“…the dread of something after death,The undiscovered country from whose bournNo traveler returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
A great article in The New Atlantis, “Just a New York Problem?” by Schulman, Foht and Matlack, compares covid-19 deaths, state-by-state, for the week ending April 29, 2020, with deaths from various other causes—car accidents, flu/pneumonia, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and all causes—for the week ending April 28, 2018. The map is color coded to show which mortality rate is less than that for covid-19. For example:
- Wyoming, the color is white, showing that 1 death due to covid-19 is surpassed by all the other listed causes of death for a similar week in 2018;
- New Jersey, the color is black showing the 1707 deaths attributed to covid-19 surpasses the 1369 deaths attributed to all causes;
- Texas, the color is magenta showing the 189 deaths attributed to covid-19 surpass the 168 deaths due to Alzheimer’s, the 38 deaths due to flu/pneumonia, or the 64 deaths due to car accidents.
I like this kind of number crunching!
Go here to read the rest.
A good tactic for the attacker in a battle is to try to appear in as many places at once. The defending general needs to keep his head and arrange his forces according to his enemies’ real strength. At the start of the Pacific War in 1942 we had reason to fear the Japanese could be anywhere, until experience and intelligence focused our efforts (and calmed out national nerves). We need to do the same with this Chi-Com “gift” to the world: tough measures around the old and sick, and in high-density areas, more restrained measures elsewhere.
Context. Every two or three days more Americans are killed by the China Murder Virus than died at Pearl Harbor.
Respectfully, not enough context T. Shaw. How many days does it take the grim reaper (i.e. all causes of death) to kill more Americans than the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor?
I’m not saying that the Chinese murder virus isn’t a murderous virus. It is. But we’ve turned it into the Jack the Ripper of viruses because of the attention we’ve paid to it. Everybody knows Jack the Ripper killed 5 prostitutes in London in 1889(? guessing from memory here). How many prostitutes were murdered by Not Jack the Ripper in that time frame? Might be interesting to know.
Is it really appropriate to say Covid19 killed more people than heart disease did when heart disease sets people up for a Covid19 death?
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Heart disease kills. Not always, but it does kill. Covid19 kills, but not always (in fact, usually not), but it does kill. Is it really fair to pick one over the other?
“Is it really appropriate to say Covid19 killed more people than heart disease did when heart disease sets people up for a Covid19 death?”
DJH, I’m not sure I really understand your comment, but I interpret that the authors of the work were picking out “proximate” causes, that an occurrence or disease happened to cause death and if it hadn’t happened there wouldn’t have been a death.
Another thought (wish I’d had it when posting this piece): a very important statistic is the number of deaths due to heart disease for the week ending 29 April 2020. If this number is significantly less than that for previous years one might conclude that some deaths attributed to covid-19 were, in fact, due to heart disease. If the number is significantly greater than previous years, one might conclude that patients with heart disease were neglected due to focus on covid-19 treatment.
From what I’ve heard one of the issues with the covid-19 death count is one of comorbidity. There are cases where people have died having multiple health issues at the time of death. The reporting standards for reporting covid-19 deaths have been liberalized, so this may make it harder to know if the statistics are really comparing apples to apples.
Dr B.K.: What I mean is that the Coronavirus that causes Covid19 acts as more of an opportunistic killer. Yes, there have been some healthy, young people who have been struck down. For the most part though it is the elderly with heart disease or diabetes, or the obese, the immuno-surpressed, etc.
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Yes, I supposed Covid19 killed these people, but it seems to me rather like my grandmother-in-law who died of breast cancer at the age of 104. My mother died of a heart attack at the age of 58–after a nasty battle with cancer, pneumonia, and weight of 80 lbs (she was 5’4″). Is it really appropriate to include my grandmother-in-law of breast cancer stats? Is it appropriate to include my mother in the heart disease category?
Yes, there have been some healthy, young people who have been struck down. For the most part though it is the elderly with heart disease or diabetes, or the obese, the immuno-surpressed, etc.
I would disagree. CDC stats show that the real threshold for the higher COVID mortality rates starts at 45. Starting there all age cohorts report that the percent of total deaths Feb 1 thru Apr 25 related to COVID are over 5%. In fact, the COVID / Total deaths for 90 year olds is slightly better than for 50 year olds, Of course, these numbers are by no means final (hope the columns stay aligned!).
Provisional Deaths from 2/1/2020 through 4/25/2020 – CDC
Age cohort COVID-19 Total Percent
Deaths Deaths
under 1 year 4 3725 0.11
1-4 years 2 723 0.28
5-14 years 3 1072 0.28
15-24 years 42 6385 0.66
25-34 years 278 13532 2.05
35-44 years 707 19539 3.62
45-54 years 1929 37899 5.09
55-64 years 4699 91146 5.16
65-74 years 8001 141556 5.65
75-84 years 10196 177917 5.73
85 years and older 11458 225944 5.07
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku
TomD…I’m sorry, I can’t make head nor tails out of your table…could you please repeat with spacings and headings?
i imagine one would find “the real threshold for higher mortality” from nearly all causes of death starts at around 45. Except maybe for suicide, homicide, accidents (vehicular, occupational) and drug overdoses.
i imagine one would find “the real threshold for higher mortality” from nearly all causes of death starts at around 45
Of course. And so what would we expect as a consequence? That 45 is elderly? Or that COVID-19 affects some non-elderly age cohorts the same as it affects elderly cohorts? I say it’s time to dump the ‘it mainly affects the elderly’ meme, because it’s untrue.
BTW, according to the CDC stats the total COVID-19 deaths for ages 25-64 is 7613. The CDC ‘most likely’ average estimate for 1976-2007 flu deaths for ages 19-64 is 2385, and the 2017-18 season (the worst since 1968) for ages 18-64 is 9554. So, COVID-19 is much worse than the average flu, but not yet (as of 4/25/2020) as bad as the worst flu for the non-retiree age brackets.
Bob, I had spaces in the table, they got stripped out when it was posted. The column headings were ‘Age cohort’, ‘COVID-19 deaths’, ‘Total deaths’, and ‘Percent’, The first line under those headings should read ‘under 1 year’, ‘4’, ‘3725’, and ‘0.11’
TomD:
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I developed hypertension in my forties, probably about age 43 or 44. I didn’t start treating it until a couple of years later. Hypertension is called the silent killer because a lot of us are walking around with it and we have it and don’t know it.
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Obesity affects about 42% of adults, and I am willing to bet a lot of 45+ people have hypertension and pre-diabetes to go with it. Once a person hits 40, they are not young, and a lot have the beginnings of heart disease and a weakening immune system.
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https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
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I probably should not have said elderly with heart disease, but the elderly, those with heart disease, diabetes, etc.
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It might be more accurate to say the health-compromised impoverish who live in large cities.