I'd been wondering about that! Back in February I looked up the number of flu deaths and the first number that came up, from the CDC was 16K. So I'd been confused, since then, at the much higher numbers being given.
I'm given to the theory that most numbers you see thrown about publicly, about anything, are, on some level, bullshit. The bigger the number, the more likely this is to be true.
Such metrics are good for understanding magnitudes and trends, but not a lot more than that.
It reminds me of when Halford did the deep dive into questioning Yellowstone's published statistics on visitors/year. If something flies under the radar as being uncontroversial for years and years, it's subject to drift.
Oh for God's sake. I've been spending a month as one of 10 people on a sports discussion board arguing with a moron who will NOT give up the argument that the lockdowns are bad because if they were good, surely it is very bad of us that we don't also have economy-destroying quarantines every year to save the tens of thousands of people who die of the flu, and he hopes we will start doing that soon if we don't want to be illogical.
Never did any of us even wonder if there aren't tens of thousands of people who die of the flu. These stats include all pneumonia? AND they are extrapolated from excess deaths?
And he's now moved on to an argument that there is "no evidence" that the lockdowns have had any effect on anything. It's an eerie echo of the eternal denials that baseball strategies have any effect because there is "no evidence" that they have an effect (without ever suggesting what sort of evidence there could possibly be, since there could not be experiments).
If the lockdown lasts through fall, the Pirates will have had their best season in decades.
These stats include all pneumonia?
I don't know if it includes all pneumonia. They may be claiming some portion of pneumonia deaths.
Sadly, one of my aunts came out as a denier last night, citing a recent quacky video (Erickson/Massihi) and saying "healthy" people should be allowed out. She's gone downhill politically since partnering with a Republican surgeon, though I've tried to avoid engaging as our contact had been low before. I had to drop off the video call to seethe.
(I'm told the rest of the family grayrocked her and she left.)
Yeas there will be (already are but they will intensify especially as the campaigns really get going) extended rancorous political discussions about the correct death counts. Also see the H1N1 numbers debate (which will figure prominently given Biden being Obama's VP). Or the debates on Iraq excess deaths (d-squared was a passionate participant if I recall correctly).
I suspect if we counted COVID the way we do the higher flu numbers we would be close to if not above 100,000 deaths in the US right now due to the epidemic*. And some of it may be due to just delays in reporting deaths. Which also really muddles the waters on predicting peaks and plateaus etc. Bad news is that delays mean there have been more deaths, but good news is that late reporting may mean various places "peaked" earlier than it seems. I don't believe there is too much actual deliberate undercounting right now. but I may be being naive**. Other than I absolutely do believe that DeSantis is trying to do it. They have taken various steps to limit accessibility to hospital and nursing home information. And one thing I learned, for instance, is that they are only reporting the deaths of "full time" residents. Snowbirds who are resident elsewhere are not counted ( although I suspect there are a whole raft of counting issues in various arenas that come up in a place like Florida with a big seasonal influx not sure what the standard is).
*To me the main supporting evidence is the various excess deaths examinations,,, but then again lower car accident deaths etc.
**Of course Trump would clearly support under-counting. Everyone reasonably cites his "15 cases soon to be near zero" thing, but I almost think more revealing was when he argued against bringing 20 some patient in of a ship because "who needs those numbers when they are not our fault." Christ.
Someone says something crazy, you say "Mmm. Does anyone need more coffee?" Don't agree or disagree, just refuse to get into it.
The whole contesting counts (we're undercounting/overcounting) conversation worries me. It seems like it inevitably opens the door to "everyone just pick the number you want in order to support whatever political point you're trying to make".
Of course, I suppose everyone was going to do that anyway.
Yes, I am very aware that strategic undercounting is a source of paranoia for me and I'm trying to quell the paranoia. Here's an article on Florida, though:
15: I worry about this, if only because I seem to be surrounded by people who think all of epidemiology requires only two numbers. But it's not really surprising to me that it's got to be hard to figure out how many died of a disease when different places are going to count it differently (if I die of a stroke due to treatment for COVID-19, is that a stroke death or a COVID death?) , and not at all surprising that Trump would want to inflate the number of flu deaths if given a range of numbers.
13 Will that work with anyone whose mind has been addled by Fox News or just narcissists and sociopaths?
Obviously when you count something the specifics matter greatly and which way you measure something depends on the question being asked.
13 disappoints profoundly. I was expecting a whole thing with pebbles in a velvet bag.
Why wouldn't the CDC include pneumonia deaths as flu deaths? The flu leading to pneumonia is a really common way of dying.
We're counting flu the right way and COVID the wrong way! The census should be done using sampling! There are faster an more accurate ways to count large numbers than 1+1+1 for every one you can find.
21: I wish testing were so cheap and easily available that we had better actual counts. Like you could do your own rapid flu test at home, tell your doctor or your public health department and it got counted. Also, then you would know to stay out of work longer than you would with a regular cold.
Plenty of other things cause pneumonia though. I wish I could find statistics for pneumonia fatalities broken down by which pathogens were the likely cause.
In this study in a St. Louis hospital, adult viral pneumonia was 24% flu, 24% rhinoviruses/enteroviruses (taxonomically they are basically the same thing), 13% parainfluenza virus (not a form of influenza), 11% RSV, 9% coronavirus (yes, the normal ones that give us colds), etc.
In this study in a Korean hospital there was a much higher mortality among people with RSV-induced pneumonia than influenza-induced pneumonia. (albeit they were also 7 years older on average)
12,13 What a great word. Anyone know etymology?
It's fairly recent therapy/dealing with difficult family-speak, but I don't know an origin.
Although I guess the response to 27 could be "all of those other viruses cause the flu too, pretty much, although not called "influenza virus". I meant viral pneumonia in general"
28: New term to me. Quick search returns "The idea is that you keep your head down like a grey rock and blend into the landscape. " From a Dec. 2017 blog post. Will try to trace it earlier. And seems to be generally rendered as two words.
Here's the origin I usually see cited but the author doesn't claim they invented it: https://180rule.com/the-gray-rock-method-of-dealing-with-psychopaths/
That makes psychopathy seem like a problem.
Earliest I am finding it is 2011. Maybe 2007, but web searches by date are not really precise, and most "earlier" references are when it appears in a sidebar or forum whose date is probably set to its creation date. Usenet was excellent for this kind of thing because of the date-stamping. Really a loss when Google fucked them up so much.
34: Huh, reading that looks like a summary of why I tend to manage well under abusive bosses (no one currently, but I've had some nightmares in the past). I hadn't conceptualized it as intentional grey rock, but that's definitely what I default to when someone's trying to amuse themselves by fucking with me, and it's effective. Not perfect, working with someone like that is still miserable, but pretty effective.
Oh wait I read on, and that author does claim to be the originator.
37: That's pretty much my default way of going through life. That may explain why there's not much conflict or friendship in my life.
Snowbirds who are resident elsewhere are not counted ( although I suspect there are a whole raft of counting issues in various arenas that come up in a place like Florida with a big seasonal influx not sure what the standard is).
We have similar issues here, and the standard does seem to be counting people by their place of residence regardless of where they contracted the virus. Some of our earliest cases, including the first death, were Alaska residents who contracted it out of state. I'm sure we'll start seeing some in the other direction once the summer fishing season starts.
In this study in a St. Louis hospital, adult viral pneumonia was 24% flu, 24% rhinoviruses/enteroviruses (taxonomically they are basically the same thing), 13% parainfluenza virus (not a form of influenza), 11% RSV, 9% coronavirus (yes, the normal ones that give us colds), etc.
This may help answer heebie's question about what symptomatic people who test negative for COVID actually have. There are a lot of options!
Still! At rates far exceeding covid?!
Sure, why not? COVID isn't that widespread, when compared to every other respiratory infection that's circulating all the time.
Also don't something like 10%-20% of the people with negative test results just have COVID and a false negative test?
Ah, no, of course that's 10%-20% *of the people with COVID*, not of the people taking the test.
43: but how are they circulating during mass quarantine?!
Within households? Via grocery stores etc.? It's not like people are on complete solitary-confinement lockdown all the time.
Yes, but they're effective enough to have shut down Covid pretty well.
Covid is more rare, so harder to get.
Pretty well, but not 100%, and the same is presumably true for any individual one of the other numerous respiratory infections out there. Even at reduced incidence, adding them all up leaves a lot going on.
50K deaths from pneumonia in the country per year. So let's say 5K in Texas. So lets say 400/month. 75% of those are non-flu, so 300/month. My county is 230K people out of 30 million, so about .7% of Texas population. So that would put us at about 2 deaths per month. Which is double the number of covid deaths we've seen. So Teo is right!
UNLESS that 50K is another nefarious CDC estimate.
People have lots of problems that are fatal by way of pneumonia. You get weak, but you can't die of being weak. You go until your heart stops or you can't keep your lungs clear.
It's a cunning scheme by the CDC to ramp up pneumonia deaths to support their numbers.
I keep reverting back to the excess deaths graphs. I feel like those are much more in your face. I have two screenshots on my phone and I keep reposting them in comments.
57: Some percentage of those are people who had heart attacks and strokes who could not get care because health systems were overwhelmed. Italy and probably NY, NJ fall under that category. In MA, I don't think we lack capacity to provide urgent and emergent care - our hospitals are kind of empty - but people are afraid to come in - and some are probably dying at home.
I think for most policy questions, basically anything other trying to do epidemiology specifically (e.g. estimating various parameters), excess deaths caused by health systems being overwhelmed should count as deaths caused by COVID.
Plus, I've seen things saying that the covid is causing strokes and heart blockages.
60: Yes, it's hard to tease out. But there also appear to be people who are choosing not to
Go to the hospital and trying to tough it out. Cardiology departments that go a whole weekend without a single MI presenting, and they have the staff to manage it.