Don’t just take it from the CDC.
Deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic have been spiking around the country according to a tabulation of obituaries published, a new report found.
Comparing death rates for 2020 to the last three or four years is one way to arrive at a more accurate measure of the number of deaths from COVID-19.
Fake news… you should publish unskewed graphs that display the ineptness of the Obama administration compared with the perfect response from Donald J. Trump.
donald trump should be tied to a chair and someone should read this to him… force him to listen and absorb…
Maybe then he will understand why we wear masks.
“Spiked” has a publishing-specific meaning.
I thought from the headline that papers across the country were declining to run obits.
It wouldn’t matter. It’s not about whether he understands or not. It’s about anti- political correctness, owning the libs, personal vanity, being perceived as weaker than the virus, never backing down, etc. Nothing about Trump, and the Trumpettes, and masks has anything to do with public health.
Initial research like this tells us that this is a big event, but it will take a few months, at a minimum, before we really understand what happened. It’s that long for all of the information to get through the system, and then researchers have to get ahold of it (which isn’t trivial with the Trump administration wanting to downplay what actually happened). The length of time for this is a benefit to Republicans…if the reporting on this could be updated daily, with accurate information from all over the nation, most people would understand how much of a failure this is by the Republicans, and hold them accountable.
As always, Republicans are depending on misinformation and lies to hold onto power, the only chance we have to fight that is epidemiologists and other researchers who can nail down what is going on, and trace what is likely to be a new growth in cases going forward.
Excess deaths are the most accurate count since it’s very hard for the Trump administration to suppress those numbers.
Whenever I run across a ‘just the flu’ dolt, I point out that slit trenches are not dug in NYC for the flu.
This is all the more remarkable in light of the drop-off in road traffic deaths. It was a bit of a drag that the data stop over a month ago. The current situation is extremely touchy. Economists in recent years have augmented forecasting (predicting what is happening in the future) with nowcasting (an attempt to get a clearer picture of the current moment, especially in the “fog of war”), and backcasting (trying to figure out what actually happened, which may differ from the official record. For example, Florida, a state with known data issues, could benefit from applying all three of these techniques.
This is another interesting data point, but the state-level numbers seem unreliable to me as an accurate indicator of excess mortality. Just look at California, which shows 2020 deaths well below the rolling average, whereas the CDC reportedly had the number of excess deaths at 9% for California last month.
My tentative suspicion is that there is a self-selection bias because most obituaries depend on family members paying for them, and that the demographic groups most likely to be hit with the virus in most of the country do not tend to do obituaries. If a dozen immigrants from Central America drop dead at a meatpacking plant somewhere in the Midwest, the methodology here seems unlikely to pick that up.
I don’t think this is playing into their hands. Most people already seem to realize the numbers are being lowballed.
So it isn’t actually good for the Republicans for this to come out in a few months. Right before the election you’ll have headlines that the number of dead was really higher.
And if there’s a second wave going on then, there will be a lot of people really pissed off at Trump and the Trumpanzees.
Welp, then maybe if trump were to suddenly develop covid symptoms and test positive… … maybe then reality would intrude into his Fox/OANN bubble universe and his sycophantic talking head followers would be at a loss as to how to spin it all.
Sorry Mr. Darr but if “A Clockwork Orange” taught us anything it’s that tying a psychopath to a chair and forcing him to absorb things has only a temporary effect.
Thanks for posting that. It’s reduced me to tears–I knew it would either way, so no big deal about that. Philip Foglia reminds me of my dad, and reminds me how blessed I have been to be one of his sons and to have had him in my life for 59 years.
I wish reading this to that abomination would force him to absorb it, but I know it wouldn’t even begin to penetrate the shell he has around himself. It wouldn’t surprise if he said something like, “Pffft, Philip Foglia. What did he ever do for his kids? My dad gave me $4M before I was 18.”
It wouldn’t.
country approaches the symbolically important COVID-19 death toll of 100,000.
Some tracking sites have the death toll exceeding 100,000 already. There are at least 4 sources of covid-19 statistics that I have visited. It would be helpful to cite the source that is being used here.
And another thing. What constitutes “official”? Is “official” synonymous with accurate? How can we sure?
He’s pining for the fjords
and @darrtown
I heard this interview yesterday. And while it is about COVID-19 victims it is also about celebrating lives that were lost.
I especially loved the anecdote about the grandmother who was tough, and was still challenging family members to arm wrestling contests when she was in her 80s.
It’s more than 5 seconds long - his attention span (actually according to some of his staff) is 5-15 seconds long.
