The numbers ... why Covid numbers aren't inflated

[bigmike82]

There's this notion that Covid numbers are vastly inflated because of ... reasons.

Here are three articles address this utter and total nonsense.

To be clear, this **** is complicated, and understanding all it requires a fair bit of effort. That said, people who try to sell you the lie that the numbers are significantly inflated do so because of political reasons, and to cast fear, uncertainty and doubt at our system of governance.

They lie to you. They try to mislead you. They try to obfuscate the truth.

Here's the fact. If the number of Covid victims were substantially overstated, we're talking about a conspiracy at all levels of your health care delivery system.

Your nurses.

Your bed-pan changers.

Your janitors.

Your doctors.

Your hospital administrators.

Your hospital IT workers.

Your County health department workers.

Your state health workers.

Your representatives, your congress people, and your senators.

Don't fall for their bull****.

https://khn.org/news/how-covid-death-counts-become-the-stuff-of-conspiracy-theories/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debunking-the-false-claim-that-covid-death-counts-are-inflated1/

https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-are-covid-19-deaths-counted-it-s-complicated

[SPUTTER]

BigMike, I'm guessing you haven't seen all naughty nurse pics and tiktok videos of hospital staff dancing around making light of the whole situation?

[TrappedinCalifornia]

...Here's the fact. If the number of Covid victims were substantially overstated, we're talking about a conspiracy at all levels of your health care delivery system...

Your own argument points to the fact that it doesn't HAVE to be a 'vast Right-Wing conspiracy' or similar. As you note, it's... complicated.

Doctors, nurses, janitors, et al. have a parochial view. By definition, that creates perceptions which feed, consciously and unconsciously, into the decisions which influence how what is counted is determined. From one of your own, linked articles...

There’s no evidence of orchestrated inflation, but parsing the role that the disease plays in some deaths is not always easy for doctors — nor is the process clear to the public.

Administrators, local/county/state/federal health officials, and politicians ALL have agendas and perceived reasons for pushing them. It's just like Fauci lying about not needing to wear masks in the beginning so as to preserve supplies, then, later, acknowledging the lie pushing mask wearing to an almost absurd degree. Not all of those myriad agendas are puritanical in terms of being strictly related to COVID. In fact, when it comes to the accusations of 'inflating numbers for the money,' I'd be willing to bet that some of that did occur; not simply for the money's sake, but for accessing the monies to fund local health care programs in general. At least that would have been the thought process for some.

Such 'accusations,' at least in some cases, would be similar to the media's erroneous portrayal of Ebonics. If you listened to the interviews of the teachers who started that whole thing, they openly and publicly acknowledged that it wasn't about teaching 'ghetto slang' instead of English. Quite the opposite. It was about a means of accessing Federal funding to be able to buy materials to teach English; i.e., a way to 'work the system' to garner funding to do the job as the funds they were receiving through the normal budget process via the School District were claimed to be 'insufficient.'

On the flip side, some of the 'accusations' are legitimate in the sense of numbers being 'massaged' to fit a prevailing agenda. That includes, but is not limited to, the nature of statistics and statisticians. From the same article...

...The CDC uses different sources to post slightly different fatality figures...

Nevertheless, the official numbers don’t capture all COVID-19 deaths, for several reasons...

In an effort to capture some of the missed fatalities, the CDC measured “excess deaths”...

The agency attributed at least two-thirds of those deaths to COVID-19 — because people died either from the disease or from other causes as a result of avoiding medical care because of the pandemic...

There will ALWAYS be differences of opinion with regard to methodology and assumptions; i.e., those things which determine what numbers are included/excluded. By definition, the subjective nature of the decisions made by the doctors vis a vis the cause of death, means that the numbers are not empirically 'absolute.' Likewise, there will be disagreement on what constitutes the 'greater good' insofar as the various agendas and the numbers used to support and promote them.

When historians look back on this whole episode, any legitimate analysis would have to start with the idea that "truth" was the first casualty. In fact, it wasn't even so much one of those Obi-Wan Kenobi prevarications of "a great many of the truths we cling to are greatly dependent on our own point of view." As we've discussed previously, the real "truth" is that we simply don't know and, for some things (including the actual, real numbers), we'll likely NEVER know; having to rely on estimates, guesstimates, SWAG's, and similar. As a result, there will, forever, be debate over which numbers to 'accept' and, as a result, accusations and counter-accusations.

[SPUTTER]

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[toro1]

BM,
There is an old adage, when the facts are on your side you argue the facts, when they are not, you muddy the water. The COVID cheerleaders have done nothing but muddy the water the entire time.

With all of the conflicting information being thrown around, the only way to understand the magnitude of COVID is to look at excess deaths. The data below is from the CDC web site although one needs to work through many different pages to find the data. Remember the muddying the water comment?

Through early July excess deaths were consistently running at about 50% of reported COVID deaths. Then in one week something odd happened and excess deaths all of the sudden agreed perfectly with the COVID totals. What happened became clear at the end of the year. If one back calculated the excess death baseline number being used for 2020 starting in July, The CDC was using a death total from 2015.

In order to get a more realistic excess death number one needs to figure out what a reasonable expected total would be for 2020. If you look at 2015-2019 numbers and get an average death increase per year and then add that total to 2019, you get an expected 2020 death total of ~2.9 million. There actually a total death number in 2020 of 3.2 million (numbers are rounded for simplicity).



That sounds pretty bad, but lets delve into what makes up that 300,000.

In looking at the CDC data for the age demographic of 15-54, we show a total of ~500,000 deaths for this age group in 2020. If we look at how many deaths were in this age group for 2019, there were ~330,000. By my calculation that means there were ~170,000 excess deaths in 2020 for an age group that was not heavily impacted by Covid. It sure looks to me like the lockdowns had a huge effect on that age group.

Lets take a closer look at the older demographic-
If we subtract that 170K (excess 2020 deaths in the 15-54 demographic) from the total excess deaths of ~300K and we have a stunning 130K excess deaths in the older age demographic which is a 2x flu season. Looking at it another way, there were 40K more deaths that may attributed to the lockdown than people who may have died from Covid.

You need to stop taking articles at face value and actually look into the data and start doing some calculations. When that is done (and many on this forum have done that, and you do nothing but attack them) the picture becomes very clear.

For anyone that is scared of this, stay home. If you are right, all the naysayers will be dead shortly and you can crawl out of your cave to a new world free of COVID.

BTW, due to your constant attacks on others you have been on ignore. You are back on it so there will not be further responses to your drivel.

[bigmike82]

whinging and moaning...
BTW, due to your constant attacks on others you have been on ignore. You are back on it so there will not be further responses to your drivel.

Being on the ignore list of spineless cowards who pull **** like this is an honor. Thanks for that.

[bigmike82]

Your own argument points to the fact that it doesn't HAVE to be a 'vast Right-Wing conspiracy' or similar. As you note, it's... complicated.

Doctors, nurses, janitors, et al. have a parochial view.

Yes, but they serve as canaries in the coal mine. Government says Covid deaths are spiking. Nurses don't see increased censurs in their units; janitors aren't taking more bodies to the morgue. Etc. The fact is, though, people from all areas of the health system have seen the effects of the increase in the numbers of infected.

In fact, when it comes to the accusations of 'inflating numbers for the money,' I'd be willing to bet that some of that did occur; not simply for the money's sake, but for accessing the monies to fund local health care programs in general. At least that would have been the thought process for some.

But here's the thing. Covid has hit hospitals in the bottom line really, really hard. If anything, they are incentivized to downplay the effects of this disease in order to recover their profits.

But they're not doing that. Why would that be, if the numbers are inflated?

Such 'accusations,' at least in some cases, would be similar to the media's erroneous portrayal of Ebonics. If you listened to the interviews of the teachers who started that whole thing, they openly and publicly acknowledged that it wasn't about teaching 'ghetto slang' instead of English. Quite the opposite. It was about a means of accessing Federal funding to be able to buy materials to teach English; i.e., a way to 'work the system' to garner funding to do the job as the funds they were receiving through the normal budget process via the School District were claimed to be 'insufficient.'

On the flip side, some of the 'accusations' are legitimate in the sense of numbers being 'massaged' to fit a prevailing agenda. That includes, but is not limited to, the nature of statistics and statisticians. From the same article...

Lastly, think about this. One of the articles quoted the state of Alaska's opinion on what constitutes a Covid death in the sense that it hastened a death by any amount of time at all. And that's how we've measured causes of death all the time.

If a nurse intentionally feeds you too much morphine while you're on your deathbed, that's murder.

If your kid cuts off your oxygen while you're in hospice, that's murder.

If someone shoots you in the face while you're grabbing your lipitor prescription, that's murder.

Covid is a cause of death if it directly leads to your death. Those numbers aren't fudged. Physicians all across the country are making those judgements based on individual circumstances.

The numbers aren't inflated. Not by any degree that changes how we should handle this illness.

[bigbossman]

Here you go with your made up "conspiracy theory" straw-man again.

[bigmike82]

Here you go with your made up "conspiracy theory" straw-man again.