The Financial Times reports the Global Coronavirus Death Toll Could be 60% Higher Than Reported.
Normally the FT is behind a paywall. This one is a “free” read.
Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across these locations, considerably higher than the 77,000 official Covid-19 deaths reported for the same places and time periods.
To calculate excess deaths, the FT has compared deaths from all causes in the weeks of a location’s outbreak in March and April 2020 to the average for the same period between 2015 and 2019. The total of 122,000 amounts to a 50 per cent rise in overall mortality relative to the historical average for the locations studied.
Overall Death Increase
- 60% Belgium
- 51% Spain
- 42% Netherlands
- 34% France
- 299% New York City
- 155% Italy Lombardy Region
- 75% Stockholm Sweden
- 1,400% Jakarta Indonesia
The FT did not calculate excess deaths for the US, just New York City.
U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Is Far Higher Than Reported, C.D.C. Data Suggests
In what I believe to be a copycat idea, the New York Times reports U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Is Far Higher Than Reported, C.D.C. Data Suggests.
Total deaths in seven states that have been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic are nearly 50 percent higher than normal for the five weeks from March 8 through April 11, according to new death statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is 9,000 more deaths than were reported as of April 11 in official counts of deaths from the coronavirus.
Not Like the Flu, Not Like Car Crashes, Not Like…
We can also take a pretty good stab at it from the Atlantis article Not Like the Flu, Not Like Car Crashes, Not Like…
I discussed the article on April 21, in Covid-19 Deaths In Context and the Absurdity of Flu Comparisons.
One person commented “Egad, man. That first chart is beyond bogus. The COVID (red line) is clearly cumulative, while the other lines are showing per day on a day to day basis.”
Reality: It is deaths PER week – NOT cumulative
.
Another person accused me of being a socialist, clearly not understanding the word.
A third said “Perhaps economics bloggers should stick to what they know, and not take a Peter Navarro analysis. Missing in any of this bombastic “analysis” is any discussion of the demographics of fatalities.”
Clearly it is far too difficult for people to click on the Atlantis article and see what it has to say, then refute the case as laid out. These people are too lazy to click on a link. while making absurd assumptions about the data that was presented.
Here is a link to the Monday April 27 version of the chart. I added the box in blue which I believe to be the excess death counts PER WEEK, PER MILLION.
Yes, older people are more at risk. But Judging from some reader comments, we should just say that we don’t give damn because these people would have died anyway, so who cares?
The facts are, hospitals were not prepared those excess cases, nor were mortuaries.
New York Forced to Send Bodies Out of State for Cremation
In case you missed it, please consider New York Forced to Send Bodies Out of State for Cremation
Trump’s Lysol Moment
Ignorance abounds and Trump helped spread it with a Lysol Moment: His Most Ridiculous Comment Ever.
‼️Two people in #Georgia drank liquid disinfectants over the weekend in misguided attempts to ward off #COVID19, according to the Georgia Poison Center.😱
Both men had histories of psychiatric problems and are expected to recover.#coronavirus https://t.co/lXU2DFyzKh
— Dena Grayson, MD, PhD (@DrDenaGrayson) April 29, 2020
Two people in Georgia drank disinfectants
and hotlines received calls asking how to drink Lysol safely.
Open Up Society
Meanwhile, two doctors in California using bogus analysis want to open up the US. I commented Fully Open Up Society Now? Really?
Without a doubt, we need top open up the US.
The focus ought to be opening things up safely. But we do not have enough tests yet.The US lags other nations badly on a per capita basis.
Mish
thanks, those numbers are hard to argue against. If we assume that 25% of new yorkers have already been infected based on antibody testing then we can say that this virus has run one-quarter of the way through. The speed of it explains the huge increase in march-april deaths. Unfortunately it is unstoppable imo. We did the right thing by lockdown but now its time to open up since were all gonna get it over the next 12 months. Lethality rate of .1% to .5% is unavoidable and 500k deaths is probably unavoidable sooner (open up) or later (Lockdown). Herd immunity is the only solution. Meanwhile economically were looking at the loss if maybe 10% of all businesses. The effects of that will cascade into all sectors. our homeless problem is about to get MUCH worse. Financially the economic damage is going to be worse than anyone can imagine and will exponentially get worse the longer we lockdown. 500K deaths is bad but 10M economically devastated is terrible. We cannot prevent the first but can do something about limiting the 2nd. Open up.
You pretty well stated the choices. A vaccine won’t be in time, so the best option is to continue to do things to slow the spread to prevent hospitals from being overrun, but get back to work.
Have to watch out for hospitals being overrun!So many of them, the madness!
Thanks Mish, I have been following this issue and great to see your charts and comments on the issue of understated deaths
Well, good for the FT and NYT for publishing those relative death numbers. Death numbers relative to other years remove at least one big unknown. And focus on the real bottom line.
Unfortunately, they don’t mean much without knowing the variance of such numbers. For example, if Numastan has 20% more deaths than some average, is that 20% different from any other year’s percentage?
Beggars can’t be choosers, but it would have been nice to see all the numbers the FT and NYT computed, rather than their editorial subset. And links to their source data is always nice. But, for the price? Cool.
For those wanting to look in to possible source data, the CDC has death numbers for the USA (2014-2020) at:
Those Trumpeters who continually bring up the supposedly “superior results” that Sweden has achieved with its COVID-19 strategy have been corrected by, or will need to correct, their orange idol …
Donald J. Trump ✔
@realDonaldTrump
Despite reports to the contrary, Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown. As of today, 2462 people have died there, a much higher number than the neighboring countries of Norway (207), Finland (206) or Denmark (443). The United States made the correct decision!
Just a nit-note: As you probably know, raw numbers are what they are. The easy way to convert to deaths-per-pop-unit would be make Sweden’s deaths 1200 or so, given it’s twice the size of the other three countries.
Interesting that Denmark is double the oddly-similar numbers from Nor/Fin. I wonder what the noise factor is on these death numbers from various places. You’d expect noise might dominate the numbers if the slope of the death curve is sharply up or down, for instance.
By the way, are these deaths over-all or deaths assigned to C19?
COVID-19 deaths
Country Tot Cases/ 1M pop Deaths/1M pop POP POP DENSITY
Sweden 2,088 256 10,129,869 22.5
Denmark 1,581 78 5,771,672 133.9
Norway 1,427 39 5,501,167 17
Finland 902 38 5,622,534 16.6
Iceland 5,266 29 360,390 3.5
Norway and Finland have nearly identical POP and POP DENSITY. Denmark has nearly identical POP to those two but far larger POP DENSITY.
Thanks!
Yeah, pop density is certainly something to keep in mind. But balancing DEN<–>NOR/FIN are TAI/HK/SING/SK, all of whom should be a pile of bodies. Except THSS were all geared up by SARS1, so they had a head start.
And the people of TAI/HK/SING/SK don’t consider it stigmatizing or a heinous attack upon their freedoms to (have to) wear a mask in public places or practice sensible social distancing when respiratory viruses are prevalent.
Hi Mish, great post. I’ve been curious about this topic for a bit and it’s good to see someone trying to actually put numbers on it. As to where some of those non-COVID excess deaths are coming from, I think that deaths by heart disease, cancer and especially suicides will all show dramatic increases over this time as well. The suicide bit (10th leading cause of death for 2017, the last year with full accounting) hardly needs elaboration, but for cancer and heart disease I have a couple of anecdotes for why those will go up too. My dad is an oncologist and he has been working 3 days a week because patients aren’t coming into the office for treatment if they think they can manage without it for a little bit longer. My brother is a primary care physician, and he had a patient who didn’t want to go to the ER die of a probably treatable aneurysm last week. I work for a company that makes implantable cardiac devices/pacemakers, and we’re seeing a massive decrease in volume – only the patients in the most dire of circumstances are getting hardware put in. For all three of these, some of these might be showing up already but we should expect a big surge in mortality down the road, unless people think that 100% of the care that isn’t happening now was unnecessary in the first place. In some ways, this will be a morbid way to evaluate how much the health care system was actually doing for people with heart disease/cancer/COPD/etc.. Sad irony is that the people who are dying from fear of getting COVID are the same group that would be most likely to die if they got it, due to how it disproportionately affects those with underlying conditions. So, given all that, I think it looks like lockdowns or not, there will be a large pile of corpses, but the choice we get to make is whether the economic wreckage takes 4 years or 20 years to undo.
Definitely a lot to learn from this, if we pay attention.
Everybody wants to talk about fatalities, but no one wants to talk about the permanent damage to lungs and organs of even a minor case. Sure you may survive, but will your health ever be the same?
We don’t know how much damage it will do. Perhaps, none, perhaps a lot. About all we know at the moment is that some studies have shown that 17% of those recovered aren’t able to do all the things they could before their illness, due to reduction in lung capacity. Will their lungs continue to heal? Will they get worse? We just don’t know.
Certainly it wouldn’t be surprising to find a year form now that some percentage of the population has some loss of lung function, or that there are people with fibrosis in the heart, or that the rate of strokes is increased. It will take at least a year or two before we really have a handle on this, but in the meantime we can hope that the permanent damage is minimal.
Here is a rough analysis of NYC COVID-19 fatalities by age and by comorbidity. Fauci should be fired immediately.
Using the NYC fatality data by age and comorbidity, you can see that it is mostly older folks with comorbidities dying.
Using the recent NYC serum antibody data as a basis for determining total people infected, and the age demographic NYC data, I calculated the fatality rate for age group. Fatality rate without a comorbidity is very low. Surprisingly, even in the 75 and up age group, fatalities without a comorbidity were very, very low.
I had to use averaging for the 18-44 age group, as the serum antibody data further breaks up these age categories more finely than does the fatality data.
Fatality rates for those irrespective of comorbidity:
18-44 – 0.07%
45-64 – 0.82%
65-74 – 3.4%
75 – 7.7%
Fatality rates for those without known comorbidities:
18-44 – 0.006%
45-64 – 0.03%
65-74 – 0.05%
75 – 0.06%
Ergo, the current lockdown policy is dumbheaded.
As with the 2008 financial crisis, there will be increased suicides. Already there is reported increased spouse and child abuse. Medical care is being postponed. People’s lives ruined. When we need to isolate the elderly with comorbidities, afterall.
Dopey NJ governor, failing to heed WA state’s experience, expresses outrage at nursing home deaths. Cuomo, failing to learn from the 2017-2018 flu epidemic’s overwhelming NYC hospitals, blames the Orange Man,
Fauci has this data. He is an imbecile.
I’m not sure why comorbidity is a consideration. Living with a comorbidity is still living. Most comorbidity are managed for long duration as evident by how many with a comorbidity survive CV.
People freak out about an incorrectly reported COVID-19 fatality rate of 0.8%, purportedly 8x that of the flu. And yes, most folks with comorbidities do survive. But as there are not insignificant numbers of elderly Americans with comorbidities, they should be locked down. Just not everyone else. A lot of the deaths are occurring in nursing homes. Folks are there for a reason and have serious chronic conditions. We should be directing policy to protect these folks and not harm everyone else by a shutdown.
A new study published April 22 in the Journal of the American Medical Association characterizes the symptoms, comorbidities, and clinical outcomes of 5,700 patients hospitalized because of COVID-19 in the New York area. The authors found that 94 percent of the patients had a chronic health problem, and 88 percent had two or more. The three most prevalent conditions were hypertension (56.6 percent), obesity (41.7 percent), and diabetes (33.8 percent).
Being obese, which is a controllable problem with proper knowledge (it’s the carbs) and discipline, is not only bad for the individual, it is bad for the person’s neighbors and for society in general, as we are seeing.
The coronavirus is particularly unkind to those who are obese
April 15, 2020
America’s obesity epidemic appears to be making the coronavirus outbreak more dangerous — and potentially more deadly — in the United States, new research suggests. For younger and middle-aged adults in particular, carrying excess weight may significantly boost the likelihood of becoming severely ill with COVID-19.
The evidence for this comes from thousands of COVID-19 patients who sought treatment in emergency departments in New York, and it’s prompting alarm among doctors and other health experts. In the U.S., 42.4% of adults have obesity, which means their body-mass index, or BMI, is 30 or more.
Thanks Blurtman! This is the only coronavirus post I’ve seen in the entire month of April worth reading, both the facts as well as your opinions.
Fire Fauci immediately? Why won’t trumpty drain the swamp?
Danish study estimating Denmark’s under-70 population IFR to be 0.059-0.154%.
Carl Bergstrom does some population adjustment math and figures the total population IFR to be 0.32-0.83%.
Los Angeles County is estimating between 0.1-0.2% overall mortality rate based on their antibody data so far. That would put it right in line with the mortality rate for the common flu (0.1%).
Except for your little theory doesn’t account for the huge surge of dead bodies eh?
I generally like and agree with what your saying. A more targeted and less widespread shutdown could be as effective from the virus standpoint and much safer for the economy. Combined with more widespread testing and case tracking and we surely would be better off.
IT is not dopey. DEATH is the desire. DEATH AND FEAR.
People will be BEGGING for the VACCINE. Its all about the vaccine and 5G.
Patients come in with clear lungs. No Virus but LOW Oxygen. That is 5G. That is what the weapon was designed to do.
Spanish Flu in 1918 was not a FLU. They did a LOCKDOWN then as well.
Viruses are actually Exozomes. OUR CELLS pushing out toxins.
Show the replicating Virus. EM. Show 500 people with the same replicating Virus
Imbecile? No. Smart move, very smart. This (lockdown) is a CYA move on part of Fauci. The initial local healthcare official response was inept. What’s not smart about Fauci rite now is the constant public appearances. His imminent comeupence (its coming) puts both the Trumpster and the Dems in a very awkward position; probably the only reason Fauci might be rescued.
We are previewing one of the debates of the election.
One side (guess who) will say they had the lowest deaths eva’ from any pandemic ever.
The other side will say there are 240,000 confirmed deaths (based on our current trajectory), plus an add of approximately 30 to 50%.
And the truth of the matter (if we’re still allowed actual numbers by that time) that there will have been too many.
The “greatest generation” will walk in formation again, this time to the crematories.
That’s one of the problems with having a classical education, you think you know it all. We’re not talking about population numbers or cancer but of something new.
You know of course that statistics can be manipulated.
“one of the shortcomings of statistics is that they do not bear on their face the label of their quality.”
“The bottom line is this; sickness and death due to the government response to this manufactured pandemic will be multiple times greater than the death toll due to this coronavirus. But it is much worse than that, because the deaths due to this response will continue to rise for years to come, as people struggle to stay afloat in a country whose economy has been destroyed. Early and unnecessary death, suicide, family abuse, violence, despair, starvation, and loneliness will continue to reek havoc on Americans, causing any number of continuing health problems and death.”
There will certainly be many quarantine/shut down deaths, but they will be hard to identify.
I read 3 paragraphs and as far as I’m concerned the author revealed himself to be a fraudulent nutjob.
Bro, go walk through a hospital, breathe deeply and lick some doorknobs. Report back with the results.
I am a little confused.
Why exactly do we have to assume all of the alleged “excess” deaths were caused by Covid-19?
Because it helps justify the hysterical overreaction to what is little more than another flu variant.
“excess” deaths
…
OK … fire away … what is YOUR explanation?
For instance – deaths due to car accidents is a biggie … and with “shelter in place” during that time frame … shouldn’t that suggest a DROP in deaths?
I’m all ears
I have no idea.
Just as those who are blindly ascribing them to CV-19 have no idea.
The difference is that I will freely admit it.
I’ll buy that not “all” excess deaths virus related.
But that does not stand in the way of number of deaths virus related understated.
It does if you are using those numbers as evidence to support your assertion.
We must save everyone. Reduce the Speed limit to 25 MPH. We may die. Don’t let children out to play ALONE. Imagine. Keep taking the vaccines.
Man is smarter than our creator. Our Immune systems are incredibly well designed. Why believe that. Fauci and Gates know how to create a better human.
WAKE UP WACKOS We are HUMAN. You only need to learn to control your mind and you can have anything you desire.
Dr. Bruce Lipton DO NOT INVESTIGATE. You trust the state. WHAT KIND OF WACKOS TRUST THE STATE?
In Memoriam Edmund Cadwalader Evans A sound economist, one of the few who
understand the nature of the state 1935
Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.
Herbert Spencer, 1850.
This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention, the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State; that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long-run sustains, nourishes and impels human destinies.
Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1922.
It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it
still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
Henry L. Mencken, 1926
and yet, having no idea, you will question well reasoned calculations
People who are thinking of killing themselves only need a week or two in isolation to actually kill themselves. Also people neglect to get proper care for other issues they have because they are told they will get covid19 and die if they leave their house. Cancer cells and heart disease don’t care about a lockdown.
Emergency rooms are empty because people are afraid to go. A few weeks ago we were told it was dangerous and to stay away. Now it is safe, and come if you think you need to. C19 numbers are down, but not a whole lot. What’s different? No Masks … Masks? What’s different? It changes every day.
Indeed, ERs have been noting lower rates of people coming in for heart attacks and strokes etc. Now it may be a good guess that most of the excess deaths are individuals with COVID infections, but still a guess.
I would like to think we’ll know all of these things in hindsight after a couple of years … but probably people will still be arguing about it.
btw, the volume of (police) agency reports of auto accidents are down roughly 50%.
surprised that is not down more, must be those people speeding on the freeways due to low traffic 😉
Deaths are pretty stable from year to year. If deaths this year are very, very different than prior years, Covid19 would certainly explain it. As mentioned about, certain things that normally cause deaths are way down this year, including car accidents and murders. The lockdowns also inhibited the regular flu, and flu deaths have been very low since the first of April. There are other causes that might be up, though, such as suicides. Feel free to name any other things that you think are causing more deaths than usual.
What other explanations might there be?
A sudden surge in the popularity of parkour?
Spontaneous human combustion?
Jesus calling home the faithful?
Failed alien abductions?
Whatever it is, we need to get to the bottom of it before it kills us all!
Again – I don’t know.
But without actual testing and verification, neither do you.
And neither does anyone else.
If everyone is going to go on and on about how “the science” says we need all these extreme measures, then it is incumbent on them to practice actual science – which doesn’t include hunches or guesses.
On the contrary – I firmly believe it’s unreported spontaneous human combustion.
We need more testing on that. But it’s hard since it’s all unreported.
Seriously WTF is it but Covid?
Who knows? That’s the point. No one knows what caused the higher number and without knowing you can’t simply assign a cause just because it fits your argument.
Well – I guess you can do it, because you did. But that doesn’t a) make it right or b) make it actually mean anything at all.
We do know that, if you look at the CDC website under the regular flu, that in late March and early April, there was a huge surge in deaths due to pneumonia that was unlike any other year. Oddly, this happened just as flu infections were falling quickly. It’s odd that so many pneumonia deaths resulted from so few flu cases, isn’t it? Yet, they weren’t recorded as Covid19 deaths, so obviously that can’t be the explanation.
/-sarc
“science – which doesn’t include hunches or guesses.”
Lol. Hypothesis.
The theory that the exes deaths can be attributed to CV19 is a good theory. It is unlikely a better theory will come along to replace it. But many of us are listening in case you find one.
A “hypothesis” is not evidence.
Spat my coffee out with your parkour comment.
Zardoz, I do enjoy your comments, hard to get a laugh at this time but your wit is appreciated.
There is also over reporting. My daughter works at a hospital. They count all respiratory deaths as C19, tested or not as well as anybody that dies and tests positive. This includes such as motorcycle accidents, etc.
Please think for 2 seconds and you will no longer be confused.
DBG8489: That’s the problem with not having a classical education. You don’t understand how statistics work, how they apply to large numbers. Did you know that the American census would be more accurate if sampling was used instead of “trying to count every head”.
Statistics of large population are very accurate. You cannot know that your neighbor will die tomorrow, but in a 100,00o,000 population you know that 3,500 will die every single day.
You can also predict how many will die from cancer, car accident, etc etc.
This is not magic, its not complicated its actually very very basic stuff (in the case of 3.500) take the average life (75 years) and the number of days in the year, and voila!
Then there’s this….
What Excess Deaths. You believe the nonsense the media tells you. IF YOU WATCH TV YOU ARE UNDER the control of the CIA. Movies as well. You are brainwashed. POD people with the masks. Idiots wearing masks at home and in their car.
WAKE UP There are no extra deaths. There are no extra bodies to get rid of. White boxes in a hole do not mean anything.
LIES and you are the reason. POD people. WEAR a mask and reduce you oxygen. Stay in the house out of the sun. Watch TV all days with the FEARPORN.
How can so many be so blind. Mish that charts is BULLSHIT.
Here is another link to youtube.com
I understand you cannot believe. Background People you are called. You have no souls. If you have a soul WAKE UP we are going to 4D. Ascend. Learn what you are. Be HUMAN
Zero Hedge: “UK Study Shows 18,000 Extra Cancer Deaths Possible Within A Year Due To COVID-19 Focus”
Oh wait, 27,000 known deaths from CV in one month.
It’s a long time til next year.
It is a long time till next year, but the unintended consequences have not been added up yet.
“As we previously highlighted, Richard Sullivan, professor of cancer at Kings College, London, also warned that excess cancer deaths could eventually outstrip COVID-19 deaths.”
Now that the ‘get the country open again’ train leaving the station … anyone else have the nagging sense that there will “pressure” from TPTB to classify (as many as possible) deaths due to something other than covid?
Nope. They are going to continue to do what they are doing now – classifying as many deaths as possible under the CV19 banner. Politicians think of the future and their future is whenever elections roll around. If the economy is in the tank still then or many people are still suffering, regardless of what gross GDP & such figures show, then the voters are going to take it out on the politicians. And the only defense the politicians are going to be able to muster is via death counts. SO the higher the CV19 deaths, the better, from their perspective.
“SO the higher the CV19 deaths, the better, from their perspective.”
…
You can’t be serious.
DJT is staking his political life on the worst is behind us.
Time will tell.
I’m thinking state and local politicians. Forget about Trump. You can’t analyze what drives an insane person.
Doctors are trying to do their job, not make politicians look good or bad. Just as they do now, doctors will try to classify them to the best of their ability. They will always miss some, and classify people as stroke or heart attack, not knowing that the patient had Covid19 to trigger it. Covid19 triggered pneumonia they are much more apt to catch.
The doctors are secretly in league with the scientists to drive us away from God, and his representatives on earth, the TV Preachers. It’s in the Bible. I’m told… haven’t read it. Words are too big.
I would say there has been concerted effort to report deaths at nursing homes as something other than covid. Bad for business.
92% of people don’t even get hospitalized when they get it. While I agree the death rate is higher I think when you have > 99% people surviving a virus, this isn’t reason to leave everything shutdown anymore. Even California has plans to open things up in May and June. I see the virus on the decline in the summer and remdesivir+ being available to anyone who tests positive. We prevented catastrophe by shutting things down but now there are a tsunami of patients awaiting surgeries and other treatments for illnesses unrelated to Covid-19. Those people are going to get sicker if they don’t get treated. Covid-19 can be blamed for deaths unrelated to getting the virus for some people too but because the system couldn’t handle the influx. Now is the time to start getting America healthy again.
About 1/4 of those over 80, who contract the disease, die. Or so I heard on Tom Luongo’s podcast. So it isn’t a death sentence even for that group. I also heard recently that a lack of empathy is a sign of schizophrenia.
And opening up America prematurely will start to get America healthy again?
yes to some degree. There is a thing called herd immunity that has already happen in some places. There was a large antibody test somewhere with about a sample size of 9000 that found 90% of them already had the antibody for Covid-19. The truth is in some parts of country Covid-19 has probably been around for 4-6 months. The elderly need to be shielded and nursing homes and similiar facilities need to go into lockdown. But 90% of the country doesn’t need to be in full lockdown. And make people wear masks and gloves if necessary. I have no issue with it. We can live normally and wear masks and gloves. Some people do that in some places in wintertime anyway.
This is bullshit, there is no herd immunity to Covid-19, anywhere. Estimates range from below 1% exposure in most parts of America, up to a maximum of a possible 25% exposure in NYC. Herd Immunity in the US = millions of dead.
The elderly can’t be “shielded”. Everyone knows that it is too contagious, and that if allowed to spread it will infect probably 80% of the population within a year. In the end, there are only two possible outcomes. The first is to stamp it out completely, as happened in South Korea and New Zealand, among other places. The other is to just let it run it’s course and kill those that are vulnerable. The latter is the path the US has chosen, but with the attempt to flatten the curve so that everyone gets medical care, and those that can be saved, are saved.
Just did a quick calculation: 545 newly unemployed for each covid death. The unemployed # should probably be much higher if it were to account for all of the independent contractors and the like who really have no way to be counted. I think that we should look at a Plan B that does a good job of protecting the vulnerable while allowing most of those 30 million new unemployed to get back to work. This is not a binary yes/no on whether something should be done. But that something does not necessarily need to put so many people out of work. And school. And everything else.
The unemployment number will hit bottom before the death number does. That ratio will change quite a bit. I agree with you that there exists a Present, but let me blow your mind with the concept of… THE FUTURE!
I’ve come to realise that the “protect the vulnerable” message is mostly political.
Vulnerable people:
Hospitals are not a good place to be during a pandemic
Care homes have staff coming and going
Frail people at home have people coming and going
Frail people at home with families have people coming and going
And we have a virus that spreads asymptomatically.
Shielding is a crock.
Hey Mish – there is an error in your article title. I think you meant it to read “overstated” not “understated”.
Know how I know you didn’t read the article?
I did. It’s full of BS. The question as always is who gets tagged as a CV19 death and under what circumstances. This is where the overstatement errors are being introduced. That should be obvious but refer to my reply to you above.
The article is about the extra dead people that magically started appearing at the same time covid did. Those aren’t estimates.
You must be talking about the thousands of people who were told not to go outside of their homes and get proper care for whatever ailment they because if they did they would die. I don’t think they have essential oils for cancer, heart attacks, stroke so it’s difficult to treat those from home.
Interesting. So you think that telling people not to go outside caused thousands and thousands of people to pass away for no particular reason?
Unfortunately almost everything he writes now is bullshit. This is clearly a compromised site full of left wing propaganda.
it doesn’t matter what they are/aren’t being reported as. There are 50,000 more deaths than would be expected over that time frame. If you dont believe it is covid causing those deaths, what is your alternate explanation?
And still, the USA, shining beacon of brilliance and freedom, is lagging way behind in testing. I got a test a couple days ago… the swab was hard to break off, and the nurse offered that it was made locally on a 3D printer. Since the slogan is now Keep America Great, this must be what Great is… a country that after 2 months can’t mass produce or hire someone to mass produce a 2 gram piece of plastic.
One of two things is possible: Either there is nobody left in this country with two brain cells to rub together, or there has been a catastrophic failure in leadership.
Heck, maybe it’s both.
50% of the population is dumber than the other half.
While the US lagged very badly early, they are aren’t lagging anymore. They have done 18,762 tests per million people, nearly 2% of the people in the country. The countries at the top of the number of tests/million tend to be either tiny, like Faroe Islands, Falkland Islands, and Gibralter, or really hard hit, like Italy, Spain, and Portugul. Most of the other major countries are in the same general range as the US.
Carl–please don’t confuse number of tests with number of people tested. Multiple tests have been performed on certain people (mostly ill people in healthcare settings).
And, how many do you suppose are being performed on higher-ups in government and industry that have pull?
It is certainly true that multiple tests are being conducted on the same people, so my statement that they had tested nearly 2% of the people was not true. However, it really isn’t relevant to the point that the US is no longer lagging in testing, because other countries also conduct multiple tests on the same people in all countries. Let me rephrase my comment slightly: “While the US lagged very badly early, they are aren’t lagging anymore. They have done 18,762 tests per million people, a number about equal to 2% of the people in the country. Most of the other major countries are in the same general range as the US.”
“Either there is nobody left in this country with two brain cells to rub together, or there has been a catastrophic failure in leadership.”
Americans aren’t any dumber than anyone else. (not saying much, perhaps….)
It’s just that financialization have gone on long enough here, to ensure that all resources have been redistributed: Away from those who have braincells. To complete and utter leeching wastes of time and space who serve no useful function in any society whatsoever, yet are “making money off their home”, or “their portfolio” or “in finance” and in related rackets put in place to ensure connected complete idiots get to take control over all the resources their productive betters, the ones with braincells, have created and are creating.
So I suppose in one way you can call it a failure of leadership, since all leaders and all owners of all things are by now completely and utterly, in every possible way and without exception, full on retarded. But the rot is so deep and fundamental, that it’s not something you can even begin solving by “electing” another inevitable retard to some exalted job description the dupes are told to be in awe off.
On the contrary, the fact that test kits are being made on 3d printers shows the incredible ingenuity of the American people. I say this as a Brit.