
35% of excess deaths from pandemic not caused by Covid-19 - jtbayly
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/35-percent-of-excess-deaths-from-pandemic-not-caused-by-covid-19
======
devy
According to the article, there are 2 types of excess deaths:

\- the virus can also cause death by exacerbating underlying health issues;
the body’s immune system is weakened while fighting off the illness.

\- the sudden emergence and rapid spread of the disease overwhelmed critical
care units when the virus was at its peak, reducing the amount of care any
individual patient could receive.

And the argument of "35% excess deaths not caused by COVID-19" is perhaps
technically correct due to the reasons above, however, those are indirect
deaths that had the root cause of SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus. Notice the
difference between COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2? The former is the disease, the
latter is the virus.

As Dr. Mike Hansen said in a few of his autopsy report review videos he made
in his YouTube channel[1], there are very few direct cause of death in the
death certificate he signed and issued for his ICU patients, most related to
blood clots and lack of oxygen but the common indirect cause is the SARS-
CoV-2. In other words, if it weren't for the coronavirus infection, these
deaths could either be prevented or delayed.

So I think it's more nuanced than simply saying we are attributing 35% the
excess deaths to COVID-19 whereas these are indirectly caused by SAR-CoV-2
viral outbreak.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h8TIxeg1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h8TIxeg1g)

~~~
jtbayly
No. You are not representing the article or the study accurately. There are
many other reasons for excess deaths than the two you mentioned.

From the article:

>there were 96% more diabetes-related deaths than experts predicted. For heart
disease, the figure was 89%; for Alzheimer’s disease, it was 64%; and for
stroke, it was 35%.

>As well as people not being able to get the necessary treatment due to
hospitals being overloaded, the study authors also speculate that people may
have stayed at home due to the virus despite experiencing worsening symptoms
of another condition they may have had.

>They also believe that the pandemic’s effects on people’s mental health may
have played a part.

>As Prof. Woolf notes: “We can’t forget about mental health. A number of
people struggling with depression, addiction, and very difficult economic
conditions caused by lockdowns may have become increasingly desperate, and
some may have died by suicide. People addicted to opioids and other drugs may
have overdosed.”

~~~
treeman79
Went through a few years of suffering minor strokes, only finally got
stabilized back in January.

Had several bad scares that I didn’t go in that I really should have.

Finally had a bad enough scare that I went to ER. Apparently heart isn’t doing
great, or heading in that direction. I was stable enough to go home. With
strict instructs to get additional testing in day’s.

Yet I’m Having major problems getting access to a cardiologist due to
everything.

So yea, i lucked out in getting stable right before things shut down. But
having a seriously hard time getting any follow up care.

So at a certain point this shutdown will kill me. And I’m fairly young.

So I have to balance virus risk with the more likely death due to lack of
care.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
If in your location shutdown policies are preventing you from getting
healthcare, they are doing their shutdown wrong. This is very sad.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
This is known to be happening in the UK too. The expectation is for thousands
of 'excess' cancer deaths due to reduced cancer-related medical services.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-53310007/they-paused-
my...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-53310007/they-paused-my-chemo-
because-of-covid)

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53300784](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53300784)

------
qiqing
Some sources of excess deaths:

1) In Wuhan, when the primary care taker(s) of a child or a disabled or
elderly person suddenly become hospitalized and there's no opportunity to
arrange backup care, there were many stories of when dependent is found
deceased later.

2) Sometimes, a month or two after someone 'fully recovers' from Covid-19,
they experience a blood clot. If that clot results in a stroke or heart
attack...

3) Sometimes a Covid-19 survivor has organ damage significant enough to be on
a transplant list. Due to fewer car accidents, the organ supply isn't what it
used to be in the BC era...

~~~
thu2111
Problem is that inactivity is also known to cause blood clots and subsequent
problems, hence deep vein thrombosis being linked with long distance flights.
What happens during lockdown, people stop moving about and spend all day
sitting at home.

I think we need to be apply critical thinking to claims of the form, "some one
recovered fully but then was struck down by covid19 a second time". That can
easily be a correlation/causation fallacy.

------
andor
My suggestion is to skip the article and read the original paper instead:
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768086](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768086)

It's not any longer and written in clearer language.

The paper simply summarizes the _reported_ causes of excess death.

------
pwinnski
It would be nice if we counted COVID-19 deaths the way we count flu deaths,
which is generally using the "excess deaths" figure. Why some states would go
with "50% of excess deaths" or "65% of excess deaths" seems like an odd
choice. Are there non-political reasons for doing that?

~~~
pwinnski
It seems that we are much more generous in how we count flu deaths, so that
15,620[0] confirmed tracked deaths in the most recent flu season ends up as an
estimated 42,000.

All the comparisons I've seen this year have been using the 24,000-62,000 flu
estimate uncritically when comparing to COVID-19, but apples to apples is
apparently 15,620 for flu and 132,056 for COVID-19[1].

Perhaps flu-like estimates will come later, since the CDC tends to wait until
the end of flu seasons to release those numbers. We're clearly nowhere near
the end of COVID-19 season.

[0] [https://news.yahoo.com/flu-deaths-were-counted-
covid-0534499...](https://news.yahoo.com/flu-deaths-were-counted-
covid-053449918.html)

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
updates/case...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
updates/cases-in-us.html)

~~~
sparrish
When is the end of COVID-19 season? Why would the COVID-19 season have
different dates than the flu season?

~~~
pwinnski
We have a very long history with the flu, and know that historically, the
season ends around March every year.

COVID-19 is new, and was barely getting started in March. Despite early claims
that it would definitely taper off in the summer, apparently based on the fact
that the flu does, it is not tapering off at all. We have no idea when
COVID-19 will taper off, or if it will before herd immunity is reached (with
or without a vaccine).

So we don't know yet when the end will be, and they have different dates
because they are different viruses.

------
GuB-42
The article is not what I expected. The 35% are deaths caused indirectly by
the disease, not the results of things like change of behavior or economic
downturns.

The 35% are from people who supposedly recovered from Covid-19 but died later
from complications or a weakened body. I still would call that Covid-19
deaths.

In the same way that if you fall, break your leg, and later die from
infection, we can still say that the fall caused your death, even though what
sealed your fate is a bacteria and not mechanical damage.

~~~
jtbayly
No. Read it again. Some are. Some aren't. We don't know what percent fall in
each category.

------
guscost
So far. Secondary effects from lockdown will continue long after the pandemic
wave is over.

For example, consider how many people delayed a cancer screening or treatment
in the last few months. If anyone who loses a month of life to respiratory
disease is a “COVID death”, then anyone who loses a year to cancer, because
they waited to treat it, is a “lockdown death”, right?

~~~
DangerousPie
Aren't those "lockdown deaths" still "Coronavirus deaths" though? The reason
lockdowns have to be done is to prevent the much larger number of deaths that
would occur if coronavirus is allowed to spread unhindered. So it's not clear
to me why you need to make this distinction here.

Of course the distinction matters from a biological and medical point of view,
but from a policy point of view all you really need to know is that if
coronavirus didn't exist then those deaths wouldn't have happened.

~~~
guscost
> The reason lockdowns have to be done is to prevent the much larger number of
> deaths that would occur if coronavirus is allowed to spread unhindered.

This claim is _not_ accepted by all in the medical or scientific community.
This is just the line from the _epidemiologists_ who have the most influence,
and it has been amplified by the media into some sort of unquestionable creed.
My guess is the damage that these epidemiologists have done is going to be far
worse than the disease itself. If you can't see that their over-simplified
non-linear models are essentially just guesses too, then you are missing a big
part of the picture.

~~~
fzeroracer
I mean it's really simple.

No lockdown => hospitals overwhelmed => people can't get care they need or
people avoid hospitals to avoid getting sick => excess deaths

Lockdown => hospitals less overwhelmed => people avoid hospitals due to
lockdown or to avoid getting sick => excess deaths (but less than the no
lockdown scenario)

Here in Austin our medical community is practically begging us to take better
precautions because our hospital system is starting to hit capacity due to the
second wave we're staring down [1]. Saying it's not 'accepted' in the medical
community seems wrong.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv4kCwo1JMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv4kCwo1JMc)

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>No lockdown => hospitals overwhelmed => people can't get care they need or
people avoid hospitals to avoid getting sick => excess deaths

>Lockdown => hospitals less overwhelmed => people avoid hospitals due to
lockdown or to avoid getting sick => excess deaths (but less than the no
lockdown scenario)

Right, but eventually as things taper off there's a crossover point where the
first option will have less deaths going forward. Where that crossover point
is the point of contention.

~~~
SomeoneFromCA
Really? how exactly would people go to hospital if they are already
overwhelmed& Like, have their cancer surgery in hospital cafeteria?

------
amitkapit
Lockdowns and fear-spreading are a political decisions, regardless to if we
judge them to be wrong or not. So, if people don't go to the doctor, that's
because they are worried from what they watched on television. If hospitals
collapse, that's because they are either not prepared, or have lots of staff
in quarantine. That's not because of a virus, but because of how humans were
prepared and chose to deal with the situation.

~~~
watwut
This framing where any action that takes virus seriously is talked about as
"fear" is quite manipulative political action too. Let's not pretend the
"whether we judge it right or wrong" somehow removes it.

So is attributing overloaded hospitals to "lots of staff in quarantine" given
how it looked like in Italy or Spain or New York.

------
jeffbee
I wonder how officials record deaths where the person was just found dead. Do
they try to figure out the causes of death? It was reported in New York City
that the rate at which firefighters and paramedics were finding dead people at
home had increased by 10x over normal rates. They were finding 200 or more
people daily.

~~~
danans
Unfortunately, in many places tests were not being performed as part of the
autopsy, so to understand how many of those were Covid19 deaths, researchers
will have to use a model derived from known cases and causes of death.

------
shiftpgdn
I have been shouting from the roof tops that if we don't implement some sort
of UBI and second string PPP program we are going to see many more people die
deaths of desperation as their economic livleyhoods are stripped away.

~~~
hartator
Suicide is up in every countries with lockdowns. “Generous” money printing or
not.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
The suicide rate from 1999 until 2019 increased by 35%[1]. It's been an
unaddressed growing systemic issue for a long time. As of June 23, the COVID
death rate was 36 per 100,000[2] in just a handful of months. As of 2019 the
average suicide rate was 14 per 100,000[1]. Unless that suicide rate does an
unprecedented 250% jump it's not going to have the impact Covid has had so
far, not to mention the rest of the year, which as we can see is going to be
messy given the rate of increases (many of the current hotspots had a big jump
in deaths per day the last couple of days).

It's tragic that suicide is increasing, it really is, but COVID is the far
greater threat.

[1][https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db362.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db362.htm)

[2][https://www.statista.com/chart/21170/coronavirus-death-
rate-...](https://www.statista.com/chart/21170/coronavirus-death-rate-
worldwide/)

~~~
BurningFrog
Here is a doctor claiming they've seen a 13x increase (+1200%) in suicides:
[https://abc7news.com/health/suicides-on-the-rise-amid-
stay-a...](https://abc7news.com/health/suicides-on-the-rise-amid-stay-at-home-
order-bay-area-doctors-say/6201962/)

~~~
hasty
He later retracted that, as it wasn't true:
[https://www.redding.com/story/news/2020/05/29/no-bay-area-
ho...](https://www.redding.com/story/news/2020/05/29/no-bay-area-hospital-has-
not-seen-a-years-worth-suicides-coronavirus/5279780002/)

~~~
BurningFrog
That's an awesome find, thank you!

------
SomeoneFromCA
The explanation is simple. Tests are not reliable. This is what is happening
now in Central Asia.

------
anon104
Was this article run through Google Translate? It's horribly written.

------
noname123
, sxzzs i

------
duxup
>up to 35% of excess deaths during the early phase of the pandemic may not
have been directly due to COVID-19

Does that mean the other 65% of excess deaths were or "may have been" due to
COVID?

~~~
xlm1717
You can read the article before commenting, you know.

~~~
duxup
I did, I honestly did not feel it was very clear about ANYTHING it said.

There's so many "may" and non specific statements, etc that I'm not at all
sure what it is it is saying.

