one of the damnest things I've heard of it true.

They did indeed. They are saying his tweet implies Covid wasn’t the reason they died which is not what the CDC meant. Like what Cortopaasi said earlier in the thread, an obese person could live for years but Covid came along and they died. They are saying Trump’s tweet is claiming they died of obesity, not Covid.

Seems nitpicking to call it misinformation. Its just a different interpretation of the data.

[Kriegsspiel]

I'm glad they're starting to publicize this type of information more, so people can stop being so afraid. Like Maddy said, it's been out there for a while, but it's a good thing that people see this good news more often, as opposed to only seeing bad spin on the news about it all the time that skews their perception of reality. It should help them be able to handle unlocking the country and going outside, and eventually they'll forget why they were so afraid.

In my completely unqualified opinion, if you're young and healthy, you don't have any reason to be more afraid to be alive than you usually would.

Maybe even less, since all those old people causing car accidents are staying home.

[Maddy]

This morning I received an e-mail from a committedly progressive friend with whom I recently shared some thoughts about the political underpinnings of the whole CoVid thing. Quite out of the blue this morning, she mentioned that an increasing number of people she knows are becoming sick and tired of the politicization of CoVid, as well as the accompanying climate of social unrest. Although purely anecdotal, this suggested to me that the latest news bombshell (about only 6% of CoVid 19 deaths being caused by CoVid alone) has finally breached the soundproofing surrounding the "rank and file" democratic mind. The fact that this news story continues to spread and gain traction tells me that, for whatever reason, the message that they've been duped has finally gotten through to the progressive wing.

[WiseOne]

In other words, the whole pandemic WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!! turned out to be completely wrong:

" The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data last week that depicts how many Americans who have died from COVID-19 also had contributing conditions.

According to the report, only 6% of deaths have COVID-19 as the only cause mentioned, revealing that 94% of patients who died from coronavirus also had other “health conditions and contributing causes.”"

https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/new-c ... onditions/

So it looks like anyone who is healthy can go about their lives normally.
Not medical advice, etc.

@WiseOne?

Talk about conjuring up news out of thin air....can I clear up some of the confusion on this?

First: That co-morbidities (basically a laundry list of metabolic syndrome manifestations plus respiratory issues) are strong predictors of COVID-19 mortality and hospitalizations has been known since practically the start of the pandemic - certainly by early May. There is no new information on that front.

Second: You all need to understand how hospital discharge summaries and death certificates work. A discharge summary starts with a list of diagnoses on admission and at discharge. They are in no particular order. For example, you might see: 1. COVID-19, 2. Morbid obesity, 3. Diabetes type 2, 4. Renal failure. And so forth.

The discharge summary then proceeds to a text description of what happened during the hospitalization. It's usually written by an exhausted intern, and almost always by someone who wasn't involved in most of the events. There are also a large number of checkboxes imposed in recent years by hospital administrators for things like fall risk, flu shot, med reconciliation etc. As those things have increased, the quality of the text description - the most informative part of the summary - declined.

When a patient dies, there is a death summary instead of a discharge summary. It's an abbreviated version, although it includes the list of admission and discharge diagnoses. There is also a death certificate, which asks for "cause of death". This is again filled out by the exhausted intern. It's pretty random what they'll put down. In the era of COVID, COVID-19 will be listed if it appears anywhere on the diagnosis list, for many reasons. It's an easy choice, plus the hospital gets extra $$. Nowhere in this process is there any systematic effort to determine the true cause of death - or what that even means. It's often quite difficult to figure out, and no one has the time. The sole exception is when there is an autopsy and report from a medical examiner or pathologist - and even then it's often a guessing game. And in the COVID era, there are not many autopsies because of the fear of launching a ton of virus into the air.

The CDC then gets this paperwork and has to make sense of the data and figure out who died of COVID-19, vs. who died of something else and just happened to test positive, vs. someone who caught COVID which then tipped an already sick person into the "cascade of badness" which then resulted in death. Good luck with that. I imagine they just look at the diagnosis list to see if it includes COVID. That's how ridiculous stuff happens like the guy who died in a motorcycle accident being counted as a COVID death.

This is why I suspect the most reliable data are statistical excess deaths. I did a detailed post about that some time back. In short, deaths were lower than average (for the past 20-25 years) going into COVID, because this past flu year was an unusually mild one. That meant there was a correspondingly high incidence of people just waiting for the next virus to knock them off. During the height of COVID at any one geographic location, there was a higher death rate than average. This lasts about 6-8 weeks, and is followed by a drop in the death rate to BELOW average levels. That speaks to a situation where this year's deaths were compressed into a short period of time because of COVID - but the AVERAGE for the entire year may well prove to be within normal range at the end.

I also took a peek at Trump's tweet and the yellow-journalism article reporting on it. Both were full of misinformation IMHO. Sigh...wish Trump would keep his twitter-mouth shut!!!!!

[GT]

In other words, the whole pandemic WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!! turned out to be completely wrong:

" The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data last week that depicts how many Americans who have died from COVID-19 also had contributing conditions.

According to the report, only 6% of deaths have COVID-19 as the only cause mentioned, revealing that 94% of patients who died from coronavirus also had other “health conditions and contributing causes.”"

https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/new-c ... onditions/

So it looks like anyone who is healthy can go about their lives normally.
Not medical advice, etc.

@WiseOne?

Talk about conjuring up news out of thin air....can I clear up some of the confusion on this?

First: That co-morbidities (basically a laundry list of metabolic syndrome manifestations plus respiratory issues) are strong predictors of COVID-19 mortality and hospitalizations has been known since practically the start of the pandemic - certainly by early May. There is no new information on that front.

Second: You all need to understand how hospital discharge summaries and death certificates work. A discharge summary starts with a list of diagnoses on admission and at discharge. They are in no particular order. For example, you might see: 1. COVID-19, 2. Morbid obesity, 3. Diabetes type 2, 4. Renal failure. And so forth.

The discharge summary then proceeds to a text description of what happened during the hospitalization. It's usually written by an exhausted intern, and almost always by someone who wasn't involved in most of the events. There are also a large number of checkboxes imposed in recent years by hospital administrators for things like fall risk, flu shot, med reconciliation etc. As those things have increased, the quality of the text description - the most informative part of the summary - declined.

When a patient dies, there is a death summary instead of a discharge summary. It's an abbreviated version, although it includes the list of admission and discharge diagnoses. There is also a death certificate, which asks for "cause of death". This is again filled out by the exhausted intern. It's pretty random what they'll put down. In the era of COVID, COVID-19 will be listed if it appears anywhere on the diagnosis list, for many reasons. It's an easy choice, plus the hospital gets extra $$. Nowhere in this process is there any systematic effort to determine the true cause of death - or what that even means. It's often quite difficult to figure out, and no one has the time. The sole exception is when there is an autopsy and report from a medical examiner or pathologist - and even then it's often a guessing game. And in the COVID era, there are not many autopsies because of the fear of launching a ton of virus into the air.

The CDC then gets this paperwork and has to make sense of the data and figure out who died of COVID-19, vs. who died of something else and just happened to test positive, vs. someone who caught COVID which then tipped an already sick person into the "cascade of badness" which then resulted in death. Good luck with that. I imagine they just look at the diagnosis list to see if it includes COVID. That's how ridiculous stuff happens like the guy who died in a motorcycle accident being counted as a COVID death.

This is why I suspect the most reliable data are statistical excess deaths. I did a detailed post about that some time back. In short, deaths were lower than average (for the past 20-25 years) going into COVID, because this past flu year was an unusually mild one. That meant there was a correspondingly high incidence of people just waiting for the next virus to knock them off. During the height of COVID at any one geographic location, there was a higher death rate than average. This lasts about 6-8 weeks, and is followed by a drop in the death rate to BELOW average levels. That speaks to a situation where this year's deaths were compressed into a short period of time because of COVID - but the AVERAGE for the entire year may well prove to be within normal range at the end.

I also took a peek at Trump's tweet and the yellow-journalism article reporting on it. Both were full of misinformation IMHO. Sigh...wish Trump would keep his twitter-mouth shut!!!!!

Thank you WiseOne!
Question: Is this why I see data presented as confirmed COVID 19 cases and then COVID Deaths versus "confirmed" COVID 19 deaths?

[Maddy]

My understanding of the term "confirmed," when used in the context of CoVid, is that these relate to cases confirmed by actual testing as opposed to cases that are "presumed." Apparently a lot of the statistics have been based upon "presumed" cases, having been attributed to CoVid based solely upon symptomatology or--in many cases--upon nothing more than a historical contact with a person believed to have CoVid. (Not that the distinction matters a whole lot when it's not even clear what the tests are measuring. . .)

[Cortopassi]

I had my review with my manager, and we were discussing Covid, of course, and all the goalposts shifting and such. We did not agree on excess deaths being indicative of something going on. I think it is, he thinks it could be noise or due to other factors. Here's the CDC graph again. It seems pretty obvious that's there's been an increase in deaths this year, right?

[Xan]

It'll be interesting to see whether in the next year or two the death numbers are below normal. I don't have any way to predict whether that will be the case, but if it is, then the excess deaths from Covid were just moved up a bit.

[I Shrugged]

One problem is that according to anecdotal accounts from cardiologists and such, many people have stayed home rather that get treated for life threatening things. How many excess deaths arose from this?

[Cortopassi]

One problem is that according to anecdotal accounts from cardiologists and such, many people have stayed home rather that get treated for life threatening things. How many excess deaths arose from this?

You could argue that's from Covid as well, but then should subtract them off, if it's determined they would still be alive if they came to the hospital. In my opinion.

Excess deaths do seem to be there. I don't know if these curves are normalized for population increases or not, but it sure would be cool to see this data as far back as possible, to the Swine flu, 1968 flu, 1957 flu, and see what the overall comparison looks like.

I would bet we'd see higher incidences of excess deaths from the earlier ones, and a lot less shut it down mentality. Maybe we were just more ignorant. Maybe less scared. Too much tech now to think we can fix it all.

There is a Human Mortality Database (not coming up for me) that supposedly has data back to 2000 on many countries.

[WiseOne]

One problem is that according to anecdotal accounts from cardiologists and such, many people have stayed home rather that get treated for life threatening things. How many excess deaths arose from this?

You could argue that's from Covid as well, but then should subtract them off, if it's determined they would still be alive if they came to the hospital. In my opinion.

Excess deaths do seem to be there. I don't know if these curves are normalized for population increases or not, but it sure would be cool to see this data as far back as possible, to the Swine flu, 1968 flu, 1957 flu, and see what the overall comparison looks like.

Yes, some of the excess deaths will be from "collateral damage" of the mass unemployment, cancelling of elective procedures, reluctance to go for urgent medical care, the increase in crime in large cities etc. You won't easily separate those out. On the other hand, it probably is the case that there will be fewer deaths from things like car accidents because people have been traveling less.

Ivor Cummins (on his youtube channel) has studied this issue quite thoroughly if you want to take a look. He has found that the excess deaths this year (compared to the 25 year average, corrected for population growth) is not as much as in some of the years in that time frame.