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I've already said this in another thread, but the number of CV-related deaths has been understated, and we won't have the full scope of fatalities until some time later when estimates are issued by the CDC and WHO. We are currently only counting the number of deaths resulting from confirmed cases of COVID-19. In New York, it is estimated that an additional 150-185 deaths a day are in unconfirmed COVID cases. The testing is not sufficiently robust to capture the full scale of the outbreak.
There were "only" 3,433 confirmed swine flu-related deaths in the U.S. in 2009. The number of estimated deaths ranges from 8,860 to 18,306. The estimated deaths for CV-19 could be 2-3 times higher than the official tally of confirmed deaths. But we all know people will call the estimated number a ploy to make Trump look bad even though the death toll for nearly every pandemic is an estimate.
The death numbers are also at the same time being overstated, as people who are dying from other causes, who also happen to have the coronavirus, are being classified as dying from the coronavirus, regardless of whether that was the determining cause of death or not. This is not the usual way that these death statistics are accounted for.
The bottleneck for this whole exercise appears to be a lack of ventilators. Already we see New York State announcing that their initial requests were too high and that they will not need nearly as many ventilators as initially forecast. Again, that is good news.
Once there are enough ventilators to go around, there will be no legitimate reason to continue this lockdown any further. And it appears that point may be coming up a lot sooner than what the experts were projecting, even quite recently.
New York lost 800 people yesterday, and that number is climbing. On average, less than two minutes between deaths.
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...and either laying people off or sending them home.
The hospitals are laying people off because they're not making enough money of treating COVID-19 cases. The low-manpower, high-revenue cases that are needed to keep things running aren't there. Using market mechanisms for health care is a fragile model and it completely crumbles in a crisis.
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Our system would have been able to handle it looking at the situation and seeing the hospital vacancies at this point.
The hospitals are laying people off because they're not making enough money of treating COVID-19 cases. The low-manpower, high-revenue cases that are needed to keep things running aren't there. Using market mechanisms for health care is a fragile model and it completely crumbles in a crisis.
The government is going to eventually have to step in and backstop the hospitals if we see a massive failure rate (we kind of already did a first step to that in the stimulus).
I believe at that point the arguments against a public health care system in the US will no longer be tenable.
Nope. The reason it's coming up sooner is BECAUSE of the isolation, not in spite of it.
The estimated deaths - had we done absolutely nothing - would still be estimated the same. We all made a sacrifice and changed the outcome. Don't be fooled.
One thing that is happening is that the "flattening" worked - it reduced the strain on resources. Without anything else to go on - it was a guess - but a reasonable guess - so nevertheless, "be prepared for the worst" was the right choice. Turns out - lockdown works. Don't believe it? Ignore NY - they're screwed - but chart the day to day deaths if Any Euro country compared to Ohio, PA, FL, MI, or even LA. Especially CA. No comparison. At all. FLATTENED. Not the number of deaths - that's due to population size, age, and other things - but the Rate of Change of the Rate of Death. The Acceleration of the death. STEEP there. Not so steep here. It worked. No other explanation, unless you're gonna stick with "they were wrong all along." Without any science.
Here were your options:
We do nothing. It fixes itself. You say, "See? Nothing bad happened."
We do something. It fixes itself. You say, "See? Nothing bad happened."
It appears that this shutdown has effectively been a reaction to a projected inadequate supply of ventilators, not that those have worked very well for the people who have been put on them. Once there is an adequate supply of ventilators, there will be no solid excuse for continuing this extreme overreaction, other than that the medical professionals continue to advise caution. Which makes sense for them because they want to cover their behinds, but it is spectacularly bad for the rest of humanity.
We need to stop blindly deferring to these sorts of "experts" and realize that while their perspective is important, it is not the only important perspective that needs to be taken into account. That is why these sorts of decisions should not and cannot be left to them. Medical doctors are far too risk averse, in large part because of the legal environment, and they are also financially too self invested in this situation, in that they make a lot of money from these sorts of episodes.
Fortunately, I think President Trump and his team understand all of this.
The bottleneck for this whole exercise appears to be a lack of ventilators.
The mortality rate is pretty bad, once you're at the ventilator stage. That's a fair criticism of the press coverage and focus on ventilators. (Of course, the mortality rate among those who need a ventilaotr and can't get one approaches 100%, so...)
The number of COVID deaths will certainly be much higher than what has currently been reported.
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The provisional counts for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths are based on a current flow of mortality data in the National Vital Statistics System. National provisional counts include deaths occurring within the 50 states and the District of Columbia that have been received and coded as of the date specified. It is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated. Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods. Death counts for earlier weeks are continually revised and may increase or decrease as new and updated death certificate data are received from the states by NCHS. COVID-19 death counts shown here may differ from other published sources, as data currently are lagged by an average of 1–2 weeks.
Pneumonia deaths are included to provide context for understanding the completeness of COVID-19 mortality data and related trends. Deaths due to COVID-19 may be misclassified as pneumonia deaths in the absence of positive test results, and pneumonia may appear on death certificates as a comorbid condition. Thus, increases in pneumonia deaths may be an indicator of excess COVID-19-related mortality. Additionally, estimates of completeness for pneumonia deaths may provide context for understanding the lag in reporting for COVID-19 deaths, as it is anticipated that these causes would have similar delays in reporting, processing, and coding.
One reason we know COVID is far worse than the flu is because the number of official pneumonia-related deaths is always significantly larger than the number of flu-related deaths (ordinarily 4 to 5x larger). Here, we see confirmed COVID deaths running neck and neck with classified pneumonia deaths if not outpacing pneumonia deaths completely.
The deadliest week of flu/pneumonia in recent history was in January 2018. 7,018 people died. COVID alone has claimed 10,434 lives in the last week. We have will have a better sense of things once we have more complete pneumonia information, but it is clear that this will have a much higher death toll than 2018 did for both flu and pneumonia combined.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 04-09-2020 at 03:59 PM..
One reason we know COVID is far worse than the flu is because the number of official pneumonia-related deaths is always significantly larger than the number of flu-related deaths (ordinarily 4 to 5x larger). Here, we see confirmed COVID deaths running neck and neck with classified pneumonia deaths if not outpacing pneumonia deaths completely.
The deadliest week of flu/pneumonia in recent history was in January 2018. 7,018 people died. COVID alone has claimed 10,434 lives in the last week. We have will have a better sense of things once we have more complete pneumonia information, but it is clear that this will have a much higher death toll than both than 2018 did for flu and pneumonia combined.
Well, Dr. Fauci is out today projecting 60,000 deaths, all-in, which is less than were attributed to the flu year before last. Perhaps this projection and this expert opinion will also be as wrong as all of the rest of them have been so far.
The original models were all based on the US and the world doing nothing of course.
Unfortunately we will never know for sure how much of an overreaction our actions may have been.
I think it's in their job description....plug in the most exaggerated..most extreme scenario
...that's sounds familiar
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