Just to keep track of the nonsense that has wrecked our economy and generally made our politicians run around as if their fool heads were on fire, each day I publish the corona virus total death toll in the US based upon the latest data I can find. A single death is an immense tragedy if you love the person. However, we are not talking about love, but rather public policy, which should always involve a sober analysis of risk and cost. Please recall that in a bad normal flu year our death toll in the US can be as high as 90,000.
Note: this will be a total death toll since the beginning of this bad farce, and not a daily toll. As of the beginning of May 4 the death toll is 68,602. May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.
France started going through some of the pneumonia samples and found it was in France in December. Dude had been sick for 15 days at that point, and hadn’t been traveling recently.
China, of course, is trying to pretend this means it wasn’t from China.
Because if they say it often enough, it will make them destroying evidence (and witnesses) to the outbreak back in November go away.
I’m trying to find data for deaths due to heart disease during April 2020. If the number is appreciably less than that for similar periods other years one might conclude that many deaths due solely to heart disease are being incorporated as due to covid-19. If the number is appreciably greater one might conclude that more people are dying from heart disease because of neglect occasioned by hospitals and doctors focusing on covid-19. …or valid fluctuations?
Oopsie…. CDC has revised the numbers down a itty bit to 38,576.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
Just a bit.
Reading the fine print we see that number hasn’t been downgraded. It been steady. CDC never reported 69K deaths and then downgraded it. Their numbers lag behind because they’re based on death certs and those take time to be filed, recorded and sent to the CDC. Facts matter. “Provisional death counts may not match counts from other sources, such as media reports or numbers from county health departments. Our counts often track 1–2 weeks behind other data for a number of reasons: Death certificates take time to be completed. There are many steps involved in completing and submitting a death certificate. Waiting for test results can create additional delays. States report at different rates. Currently, 63% of all U.S. deaths are reported within 10 days of the date of death, but there is significant variation among jurisdictions. It takes extra time to code COVID-19 deaths. While 80% of deaths are electronically processed and coded by NCHS within minutes, most deaths from COVID-19 must be coded manually, which takes an average of 7 days. Other reporting systems use different definitions or methods for counting deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html — this one remains similar.
The numbers reported by the NVSS appear to lag behind the CDC data by a week; maybe two.. If you look at table 2, “Deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), pneumonia, and influenza reported to NCHS by jurisdiction of occurrence, United States. Week ending 2/1/2020 to 5/2/2020.*,” South Dakota reported 11 “Covid 19 Deaths” and no Deaths with Pneumonia and Covid 19.” Between 2/1/2020 and 5/2/2020. South Dakota was at 11 deaths on Sunday April 26 (reported by the SD DOH on that day). The next reported deaths were reported on Wednesday April 29.
So the info SD transmitted to NVSS was probably transmitted on Monday, 4/27, and the next transmission was today, and when NVSS updates their information for the week ending 5/9/20, they’ll include the 2 people who died on the 29, and the 4 who died on 4/30 and the 4 who died on 5/1, bringing us to the current covid 19 death toll in SD of 21.
Or maybe it will take another week for the ten deaths reported locally between 4/29 and 5/1 to show up.
It’s interesting to me that the 11th death, which was reported locally on 4/26, the 1st day of the week ending on 5/2 made it into NVSS, but the other’s didn’t. It would seem logical to conclude SD reports on Monday (in this case, 4/27) for the previous week, ending on 4/25. Probably the 4/26th death happened on 4/25 so it got reported publicly on 4/26 and included on the weekly report of 4/27, which NVSS publishes as “week ending 5/2/2020”
The double and triple counting in the table one is bothersome: 92,615 people died with “Pneumonia, influenza or Covid-19.” I’m understanding that to mean, we don’t know what they died of, but they were suffering from all three at the time of death.
Bob, you might find this interesting. You’ve noted how the numbers decline over the weekend, only to go back during the business week.
We’re experiencing the opposite here. Our number of active cases drops (i.e. more recoveries than new infections reported) during the week, then on the weekends the number of active cases goes up (more new infections reported than recoveries to offset the new reports). That pattern has held for two weeks, so not quite long enough to be a trend. But what I’m inferring is that the slight uptick is due to people going in to be tested on the weekend because they don’t feel quite right, but they don’t feel particularly sick either.
I’m expecting our general downward trend in active cases to start climbing in the coming days. There were two drive-up clinics for Covid-19 testing in Sioux Falls today. One was specifically for Smithfield employees and their families.
It’s been obvious for some time now that when we make a concerted effort togo looking for this virus, we find it.
“The double and triple counting in the table one is bothersome: 92,615 people died with “Pneumonia, influenza or Covid-19.” I’m understanding that to mean, we don’t know what they died of, but they were suffering from all three at the time of death.”
I think that’s actually the count for everybody who died with one or more of those at the time of death, not (in most cases) all three.