Except you can see the excess total deaths compared to previous years and how well it correlates and is otherwise unexplained [1].

A lot of the labeling occurred because people couldn’t get tested yet presented symptoms that indicated covid. In that situation, you can’t say 100% without a test, yet it’s the reasonable conclusion in a pandemic.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

Something worth keeping in mind is how many fewer people died of other causes compared to previous years [1]. Yes, the data will show an excess number of people died versus previous years but I believe the parent comment is saying we should pay close attention to what the cause of death really means in terms of age and comorbidity.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/HfaMhcK.jpg

One further thing to bear in mind here is that some causes of death can be expected to be decreased on account of lockdowns e.g. accidents - less people out and about, less people driving etc. will naturally lead to less accidents. Of course on the flip side, more people stuck at home & using the time to do renovation work etc. could lead to an increase in e.g. power tool related accidents.

Other causes of death such as flu can likely also be assumed to be decreased as a side-effect of lockdown

Contrariwise, people are avoiding treatment for other illnesses for fear of catching COVID in a hospital. Many people are depressed or even suicidal. And people are less active, which aggravates other health problems. All of these factors could increase the number of deaths.

3 months of lower activity is not killing people in those 3 months.

Any effects will be felt on a much longer timeframe.

Most office workers have very sedentary lives anyways, that didn’t become significantly more sedentary when they replaced their drive with a walk to another room and working in an office with working in that room.

Throw in the fact that they are likely cooking more because restaurants and all were shut and not just having lunch delivered to their office, they may even be getting more activity in.

Plus no commute leaves more free time in the evenings for exercise etc. Obviously not everyone will be doing that, but anecdotally a few people I've talked to from work are going for more walks & cycles etc.

If it was significant in comparison, we would not see a sharp drop in deaths after the lockdowns.

Do people get depressed and die because of a lovkdown? Sure, I got depressed as well. But the numbers show that this issue is far less than the number of people that would die otherwise.

Curious if we know specifically what caused the tens of thousands of excess deaths that showed up around January 2018? Was that a particularly bad flu season?

How you label the deaths is not that big of a deal in the larger scale. If you want to know the true toll of the epidemic, just look at this year's deaths vs. an average of previous years. It's simple and transparent.

Here's that data for England:

https://imgur.com/sxoolBX

I get why everyone is questioning everything, but there isn't some big conspiracy here. Lots of people died of COVID. Most of them were 80+. You probably don't know any of them if you don't hang out with 80-90 year olds.

But then we get to the question of whether those deaths were caused by COVID or other causes.

We know that traffic fatalities in some areas have risen drastically due to the lockdowns: https://abc7.com/traffic-fatalities-california-highway-patro...

We also know that doctor visits have gone down due to the coronavirus, leading to medical staff being laid off: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/02/8262324...

We also know that hospitals are financially incentivized to diagnose a patient as COVID positive: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fac...

And there are German serological studies that suggest a COVID death rate of 0.39%, in contrast with the NYC study that claims a death rate of 1%

Taking this altogether, and we have plenty of wiggle room to suggest that even the excess deaths don't necessarily imply that COVID is extremely deadly.

You are conflating a lot of different things.

Traffic fatalities were actually down overall (total numbers), but up per mile driven. In other words, people were driving much less and dying in lower total numbers, but the people who were driving were driving faster and thus a bit more likely to die. That article is poorly written to generate headlines and clicks.

Arguing over a specific IFR is also kind of pointless because the disease is so age and condition dependent. Whether the true overall IFR in a population is 1% or 0.4% doesn't really matter - it's a bad representation of the overall situation. COVID is a disease that kills a very large percentage of 80+ but is quite low risk for younger people. A single number doesn't capture or represent that. Demographic differences between 2 cities could easily cause a large skew in actual IFR.

Hospitals are (possibly) financially incentivized to diagnose COVID in the US. But this is a world-wide disease and no other country has the insane US healthcare system where that would matter.

> Taking this altogether, and we have plenty of wiggle room to suggest that even the excess deaths don't necessarily imply that COVID is extremely deadly.

That's not correct. It's absolutely clear from the numbers across many countries that COVID is extremely deadly if you are 80+ and not deadly at all if you are 15. Make of that what you will. Arguing over IFRs and hospital reimbursement is missing the point. It's simultaneously true that COVID is very deadly for some groups but may not be deadly at all for you and your friends.

There's a good argument to be made over how much of the excess death is due to secondary effects (untreated heart attacks, delayed cancer treatments, etc). But there's no way to arrange the numbers such that COVID doesn't obviously kill a lot of old people. Just look at the death rates in care homes / retirement homes. It was like a plague ravaging them.

1. My link stated that in certain areas, such as Connecticut, traffic fatalities went up.

2. My overall point is that a certain number of excess deaths are atrributable to the lockdown itself, rather than Covid. IIRC, the total number of reported deaths in NYC from heart disease, heart attacks, cancer, and a whole bunch of other diseases went down drastically; either Covid-19 magically cures all these other ailments, or a bunch of deaths are being mislabelled as Covid-related.

> Hospitals are (possibly) financially incentivized to diagnose COVID in the US.

That depends. Some, apparently, are incentivized to do exactly the opposite.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/legal-regulatory-issue...

> and not deadly at all if you are 15

Very low risk, but not no risk.

Yes, not zero risk. But to give you an idea of the risk, here are the numbers from England (only, not entire UK):

- Total COVID deaths: 28,137

- Deaths, 0-19 years of age: 18

- Deaths, 0-19 years of age, no pre-existing condition: 3

You are definitely going to see individual news reports on those 3 cases because they are exceptional and scary. But you aren't going to see individual news reports on the 25,721 people aged over 60 who died of COVID during the same period.

And keep in mind that not only are the raw numbers astronomically higher for the older age ranges, but those older age ranges are also much smaller populations. So it's even worse than it appears.

For example, 15,020 people aged 80+ died of COVID. But 80+ year olds are only 4.6% of the population in England. Under 18s make up more like 25% of the population but only account for 18 deaths. That's about as close to low risk as you can get without being zero risk.

There is no wiggle room. The fucking deaths doubled. This is just FUD.

> And there are German serological studies that suggest a COVID death rate of 0.39%, in contrast with the NYC study that claims a death rate of 1%

That’s in the same ballpark. You can expect great precision with these estimations.

You can just look at the all cause excess deaths and see that the number of people that have died so far this year is much higher than previous years in New York. So whether you agree that person A died from covid or not, there were many more deaths due to something.

woah, i just looked up excess deaths in my city vs covid19 diagnosed deaths and it is freaking me out even more.

What is the effect of fear? Cortisol spikes and avoiding going to the doctor for what would normally be a good reason need to be researched.

Reduced access to healthcare, counterintuitively, reduces mortality in the short term, because it reduces complications from medical interventions.

On the medium and long term instead it increases mortality, as expected.

Moreover, lockdowns and social distancing also reduced flu deaths.

This means that the total number of deaths attributable ti Covid may in fact be higher than the excess mortality over the average of previous years, although it is difficult to quantity the difference.

That is something worth researching, but even then, it's still justifiable to count a death by fear as a death by pandemic, given that it wouldn't have happened without the pandemic.

You can have a pandemic without fear though.

Really? Has there ever been one? Or is the fear a natural human response to an invisible, omnipresent killer?

Well, I guess I should say you can have a pandemic without a fear-mongering news media that significantly exacerbates it.

I personally am not "fearful" of COVID-19, as are many (most) people I know, so it is clearly possible for the general human.

If you're not fearful and nor are most people you know, who are you claiming is fearful?

Personally, my behaviour patterns have changed. I'm more aware of when someone I don't know is near me. When I hear about the vulnerable people in my close community who suddenly have to navigate the world with significantly increased risk, I feel worried for them.

I'm not claiming anyone is fearful?

I claimed you can have a pandemic without fear.

Its still caused by the virus. It counts.

Not completely. Fear is very profitable, it makes people more pliable, people that are afraid are less rational. There are strong incentives to make people irrationally afraid.

The most reliable number is "excess deaths", since that's hard to fake even if it's not specific.

Based on excess deaths - the difference between how many deaths from all causes would you exec and how many were reported - USA is very likely under counting deaths. Also all case mortality coincide very well with reports of COVID-19 cases.

USA is very likely to significantly under count deaths from COVID-19.

See: Preliminary Estimate of Excess Mortality During the COVID-19 Outbreak — New York City, March 11–May 2, 2020

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e5.htm

> my good friend’s brother is an ER doctor

I've seen a number of rumours from brothers of friends or friends of brothers, but no actual doctors saying this.

I also read that in Florida, the number of COVID-19 deaths is fairly low. Instead, the death rate from regular pneumonia is sky-rocketing.

Similarly, several people I know have self-diagnosed themselves with COVID-19 due to just one symptom. In some cases the symptoms have disappeared the next day. In many cases the people are the "usual suspects" who seem to get ill several times a year anyway. I'm not aware of a single person who has definitely had COVID-19.