We fouled up. We trusted them. Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts gives us the details:
Why I’m waiting on the whole 6% news about Covid
What’s that? The news reported that only 6% of those who have died of Covid died only with Covid. The other 94% had various other conditions, ailments, or comorbidities (a new addition to the breakfast table lexicon this year).
In other words, 94% of those who die have something else. That’s all that means. In fact, it probably means not much more to the medical pros from Dover. It just means 6% certainly died of Covid since they had nothing else. The other 94% had something else as well. Whether they developed the other conditions because of Covid, had it before hand and Covid exacerbated their other conditions, or they just died of the other conditions and only coincidently had Covid is not mentioned.
Now this isn’t actually news. Truth be told, and I hate to break it to people, but “Science(TM)” doesn’t always know everything. It doesn’t even know what our pop culture narrative assumes it knows (which is usually close to everything). Nor is there some magical science room where all the stats and all the proof of all the facts in the universe are kept and we can just go in, open a file, and there’s the answer! Nope.
Fact is, one thing we’ve learned during all this is just how limited and often ignorant of things scientists can be. So far, most of what they’ve come up with – aside from the technological equipment that can help keep people alive – is what pioneers in the 19th century probably would have figured out: if you get sick, take care of yourself, avoid others, try not to spread it, and if it gets bad get to the doctor. Everything else is still up in the air, or the science has proven to be wrong, or they just don’t know yet. The same goes for most academic and scholarly disciplines, but right now we’re just doing science as it relates to C19.
So it’s nothing to see that there isn’t an exact count of how many actually died of the Flu in a given year. Or AIDS. That’s another common one. You’ll get how many died, but then you’ll often have a little asterisk that says the numbers are likely much higher, but it’s tough to tell if it’s AIDS or something else the individuals died from.
Now, if I had something to ask, it would be why it hasn’t been until now that this has become a thing. I wouldn’t be like the good deacon above and flippantly dismiss it. I would like to know why in other cases, when there could be many causes behind a person’s death, we often only get the most restrained reporting of numbers regarding those who clearly died of the ailment in question. Why, for instance, do we hear that 7K to 9K Americans die of AIDS, and only see in the footnotes that the numbers could be much higher, but we don’t know? Why isn’t that how Covid-19 is reported: “There have been over 10,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the US, but when considering co-morbidities and other compromising conditions the numbers are likely much higher.”?
Why we wonders? That’s what I would like to know. Perhaps it would be nice knowing if that discrepancy is common (6% vs. 94%). I mean, is it usually that big of a difference? But if I had one question at a microphone in a town hall, that would be my question. Why the difference in how Covid versus other infectious diseases is being reported where deaths are concerned?
Go here to comment. My conclusions are much more severe than Dave’s. I have a very good memory. This garbage was sold to us as the second coming of the Black Death. Unless we immediately panicked and obeyed our fearless leaders with corpse like obedience, millions would die in the streets just in the US alone. It was all rubbish and hysteria, but of course the idiot politicians who led us to set fire to our civil liberties and our economy will never admit that. Most people will remember this because of the virus pandemic, I will remember the pandemic of human folly that captivated so much of the globe.
Yes, Covid exclusive deaths are about 10,000. This entire episode has been a psyop effort by Democrats to defeat Trump. See William Briiggs: https://wmbriggs.com/post/32396/
The problem is bigger than Dave imagines. The CDC states that those people, 94%, had 2.6 co-morbidities. While I haven’t read all of the CDC report, but if we followed the pattern in Italy as some medical people report, many of those 94% would have died this year anyway because of the co-morbidities. The Covid only advanced the deaths 6 months, as many predicted.
Yes it’s worse than Dave imagines. Covid-19 is a disease caused by a respiratory virus. If you die from it, then it stands to reason you died from respiratory distress of some sort. That’s a much smaller number than what we’ve been force fed. In fact, we can’t just lump in all the pneumonia cases because pneumonia is bacterial as well viral and there’s no evidence those folks got a bacterial infection from virus. So, where does that leave us? Well, no one knows the actual number of deaths attributable to Covid-19, but we do know for certain it is way less than the 180k number being sold to us by “science”. This is clearly a case of we need to defeat Trump at all costs. This simply proves that the party of baby killing really has no limit to the depths of its depravity. If there was any justice in this country, Cuomo would be in prison by now for manslaughter at the least. I actually think he gave Kermit Gosnell a run for his money.
Shortly before this came out, there was a sudden surge in talk about “undercounted COVID deaths” that used excess deaths as a baseline.
Because, gosh, there wasn’t anything else going on that would trigger increased deaths, right? Stress, suicide….
And then there’s the whole only 10% of the people who tested positive were actually sick thing from the weekend.
The corruption of the FDA has again been exposed.
When the FDA requires expensive prospective controlled clinical studies before approving a medication are they following the science or controlling the science?
Because the FDA approval process is so complicated and expensive, large pharmaceutical companies are at a great advantage getting a new treatment approved.
Hydroxychloroquine is not the only inexpensive treatment that the FDA has resisted for the treatment of Covid. Medicare and insurance carriers do not want to pay for medications or services that are not FDA approved; so even with an Institutional Review Board approval the expense of completing the controlled prospective randomized required for FDA approval is prohibitively expensive.
Although it seem reasonable to approve a medication or procedure that is sate and shows promise so that studies and the science can proceed, this is not how the FDA operates.
My Chris Farley (RIP) imitation. “Governor Cuomo, Remember when you used China virus hysterics to lock down the NY businesses [no family’s paycheck is nonessential] and kill the economy and tax base? And, then, you and DiBlasio let NYC burn and the taxpayers left? That was awesome!”
From day one, it was 100%, 24/7 politicized/scam science deployed to exaggerate the perceived negative impacts of the China virus and blame Trump so he loses in November.
Qui bono?
They oppose CHQ for two reasons: One, it likely will reduce the Wuhan flu death rate, which they must exaggerate, and two, Trump is for it: TDS.
Father Loya’s take on it. It is a short 6 minute clip. I am guessing that Deacon Greydanus would consider him something of a Covid-skeptic.
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https://www.facebook.com/annunciationbyzantinecatholicparish/videos/306757677213268/?extid=4DE2Zx0iCKqmKsrV
The third reason HCQ is opposed is that it’s a cheap generic, so there’s no money to be made off of it.
Slightly off topic, but this came my way. There could be other fairly inexpensive ways to treat this disease. We have heard of Cytokin storms, but there is something called bradykinin storms, and those may explain some of Covid19 symptoms.
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I am on an ACE inhibitor. I read a while back medical researchers were not sure if that put me at elevated risk. After reading this article, I assume I am. On the other hand, I get plenty of Vit D and Zinc. Vitamin D is listed in this article, as are a few other FDA approved drugs.
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https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63
If a Democrat had been in the White House, we all would have been put on a low dose of HCQ, and Vitamin D and Zinc supplements and told to get on with our lives because Covid wasn’t any worse than a bad flu.
And there would have been much rejoicing.
Terrible article. Comorbidities have been part of the discussion at least since March. Griffey cleverly plays it off, though, jumping from comorbidities to “science is often wrong” so fast that you think it was something that science was wrong about.
Remember all the stories out of NYC about respirators and pneumonia? This is public record. We’ve gotten better at treating the disease, so we’re not seeing as many complications. We have been experimenting with treatments, even less costly ones, and we’ve been getting better.at it. It’s always been a disease that does more damage to the elderly and infirm. Again, that’s not news.
It’s always been a disease that does more damage to the elderly and infirm. Again, that’s not news.
Then why close down schools?
“More damage” is very much understating it.
“The average age of death is higher than average life expectancy” is a bit more informative.
Similarly, “two or more co-morbidities increases the risk of adverse incomes” is not even in the same time-zone as “single-digit percent of those who died had fewer than two and change CONTRIBUTING FACTORS to their death.”
Contrast:
“Obesity and low vitamin D levels increase the risk of death”
vs
“Subject died of late-stage cancer and COVID-19.”
Pinky, my point was wondering why the difference in covering and reporting? As I said, when you go to find out flu deaths it usually lists only those we’re certain of, mentioning that there could be many more. Same with AIDS. That’s a very common one where the least number is presented, typically after mentioning that far more with HIV/AIDS have died, but perhaps due to other conditions and not only HIV/AIDS. I was curious about why the difference. Why not say 20K or so is how many we’re sure have died of C19, but there are many more and so on and so forth? Why run with and constantly repeat the highest number imaginable, leaving us to wonder about that little 94% as if it’s no big deal when it’s so often a big deal in other cases? Why the difference in how it’s presented? That’s well outside the obvious fact that science isn’t always correct, including with C19. But that is a different discussion.
In Minnesota over 99% of all COVID-19 deaths are from ages 35+. Over 90% of all deaths are from ages 60+. The department of health only releases age data in 5 year brackets so the exact median age for death is impossible to determine, but it is in the 80-84 bracket. The number of people 100+ in the death counts is the same as everyone in the 0-44 range.
Note too that the situation is even more skewed because despite the lower death rates, more young people are infected. For example the 0-34 range, which count for less than 1% of the deaths, account for almost 40% of the total cases. The 0-59 range, which count for less than 10% of the deaths, account for close to 3/4 of the total cases.
And this analysis doesn’t even deal with whether the younger people were sick or had compromised immune systems.
And yet we constantly get stories on the news here how opening colleges and schools may be risking killing our kids.
The 94% that died of co-morbidity tells me we as a nation are not very healthy from obesity, diabetes, high BP, smoking, drug use, alcoholism, etc. Though I am suspect of the positive test numbers.
We have naval medical research stations across the world. The Jakarta station first to ID SARS. What happened with COVID-19?
Dave, I agree that scientists being wrong is outside the discussion. So why did you put it there? It wasn’t an accident. You talked about a stat and immediately followed it with scientists are often wrong.
Now, if I said that I didn’t know why you did that but, let’s be honest, some people on the internet are known communist liars, a reader might think that I had (a) demonstrated that you were lying, and (b) labelled you a communist. Those are natural implications. I don’t think that either of those things are true, but if I just said those things you’d call me out for it, and you should. I remember an (ultimately fruitless) conversation on this site about whether a particular bishop was lying or being deceitful, and I thought there was a difference. I don’t think your article included any lies, but I don’t think it was assembled in good faith.
Don, some schools are opening. I don’t have school-age kids, so I haven’t thought about it much, but I would have expected more to be opening. I think a lot of the early shutdown was lack of understanding, and a lot of the current shutdown is parental over-cautiousness. Then again, kids cough on everything, so there might be legitimate concern about them increasing the spread. I just don’t know.
It varies Pinky. However, even in schools that are open the restrictions are beyond parody, as is the case in my local schools where the schools are half in session and half in distance learning. The thing about kids is that the regular flu is deadlier to them than the Covid nonsense. Our reaction lacks all thought and proportion.
Pinky,
The problem with policing things based on whether they are in “good faith” is that readers can wonder whether your comments were made in “good faith.” It’s an argument ultimately made on your moral authority, but by introducing the topic you’ve also introduced the means to cause others to doubt your own moral authority. A better means of proceeding when you aren’t sure why people said things is to ask them.
Pinky, my point wasn’t to hammer the fact that science obviously gets it wrong sometimes, as it has with C19. My point was that science doesn’t always know everything, and therefore we shouldn’t be shocked when it’s reported that the stats aren’t 100% ‘this is exactly how each and every person has died relative to C19’ I then went to what I could speak to, and that’s why the discrepancy between how the stats we do have are reported in this case (the highest number possible reported with little qualifying) versus other diseases in which lower numbers often are given, with mere sidenotes about there possibly being more, but we can’t be sure. That’s what I chose to focus on since, as I said, I don’t expect there to be some magical room where the science knows all and has an exact stat that demonstrates everything.
The 94% that died of co-morbidity tells me we as a nation are not very healthy from obesity, diabetes, high BP, smoking, drug use, alcoholism, etc.
Or maybe we’re just old and worn out, collectively speaking.
South Dakota is similar to Minnesota. The median age for positive cases is somewhere in the middle of the 30-30 age group. The age group with the largest number of infections is the 20-20 age group The median age for fatalities is somewhere in the upper 70s. The age group with the largest number of fatalities is the 80+ group More people in that group have died (78) than in the next 3 groups (50-59, 60-69, 70-79) combined (75).
Or maybe we’re just old and worn out, collectively speaking.
The Baby Boom didn’t have very many kids– meeting replacement was unusual– and that cohort is hitting retirement, now.
Plus, people are surviving a lot of stuff that would’ve killed them before.
That said, those getting sick– as in actually sick, not testing as infected– and dying, are overwhelmingly from a tiny portion of the population. (population pyramid in link below) That’s if you don’t look at just the something like .7% of the population that is about half of the deaths– nursing home residents.
Drawing conclusions about the general health of the country from that sampleis not wise.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html#field-anchor-people-and-society-age-structure
In Minnesota nursing home deaths have reliably made up about 3/4 of the total deaths.