We always hear that that those over 65 are at the highest risk of death from COVID.
Ever wonder what the percentages are in the 65-74, 75-84, and the over 85 range and where we are in general with respect to dying of COVID?
VERY easy to see at a glance: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
I don’t understand why people won’t look at the data. Why do they get mad when you say, “You know, I think things are getting better and here’s why.” They don’t want to hear it. It’s like trying to talk a kid out of believing there are monsters under the bed.
Mrs. Monomakhos
Until people stop believing the liberal media these irrational fears will continue. Here in Florida one news outlet reported that teachers in one area were in tears at the prospect of having to go back to work. Wonder who they’re voting for in November.
On a side note this data shows the reported death totals are overinflated for COVID
RE: “On a side note this data shows the reported death totals are overinflated for COVID.”
Yes, because with regard to the number of COVID deaths, they include deaths unrelated to COVID if the person was COVID positive at the time of death. Example: You’re 80 with heart disease. You come into the hospital with congestive heart failure. They test you for COVID, as they do all patients, and you’re positive. You die. They count you as a “COVID death.”
With regard to the number of cases, they count each time a test is performed as a “case.” A patient, especially in quarantine situation, is tested multiple times until they test negative X days in a row (I’d have to look it up but I think it is 2 days). Because each time a person is tested, they are counted as “a case” one patient could represent 10 cases, for example.
As if this weren’t enough to shake your faith in the numbers there are also also other factors that need to be considered: Bypassing FDA approval (and the rigorous testing that goes with it), test kits have flooded the market. False negatives and false positives are purportedly widespread.
Couple that, with really poor reporting, like what we saw in FL where 100% of the people tested were supposedly positive, which is ludicrous.
So what this means is that the actual numbers are considerably LOWER than have been reported.
My Dear, many people don’t “look at the data” because it upsets the narrative. Many people –particularly on the Left–are “sheeple” and they eagerly accept whatever the gummint tells them.
I hate to say it, but Aristotle wasn’t wrong: some people are born to be subservient. As long as their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter are met (as in slavery or servitude), they’re quite happy to schlep along with their lives with nary a care in the world. That is why we may be in the last stage of civilizational collapse but that’s another conversation.
Definitely a lot of lemmings in this world.
George,
I think you hit on a very interesting point. One would assume that most people would value and cherish freedom, but I have also had many experiences with people who refuse to look at the data. It’s as if they want to be scared and enjoy having their rights stripped away. As a freedom loving Jeffersonian and proud Orthodox Christian, it is a mindset that is completely anathema to me. I used to sometimes wonder how totalitarian regimes came to power and the people allowed it. Unfortunately, I don’t wonder anymore. I think I’m going to watch Braveheart again to restore my faith in humanity.
Jon, my study of history led me years ago to the conclusion that most people do not like freedom at all if it involves any discomfort.
Another one!
I have told more than one priest (for some reason, this has most frequently come up in discussions with priests), that when it comes to politics, I am a “hopeless Jeffersonian”.
Mathew, you and me both! I would add that I am a “hopeless Jeffersonian-Jacksonian” as well. But that’s just me.
George, I am not sure you can be both. I am pretty familiar with Jackson having read all of his published (at the time) letters and papers, the two best biographies of him at the time, numerous monographs and wrote a paper on him that, had God not intervened, I would have presented to the Kansas Historical Association. That would have gotten me well on my way to, perhaps, fufilling my dream at the time of studying under Robert Remini preeminent Jackson scholar. But God did intervene.
Though both were slave owners that is about the only similarity they had. Even in that they were quite different. For one thing Jackson deeply loved his wife Rachel and was faithful to her even when it cost him politically. Politically they were miles apart.
I’m actually a Monarchist. I am a child of a King, I worship a King and I am a citizen of a Kingdom.
“That is why we may be in the last stage of civilizational collapse but that’s another conversation”
I tend to agree, but, it’s hard to cut through all of the muck. But, If this is the case, the questions is what sort of civilization will come out on the other side? I tend to think there will be a Balkanization of America, ideologically we are just so different that I’m not totally convinced that coexistence can happen, one side will not be ruled by the other.
Petros, I would love to see this country split up into several countries. But for the life of me, I’m baffled by the fact that my friends on the right and the left all seem to think that would be horrible. I don’t get it.
The people who are denying the data are the same people who are denying that there are violent riots that are destroying cities across America. They are the same people who are having convulsions as they scream, “Orange man bad!” They are the same people who pledge allegiance to the Marxist…er…I mean…Democrat party.
Not really. By downplaying this, all we’re doing is undermining any recourse we might have against China and, beyond that, working against what is probably the strongest, most visible, and most timely argument we have for strengthening our borders and curtailing immigration.
You’re working toward what the Left wants.
There is an important caveat when looking at that CDC data which is crucial to understand to avoid being misled.
The most recent data is incomplete and is filled out over a longer time period. This is easily observed in the “Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease” graph, by changing Select Measure from ‘COVID-19 Deaths’ to ‘Total Deaths’. Notice that the data for the most recent weeks show a sharp downward trend. This is not because total deaths in the US have started some sort of magical decline, but because there is a variability involved in death reporting. A particular death that happened today might make it into that chart in a few days. But another death might take a few weeks.
Looking at the ‘Total Deaths’ graph, one can make a reasonable conclusion that data is reasonably complete three or four weeks back from the current date. And more or less definitive five or six weeks back from the current date.
Sadly, it remains highly likely that the US monthly death count will retain a stubborn floor of 25,000-30,000 deaths per month through August/September/October.
“Total Deaths” includes influenza and pneumonia, as well as COVID. “Provisional” means reported to the NCHS.
You are correct that the total deaths tab on that graph is COVID + ILI, rather than all-cause deaths, I misspoke. The point that one can err looking at the most recent weeks due to incomplete reporting is unaffected. If a couple weeks from now you go back and look at the same graph, the figures for the week of August 10 (last week), will be higher than they are today.
You are absolutely correct. The number will go up but the reporting we have in place now is far more timely than it was when the reporting structures were first being set up. We may see a bump because of all those people in the streets. But the trend that is is whittling down is there and that’s a good thing.
A few things I’d note in response. Different data sets use various reporting methods, and they are not identical in process or latency in data collection. You are correct that there are data sources aggregating better and faster than were available at the start of the pandemic. However, that is not really relevant to the particular CDC report you are highlighting. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is not designed to be able to pull out trends or draw conclusions from the immediate past.
There is simply too much variability in day to day reporting to be able to identify trends looking at a particular day of covid data. For things like deaths, the common practice seems to have settled on looking at a seven-day rolling average.
Unfortunately, when looking at seven day averages from aggressive aggregators like the COVID tracking project, the trend is not “whittling down” as you put it. For the moment it appears to be treading water at slightly over a thousand deaths a day.
This is extremely concerning, partially because deaths are generally lagging initial infections by many weeks. The current state of affairs dates back to prior to school and university reopening attempts. The data does not really support street protests being a major driver of the recent growth in infections and deaths. That trend appears to have started following Memorial Day weekend, which was when a lot of things started to “open up” again. In retrospect, opening bars and indoor dining will look to have been a terrible decision. I read of business intelligence units being able to correlate and predict future covid outbreaks by tracking signature transactions at restaurants (in-person dining).
Major universities such as Notre Dame and UNC that had just attempted to begin physical fall semesters have had to pull the plug after one week due to outbreaks. I suspect gathering students together, exposing many of them to infection, and the immediately sending them home spread out across the country is going to seem tragic in retrospect, but it will be a couple months until the actual consequences can be ascertained.
Flavius, you are correct. The numbers we were looking at for 8/15/20 (on 8/20 when I published them) will require up to another 9 days to be what I would call stable. It’s not like in the beginning, though, when everything was being calculated by hand. At this point, deaths are coded and transmitted electronically.
My point isn’t that these numbers are what they’re going to be in two weeks.
My point was that the numbers are way down from April and even the “experts” are revising yet another of their models predicting that instead of it taking 70% of the population being infected with COVID to reach herd immunity, it’s now going to take perhaps 50%.
Every time they revise their models, it’s always on the side of the virus being less severe than they originally assumed. We’ve come a long way from Bill Gates projections in 2018 that 33M would be death within 6 months.
It is also REALLY important to keep in mind what these numbers represent. The number of COVID deaths include deaths from other causes in COVID positive patients and there is not a 1-to-1 link between people with COVID and COVID cases. If someone is tested 10 times, they count each positive test as a “case.” A case does not represent a single person.
So, a case is not a person (it’s a positive test) an a COVID death is not a death from COVID; it’s a death of a patient who tested positive for COVID. The numbers are dramatically inflated.
The data will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods. Death counts for earlier weeks are continually revised and may increase or decrease as new and updated death certificate data are received from the states. According to the CDC, the lagged is an average of 1–2 weeks.
Let’s look at the data from mid April 18 and compare it to something not so recent, as it’s unlikely to change all that much. 6/27/20 would be good as it is before we see the bump from the thousands of people who flooded the streets during the riots. Let’s look at one category, i.e. the >85, because that’s where the highest number of deaths are. It’s worth remembering that social distancing was at its peak in mid April because all the restaurants, bars etc. were closed a month earlier in mid March.
04/18/20 = 5,657 COVID Deaths
06/27/20 = 1,083 COVID Deaths
This represents a 20% decrease between 4/18/20 and 6/27/20, when social distancing began to relax due to the riots.
Compare COVID with those who die of cardiovascular disease. Among women, more than 200,000 of the 454,613 total CVD deaths occurred in the ≥85 year age group. In men, approximately 100,000 of the 409,867 total CVD deaths were in those ≥85 years.
With regard to the universities, an outbreak means there are people who are testing positive. That’s it. My daughter (28) was just at a party where 5 of people tested positive and the rest had to get tested. I don’t know how many people were at this gathering but all but 2 didn’t know they had it. The 2 reported feeling like they had the flu. None were hospitalized. No one died. College age students usually do not get all that sick so there may be no tragedy “in retrospect”.
This is good news, right?
In brief, we both believe we are ‘looking at the data’, but we have some very different conclusions about things, and the differences are probably not reconcilable.
I know we discussed things last month, and I’m not out to re-litigate them here, just that what I said then still stands. If I am making repeating some summary ‘data-driven’ statements, they are:
* There are fewer deaths slipping through the cracks now than there were in April/May, but the actual death toll is probably over 200,000 at this point, still running ahead of the official numbers
* There are not a meaningful number of people dying ‘with’ covid. People really are dying ‘from’ covid, there is no real inflation of the numbers
* Even when you include the most elderly cases the YLL metrics on fatal cases are still depressingly high, it is not accurate to say that people dying from covid were about to keel over from preexisting conditions anyway
Again, social distancing began to relax Memorial Day weekend, not in late June. The wave that resulted from that in Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas had reopening as a root cause and not ‘riots’. It will be a few weeks before we start to get a grasp of the case count consequences of school and university reopenings, and a few weeks beyond that for the subsequent deaths to start rolling in.
Outbreaks at universities are going to cause extended clusters. I have lost track of how many family gatherings have resulted in outbreaks. One August 7 wedding reception in Maine has just been linked to fifty-three cases. And one death, from a person that didn’t even attend the reception but was infected by someone that was. It is a reasonable concern that students are going to bring disease back with them.
Cool. I’m pretty new to this site. I didn’t realize that Anderson Cooper commented here.
Unfortunately will attribute this “success” to masks and social distancing, etc. and as proof it should continue.
Here in Texas our Republican Atty General just filed yet another action to support religious liberty and freedom of speech. No Democrat has filed anything like this in the nation as I know on the state or the federal level. I would LOVE to be proven wrong, please advise. How any Christian (much less hierarch) cannot see the threat to religious liberty, free speech, life from womb to tomb of the Democratic platform and its representatives is unfathomable to me. I always wish those Christians would tell us 1. What/who is more important and 2. How they will like the results of a Democratic administration personally. Or like data, are they just ignoring predictable results?
People don’t look at the data because they can’t read it. Most of society thinks the Third Millenium AD began on the First of January 2000 instead of 2001 – ie: they can’t count in 10s, 100s, 1000s etc. So what chance do they have with difficult stuff like percentages, ratios etc?
I think most people were perfectly aware, or became aware, that the new Millenium AD began January 1, 2001. But it’s when the odometer turns a new set of zeros that folks like it. For whatever reason, people like it when the zeros pop up; next the fives. I suppose it’s a digit thing.
Thus a 50th wedding anniversary party is fun. (I’ve been to my grandparents’, put on my parents’ with my siblings, and our kids threw a party for ours.) All anniversaries ending in zero are ‘big’, those ending in 5 are a bit special; the others are ‘off year’ and just get a dinner out! 😉
The best synopsis of this satanic operation from an Orthodox perspective that I’ve run across this far.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/osc-57
In Christ,
Mike
Thank you, Mike, for the link. I’m reading the transcript and it’s really helpful.
Well, now I think Trump will win Michigan, Ohio, Pa, Wisconsin, Iowa, the only doubt is Florida. Most of the states outside of Pa had unemployment under 11 percent. Florida is a problem since Biden is after seniors over Trump wanting to get rid of the payroll taxes that could cut into social security. Michigan does more car manufacturing than Plane manufacturing. Aerospace companies are laying off due to less plane travel while car production is increasing. Changed my mind because of the labor stats in July.
Trump will probably win Minnesota as well. Florida is in the bag for The Golden Don as well. The high point of Democrat voting was 2018 when they had a charismatic nominee for governor but they came up short.
FYI, even though Trump has run unopposed in the 2020 primaries, in most states he won more GOP votes than all the Democrats combined. And that was before the St George Floyd riots. Personally, I would not be surprised if Oregon tips red in November. Why? Because as my father would say: “to parakhesianai” (they have “over-shitted it”). You read it here first.
Looks like the Fair Gailina was correct again:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2020/08/29/it-looks-like-a-lot-of-those-positive-covid-tests-should-have-been-negative-n2575305
Guess what? The mortality rate for the US and Sweden are neck-in-neck. We had a lockdown while Sweden did not:
https://twitter.com/SethBTillman/status/1301819302736261120?s=01
Maybe file this one under “Better to be safe than sorry”? NOT.
The US catching up to Sweden in per-capita mortality after months of reduced restrictions (which were never universal across the country anyway) is really diametrically opposed to the point you seem to think you are making.
I remember people on here months ago being skeptical of the idea that the US was going to catch up to Italy on mortality rates. That has more or less happened, and I’m rather concerned what the last four months of 2020 will bring. My concerns from March and April more or less turned out to be the case.
I still take grim amusement at people who don’t really understand what Sweden did and did not do. Or how the country has been affected. It’s used more as a catchphrase than an actual serious contrast.
Gotta trust them numbers:
https://www.wbir.com/article/news/investigations/shelby-county-woman-died-6-months-ago-letter-covid-19-positive/522-bcd8c6e1-5d75-4e07-af99-ed7babed909b