On big subs, like worldnews.
Like, a lot of people quoting one CDC report on IFR that presented COVID as less dangerous, without actually knowing the difference between CFR and IFR. Despite the fact that the numbers (in the report) are still very fucking high.
I hear more and more people saying that countries overreport deaths, based on some anecdotal evidence (one time a bike crash was reported as a COVID death), which is complete bullshit, of course, easily checked by looking at excess deaths.
Absolutely braindead comparisons to seasonal flu, as if seasonal flu isn't
- less dangerous
- a huge fucking problem and a cause of millions of deaths
Chapos, COVID is the most deadly airborne virus pandemic since spanish flu, and the most deadly virus since HIV/AIDS.
Oh yeah, I say "since HIV/AIDS", but HIV/AIDS pandemic is still happening. Literally millions of people die. We haven't cured it. Who said that we'll cure this one?
Also, you cant really compare coronavirus to HIV, but if we look at annual deaths, then HIV was at its peak at ~1.9 million deaths (in 2005, I think). Compare that to COVID. This is just the first 7-8 months of the pandemic and we already have more than a million deaths! That is, despite the fact that:
- Deaths are seriously underreported (I'm talking 30-50% just in the US. Imagine fucking Brasil. Russia? In Russia its way worse).
- Coronoviruses are seasonal and they peak at winter
- The whole world went into lockdown for months.
Holy shit, I fucking can't.
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There's no truth, your parents are idiots. Just compare the overall deaths in 2019 compared to now. Gee there's a huge spike in deaths I wonder what could possibly be causing that.
Yep.
Forgive me for linking to 538, but I found this article to be a decent explanation on why counting deaths is complicated and how our current methods are not built for the just-in-time nature of a pandemic:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-deaths/
This comes from either a misunderstanding or an intended obfuscation of what "cause of death" means, and how it's determined. Technically there is really only one way to die: not enough oxygen gets to the brain. But this can be caused by a million different things, and one thing can precipitate the next, so where do you draw the line?
When you have a patient with covid who then catches pneumonia and dies, was it the covid or the pneumonia that killed them? What if the process was less cut and dried than that? Like a covid patient with comorbities who deteriorates and dies; was it the comorbities that killed them? Or did covid push an unhealthy person past the point they could recover from?
I think this question is the nugget of truth to "anyone with covid is counted as a covid death" argument, but even if there are some cases that are absolute stretches at best (like the bicycle example), they are such an absolute minority of cases when compared to the million plus other worldwide deaths so far.
You don't "catch" pneumonia - it's a disease state that can result from an infection. You catch the causative agent of pneumonia.
Sorry if that sounds pedantic but I think it's emblematic of how easy it is to mischaracterize something this complex by not knowing the correct medical terminology.
You're not wrong, but in this case I do think you're being a bit overly pedantic and making a distinction without a difference.
I think it's a perfect example of how the general public has a limited vocabulary with which to discuss these things.
I'm also a clinical lab scientist, so speaking in very specific terms about this stuff is kind of my bag.
lol. Ah, well there's your answer.
I worked as an ER scribe for several years and then as a hospitalist scribe for a couple years after that. Throughout all this time I saw innumerable examples of the physicians saying the patient "caught" pneumonia, or "got" pneumonia, or whatever generalized term you want to use. Medical professionals understand that you catch Strep pneumo, or Klebsiella, or Mycoplasma, or whatever, and not just "pneumonia," but there's really no need to be anally retentive like that when discussing the patient with another person on the treatment team, you know? Especially considering that most of the time they don't even know what pathogen is causing the pneumonia until a blood or sputum sample gets down to you guys.
And yeah, the general public might not understand that you don't actually catch pneumonia, you actually catch some pathogen that causes it, but again, I'm struggling to see how that makes much of a difference in this case.
It doesn't change your point about comorbidities. It was only tangentially related, tbh.
True that.
There are certain guidelines for WHO reporting, I can find them if you want. So, if you die from completely unrelated causes, it doesn't count. If you recover and then die, it doesn't count.
Even if there are some % of cases overreported the best way to fight that argument is by pointing out excess mortality stats.
Here's an article from august 12 saying 200000 people had already died in US, based on excess death numbers.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.html
Basically, are some deaths wrongly reported? Sure, mistakes happen. (Even though you have to realise that each doctor is not stupid and probably has some idea what caused it)
But does it mean there are actually less deaths? Hell no.
Your parents are dumb boomers
The stats clearly show more deaths
Of course a dude in a car crash was counted as a COVID death. COVID can cause extreme brain dysfunction, fainting, strokes, and so much more.
If a guy is COVID+, has a stroke while driving and crashes his car and dies, then he died of COVID.
If a guy is COVID+, and gets into a traffic accident and dies, but has a spotless traffic record for a decade before that, he died of COVID.
If a guy is COVID NEGATIVE, but still has lasting symptoms, and he crashes his car and dies, but he never crashed his car during the last 15 years, then he almost certainly died of COVID.
Because COVID made them crash their cars. kindergarten shit
etc