“Presumed” COVID-19 deaths in NYC
There’s been a sudden hike in the NYC death toll from COVID-19:
The Big Apple’s new death toll is 10,367. That figures combines the 6,589 victims who tested positive for the virus plus another 3,778 who were never tested, but whose death certificates list the cause of death as “COVID-19 or an equivalent,” according to city Health Department data from March 11 through April 13.
A description:
Probable coronavirus deaths were more common than confirmed coronavirus deaths among victims ages 75 and older, according to the city’s Health Department…
More than 90 percent of confirmed COVID-19 deaths happened at city hospitals while about 60 percent of probable coronavirus fatalities occurred in hospitals. The other 40 percent of probable coronavirus victims died at their own homes or in nursing homes.
This is another illustration of the slippery nature of the COVID-19 statistics. Even if people are trying their best to make them accurate (and you may or may not agree that they are trying to do that), it’s challenging. In several recent posts and comment threads (see this as well as this) I’ve pointed out the similarities between COVID-19 and flu in terms of symptoms, mode of death, and ages and types of people who are more likely to die from each disease, as well as the difficulties of testing for flu. So some of these 3,778 home and nursing home deaths may indeed be COVID-19 or they may be flu, or they may be pneumonia from some other cause.
One way to try to ascertain what’s actually going on is to compare this year to last year:
Aside from confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths, 8,184 people died in the city from March 11 through April 13. During the same period last year there were just 5,167 so the difference could be coronavirus fatalities that neither tested positive nor were designated as COVID-19 victims in their death certificates.
Possibly. Or maybe they are stress-related – we’ve certainly all been under extra stress, haven’t we? Or maybe some of the deaths come from people with other ailments who are shying away from doctors and hospitals out of fear.
Or maybe – maybe it’s the flu:
The current flu season is on track to be one of the worst in years, Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN.
CNN reports that Fauci says the 2019-2020 flu season is on track to be as severe as the 2017-2018 season, which was the deadliest in at least a decade.
New data from the CDC released on Friday estimates that so far this season, at least 6.4 million people have caught the flu, 55,000 people have been hospitalized and 2,900 people have died — 800 more people then were estimated the week before.
That was written on January 4th. So any comparisons of deaths between last year – a fairly light flu season – and this year, which was on track to be an extremely heavy one, are not going to tell you much about COVID-19 deaths, because the years are not equivalent.
Then again, maybe that severe and deadly flu year that Fauci noted in early January was actually a result of cases of COVID-19 making early inroads. We wouldn’t have known, since COVID-19 would have not been suspected or able to be detected even if it had been suspected.
I wonder whether we’ll ever know the truth. And you don’t even have to posit some nefarious intent on the part of authorities in order to say that.
As always, the relevant question is “cui bono?”. It is obviously of immense benefit to certain members of the MSM (eager to blame Trump) and to certain ideologues (eager to expand the power of the state) to maximize the number of fatalities from the Wuhan-virus. The incentive for leftists to classify almost any death as resulting from the virus (when, in fact, the person might well have died “with” the virus, rather than “from” the virus) is indeed significant.
How much more ($$$) does a hospital get for treating a Wuhan Flu patient in comparison to treating a pneumonia patient?
According to earlier reports, the amount is substantial.
As they say, “follow the money.”
Leftists lie.
In other news…water is wet.
I’ve been taking the cumulative testing numbers out of NY and putting them into a spreadsheet, so that I can difference sequential days and extract the daily numbers.
The maximum number of daily tests was 26.4K on April 9, and then it trended down for 3 days to 16.8K on April 13, and spiked up a bit to 20.8K yesterday.
The percentage tested positive topped out at about 50% on April 1, and has slowly drooped downward to the lowest recent level of 34.5% yesterday.
I think this is the good news, even though deaths are still climbing, if I have that last point correct.
Edward:
A lot of these “presumed” deaths were not in hospitals. So I’m not at all sure the reimbursement applies.
This is a little off topic. Hope that’s okay.
At his blog, Arnold Kling provides a link to the New York City daily data summary for COVID-19 (https://tinyurl.com/swvsmb6).
Kling then points out that only 133 death certificates out of 6589 were for people with no underlying conditions, but all 6589 deaths were attributed to COVID-19.
Throughout the pandemic, I’ve been extremely frustrated with the lack of data quality and standardization. From that perspective, this little bit of information is just one more unpleasant surprise. More questions are raised than answered.
For those interested, more data at the link.
Lots of Covid-19 deaths without tests.
And lots of “tests” that are false negative. There was an article about 30-50% of Chinese tests were false negatives. This is what the Chinese were using, and sent to Holland, who sent them back.
We need more testing, including tests of the “tests”, to see how good they are.
Also we need age … and BMI stats – lots of those who die are obese, as well as having diabetes and other co-morbidities.
How many who die with Covid-19 would have died in 2020 w/o it? Nobody ever knows, but my guess is about 50%.
Cornflour:
How many people over 65 have NO underlying conditions, if you include hypertension, obesity (even mild obesity), previous cancer, diabetes, and asthma? So of course there are few deaths of people who don’t have an underlying condition, because most deaths are in that age group.
I have yet to see a single statistic saying what percentage of people dying from COVID in the younger and older age groups have underlying conditions compared to the percentage of people in those age groups in the general population who have those conditions. That’s the statistic that matters, and I haven’t seen it. If you can find it, please post a link!
IT’S New York City inside of New York State. OF COURSE they are juicing the stats.
Neo:
If you click on the link I provided, you can see how underlying conditions break down by age group. Of course, that data is for those who are said to have died from COVID-19. Even among the younger groups, underlying conditions are common. Yes, that surprised me, but you have a good point.
I don’t have a link to analogous data for the general population.
The New York City daily data summary defines underlying illnesses as diabetes, lung disease, cancer, immunodeficiency, heart disease, hypertension, asthma, kidney disease, and gastrointestinal/liver disease. Obesity isn’t included in this data compilation.
Finding the percentage, by age group, for these listed conditions, in the general population shouldn’t be too hard, but it would be tedious and time consuming. I’m afraid I’m too lazy for the task, but there are now millions of newly unemployed …
P.S. The federal government publishes mortality and morbidity statistics. If I remember correctly, they’re compiled by The National Library of Medicine. If anybody wants to take on the job, that’s where I’d start.
The current flu season is on track to be one of the worst in years, Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN.
This year was set to be a bad flu year precisely because the US was already infected with CV19, and it was killing people. Just no-one knew it at the time.
Most recent CDC figures…
https://web.archive.org/web/20200416003610/https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
Neo:
The CDC has an online publication called “FastStats.” This is like an online handbook that collects statistical information from many other government publications.
Here’s a link
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/default.htm
There’s a section of FastStats entitled “Diseases and Conditions.” Another is called “Infectious/Immune.” If you browse those two sections, you’ll see data on various diseases, for the general population. There are breakdowns by age groups.
That data could then be added up and compared to the data supplied by the New York City daily reports on COVID-19 deaths with underlying illnesses. As far as I know, nobody has done that particular bit of arithmetic.
Also, please note that I haven’t searched FastStats to determine if it includes data for all nine of the diseases that NYC daily reports list as COVID-19 underlying illnesses. Either way, the site would put a big dent in the problem you posed.
Neo:
As an example, I’ve just looked at the CDC FastStats cancer statistics in some detail. There are lots of numbers, but I don’t see the ones you’d need. Sorry to have mislead you.
For what it’s worth, the data on diabetes might be more suitable.
Still, quite a bit of research left to do.
Not likely.
The flu is still there, and it’s still as deadly as usual, but it’s not likely to cause a significant number of deaths.
Why? Te coronavirus spreads much faster than the flu. While the aggregated number of deaths at the end of the season could be similar, the ones caused by the flu will happen during a several months period, while the coronavirus ones will happen in a few weeks.
The coronavirus is like a flu that concentrated all the cases in a few weeks window. That’s why it’s so hard for the health system, even when the final mortality rate is not that high.
This is the daily mortality in Spain for the last two years. You can notice the increase during winter months, due (mostly) to the flu. The final death toll is the area under the graph.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WWDFm/4/
The coronavirus is a very high and narrow peak. And while the final aggregated death toll (the area under) is likely to be similar to the flu one, on a daily basis and during the coronavirus outbreak, the number of deaths is gonna be much higher. The flu will still be responsible for some deaths, of course, but only a small percentage of then.
Colds too… as corona virus (6 of them) cause cold symptoms..
so this comparing to flu is not correct.. 15% of colds are caused by corona virus
They announced that ny is getting better and not..
Trump called out custom again for inflation of the death numbers
Better:
Coronavirus updates: US deaths fall; New York improving (USA Today)
and not:
Death toll soars after NYC counts ‘probable’ fatalities (AP)
the disparity is about 3700 deaths are in question… many of them were NOT TESTED so could have been flu deaths, or just plain old elderly with pneumonia… but they get no money for that, do they?
and
Cuomo Insists He Doesn’t Want a Fight With Trump
given its the times i cant read it, nor can i see their ads..
so they must be living on subscriptions as people read the information and get ad revenue with rewrites of the same information… or commenting on the times article reveal the same information.
Yann: This is the daily mortality in Spain for the last two years. You can notice the increase during winter months, due (mostly) to the flu. The final death toll is the area under the graph.
hard to look to spain as when this started they decided to nationalize their healthcare, and fold the private into the public and so they crippled the system at the time they needed it most as you cant do the folding like a souffle.
@Artfldgr
The healthcare system in Spain has been always public, and it actually worked very well. Franco’s dictatorship had a fascist component, and fascism (and I mean the real one, not the cartoon parody) favors public services. It hasn’t been nationalized last years, quite the opposite indeed, it has gone a bit more private.
More than once I’ve heard from some people that private healthcare cripples the system, from other people that public healthcare cripples the system. That’s non-sense. You have both shitty and wonderful public health systems, both private and public ones. The key element is not whether the system is public or private, but whether the society is a civilized and meritocratic one or a shithole, or something in the middle.
Japan will have a good healthcare no matter it’s public or private, because it’s Japan. Mexico will have a shitty one no matter it’s public or private, because it’s Mexico.
Artfldgr:
The fact that certain forms of coronavirus can cause colds is not the point. SARS and MERS are also caused by coronaviruses and they are very different from colds. COVID-19 is compared to flu (a different virus, as I’ve made clear many times) not because of the viral type but because its symptoms and its lethality seem far more similar to influenza (there are different strains of influenza, of course) than to the coronavirus that causes colds.
The President’s state-based phase re-opening plan will put pressure on politicians not to lie about how severe their problem is. New York can stay closed forever if it likes, but other states will get back to work and not go broke.
Tex – it looks like to me that the NY plan is to stay closed and ask the Feds to bail them out, i.e., let Texans and the open states do the work and send the money to the closed states.
Glenn Jacobs, the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, came up with the first detailed plan I have seen for “re-opening.” You can find a download here:
https://www.wate.com/news/local-news/knox-county-mayor-glenn-jacobs-outlines-6-week-phased-reopening-plan-from-coronavirus-shutdown/
Seems sensible to me. It’s worth a look. I saw that article on Instapundit a few days ago. Re-searching for it just now I came across a news article that some other Tennessee politicians appear to be using it to form a plan that spans several counties.
Hopefully we will see much more of this in the next week.