The Centers for Disease Control took a step May 1 towards shedding light on the pandemic’s true death toll.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1307206
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1307206
And cue the un-release of the tool in 3…2…
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Probably the most important story on TPM this week.
Trump is touting how the numbers are low, always low, compared to a whatever mythical worst case / public doesn’t care about their own lives estimate he wants to use to make himself look better. Excess death counts – something that no state can fake to keep their COVID-related counts down – will certainly show that the US is well over 100K deaths already, and probably will end up over 200K by the end of summer.
The other factor that mitigates in favor of a higher COVID-19 death count, as opposed to some of the other deaths that might have been prevented without COVID-19 but are not COVID-19 related, is that there are certainly far fewer deaths from traffic accidents or other events that get reduced as people spend far more time at home.
Trump and R governors and those asshole protesters act on wishful thinking and assertions that things aren’t as bad as they seem. The excess death count is a reality check they all need and reporters should question them aggressively on it.
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Absolutely correct. But here’s the problem. The right wing will start screaming, if they haven’t started already, as to how these numbers are ‘cooked’ to make the President look bad. I saw this yesterday with a right-winger who claimed his sister, who’s a nurse, is constantly hearing from the doctors in her hospital to note that the death of a patient was caused by the virus, even if it wasn’t.
My thought here is that, if that’s true, medical boards all over the country should be swamped with complaints about these lying doctors who should lose their licenses to practice. I can’t imagine anyone with that much investment in their education demanding that others lie about patient losses. But here we are, even having to discuss the remote possibility that deaths happened with the virus not even involved being reported in these numbers.
This isn’t going to go over well. It’s what I’ve been saying, and maybe this pandemic will force a resolution to this issue, but the reporting is what is making people feel the lockdowns are invalid. We don’t know what we don’t know, but changing the methodology in mid-stream isn’t going to help against the virulent ‘Liberate’ movement and is only going to make things worse.
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From Florida will simply stop reporting. To them it’s a public relations problem not a national emergency
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“Excess death”
What a shameful term to use.
Why belittle a life like that?
trump is a clear and present danger to all of humankind.
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Ummmm… Why are you so concerned with the “optics” of getting more accurate data? What, we should do the Florida bit and fudge and lie about it?
That just guarantees that even more people will die, because measures won’t be taken.
Maybe stop listening so much to the whining of the 20% and look at the 80% who support the stay-at-home stuff and don’t want to open up.
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He knows. He has always known.
(Repeating: He is trying to out run the dead.)
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Anyone know what caused the excess deaths around January 2018?
Also, these excess deaths are even more so when you consider the significantly reduced deaths from traffic accidents, and really most other accidental deaths, that aren’t happening as we all sit in our homes.
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And I am among those 80%, absolutely.
Credibility is always eroded when ‘new’ data gathering techniques are developed during data collection processes. This process doesn’t need any help in looking ‘bad’ for the wrong reasons. Yes, we absolutely need to know the depth of the problem. And it needs to be reported as ‘bad’ when it is indeed bad (and it is). We already know data gathering is compromised (e.g., Florida), so why wouldn’t it appear that this new methodology is to make up for the lack of data?
There’s just a whole lot wrong with this from a statistical point of view. I’m sure you don’t agree and I’m ok with that. We can agree to disagree. It’s just tough to convince the 20% that this is sincerely a problem when the goalposts keep moving.
My working assumption is that fewer deaths from traffic and other accidents probably just offsets increased deaths due to untreated causes other than COVID-19. Until someone proves otherwise, excess mortality should be our best working proxy for actual coronavirus deaths.
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I don’t care about convincing the 20% about anything. They’re entirely impervious to logic, reason, facts or anything else.
The only good thing they’re doing for the country right now is all gathering together in defiance, which basically ensures that a lot of them are going to get sick and die.
Write them off, it’s pointless. For the rest of the world, figuring out more accurately what’s going on is always a good thing.
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John Hopkins has a similar tool.
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But trump doesn’t own Johns Hopkins.
He does own the CDC, which, remember, generated the IMHE model that stood out from all the other models out there by magically changing its prediction from 100-240K down to the 60K that we blasted past last week.
Not a coincidence.
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trump says 90,000 is his new limit eh? Well, I we will certainly blow past that by the end of May.
The virus is still here donald. And weather is quite warm here in Tucson. People are still dying donald.
How’s your increase in testing going, donald? I would guess not so well because Jared got sent out to lie about how we have more than enough.
How’s the vaccine angle working donald? Don’t wanna talk about it eh?
What’s your drug of choice now, donald? Some kind of malaria or cancer drug with a really fancy name? Or maybe an extra strong UV tanning bed is the way to go… or even a whopping intravenous dose of concentrated clorox will do the trick. Or stick some in an old asthma atomizer and huff it straight.
donald trump … an asshole’s asshole.
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It’s not a reflection on any individual life, but tries to describe the normally experienced mortality rate and any level of mortality that exceeds that rate. A different description would be “extraordinary death rate,” extraordinary meaning beyond the ordinary.
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Additional adjustments will probably come later but hopefully before the election.
I have another use for the term “excess deaths.” How about looking at how many deaths they have in, oh, say, South Korea, divide the population of the US by that of South Korea and multiply the deaths in South Korea to get the number of deaths we would have had in the US if we had a competent administration in the WH. This gives around 1500. So, Trump and his minions are responsible for almost 70,000 unnecessary and excess deaths in the US and counting.
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Two years worth of data, presented in this format, is not much to go on. It’s hard to say anything about Dec/Jan 2016. There’s noticeable excess mortality in Dec/Jan 2018, none in Dec/Jan 2019, and none in Dec/Jan 2020. Also, there’s no no excess mortality in April of 2017, April of 2018, April of 2019, and a lot of it in April 2020.
Excess mortality is a pretty gross (in the sense of non-specific) metric, but it’s not difficult to make conjectures about what it might be reflecting.
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Last night Trump warned that the US covid19 death toll could reach 100,000.
If I’m interpreting the CDC chart correctly, his new estimate is already in the rear view mirror.
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Much better term.
No life is “excess” to me. Even donald’s. And that is really pushing my limit.
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