If the number of COVID-19 deaths are inflated then how do you explain the excess deaths every week since late-March? The CDC chart I linked to yesterday should be enough to end any suspicion of "inflated numbers."
just want to chime in here:
excess deaths are a good measure to use, but as with most numbers, it isn't perfect and there is some important nuance that shouldn't be ignored.
for example, there has been some research around the idea that countries that had mild flu seasons the last two years (as the US did) were more susceptible to COVID deaths, since there was a larger population of very frail patients for COVID to affect. remember, the average age of a COVID death in the US is higher than the average life expectancy. this doesn't mean, "eh, they're old, who cares?" it just means that elderly patients are more susceptible to any respiratory virus, and thus, we need to take that into consideration to gauge overall severity of illness.
also, not every excess death is a COVID death. inflated death numbers here in the northeast undoubtedly can be partially attributed to the "vent hard, vent early" course of treatment that the WHO recommended that ended up doing far more harm than good. i won't go too far into the nursing home problems that exist in my home state and its closest neighbor, as they've been well documented. the biggest problem with NY though is that state health department only counts a death as a nursing home/acute care facility death IF the death occurred at the nursing home. so nursing home patients that went to the hospital and died en route or at the hospital are NOT counted as a nursing home death by the state of NY. that's a problem, because it overstates the risk to the general population.
also, i know people hate to hear this, but it's true: our reaction to the virus caused (and will continue to cause) death. people that delayed care for heart attacks and strokes for fear of going to the hospital. people that delayed cancer screenings that will have their cancer found in later stages, and thus, have worse outcomes. alzheimer deaths have skyrocketed, and those deaths are very likely due to isolation and/or caregivers being too overwhelmed/too scared to offer care. CMS just released a study (covered in reuters) that 21% of the medicare population (that's ~12 million seniors 65+) decided to forego non-COVID care due to the pandemic, the most commonly cited reason was not wanted to risk being at a medical facility.
healthcare occurs on a continuum. our (in my opinion) myopic focus on one virus -- COVID -- has caused far greater loss of life than COVID ever could. remember that when you inevitably see some study (one is being pushed by eric deng on twitter right now, which is just an embarrassment) that claims we're undercounting COVID deaths. it's why public health messaging needs to be pragmatic, and -- at all costs -- avoid inciting wide-scale panic.
the other issue is the 'with' vs. 'of' issue, which is real. PCR is very, very sensitive testing; great for surveillance, crummy for clinical diagnosis. it works by taking your sample and amplifying it to find microscopic viral RNA. the higher your "cycle threshold" is (or how many times your nasal swab sample has been amplified), the less likely you are to have contagious virus. why that matters?
there's no national standard of counting COVID deaths. so, for some states, any death within 30-to-60 (varies on states) of a positive PCR test is counted as a COVID death. in other states, they don't count deaths if there is an obvious, non-related cause (accident, poisoning, etc.), but there ARE over 6,000 of those types of deaths in the national death count.
that's not really the bulk of the issue though. the issue is when you pop a positive PCR, it's entirely possible you cleared the virus. (provided you have a Ct score over 30, which 97% of positive PCR tests at this level have been found to contain no contagious virus). if you die of end stage renal failure 20 days later after a positive PCR at a 33 cycle count, this wasn't a COVID death. you died of end stage renal failure (which is a very grim state of living). but in many states, you'll have COVID listed as a secondary cause, and be counted as a death. that's skewed. it's like saying, "every fly ball out of the infield is a hit," and after the top of the 1st when the braves bloop a single and then fly out to right three times, you say they got four hits. not so much.
is this a conspiracy to overcount deaths? i don't think so. i just think it's a data integrity problem, and combined with the widespread fear that public health officials stoked in the spring, it's led to some panicky policy from some very craven politicians.
(depending on the poster).
