[ExI] England reduces total Covid-19 deaths by 12%

[Henry Rivera]

I realize now that I do have a FREE account there which maybe is needed. But all the NYT covid-19 content is free as a public service. I don’t have a paid subscription. I know we’d get a better analysis from you Spike if you read the whole thing. 

I have friends who say the economy is causing deaths and who might argue the extra deaths are related to stress or poverty or something along those lines. The article however made me think otherwise. I thought it would end after a few more paragraphs than the two I pasted, but it’s quite thorough. I’d love someone’s commentary who’s read it. I’ll email the whole thing to anyone for educational purposes upon request if you don’t want to make a free NYT account. 

-Henry 

> On Aug 15, 2020, at 1:23 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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> > On Behalf Of Henry Rivera via extropy-chat
> Subject: Re: [ExI] England reduces total Covid-19 deaths by 12%
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> Maybe the death counts are not correct after all. Did anyone else see this? Interesting methodology for estimating the true death count. 
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> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.html
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> >…“Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.
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> >…As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus, as people die from the virus as well as by other causes linked to the pandemic.”
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> Thanks Henry,
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> This article is behind a paywall.  I kinda get the drift from just the first two paragraphs however: it is crazy difficult to analyze the data in a scientifically-useful way.  In the states (and perhaps elsewhere) financial and political motives have really messed up data collection.  When a person dies, there is seldom just one thing wrong, so the question itself is somewhat subjective.  If a test on a corpse detects antibodies, that doesn’t really tell the coroner how long ago the patient had the disease.
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> So… we know.  We need to look at overall death rates this year compared to the average of the other years, then say this is about the number of deaths connected to covid, but it is still unclear what percent were from the disease, what percent from government actions taken to stop the pandemic, what percent were from people staying away from the hospital or doctor for fear of covid, etc.  These are numbers we may never know.
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> spike
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