
Coronavirus: Why aren’t death rates rising with case numbers? A UK perspective - finphil
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-why-arent-death-rates-rising-with-case-numbers-145865
======
crowf
It's also probably because we know more about how to treat people with the
virus. At first ventilators was the go-to plan for people with difficulty
breathing, until it was shown that ventilators were either not very useful or
even detrimental. At first we didn't realize quite how bad it was for the
elderly. The reason that Sweden had so many deaths at first and now virtually
none is because there were breakouts in nursing homes at the beginning.
Similarly in the US some states (eg. New York, New Jersey) required nursing
homes to admit people who have been tested positive for the virus. Now the
leaders of those states realize how bad that is and are better protecting the
elderly.

~~~
nradov
I recommend reading the latest COVID-19 care protocol from Eastern Virginia
Medical School. It has been updated several times and contains details on
clinical best practice.

[https://www.evms.edu/covid-19/covid_care_for_clinicians/#d.e...](https://www.evms.edu/covid-19/covid_care_for_clinicians/#d.en.140202)

~~~
xiphias2
Thanks, here's their summary for prevention:

■ Vitamin C 500 mg BID and Quercetin 250-500 mg BID

■ Zinc 75-100 mg/day

■ Melatonin (slow release): Begin with 0.3mg and increase as tolerated to 2 mg
at night

■ Vitamin D3 1000-4000 u/day

■ Optional: Famotidine 20-40mg/day

------
ImaCake
Hey there is a lot of health misinformation in this thread. Please seek advice
from professionals, not potentially biased people on a software start up
forum. There is a reason medical professionals are trained not to give advice
about your symptoms outside the practice.

~~~
credit_guy
Professionals like Dr Gupta who said for so long at the beginning of the
crisis to not wear a mask?

[https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/corona-
virus?episodeguid=...](https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/corona-
virus?episodeguid=3cf1777709183bdf1ad692c7a6e3e51d.mp3)

~~~
ImaCake
Turns out science opinion changes with new evidence. When this all started the
evidence did not suggest masks would help. Turns out they do, so now the
science advice has changed. So your argument is because science is working as
intend we should thus not trust it? This is a common anti-science/anti-
medicine fallacy.

~~~
credit_guy
Incorrect. Dr Gupta and others had known all along that masks are useful. They
were contradicting themselves when they were telling us "don't use masks, they
are useless, we need them for the healthcare personnel". Why did they need
them for the healthcare workers if they were useless? They simply decided to
lie to us.

------
daxfohl
The strange thing is it's the opposite in Australia. Second wave is much more
deadly than the first one.
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/)

~~~
pan69
Is that not because Aged Care is hit particularly hard?

~~~
konjin
Yes, Victoria has managed to combine the economic catastrophe of a New Zealand
lock down with the death rate of a Swedish no lock down.

And this will continue for at least another month. All in all it's rather
amazing how by trying to do everything right the Victorian government has
managed to do everything wrong.

At least the current government gets to wag its finger at people for wanting
such unreasonable things as jobs, leaving your house after work, or sleeping
with your partner for the first time in 3 months.

~~~
rrrhys
In the least inflammatory tone possible, what do you think they should be
doing instead?

There's a lot of pile-on about how they've done everything wrong without a lot
of suggestion about what they should've done instead / should currently be
doing instead.

For example, if Andrews and co cave to the federal and local pressure and re-
open the state today, and everything explodes in two weeks, who takes the
blame then? Still Andrews and co.

While it's been a huge outbreak by Australian expectations, it's still tiny
when compared to the rest of the world.

If we had the 10, 15,000 cases per million that are more commonplace around
the world, there'd still be a stuffed economy, lower employment, increased
mental health issues, right? We'd just have another layer of mess with
hospital overload and death that we don't have in a large amount at the
moment.

~~~
konjin
Name one country that has had hospital overload. Any country. This was an
expectation that was reasonable in February, and become a talking point for
people who want lockdowns for ideological reasons and aren't willing to look
at new evidence. [0]

In short: open everything and let the devil take the hindmost. The alternative
is a yo-yo lock down until Bangladesh manages to deploy a vaccine to everyone
infected before the virus mutates, something that will happen in 202-never.

[0] Even the horror stories from New York were because they didn't have the
capacity to bury people fast enough, not that they ran out of hospital beds.

~~~
e98cuenc
Spain

~~~
thu2111
Not really. Hospital overload here is defined as people being unable to get
healthcare because no hospital can take them. This news story covered Spanish
hospital 'overload' at the time, which basically meant they converted some
beds to ICU/COVID beds.

[https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-04-07/spains-
intensi...](https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-04-07/spains-intensive-
care-units-finally-get-some-respite-after-coronavirus-overload.html)

It discusses one of the hardest hit hospitals. However the absolute numbers
were small and they never turned people away.

This sort of bed conversion is known to happen even in normal years, so it
doesn't mean much by itself. Dramatic language can be misleading.
Unfortunately it is standard for health officials to describe hospitals as
"overloaded" or "at breaking point" simply due to seasonal flu outbreaks, as
in these articles from 2017:

[https://www.thelocal.fr/20170111/french-hospitals-
stretched-...](https://www.thelocal.fr/20170111/french-hospitals-stretched-to-
capacity-as-flu-spreads)

[https://www.euronews.com/2017/01/12/struggling-to-care-
hospi...](https://www.euronews.com/2017/01/12/struggling-to-care-hospitals-in-
crisis-across-europe)

~~~
e98cuenc
In Madrid many people were turned away from hospitals. I know personally
people that could not get into the hospital with a double pneumonia and were
told to call an ambulance if their oxygen levels dropped. Ambulances took 4-6
hours to respond, instead of minutes. In regular times a double pneumonia 100%
lands you at the hospital.

Not a direct acquaintance, but a friend of my sister was two days siting in
the hall of the Gregorio Marañon until they could transfer him to IFEMA.
Almost no supply of food during these two days, and he was lucky to have a
seat, many people lying on the floor.

They found many bodies of people dead by COVID-19 at home. They found some
bodies on the streets.

I don't get how can you pretend that many hospitals / regions were "overload".

~~~
thu2111
Spain had similar problems to Italy early on in the outbreak where they shut
down large chunks of hospital capacity by insisting doctors and nurses self-
isolated, although it's now known that this was actively harmful: the virus is
virulent and would have infected them sooner or later anyway, and the ones who
weren't already elderly or sick wouldn't have been badly affected.

It's a debatable question whether this shutdown of hospitals was due to the
virus, or due to the over-reaction to it. Other places where the virus started
later didn't do this to the same extent (although the UK did and is still
doing so!), and they saw less serious problems.

As for "many bodies of people dead at home/on the streets", can you show me
reports of people dropping dead of COVID on the streets? I never heard that,
it seems it hasn't happened elsewhere and sounds suspect.

Remember that basically all reports about people dying "of" COVID are garbage.
The average age of death when testing positive is over the average life
expectancy in most places (maybe all, I haven't checked). Almost all such
reports are of deaths that were naturally happening anyway due to age or other
serious health conditions, and COVID was just co-present at time of death -
maybe it pushed them over by a little bit, but probably only by months.
Correlation/causation mixups are a huge problem with COVID datasets.

------
ummonk
Note that this is specific to the UK. In other European countries like Spain,
death rates have been rising (with a few weeks lag from case rates). They just
are nowhere near the first wave, when death rates were more than 10x what they
are now but case rates were lower than today and because of severe under-
testing.

~~~
pier25
Death rates on the first wave were a lot more than 10x

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/)

~~~
kmonsen
holy shit that page shows that the US is an anomaly compared to all countries
it is normal to compare to. It doesn't help that it is gigantic country where
it is hard to limit internal travel, but still we are doing something wrong
here.

~~~
glofish
not sure what you mean by anomaly, US looks a lot like Sweden, a country that
looks like will be faring the best

counter-intuitive as it may sound today, US might just end up the country that
did really well. Most large countries are simply not measuring/admitting the
real number of cases.

~~~
kmonsen
This is false, if you look at expected deaths the US is sky high while all of
Europe is under control.

If we don't get vaccine then sure all countries might eventually end up the
same, but Europe is largely back to normal living with kids back at school
with almost no cases. In the US we still have lockdowns and no control at all.

~~~
glofish
Have you checked the numbers in Europe?

Most countries have twice as many cases now than at their peak in Spring and
the trend is accelerating. As for most of Latin America, they are just not
reporting the numbers because they are too poor to test.

Sky high death rate? Not even close. The worst hit countries, deaths per
population are the European ones. Again, that is not a reflection on the
societies, just perhaps their age distribution and other factors.

That the US is doing really badly is just propaganda fueled by the imminent
election. Again, it is normal, election propaganda is anything but fair.

US is actually doing well overall.

~~~
Viliam1234
> Most countries have twice as many cases now than at their peak in Spring and
> the trend is accelerating.

To put it in context, "twice as many cases than in spring" can still be per
capita 10 times smaller number than in USA.

> US is actually doing well overall.

Yeah, if the number of deaths doubles, USA can be number one! Wait, that is
actually not a good thing...

------
ldng
Because the image lack a graph of the number of test ? Because tests were
scarse at first and only done only to people coming to hospitals and relatives
and now anyone can pass one ?

------
alvah
It must have taken a special effort to write all those words without once
mentioning the false positive rate of the PCR test (~2.3%), which (unlike
earlier in the pandemic) is now in the ballpark of reported case numbers:
[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v3)

~~~
tuna-piano
If the false positive of the PCR test really is 2.3%, how are so many places
able to have positivity rates consistently less than that, more like .1%[1]?
And how can test pooling in huge numbers (like was done in Wuhan) work?

A false positive rate that high doesn't pass the sniff test.

[1][https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-
testing](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing)
[2][https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/world/asia/coronavirus-
wu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/world/asia/coronavirus-wuhan-
tests.html)

~~~
wjn0
I'm not sure if this is it, but assuming the correctness of the test is
independent of the sample quality, a sample could be split and tested multiple
times to obtain a result with a much better FPR.

~~~
cameldrv
To my knowledge, the most common failure mode is that the concentration of
viral RNA in the sample is below the limit of detection. This could be because
the swab wasn't done correctly, the patient wasn't shedding very much virus,
the sample was mishandled (heat can break down the sample), or the sample
wasn't adequately mixed.

------
pfd1986
I must be missing something here: "It is likely that (...) an increasing
proportion are young and a declining proportion are older"

Don't they have access to this data? How's that a speculation and not a plot?

------
ageitgey
> Cases peaked at 5,451 on April 5, reached a low of 101 on June 10 and very
> recently have appeared to be rapidly rising again. The most recent rise in
> cases, to more than 2,600 a day, is particularly unsettling.

One thing the article briefly mentioned but didn't really dig into (IMO) is
that the peak of 5,451 cases on April 5th is basically a meaningless number
and that it is important to try to figure out what the real number should have
been.

On April 5th, the UK was only doing 16,000 tests a day and had a nearly 40%
positive rate for tests. Only very sick people were being tested. That implies
that the 5,451 cases detected that day is a vast undercount of the actual
number of new cases at that point. It is bad data science to keep reporting
that peak case number in comparison with the current case numbers as if it
means anything.

So how many new cases were there on April 5th? No one knows for sure, but
various estimates based on community surveys guess that it was more like
100,000/cases per day. That would be a very different graph than what gets
attached to every news story.

Compare that with now, where the UK is doing ~200k tests a day (over 10x!). We
also have much better community survey data now and can estimate that there
are about 3,200/cases a day right now. The daily testing is picking up the
majority of those expected cases.

So if you actually compare numbers that are comparable (~100k cases/~1000
deaths with ~3k cases/~10 deaths), you get a much better idea of what is
actually going on. Demographics are definitely working in our favor now, which
keeps death rates lower. But it's not like we have "solved COVID treatment"
and can cure everyone now because we know to use steroids. It's mostly that
there just aren't nearly as many people getting it right now as there were at
the peak. Even if tomorrow we detected 5,451 cases again, there's no reason to
expect that the death rate should approach the peak because we are getting
much closer at detecting all the sick people than before.

~~~
thu2111
3,200 cases/day is a little more than the daily positive UK RT-PCR tests. But
by the government's own admission and recent commentary about cycle counts,
it's entirely plausible and in fact likely that 100% of these are false
positives. It's the only explanation you need to determine why there are no
deaths, although there may well be other correct explanations too.

The problem is that the test's sensitivity has been amped up to such a huge
level that labs are reporting positive for people who have virtually no virus
in their blood, or actually no viable virus at all, and certainly are not
infectious let alone at risk.

Fortunately the British government in the last few weeks finally understood
that RT-PCR tests do in fact have false positives, contrary to what was being
regularly claimed back in April. They changed their guidance on September 6th.
There's an analysis of this by a scientist here:

[https://lockdownsceptics.org/when-is-covid-19-not-
covid-19/](https://lockdownsceptics.org/when-is-covid-19-not-covid-19/)

A useful quote is this one:

 _The number of cycles is not actually specified in the publication. Instead
each laboratory must determine their own. A beautiful French study
demonstrated the relationship between the number of cycles and the chance that
a sample will be from an infectious case. Above 30 cycles and the chances of a
test being from an infectious case are only 50 /50\. Above 34 cycles they are
all positive. Another laboratory may find a different cut off. Indeed, a
Canadian study found no cases requiring more than 24 cycles were infectious._

To put it in perspective, COVID testing labs have routinely been reporting
positive at 40 cycles.

------
ck2
Steroids. Lots and lots of steroids.

The first thing they do now in the hospital is steroids, they learned after
NY.

In the UK they had the Oxford study

[https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-06-16-dexamethasone-
reduces-d...](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-06-16-dexamethasone-reduces-
death-hospitalised-patients-severe-respiratory-complications)

~~~
Bekwnn
Yeah, I think it was in a thread on r/askscience with some nurses replying
basically stating that the methods of treatment for infected patients has
evolved as understanding has grown. Steroids was one item they mentioned,
another was avoiding the respirator at almost all costs; which is part of why
the demand for them has gone down now.

------
walterbell
From [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-
testin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html)
("Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be")

 _> The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer
cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the
sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be
contagious. This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus,
called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors
and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the
patients are. In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds,
compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent
of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times
found.

> ... One solution would be to adjust the cycle threshold used now to decide
> that a patient is infected. Most tests set the limit at 40, a few at 37.
> This means that you are positive for the coronavirus if the test process
> required up to 40 cycles, or 37, to detect the virus. Tests with thresholds
> so high may detect not just live virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers
> from infection that pose no particular risk — akin to finding a hair in a
> room long after a person has left, Dr. Mina said. Any test with a cycle
> threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at
> the University of California, Riverside. “I’m shocked that people would
> think that 40 could represent a positive,” she said. A more reasonable
> cutoff would be 30 to 35, she added. Dr. Mina said he would set the figure
> at 30, or even less. Those changes would mean the amount of genetic material
> in a patient’s sample would have to be 100-fold to 1,000-fold that of the
> current standard for the test to return a positive result — at least, one
> worth acting on._

Every published "case" should include the PCR cycle threshold to enable
statistical analysis.

~~~
birken
They've talked about this issue a lot on TWIV [1], and apparently many of the
most commonly used PCR machines do the maximum number of cycles on every
sample and then test to see if the sample is positive or negative. So they
couldn't report a cycle count even if they wanted to, the machine doesn't
allow it. I don't know what percentage of PCR machines in the wild this
applies to, but based on how they talk about it on the podcast, it seems like
a lot of them.

Maybe the global cycle count for the machine could be adjusted, similar to
what you are talking about, but that is different than reporting the cycle
count of every positive test.

1: [https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/](https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/)

~~~
walterbell
The PCR test make/model could be published with each positive case, then the
well-known maximum could be cross-referenced from FDA docs on each test,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24427765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24427765)

Without the Ct value, "cases" are not comparable on the basis of test
positivity.

With transparency on the Ct value, we can determine which tests and
configurations best support health.

P.S. "the machine does not allow it" could be an HN firmware challenge. If the
fate of civilization depends on PCR test machines, do any of them have
auditable open-source firmware?

------
lukehutch
Because the average of infection has dropped by over 20 years.

~~~
coronadisaster
because school started?

------
kristianpaul
So the metrics where misleading because testing was not constant and/or
performed same way across the same population distribution?

------
mas3god
Its much easier to measure deaths than cases

------
laurencerowe
This article could really do with a discussion of how the positive test rate
is increasing over the past month, see:
[https://www.ft.com/content/e26349e5-29d4-4797-96ea-a09aac8cd...](https://www.ft.com/content/e26349e5-29d4-4797-96ea-a09aac8cd652)

------
pieceofcakedude
Because we're relying on a test which can barely be trusted. It's a research
tool and should never be used in a diagnostic capacity. Don't listen to me
about it though, that quote is from the PCR test's inventor Kary Mullis. It's
bizarre that this isn't mentioned more.

There's a rumor that it has a high false positive rate as well. There was a
New York Times article that summarized this a few days ago. Again, perplexing
why this isn't mentioned and studied more.

~~~
JulianWasTaken
This is false. See e.g. [https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-
idUSKBN2442...](https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-
idUSKBN24420X).

~~~
pieceofcakedude
Fact checks from zero credibility organizations like Reuters don't hold any
weight with me and shouldn't with anyone else. That's not even Mullis'
original quote. I'm actually not sure what the fact check proves.

Okay fine, let's say Reuters is correct and Mullis never said whatever quote
some randoms on Facebook are trying to say he said. Here's a research paper
pointing out everything wrong with the PCR test:

[http://theinfectiousmyth.com/book/CoronavirusPanic.pdf](http://theinfectiousmyth.com/book/CoronavirusPanic.pdf)

Let me know what you think.

~~~
mikeyouse
You call Reuters zero credibility but then link to some crank with a
background in telecom litigation with no virology experience whatsoever who
denies that we can sequence viral DNA?

[https://davidcrowe.ca/cnp-
wireless.com/dcroweresumelib.php](https://davidcrowe.ca/cnp-
wireless.com/dcroweresumelib.php)

Holy shit, of course that nutjob is also an AIDS truther:

[https://www.davidcrowe.ca/SciHealthEnv/alive-aids-
stats.html](https://www.davidcrowe.ca/SciHealthEnv/alive-aids-stats.html)

And still was in 2014! (Ctrl + F “David Crowe” in the comments):

[https://retractionwatch.com/2014/09/26/publisher-issues-
stat...](https://retractionwatch.com/2014/09/26/publisher-issues-statement-of-
concern-about-hiv-denial-paper-launches-investigation/)

Find better role models.

~~~
pieceofcakedude
Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test that we're all putting blind faith
into, is an AIDS truther as well.

Mullis talking about his experience:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaMZ4NyNCwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaMZ4NyNCwI)

Questioning known corrupt organizations like the FDA, CDC and WHO makes me
feel better, not worse about Mullis and Crowe. It's the scientists who blindly
follow authority who really make me nervous. But that's just me. Sounds like
you might be in the opposite camp.

I've looked through your link and saw Crowe in the comments section. He
mentions there are two new hypotheses in 2014, hence why its still being
discussed. They really have no answer for his questions besides "move on, the
science is settled". But critically look at his points, maybe you can address
them. BTW, anyone who ever tries to to tell you "the science is settled" is
trying to shut down debate, as Crowe correctly recognizes.

Any comments on the actual paper itself that Crowe wrote? You don't need a
background in virology to figure out that there's giant issues with the PCR
test. If you read the paper at all you'd see that, but I'm guessing you
didn't.

~~~
mikeyouse
Kary Mullis was an astrologist who thought that environmentalists were
responsible for the AIDS hoax and wrote the forward to an AIDS denialist book
written by a person who with her 3-year old daughter then died of AIDS a few
years later.

There is literally no benefit to engaging with these charlatans or their half
baked ideas.

Have you ever run a PCR? It's not magic and none of the arguments by these
bizarre COVID truthers hold any water when there are thousands of people using
them in research every single day.

------
nl
This seems more likely to be the real reason: [https://www.advisory.com/daily-
briefing/2020/09/01/covid-tes...](https://www.advisory.com/daily-
briefing/2020/09/01/covid-tests)

TL;DR: Some (many?) PCR tests are using too high a cycle threshold, which
makes them too sensitive. Key quote:

 _Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California-Riverside,
said she believes any test with a cycle threshold over 35 is too sensitive.
"I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," she
said._

The following is my commentary, and not specifically in the article above:

There were many early tests that were giving false negatives. It looks to me
like test manufactures over-compensated to make sure they never give false
negatives. There is no data source that I can find that shows what test is
used in what area, or what CT is used for what test.

~~~
epistasis
This article is basically bullshit derived from a NY Times article, and I'm
really sad that it got published. You know how every once in a while the media
publishes an article about something you know and it's riddled with errors
that drive a particular narrative? That article is my experience.

Research scientists and clinical scientists are worlds apart, and have very
different goals in life.

I wouldn't trust a cT coming out of any research lab either, but clinical labs
are far far more controlled and have far better processes, and have intense
validation that shows that their threshold is repeatable, accurate, and a true
representation of their limit of detection.

No research lab does any of this, and they almost never have extremely basic
contamination protections like separate rooms for pre- and post-amplification
rooms.

I've watched research scientists try to stand up clinical labs during this
pandemic, and it has been an education for them to bring their standards up to
what is the baseline for clinical testing. Its not unlike giving a butcher a
scalpel and expecting brain surgery: there are a lot of the same skills
involved but also very different and extremely narrow it's of knowledge.

~~~
alvah
Is this the NYT article you're talking about?:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/health/22whoop.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/health/22whoop.html)

Can you explain to the layperson why it's "basically bullshit"? The NYT
article I linked describes a real-world scenario where a fake outbreak (100%
of cases were false positives) actually occurred (note: I am not claiming
Covid-19 is fake).

Also, specific false positive rates aside, is it not likely we're now
approaching a rate of "cases" which is hard to distinguish from false positive
tests, which would help explain the drop in hospitalization / ICU / mortality?

~~~
javagram
Keep in mind that article is from 13 years ago.

> Many of the new molecular tests are quick but technically demanding, and
> each laboratory may do them in its own way. These tests, called “home
> brews,” are not commercially available, and there are no good estimates of
> their error rates.

The technology, as mentioned, was new at the time and not even commercially
available. There have been 13 years of improvement since then.

~~~
nl
There's an NYT article from this on the Covid test issues.

------
drummer
Because it is just a flu.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23763945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23763945)

~~~
dane-pgp
> (No more than 250,000 deaths from COVID-19 worldwide within a quarter of a
> year, compared to 1.5 million deaths during the flu wave in 2017/18).

Interesting weasel-words and cherry-picking. First, comparing a quarter of a
year of Covid deaths against a whole year (or two?) of normal flu, and then
subtly shifting between deaths _from_ Covid and deaths _during_ a flu wave (so
not caused by the flu?).

For a more accurate comparison: "between 291,000 and 646,000 people worldwide
die from seasonal influenza-related respiratory illnesses each year"[0] and
907,917 have died from Covid _so far_ this year[1], _despite_ all the extra
measures taken to limit its spread and mortality rate.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-
esti...](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-
estimate.html)

[1]
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

~~~
SamBam
> The people dying from corona are mainly those who are statistically dying
> this year because they have reached the end of their lives

The excess deaths statistics [1] give lie to the tired claim that these were
all people who "would have died anyway." 200,000+ more people have died this
year in the US alone than normal, and it's very statistically-significant,
particularly as the annual death rate is under 3 million.

1\. [https://www.sciencealert.com/2020-has-killed-up-
to-200-000-e...](https://www.sciencealert.com/2020-has-killed-up-
to-200-000-extra-people-in-the-us-so-far)

~~~
ghufran_syed
I’m an ER doc, it’s unclear to me how many of these excess deaths are due to
covid, or due to the covid _lockdown_. I am sure that many _are_ due to covid,
but patients avoiding hospital due to the worry about covid, cancelling
surgeries, and delaying chemotherapy adversely affects health too. The US
government paying for covid care is also a positive step for society, but it
does have the effect that patients who have no covid symptoms but have a
positive screening test who die of non-covid pathology will end up being
labelled a covid death in order to maximize the hospital and physician
reimbursement.

~~~
javagram
I’ve seen statistical analysis that shows US states that had a lockdown, but
not a high number of covid cases, don’t have excess deaths.

* [https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1301975654771064834?...](https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1301975654771064834?s=20)

* [https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1301976643146317825?...](https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1301976643146317825?s=20)

This suggests undiagnosed COVID is in fact the cause of most of the excess
deaths.

~~~
SamBam
That's super-interesting, thank you.

