No "additional deaths" from COVID-19?

Quicksearch

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Monday, November 30. 2020

No "additional deaths" from COVID-19?

It is interesting that the COVID-19 epidemic has not moved the needle on the overall US death rate.

Statistically-inclined readers may offer their explanations for this data, if valid.

Add: I doubt this was retracted for narrative reasons.

Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Medical at 14:29 | Comments (21) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I'd like to know how the paper reconciles itself with the data from the CDC (sorry I don't have time to read the paper itself, but if somebody has and can offer some clarity i'd appreciate it). I tried to link to the CDC "excess death" page, but for some reason it won't paste here. But i'm sure its easy enough to find, and if you scroll down on that page it shows the 2020 weekly deaths have been over the "expected death rate) since late March.

#1 bk on 2020-11-30 15:04 (Reply)

This was a terrible piece. Lots of clamoring about how the decision to pull the article wasn't backed by data. Then this article provided no data either.

If this is right

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/provisional-tables.htm

Then there are about 15-20K more deaths each month in 2020 than in 2019. Curiously, the actual total to date is exceedingly hard to find. If that trend continued thru year, that would leave about 200K more deaths between those two years.

2020 Deaths -
2019 Deaths - 2.855M
2018 Deaths - 2.839M
2017 Deaths - 2.804

Not surprising is that the trend toward more deaths each year as population grows.

It is interesting is that there are several articles statistically analyzing the difference between 2020 and other years, but they don't actually report their 2020 death tally. Furthermore, they are taking the average of the prior 5 years for comparison, even though there is a trend toward rising death tally.

This "300K excess deaths" is bullshit. You don't need to know advanced statistics if their statistical analysis approach is just wrong.

The straightforward analysis is, if there are 200K more deaths from 2019 to 2020, then we're looking at about 180-185K excess deaths, largely due to COVID19.

A deeper analysis will start to notice that Q4 of calendar year 2019 saw a dramatic rise in deaths in the US, presumably before COVID19 was here. If that trend is considered, then the excess deaths may be far lower than 180K.

#2 DrTorch (Link) on 2020-11-30 15:12 (Reply)

Oh, I meant to add that the original piece that JHU pulled didn't have the full death tallies presented either. (Yes, I read it.)
Instead it reported percentage of deaths by cause.

Honestly, that is a huge red flag, and I don't blame people for pulling the article. It was terribly misleading. However, since those who are allegedly concerned didn't bother to publish the actual death tallies either, it makes me believe that everyone in this mess is shady, and no one is trying to provide an honest analysis.

#2.1 DrTorch (Link) on 2020-11-30 15:17 (Reply)

The story is circulating that it was taken down because it doesn't fit the narrative or alternatively, because people were "using it improperly." That seems to come from the beginning of the reason the student editors gave for taking it down, but they go on to say that it was taken down because of inaccuracies. It was not a Johns Hopkins study. An economist there looked at some data and reported on a webinar that this is what she saw. That is a far weaker case even at best: webinar, student newspaper, not her field, no preprint, not even an informal review, certainly no peer review. You can watch the webinar yourself. Maggie's bounces me as spam for any link but you can go to watch?v=3TKJN61aflI at Youtube.

There is a link to the pdf on the JHU student website, and Retraction Watch, a reputable site, has more info.

The evidence is better that the CoVid skeptics are pissed because taking it down doesn't fit their narrative. Remember every time you try to report from inside someone else's head, you are giving them permission to report from inside yours, and you will have no defense if they get you wrong.

It could still turn out to be a useful and even accurate observation. But it isn't starting from a good foundation.

#3 Assistant Village Idiot on 2020-11-30 15:25 (Reply)

The question that should be answered is how many standard deviations above the 30 year mean is the number of deaths per 100,000 persons. That would remove random and population growth effects.
My understanding from a cursory review of some numbers over this past weekend is that deaths due to non-COVID communicable diseases are down, but homicides, suicides, drug overdoses, and traffic accidents are up.
The traffic accident numbers surprised me, as I would have expected them to drop with fewer people travelling. Possible explanations are that single occupant accidents may be covert suicides, drug and alcohol usage increases die to isolation and depression, or even that people drive faster on empty roads in a risk homologation effect.

#4 Another Guy named Dan on 2020-11-30 15:27 (Reply)

Dan, you're correct in that a critical number would be annual deaths (or 12 month rolling average deaths) per 100k population, to see if there is any true deviation from the trend. It would seem that information has to be available somewhere.
As for the traffic deaths, my personal experience has been that in the spring there was notably less traffic on the roads, but in the past couple of months things seem much more normal, at least in places I've been (and we've travelled a fair amount in the past month).

#4.1 bk on 2020-12-01 07:16 (Reply)

I live in NJ (the state with probably more miles driven than any other). From March-June overall traffic was down. From June until today it has started to rise. It's nowhere near normal.

Here's my gauge (and I drive quite a bit, then and now).
I have yet to encounter a traffic jam on the turnpike or the parkway. This isn't to say they haven't happened...but as much as I've driven I should have hit at least one. But I haven't. That's odd.
I drive out to Long Island several times a month. The route I take is known for multiple jams, the worst being around airports. Without people flying, those have been gone, so that's no surprise. What is a surprise is the lack of jams around work areas, 'blind curves' and areas where the sun slows traffic while rising or setting. At night, there are jams at merging areas on the major arteries, or exits for more populated towns. I have not seen any. I would drive home at 10pm to 'avoid traffic' and still hit 2 to 3 jams. I drove home recently that late and got home in record time.

But traffic IS increasing. That's a given. I have seen several accidents - but far fewer than I normally would over the last 9 months.

It's all anecdotal, but my travel times are pretty steady and standard. If there's a change I'd notice it, and I have. Things are starting to increase, though. While I've not hit outright jams, the slowdowns have increased significantly.

One thing which I think occurred this year is that people, rather than driving en masse to the Jersey shore on Friday nights/Saturday mornings and causing hours-long backups (which I'm sure happened a few times when I was not on the road), were down at their houses or rentals earlier because of work-from-home. Or they were there full time (indeed 10 people I work with stayed on the beach until last week).

#4.1.1 Bulldog on 2020-12-02 10:09 (Reply)

Fake news?

#5 Steveaz on 2020-11-30 16:10 (Reply)

Even JH can't keep their shit together, nor can the "experts". All these theories are total crap. No one knows. I get so tired of reading a bunch of pretentious bullshit from reliable sources, who turn out to be the next source for reliable information on...whatever.

This is not a good time to be a scientist.

#6 tim ferrell on 2020-11-30 16:50 (Reply)

True. There is no trust. Not that there should be.

#6.1 Bird Dog on 2020-11-30 18:25 (Reply)

Maybe we could Nate Silver to weigh in with one of his useless “percent chance” bets. Those are always good for a laugh.

#7 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2020-11-30 18:41 (Reply)

And here, I thought the BIG THING with Covid-19 is that it was killing off "Immortals"!

Besides, if three or more co-morbidities are involved in a death (as they are with at least 60% of supposed "Covid deaths"), it's a crap shoot to determine what exactly killed any given person! That means we're dealing with interpretive art, not science. Might as well employ the old "Ennie-meanie-minee-mo"!

If not, then we should ONLY go with CDC's hard findings that 16,012 people to date (11/30/2020), have died from Covid alone. (That compares to 200,000 people a year dying from medical malpractice!)

Guess we should assiduously avoid doctors and hospitals!

#8 Old Codger on 2020-11-30 20:38 (Reply)

Which is exactly what I do. Years ago, during a particularly rough financial patch, I didn't have enough money to renew my car tag and pay the property tax, so I drove for almost a year with an expired tag. I never drove so carefully within all the rules and limits as I did during that period. After all, I couldn't afford to pay a traffic ticket either.

I take the same approach with my health - in order to stay out of the doctor's office and the hospital, I make every reasonable effort to protect my health. Fortunately, I don't have any chronic conditions so that helps. I'm in the vulnerable age group for Covid, but I haven't spent one single minute concerned about it, or taking extreme precautions - the reason is because from my own observations there is nothing to worry about...at least for me. I don't live in a crowded urban environment. I'm not exposed to large numbers of people on a daily basis. I have no co-morbidities. I don't expect to live forever. I rarely wear a mask, though I will, but only by request. I know quite a few people, older and in poor health, including a 93 year old mother-in-law in a nursing home, who have not been sick. I have no tolerance or respect for the lack of logic and common sense that has been shown by the so-called experts in response to a virus with a nearly 99% survival rate.

In my opinion, this virus has been politicized and fear-mongered for the purpose of preventing DJT from being re-elected, and if the left had not had the single-minded goal to achieve that aim, we would never have known this virus existed as any different than any other seasonal flu.

#8.1 humdeedee on 2020-11-30 22:08 (Reply)

Virus, virus, virus is just another extension of russia, russia, russia. It is used to shut down the mom and pop stores as they generally deal in one area of retail such as clothes, hardware, etc. but the globalist retail stores such as Wallyworld, Target, etc. are left open because they carry some groceries and not required to curtain off the other retail items. That is a win, win for the globalist retailers when their mom and pop competition are shut down. And China, who hates Trump tariffs, gets revenge on Trump as well and sells more stuff to the retail giants. The corporatists love this kind of retailing. The other winners are the health care complex that is beginning to become as corrupted as the public education establishment. More billions thrown at them with little accountability and of course a need for liability exemptions. The big global government people find little to dislike with thinning the middle class while enriching the elite.

#8.1.1 indyjonesouthere on 2020-12-01 12:48 (Reply)

https://wattsupwiththat.com/ has an article on filling out death certificates and an analysis of how Covid deaths are counted. It's called "Cause of Death: A Primer" It seems to shed some light on this topic.

#9 Mark on 2020-11-30 23:57 (Reply)

There are no honest numbers regarding this disease. While the disease is serious (similar to flu), case counts are used to manufacture and maintain a state of hysteria in the public. Everything you read and hear about it from official sources is political propaganda designed to keep you fearful and compliant with government dictates.

These are some of the sources of dishonesty:
• Case counts ignore degree of infection, i.e., how sick a person is, and the degree of infectiousness.
• Study of cases in Wuhan finds that asymptomatic and secondary infected individuals do not infect others.
• All cases are weighted the same: A young person case is counted the same as that of an older person, which ignores the great disparity in fatality rates between them.
• The government (state and federal) provides financial incentives to report deaths as from COVID, even where the patient actually died of something else but testing showed evidence of prior COVID exposure.
• Public death statistics merge deaths from COVID only with deaths where COVID was incidental to cause of death.
• Different test methods give different results; lack of consistency.
• Significant proportion of false positives in testing.
• Testing that is over-sensitive, showing “COVID exposure” even where the quantity of virus is too low to infect others.
• Medical testing in Denmark has found that masks do not significantly reduce the spread of the virus.
• Inconsistent advice and directives from public health officials.
• No acknowledgement that a vaccine won't be perfectly effective, given virus mutation. Herd immunity is the only real protection for society, and the sooner it is achieved the better.
• Lockdowns do not lower death rates but instead do great economic, social, and emotional harm.

They’re lying to us.

#10 PubliusII on 2020-12-01 08:37 (Reply)

For example, regarding those case counts:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/the_covid_case_con_continues.html

#10.1 PubliusII on 2020-12-01 11:03 (Reply)

The medical establishment and its employees in government made sure their were no reliable numbers in order to keep the scam rolling and suck up the taxpayer dollars.

#10.2 indyjonesouthere on 2020-12-01 12:53 (Reply)

Back in the day I used to work in HIV surveillance and we had raw versus adjusted data sets. The adjusted dataset accounted for the fact that only about 90% of deaths get reported in the year the person died. However in 2015 the CDC stopped adjusting their HIV death data because electronic reporting meant that the reporting delays in previous years was no longer an issue. It’ll probably take a few more months before the full picture becomes clear, but we should know by June of next year just how big of an impact on overall mortality this pandemic has had.

#11 Jm01 on 2020-12-01 15:54 (Reply)

In 2019, the United Nations projected — pre-Covid — 3.1 million American deaths in 2020. With an aging and less healthy population, the number of deaths in the USA has been increasing about 50,000 for the last ten years. More people, more old people, more deaths. America had 3.1 million people over 65 in 1900: today about 50 million.

Percentages do matter. Look at Social Security mortality rates by age and compare them with Covid mortality rates and you see an almost perfect alignment, probably nothing outside the standard error. That’s the problem with averages when you don’t know or understand standard error.

The problem has been unreliable tests leading to an unreliable case count which produces an unreliable mortality rate which produce unreliable, politically driven public health policies. And all of this was preceded by completely unreliable forecasts of tens of millions of deaths.

We still have an AIDS pandemic, with 700,000 American deaths. The number of global deaths from AIDS has averaged about the same number of global deaths this year from Covid FOR THIRTY FIVE YEARS and counting. Where is that lockdown?

#12 Touchdown on 2020-12-01 23:24 (Reply)

There are some who may/will/can make a case that the overall death rate may not budge at all due to the "protections" and "lockdowns" which reduced other sources of death:
1. fewer people driving, fewer car accidents
2. fewer people contracting communicable diseases (notice the flu numbers are now near zero) that can kill them

Those are just 2 examples but the 'professionals' will have many more.
Here's my take. If the overall rate is flat or declines, then the BEST you've done is offered up a trade-off of covid deaths for everything else that normally happens, while making life notably worse for everyone.

Net is no benefit/no loss on lives but massive loss in lifestyle and economic well-being.
Which will increase stress and anxiety into next year, and possibly years to come.

This was a con job for political purposes. Notice the 'vaccine' is now being rolled out to 'save' us. That, too, is a scam.

The reality is we have no idea what covid deaths really are, or how much this really impacted us, and that was no accident. Economic and political incentives are in place to alter stories and reasoning.

But someone will step up to 'explain' why overall deaths didn't change year over year...that's guaranteed. The explanation will hold no water but enough people will believe it, making it the 'accepted' story.

#13 Bulldog on 2020-12-02 09:59 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email	(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications. Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u], [url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here. Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications. To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: BBCode format allowed
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Maggie's Farm

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

RSS Readers

Monday, November 30. 2020

No "additional deaths" from COVID-19?