You still don’t understand my point about systematic errors. I agree that cases are being undercounted. Calm down and think about it.
I’m careful to preface these by saying I’m not at all certain about what will happen.
I’m not making a prediction. We know the states who have this pattern aren’t following the CDC death reporting guidelines. Because the CDC told us. Also because of a whistleblower who was the literal person running the Florida dashboard.
Unless you think those things are fake you have your answer.
And to be clear should more testing, lower infection age, etc. lower the mortality rate also? Sure. But Florida/Texas/Georgia were not reporting many deaths long before any of those things came into play.
In late March I said we’d have mid 6 figures dead by the election. Not exactly apologizing for that take.
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I agree.
Witch, let’s say a state gets 1,000 actual COVID deaths. But they decide not to follow CDC guidelines and COVID patients dying of heart attacks aren’t getting reported and like 20% of deaths don’t get counted. So they report 800 deaths.
Some days later, they get 10,000 actual cases. They’ll wind up reporting 8,000. Are they still under reporting deaths? Yes. Does the death rate still track the number of new cases? Yes. Even if they’re systematially undercounting the number by a huge percentage, we should still see the deaths track the total number of cases. The only way we could see what we’re seeing is if multiple states are changing their reporting criteria in a weirdly precise way.
PS I agree there’s undercounting going on and states aren’t following the CDC guidelines. I’ve said this twice already, but I feel like Ill have to keep saying this.
Sure. There are lots of things that don’t add up. I don’t have a simple answer for what we’re seeing. I don’t think it’s all just due to more testing.
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Fair enough. I’m not saying I have all the answers either and I agree it is complicated. I just think mostly what we are seeing is the cases shift from states following CDC reporting guidelines for deaths to mostly states not following the guidelines. So the cases are rising and the deaths aren’t really following. Maybe that changes soon.
I obviously have no idea what funny business exactly is going on. It just has been obvious that several states have abnormal death data and I’ve been saying that since May, long before this spike happened. And that isn’t just a wild guess there is evidence to support it as well.
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Trusting that this doesn’t do long term damage to kids is stupid in my opinion. If kids are in school this fall it better be fully masked and the staff need extra precautions. This thing just has so much capacity to hurt the body.
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The first article makes a good point about young kids and masks: it isn’t just about getting them comfortable wearing them. They also need to not be touching their face more as a result of the mask. A five year old can wear a mask with some training, but I’m skeptical if they can do so without regularly adjusting it and touching their face.
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There’s another good point in there. Thanks for posting it. Those who want to open schools also need to avoid a teacher strike. I can’t say I’d be happy going back as a teacher if argument for doing so is that kids don’t get sick. What about the staff? Yikes.
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Here’s a list of all the ages where I would expect school children to reliably wear a mask all day.
Summary
lol
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The strongest argument for opening schools for me is that yeah it will be awful but it’s better than the alternative. Closing schools for 12 months or whatever would be TERRIBLE for millions of children.
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“Our analyses suggest that the official tally of deaths due to Covid-19 represent a substantial undercount of the true burden,” Dan Weinberger, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health and a lead author of the study, told CNBC. Weinberger said other factors could contribute to the increase in deaths, such as people avoiding emergency treatment for things like heart attacks. However, he doesn’t think that is the main driver.
The study was supported by the National Institute of Health.
The 781,000 total deaths in the United States in the three months through May 30 were about 122,300, or nearly 19% higher, than what would normally be expected, according to the researchers. Of the 122,300 excess deaths, 95,235 were attributed to Covid-19, they said. Most of the rest of the excess deaths, researchers said, were likely related to or directly caused by the coronavirus.emphasized text
Interesting read on real death #s
Here are the North Carolina new case pct. increases by week vs. testing pct. increases by week since 4/1/20 through 6/30/20. Below that is the new cases vs. SDI graph (SDI is not complete for 6/24-6/30). Does this light any bulbs for you? Since falling below the current target SDI guess, there have been four weeks where testing rise outpaced case rise (4/29-5/5, 5/6-5/12, 5/20-5/26, and 6/10-6/16). While I’m certainly not sure, I think this means there’s more of a possibility the target SDI guess in North Carolina might be 35+. What do you think?
| Date | Case Pct. Increase vs. Prev. Week | Test Pct. Increase vs. Prev. Week |
|---|---|---|
| 4/1-4/7 | 36.2% | 19.0% |
| 4/8-4/14 | 4.4% | 25.0% |
| 4/15-4/21 | 6.4% | -23.6% |
| 4/22-4/28 | 26.4% | 37.8% |
| 4/29-5/5 First week below target SDI | 2.6% | 24.7% |
| 5/6-5/12 | 13.0% | 22.6% |
| 5/13-5/19 | 29.0% | 19.6% |
| 5/20-5/26 | -7.7% | 28.1% |
| 5/27-6/2 | 23.6% | -2.3% |
| 6/3-6/9 | 27.6% | 15.4% |
| 6/10-6/16 | 5.5% | 12.9% |
| 6/17-6/23 | 10.5% | 5.5% |
| 6/24-6/30 | 15.8% | 10.3% |
I agree that the world is better with the kids at school but just YOLO opening schools back up is inviting a disaster.
Of course investing in the infrastructure to identify and implement safer air flow patterns in classes and on busses is lolamerica.
I don’t have an answer.
Florida doesn’t count deaths of people who are not Florida residents. Throw in the number of snowbirds who live in Florida and they are vastly undercounting.
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It won’t be YOLO but it will be sloppy. It will be better in rich schools and worse in poor ones, like all things, and so the divide between life-outcomes based on income will be further entrenched. Happy 4th of July!
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Yep. Completely agree.
I thought all the snowbirds established residency in FL so that they can vote there (and no taxes).
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Elementary/middle/high school debates have some grey, but the fact that so many universities are planning on having students come live on campus until Thanksgiving and then send them home is straight-up insane.
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Really shows you what universities prioritize above all else.