Re:Judge orders FDA to hasten FOIA release of Pfizer vaccine...
by pw201 on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @10:33AM
(#29892652)
This is called "whataboutery". It's also disingenuous.
In general, there's a fast statistic about COVID deaths, which is something like "deaths within N days of a positive PCR". This will catch some people who died for another reason, though if you think that's a serious problem, you'd need to argue that so many people could be expected to die for some other reason within N days that this would significantly bias the stat.
There's a slow stat, where COVID is a contributing or underlying cause on a death certificate. In the UK, these are in rough agreement. Notably, at the start of the pandemic, when testing wasn't available, the fast stat was an underestimate. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/measuring-mortali... has some links to the ONS and places like that.
In general, there's a fast statistic about COVID deaths, which is something like "deaths within N days of a positive PCR". This will catch some people who died for another reason, though if you think that's a serious problem, you'd need to argue that so many people could be expected to die for some other reason within N days that this would significantly bias the stat.
There's a slow stat, where COVID is a contributing or underlying cause on a death certificate. In the UK, these are in rough agreement. Notably, at the start of the pandemic, when testing wasn't available, the fast stat was an underestimate. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/measuring-mortali... has some links to the ONS and places like that.