Covid Deaths Per Million 7-Day Average
Positive Test Rate
The US also leads in positive test rate of tests. This suggests the true number of cases may be far higher than confirmed cases.
Daily Deaths
The US had 2,718 deaths yesterday, 2,921 two days ago, and over 10,000 in the previous four days.
Since deaths lag cases and Thanksgiving is not yet factored in, these numbers are highly likely to get worse.
Mish
Another of your dumb posts. But don’t let reality infringe on your need to hear yourself say something.
Melbourne has all of 5 million population in a very contained area The USA has 340 million population in a very wide open area where at least 50% are not going to pay much attention to any rules dropped on them.
I’m not Vox’s number one fan, but isn’t it out of line and impolite to call that post “dumb”?
BTW, my son is in Melbourne as we speak. I agree the US not doing a lockdown like the tomb-like thing Melbourne has been doing. 50% are going to call any such US government action that of a DICTATOR, MY GOD IT’S HITLER REINCARNATED no matter who is currently in the driver’s seat. And the Ozzies have a long history of tight border control.
I wasn’t calling the post dumb. I was calling the poster dumb.
This is a blog post with really poor insight. The US test program is not driven by health, but by legal risk exposure. The US test program, which started out with PCR test kits with 25-30 cycle times, is now at 40+ (its an exponential increase, 1000x more, amplifying noise and delivering false information). In contrast, Taiwan is at a Ct of 30. Never compare results if the references are different.
I had it. I’m over it. Back to normal activities, but I still wear a mask where required. It is a most unpleasant experience. Nothing like it as far as I am concerned, though I have had a lifetime of virtually no physical ailments and no comorbidities. I am 76.
I read it one way at first, too. The re-read said, “I had Covid19 and Covid19 was not pleasant.” Good to hear@Irondoor made it through! Would that we all.
Does the US count Covid deaths the same way as other countries? My understanding is that if you die in a hospital with a positive Covid test result or have symptoms of Covid, you are counted as a Covid death. So, a motorcycle accident victim, a 90-year-old with a heart attack, or a diabetic in a coma will be counted as a Covid death even if the actual cause is something other than Covid. Additionally, there is an increased government payout if the cause of death is Covid. Might that incentive color the decision as to cause of death? Finally, a PCR test run at a cycle threshold of 40 (supposedly a standard for Lab Corp) means that a single viral nucleotide sequence will be magnified by 1,000,000,000,000 times. A single viral nucleotide sequence is not a viral load that will kill you, period.
So what is it? Are Covid deaths actually over-estimated by 10%, 20%, or more? I suppose the answer might depend on what your politics are.
Does the US count Covid deaths the same way other countries do? My understanding is that anyone who dies in a US hospital with a positive Covid test or with supposed symptoms of Covid is a Covid death. That being the case, a motorcycle accident victim, a 90-year-old with a sudden heart attack, or a diabetic in a coma who fits the definition set forth earlier, is a Covid death even if the actual cause of death is from another underlying condition. Plus, there is a financial incentive from the US government. Covid deaths pay out big money to hospitals. Finally, a positive PCR Covid diagnosis run with a cycle threshold of 40 (a Lab Corp standard, as I understand) means that a single viral nucleotide sequence will have been expanded by 1,000,000,000,000 times to produce a “positive” diagnosis. You won’t die from that level of “infection”, period.
So what is it? Are actual Covid deaths over-estimated by 10%, 20%, 30%, or more?
Any time you try to count deaths from a specific cause, you are going to be low. There are many ways to miss deaths. People will die at home, untested, and will be counted as “natural causes”. No one is going to do an autopsy. People with Covid sometimes have sudden heart attacks, or strokes, and if that happens when driving, it may lead to death, which will be attributed to the accident. Then there are the deliberate errors. Long term care facilities have a financial motive for recording deaths as anything but Covid to keep from seeing customers moved out of the facilities.
At the end of the Covid season, the CDC will go back and compute deaths by their normal method, excess deaths. In a normal year, the CDC finds 4-9,000 flu deaths, and then estimates an adjustment factor, usually around 6, and multiplies the deaths they found by 6 to get the final “deaths from flu” for the year, which is then recorded as 24-54,000. They will do the same for Covid, but since more effort is going into tracking Covid deaths than the flu, the counts are more accurate. Early numbers suggest that the multiplier will be about 1.20, so if they count 500,000 deaths, the final number will be about 600,000.
Interesting Rob Arnott interview on Kingworld News.
Arnott is good with quant/numbers.
One comment was death-rate in sub 60 year olds is likely to be higher due to lockdown than due to CV-19.
Think about that for a while.
Who will take responsibility for that.
I think Arnott may be proven correct.
The reality is, that barring a real vaccine breakthrough all those places will inevitably end up with the virus going through the population. The economic consequences are going to be horrendous later on. Australia is kicking the can down the road on the economic front. There will eventually be a a 2 Trillion dollar blow out in the deficit. 2 Trillion for a country with the population of 25 million.
Yet to come is the lifting of moratoriums of mortgage and rental payments. Yet to come is the lifting of the subsidizing of the helicopter money for all.
So what- we crush freedom and healthy peoples lives because of this?
I wear my mask (it is required in the parish where I live). Having traveled abroad, I have to wonder if the highest death rate in US is due to the overall obesity and poor health of Americans.
If it were obesity, the southern states would be the big-death states. Such is not the case.
Deaths for the 1st wave in March/April were NJ, NY, and MA. And some other smaller states. The big numbers were maybe their government’s nursing home policies. One source indicates the NY policy came from the CDC and the rest followed suit.
Summer wave were states bordering Mexico. Kinda. And Florida. Plus some random others.
Recent wave: States where people probably went inside ’cause it’s coooold out there.
Last time I glanced, it looks like most US states have had some death action. Excepting Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Wyoming. Maybe a couple others. These states haven’t had death counts outside their usual range.
What’s weird to me is how the CDC is now recommending a SHORTER quarantine period, down to a week from two. How does that even make sense? Is it because the elections are over and now they want people back to work?
What would you have said if CDC recommended one week quarantine period before and two weeks after? That they wanted to spread the virus before the election to hurt Trump?
What would you have said if, before the election, a large group of people opposed wearing masks and social distancing? That they wanted to spread the virus before the election to hurt Trump?
It’s the week decrease that has me interested. Seems like a totally unnecessary risk.
Well… imagine sitting out 14 days every time you had a cold, now through March. You’d barely ever be able to work or live life.
Most people can’t live life like that. After the first time you sit out 14 days, get tested and find out that it wasn’t COVID, the next time your throat is sore and you have a fever, are you going to sit another 14 days, or just do what you did all the other winters in your life — work through it…?
I did a voluntary 2+ weeks at home (for me and family) after symptoms started Nov 4. Of the 10 symptoms on the “sign up for a covid test” form, I matched 8. Thought for sure I had it. I did not have it (did both live and antibody test, both negatives). But my entire household played it safe Nov 4-22. We threw in a few extra days to be safe, because my mom wanted to visit my kids and she hadn’t seen them in a year and wouldn’t have another chance until summer 2021.
When things looked good, we let grandma (an out-of-stater) visit with the kids Nov 23-27. She had quarantined 2 weeks on her side too. Then Nov 30 our day care gives us the “if you’ve met with somebody out of state, you can’t come back until you’ve quarantined 2 weeks” (Oregon governor told them that’s a new rule, and they’re following it, law or not). So now we’re in a forced 14-day quarantine for no great reason (no symptoms, no known exposure to the virus, and no positive tests in the family).
It’s very much put me in a “f* it, I’m doing what I want” mode. I can’t be alone.
Maybe only losing 7 days instead of 14 will help increase the overall compliance (I think it would). If you only need to do it once, not a huge deal. But these home quarantines, if you play by all the rules — you’re going to have a few of them. 14 days every time?
Don’t know about others, but I see only one informative item in the four images: That there are two groups of countries in the rather arbitrarily chosen dozen in the last image.
The two groups:
Pretty much any other “information” in these graphics is misdirection, at best.
Talk about ineptitude: Nine months in to this thing and about the only generally useful number publicly available is total deaths per capita. Deaths per cap are muddied by such things as population age (e.g. Italy, Florida, Africa), but that mud is transparent compared to the mud mixed with things like (Good God) test result totals.
One or two other commenters have noted that there are two groups of geopolitical entities in the world with respect to Covid:
And for those of you who speak of the horrors of the US government/administration, those West Pacific places share a simple method:
Now, imagine the headlines when Trump tries to implement step 1. Or Biden/Harris.
Do you trust any stats from China? Russia? India?
I don’t so I left them off
I agree with Mish
I referred to the WorldOMeter list in the fourth graphic.
Deaths and population are probably the most likely-accurate numbers we’d see from CN, RU, and IN, since those two numbers would need to be consistent lies.
Given a population and some knowledge about the gain or loss of population over the last few decades, you can calculate the number of deaths per year/month/week/day pretty accurately. For instance, take the US’s population 40 years ago, divide by 80 (years), and you get a good guess of the number of people who died last year. Same calculation would work for any population with a rectangular tree like the US’s.
CN, RU, IN, or any other country are likely to have apples to the US’s oranges in any Covid19 count. That’s one reason it’s confusing and time-wasting to even look at claims of C19-ish counts.
It’s all a hoax. Herd immunity. Drink bleach. Blah, blah, blah. Are Americans the stupidest people in the world? Absolutely!
Neither chart is proportional.
The positive ratio should be proportional to the number of tests/million performed. The positive tests should be proportional to the population && to the number of tests/million performed.
The first chart is proportional to the population but not the number of tests.
The second chart is absolute numbers, with positive ratio indicated by color, but not proportional to numbers of tests.
With numbers, interpretation without context may be misleading.
Squint hard enough and you end up not seeing anything.
We’re surpassing the daily death rate of 9/11 and the President is AWOL, preferring to play the victim on his election loss and strategize pardons for his family
USA #1
“Murica is Great!
We’re doomed. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, and don’t forget, 3 out of ; doctors smoke Kools!
Report of blood donations: SARS-CoV-2 may have been in the U.S. prior to 2020
There were also spikes in pneumonia and influenza cases in Hubei province in the fall before the Wuhan outbreak. Sewer treatment samples have also indicated the presence of the virus well before the first cases were reported in various cities (and in Italy). The history of this epidemic will be changing. It in any event completely cancels the already discounted wet market/zoonotic origin story which is still set firmly in most people’s minds.
Hard to predict where the facts will lead; even harder to predict what will happen to the narrative.
If I understand the abstract, they checked for one attribute and got around 90 hits out of 7+ thou samples. Then they checked those 90 for 3 other attributes, one of which had 80 hits, and the other two had 1 hit, each.
What I don’t get is the odds the 7000+, 10, 80, 1, and 1 groups had of having had a Sars2 close variant.
What would you get for a similar test done for any virus variant?
Do you know?
And the current US administration is MIA. What an abject failure….
Maybe the Fed could just print more money and everything will be fine?
Something tells me that viruses have been around longer than organized governments, and will most likely have the last say.
Unless we really believe .gov is going to save us from all that threatens our well being, or upsets the status quo, we’re gonna just have to reckon with our mortality and let this thing run it’s course.
You should note that the places that have instituted lock-down have knocked the number of cases down. A decrease in deaths will follow.
But,but, but what about all the drug overdoses and suicides and missed illnesses in lock-down?
A little bit of outrageous comparison for you….
Think about it, aren’t those people just as weak as the others that are most likely to die from covid? Why should we coddle their weakness above any others weakness? What is more special about a drug addict, a depressive, a guy with chest pains, than an immune compromised person?
If you don’t want to enter those murky waters of judging the value of people–do the little stuff so you don’t have to pull ou the big gun of lock-downs.
Hey, I’m traumatized by a piece of cloth on my face…
But we’re on a runaway train right now, so we’ll have to see who gets dumped out the window.
Current projections…
With rapid rollout of vaccine—488K to 580K dead by April 1st
And that probably does not count the excess deaths
As time goes on, their models get more accurate. That sounds like a very reasonable estimate.
Meanwhile, in a world we pretend doesn’t exist…
Another ‘donut day’ in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam:
0 domestic cases
0 deaths
We live in a country of stubborn stupidity.
4% of the population in the world–20% of the cases and deaths.
One lock-down should have been sufficient for a lesson on how to deal with this.
Sabotage from the top, on down.
They have 0 deaths? Nobody in those countries are dying? Not one person died from anything?
Or maybe unlike in the US, they’re not getting paid extra to label deaths as Covid deaths. Follow the money.
As the community spread rises, my job gets more dangerous….we continue to take all the steps we can to avoid being part of the problem…..which has worked for us. But with asymptomatic spreaders out there, it’s an imperfect system…..a numbers game.
I think about my own mortality a lot now, like I did back in the early spring when the first wave hit.
I tell patients how much I appreciate them following instructions…..queuing up in their cars…..communicating with the front desk by phone…..wearing their masks properly.
Believe it or not we have had people calling up looking for a dental office where they can be seen without having to wear a mask…..and it is the same demographic as the anti-vaxxer crowd….they still think COVID is a hoax.
If there were a shot that cured stupidity, they’d be too dumb to take it.
Many people are very selfish and will not prevent the spread until such a time as they or family/friend become seriously ill or die. I live in an area that sees significant tourist influx. There are quarantine travel restrictions on those coming from out of state. Yet every weekend store parking lots are full with out of state plates from second home owners and air b&b tourists. And Sunday night they are gone. The idea that any of them did a two week or one week with test quarantine is laughable.
US is also a nation with high obesity rates vs others.
It matters, susceptibility to Covid mortality increases.
What about Italy and France, eh?
False. 5% of all covid deaths are obese. Because the overwhelming majority are elderly feeble nursing home patients.
The leading cause of death in the United States is normally heart disease with an average of around 1,740 per day. Covid deaths are now 50% higher than that and likely going and staying higher still. The commander in chief could not care less.
Median age of covid deaths in my state (about 79yo) is higher than life expectancy (about 77yo).
We’re destroying young lives and businesses in a futile attempt to delay deaths that were overdue. We’re not even attempting to be logical and efficient as we go about doing that.
Our actions are fear-based, not science-based, predicated on peoples’ intuition that any action is better than no action.
So do you want to discuss the whole “death panels” thing? LOL
“destroying”?
Who guaranteed anyone a life of ease and never-ending prosperity?
“futile attempt?”
See Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam (zero cases) and 200 other countries that are doing better than the US. Get angry with the people who allowed this spike and rejected even minor efforts to keep it in check.
“Overdue deaths”?
Sez who?
The age distribution of deaths from Covid is nearly identical to the age distribution of deaths from other causes, with the exception that it kills few people under 20. That’s why the average age of Covid deaths is nearly the same, but slightly higher, than the average age for other deaths.
The place you are grossly wrong is implying that governmental action is the cause for the death of businesses. No governmental action has affected my business, at least not in a negative way, this year. Yet, business is currently down 50%. When cases go up, people, for obvious reasons, stay home, and business suffers for those who depend on walk in business. Yes, you can take the Trump approach tell people, in essence ” don’t fear the virus, just go catch it, and if you die, too bad for you”, but people are smarter than that.
As I pointed earlier to someone else, a person age 79 has a life expectancy of ten years. Their death is not “overdue”. You would make a lot more sense if you were to argue that the businesses that are dying are obsolete anyway. Covid has has mere accelerated trends that were already in place to more online shopping, and less in person shopping. It is far clearer than the deaths of the businesses that are failing are “overdue” than it is that the deaths of the people who are dying are “overdue”.
Personally, the message I want to hear from leaders is neither “go catch it and die” nor “stay home in fear”, but rather, “wear a mask, keeps social distances, and then feel safe to go about your business.”
“Personally, the message I want to hear from leaders is neither “go catch it and die” nor “stay home in fear”, but rather, “wear a mask, keeps social distances, and then feel safe to go about your business.”
despite our path to get there, at least we reach the same conclusion.
don’t think we’ll come to an agreement on many of the intermediary steps, but I can partially agree that COVID would have shut down many businesses minus govt action. Mine was one of them… we saw 40% revenue drops in the month before the govt shut us down and from a selfish perspective, wanted the forced shutdown so we’d have an “excuse” and leverage to negotiate out of some long-term leases. CARES Act give-aways were icing on the cake (we used 40% of our PPP to buy out of our leases… so it was like a get-out-of-jail-free card for us). In my case, the govt action actually kept us alive to play another day. but not all businesses are equal and govt has killed (or is killing) others. most the other small business owners in my network aren’t in that same position.
And what has happened to the rate of heart disease deaths meantime?
[Not rhetorical, I don’t know]
Thank goodness US performance on Covid has nothing to do with our (please now genuflect and place your hand on your heart) Greatest Health Care In The World.
Almost makes you wanna go Socialist on healthcare…
So what are we doing wrong? Is there anything right or wrong to do? The overwhelming majority (over 80%) of the public is wearing masks and not engaging in unnecessary activity. Are we going to just keep this up? Ratchet up the restrictions in activity even more? Wrap ourselves in Tyvec and breathe through HEPA filters? This cannot continue.
What can’t continue? Just saying Covid can’t continue has no effect. Covid will continue unless we take measures. Did anyone suggest wrapping people in Tyvec? Do you think we are incapable of continuing to wear a mask? Do you think we are incapable of maintaining social distancing?
Oh, eff your story–80% are not complying with this–every day we see top people having parties and gatherings without masks, we have state leaders refusing to demand it, we have parents arranging unmasked parties…there are a lot of people ignoring it. Have the country is enamored with the leader who still saysit isnothing more than a cold…
There is no distinguishment for being 12th highest in the world in cases and deaths–there are over 200 countries in the world managing to do better.
Boohoo, I have to wear a mask for the next few months.
Whiner!
330 million people in this country. Just because there’s pictures of crowds in the hundreds doesn’t mean the vast majority of people aren’t complying. Media is deceiving you.
I have eyes when I’m out and about. I see how crowded the bars are. I see the parking lots. I know the people who went outside their household on Thanksgiving. I travel to multiple states (via my vehicle)– urban, suburban, exurban, rural
And I repeat, approximately half of this coutry worships the guy who has actively countered every safety measure.
So my estimate is maybe 75% of Dem’s practice safety, and 25% Rep’s practice safely and maybe 10% of people who go to bars and restuarants, and maybe 15% of people under 20.
I saw hundreds crowded into bars last week in Idaho. Not a mask to be seen. I also know someone that works in healthcare, and their company had a potluck that infected 12 people. Fully half the people in this country are delusional trump humpers that think it’s all a hoax.
Well, here in the high country mountains of Colorado, from what I’ve seen mask wearing is very high, myself included. Yet counties are being put into higher lockdowns, cities are enforcing mandatory mask zones, schools continue to shut down to halt the spread… and that spread continues to rise. I suppose maybe I just don’t hang out with non-mask wearing people, being past the age of hanging out in bars and a non-churchgoer, so maybe my eyes are doing the deceiving. But then again, maybe if the majority of the US doesn’t give a shit about your health, that’s just democracy in action and we should just stop paying attention and let the chips fall where they may. Seems to work that way for everything else in this country.
This has been a challenge everywhere. The US has consistently done the worst. Why? Presidential leadership has made it much worse. Other leadership has talked the talk but not walked the walk. On an individual level too many people are incapable of changing their behavior for their own and those around them benefit. We have a tax code that benefits capital to the detriment of work.
and a ‘case’ is?? sorry, I’m behind the times, so to speak. Definition?
I would think it should be someone who is known to have the virus and displays its symptoms … it’s possible that the second factor is sometimes being ignored?
A case is someone who presents for medical attention and displays symptoms, preferably enough to be distinct from any number of other conditions.
A positive PCR test turns it into a confirmed case.
A PCR test alone is not a diagnosed case, according to 25 years of literature.
Those are the pre-Covid working definitions. If we were running PCR tests on the whole population for other conditions regardless of symptoms (e.g., staphylococcus aureus), we would have an epidemic of asymptomatic carriers. Testing the dead for various viruses/germs and attributing the cause of death to a positive test would lead to a huge increase of deaths due to whatever.
Not all PCR tests are created equal. It’s not just a matter of the CT (Cycle Time), but also how many primers are being used, whether the primer is suitable for unique attribution, and other aspects of testing quality. The fact that Elon Musk tested 2× positive and 2× negative with the same nurse and testing facility in one morning should give pause.
PCR tests are highly sensitive, so there are few “false positives”, since they are finding some nucleic acid. Question is what does it mean? Is the person sick, does he have replication competent virions, is he contagious, what is the viral load, is this test specific enough.
Fauci said, on the record that cycle thresholds render RT-PCR above 35 meaning less. He is wrong, CDC recommends at least a CT of 40.
A case in this context is a person who tests positive, and who is thus recorded in the system. The high positive test rate indicates that there are others who have covid who are not being tested. The low false positive rate would indicate that almost all of the people who test positive have Covid.
Since testing levels can vary from country to country, deaths is probably a more reliable measure. The fact that countries high in one are also high in the other indicates that the measures are consistent, however.
Attribution of deaths and reporting also differs. In Belgium they attribute their high death numbers to the fact that everybody with Covid is reported as a Covid death. The chance of your death being attributed to Covid is substantially lower in the African hinterlands. The numbers remain largely oranges and apples.
For instance, in some European countries, people who die at home are not tested. In other countries everybody goes to the hospital to die. There is also a lot of skew caused by DNR (Do not resuscitate declaration) and how various jurisdictions deal with them.
It’s great to do fancy things with statistics and regressions, but usually when you dig into the quality of the numbers themselves, it turns out you know a lot less than people are letting on.
I think a national lockdown of 6 months is needed to flatten the curve. No excuses, stay home, save lives.
So, half the people who died were waiting for a cataract procedure? I’d have to guess that their vision wasn’t their biggest problem.
Usually the biggest problem when cataracts ensue is old age.
Cataracts and age are correlated, but there’s lots of spry healthy old people who need cataract surgery but are nowhere close to death.
I am well familiar with the fact that younger people sometimes need cataract surgery. I’ve had cataract surgery in one eye. I had a detached retina, and everyone should know the warning signs for that. Detached retinas are preventable, and they are horrible if you get them. If you see unexplained flashes of light at the periphery of your vision, go to your opthamologist. The flashes are micro-tears in the retina. If you go to the eye doctor immediately, they can use a laser to repair the tears, and re-seal the retina right there in the office, with no anesthesia. If you do not, the flashes will go away after a few days, and all will seem well, until a month or two later, the retina detaches.
I ignored the warning signs as I didn’t know what they were. A month or two later, I woke up to half my field of vision gone in one eye. At that point, you risk permanent vision loss. They did surgery on me immediately; they removed the liquid from my eyeball, and did microsurgery with lasers and cyrogenic probes to repair it, which took hours, and I had to be partially awake. Then, they fill the eyeball with a gas, and for the next two weeks, you must lie face down, 24 hours a day, to keep any liquid remaining inside the eyeball away from the repaired retina while it heals. Sleep face down, eat face down. Go to the bathroom face down. It was awful. Horrible.
Then, over the next six months, your eye naturally refills itself with liquid. You can’t see through the gas, but as the liquid refills, you can begin to see again. Naturally, the vision starts at the bottom and works up, but your vision is inverted, so the first thing you see is the sky, then the tops of peoples heads. About the time you get to their faces, however, you have a 100% chance of a cataract, so you lose vision again, completely. After about 10 months, your eye is full of liquid again, and things are settled down, and they do cataract surgery, and you can see once more. Your vision, however, will not be perfect. Straight lines are no longer quite straight. If wall paper peeled off the wall, and you repaired it, the lines wouldn’t be quite straight, and your retina is the same. It’s not a problem most of the time, but if i look at a brick wall, it always appears to be caving in.
If you see flashes in your peripheral vision, go directly to your eye doctor. Detached retinas are not common, but neither are they rare. You have about the same chance of a detached retina as you do of dying of Covid; in other words, not high, but also not zero. Be aware of the early symptoms, and avoid the disastrous consequences of doing as I did, and ignoring them.
In time, when I am old enough, I’ll need cataract surgery in the other eye. For now, I have the ability to see the curious progress towards that. In the non-treated eye, colors are slightly darker and less vibrant than they should be. Whites are slightly off-white. I’d never notice, if it weren’t for the fact that one eye is clear. The other difference I notice is that night driving is harder post cataract surgery. Our natural lenses are far superior to man-made lenses in that respect. The man made lenses have much more glare, and create star-shaped light patterns around bright lights at night.
Same with covid motility…
“More than half of the patients who died were waiting for non-emergent surgeries, which included 127 people waiting for a cataract procedure.” Not sure what you think this illustrates? 240 people didn’t die because they had to wait for surgery. A lot more people will die waiting for surgery if the hospitals are full of Covid patients. Is your point that 60 people isn’t many? What is it you think this article illustrates?
The article notes “The data obtained by Second Street discovered 242 people in Saskatchewan died while on a surgery waitlist between April 2018 and April 2019.”
Hit submit too soon. The data was prior to COVID.
I did a quick search for average wait times in Saskatchewan this year and found a couple of interesting links:
Gee. I had the cataract from my left eye removed only last week. The cataract in my right eye last month. I didn’t know cataracts were so deadly. My ophthalmologist forgot to mention it.
On a more serious not however. My Brother in law required an angiogram last April. Because of the Covid panic this was delayed. A month ago he complained of chest pains, went to his doctor, who sent him straight to hospital. There was a delay rousing up a surgeon and theater nurses who had been put in on standby- just in case they were required for the covid panic. 24 hours later he had 5 bypasses done. He nearly died between waiting and getting the procedure done.
Sister needs a cholecystectomy. It was supposed to be done in March – she’s a public patient – no health insurance. She’s a cervical / bowel cancer survivor. Needs examinations every 6 months. Still hasn’t been done.