^ there is a glaring problem with that theory:
In 2020 the U.S population is suffering from many more deaths, in fact a lot more excessive death not attributed to COVID-19 in comparison to the baseline deaths numbers from the prior years. If anything, the number of COVID-19 related deaths are UNDERREPORTED.
While it is probable that in a for-profit healthcare system there are more openings for the kind of malfeasances which you are referring to, I firmly believe that if the cases of fraud went head-to-head with the actual number of COVID-19 related deaths, I will win the argument and you will lose. I am pretty confident about that.
Apologies for not having the time to get to this earlier before the topic got a little heated again.
Yes, I found Chip's meme amusing, simply as a general illustration of the different mentalities being so resistant to things.
But to get back to the point of the thread, which is to discuss data and information about this disease and pandemic:
To add to Matty's post:
1) Yes, the excess mortality in the US has spiked significantly from March onwards. ~235,000 excess deaths from March to August (i.e. over and above the average number of deaths due to all causes, when compared to the previous 5 years).
2) The thing is, there are a LOT of people who are unfamiliar with these subjects, and don't know how to parse the data, or understand what it means.
For example, there has recently been a claim/theory circulating from folks who say they have found proof that the CDC has been inflating the Covid-19 fatality numbers. The claim stems from not understanding how death certificates are filled;
"The CDC website just recently changed their reporting quietly, without telling anyone. They now state that ONLY 6% of the death certificates list Covid-19 as the sole cause of death. SEE?!!! 94% of the deaths attributed to Covid-19 aren't due to Covid-19, but are caused by other issues those people had!!! They're just pumping up the numbers to scare people!". ***which is a spurious claim in the first place. That comment has been there for months. Someone digging for confirmation bias only just recently noticed it, and began screeching about it***.
Standard practice is generally to list contributing causes of death, but also to list underlying conditions that may not have directly caused the death. Significant comorbidities are commonly listed (eg. Heart Disease, COPD etc.). Obesity has also been identified as a significant comorbidity for Covid-19, and guess what? In the US, obesity is over 42% as of the 2017-2018 data.
The other part that the overwhelming majority of non-medical personnel will be unaware of, is HOW the descriptions of the cause of death are entered in the death certificates. It's exceedingly rare to simply list the cause of death as "influenza".
A typical death attributed to a patient who's tested positive for influenza, and is due to influenza would be entered in a format something like;
'Cause of death' - cardiac arrest, due to acute bacterial pneumonia infection, resulting from confirmed infection with influenza Type A.
People don't tend to die OF the flu, but it kills thousands of people in the US anyway. They die from complications that arise from infection WITH the flu, and the death certificates are filled as such.
Yes, comorbidities, whether it's old age, immunocompromisation due to other health factors, obesity, COPD, diabetes etc. significantly increase an individual's risk of death from contracting an infection (whether it's influenza, or Covid-19 with its 20 - 30x higher CFR), and those things will likely be listrd in the death certificate as well.
The people looking for confirmation bias, with a lack of understanding, are the ones asking the equivalent of, "Yeah, but did they die OF the flu, or WITH the flu?". "Did all those people in the holocaust die FROM the concentration camps, or merely IN/AT the concentration camps?"
Another argument I've seen fairly often is, "Most of the deceased were going to die soon anyway. Look at the average age of Covid-19 deaths. They would've probably died within the next 12 months even without Covid-19".
This is another example of people misunderstanding the terminology, statistics and reality of the data/figures they're looking at. "See, the person was 77 y/o. Average life expectancy in the US is 78. They were likely going to die in the next year anyway".
No, that's not how it works. The life expectancy figure is from birth, and is simply a statistical mean. It does NOT mean that on average, 77 year old US citizens only have 12 months left to live. In general, people in the US who make it to the age of 77, can generally expect another 7-8 years of life, even WITH comorbidities.
When the statistics state that the average life expectancy in Europe in the 1700s was 30-40 years, it does NOT mean that finding 50 year old people was extremely uncommon and that folks rarely lived past 40-45. The life expectancy takes into account infant mortality.
In ANY region with little to no access to modern medical treatment/advancements (i.e. the entire planet in the 1700s, and many 3rd world regions even today), children die at exceedingly high rates. The probability of surviving to their 5th birthday was/is alarmingly low (compared to that same probability now, for regions with good access to modern healthcare).
The likelihood of surviving to adulthood in those times/regions was even lower. That significantly skews the life expectancy a lot lower, but it doesn't mean that there weren't a fair number of 60, 70 or 80 year olds regularly exceeding the 'life expectancy' numbers. It's just that most people don't really understand what the numbers mean/indicate.
To give another example of conspiracy theorists/confirmation bias types misinterpreting things they don't understand;
Years ago, there was a summit with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (and others, though it's been awhile and I don't recall all the details).
Antivaxxer conspiracy theorists posted a segment of the videotaped discussion, where they talked about increasing access to modern healthcare/medicine in 3rd world regions and how access to vaccines can help with population control in those areas. The antivaxxers immediately began screeching about "Proof that vaccines have ingredients to sterilize/kill people because they want to limit/cull undesirables!". No, it's just that the individuals in thr discussion are well aware of how access to modern healthcare affects population growth, so there was no need for the preamble of clarifying it.
Wherever infant mortality (and mortality in general) has been highest, birth rates are also significantly higher. The simple reason is that if the probability of a newborn dying before they reach adulthood is high due to disease and/or famine, people have more children to increase the chances that there will at least be a few surviving heirs. Even in the US, a few centuries back, bigger families were the norm.
As access to good healthcare improves and the probability of any newborn reaching adulthood increases significantly, people in the society naturally tend to choose to have fewer children. This is a pattern that has been seen in most developed nations, and is what they were referring to, but the uninformed misinterpreted what they heard, instead using it confirm their personal bias.
In regions of Africa, where high infant mortality due to disease and famine is common, reducing infant/child mortality with better access to modern healthcare and vaccines can help with the overpopulation that creates a downward spiral with famine.
Families are bigger due to the attempt to increase the odds of surviving heirs against the high death rates due to disease and famine, but feeding a bigger family from limited supplies/resources increases the likelihood of death from starvation. By reducing the probability of deaths due to disease, and potentially reducing the size of families when that concern is ameliorated, the reduction in family size and overall population can also reduce the risk of famine/starvation.
This holds true with how the information is dealt with in this pandemic. Some ill-informed folks are misinterpreting the data because they don't understand what it actually means or indicates.
The ones whom I consider even worse, are more insidious. They may actually know what the data and information indicates, but are counting on the masses being uninformed, and thus easily misled by skewing the way the information is interpreted or presented.
I've really come to dislike bloggers, because most of them are simply attention whores, opining/ranting about things they're generally clueless about. Very, very few have the integrity to just present information in an unbiased and fact-checked manner, but how do you separate the wheat from the chaff, when anyone with a computer/cellphone can decide to be a blogger? The folks who follow/listen to/read their stuff are generally similarly, or even more uninformed, so they're even more easily misled.
We can choose to be more careful about educating ourselves on specific topics, but as mentioned in this thread, it"s understandable that not everyone has the time, background or desire to do that. If it's important enough though...