[HN Gopher] Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% am...
___________________________________________________________________
Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages
18-64
Author : wsc981
Score : 413 points
Date : 2022-01-02 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thecentersquare.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thecentersquare.com)
| gumby wrote:
| My uncle was outside that age group but died last summer of a
| heart attack --- due to Covid. All the ICU beds in his area were
| occupied by Covid patients.
| MandieD wrote:
| I'm so sorry. My father-in-law has had his "elective" surgery
| to deal with a hernia cancelled twice due to hospital
| overcapacity, and all we can do is pray that Germany's current
| restrictions will have kept the numbers low enough for his
| current appointment this week and likely follow up procedure to
| deal with tachycardia to happen.
|
| They're not even talking about rescheduling the hernia surgery
| anytime soon - he's making do with a compression band.
|
| This is why it _is_ other people's business whether someone is
| vaccinated.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| I assume your opinion is "more vaccinated people => less load
| on hospitals", but this article hints it could be the
| opposite.
| gumby wrote:
| The article says no such thing, and in fact doesn't even
| address that issue.
|
| The closest is the following: "It may not all be COVID on
| their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge
| numbers."
|
| The person quoted isn't commenting on hospitals at all. For
| example my uncle doesn't have COVID on his death
| certificate but his doctor says that his case was simple
| enough that he _could_ have been saved had he been able to
| be admitted.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| I don't disagree but I think we should also be demanding more
| capacity from our hospitals and maybe just maybe demanding
| actual universal healthcare. It's so bizarre to me that
| that's not even on the table but it's because most just
| assume we have to have a for-profit medical system.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Increasing capacity for hospitals is actually a hard
| problem, because the time it takes to train people to fill
| the capacity is quite high.
| ericd wrote:
| Isn't Germany's healthcare system already universal, and
| their support for elderly people quite generous?
| gumby wrote:
| Hospitals build out capacity based on projections of need.
| So they look at the population of their catchment area,
| other hospitals, demographics of the locals, and calculate
| that they'll need about X icu beds / maternity rooms etc
| etc and then build in a small overcapacity for surges.
|
| If they routinely overbuilt then cost would go up even
| more. I think this approach is reasonable for any
| business,* whether private or public hospital.
|
| The Covid surge isn't something you can plan for, nor could
| you really build ICU capacity quickly enough for.
|
| Also there's a systems issue: the ICU pressure shouldn't
| even exist to the degree it does as we have a "defense in
| depth": vaccination. But for some reason people aren't
| using that defense, which simply makes things worse for the
| rest of us.
|
| * not getting into the cost issues in general, just
| addressing your specific comment.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| This examination of pfizer's own vaccine safety study, claims
| that it shows an increase in all risk mortality.
|
| https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/media-resources/th...
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Just from the name I strongly suspect it's one of the
| disinformation spreaders.
| incrudible wrote:
| The information itself is neutral. The channel is not.
| Unfortunately, this information isn't digested by the sort of
| critical and investigative journalism that should exist in
| our society. The obviously wrong or misleading information
| gets "fact checked", but this just gets ignored. There's no
| room for nuance when the prevailing belief is that "everyone
| must get vaccinated or people will die".
| Tycho wrote:
| Well a few months back in official UK mortality statistics from
| the ONS you could see a massive increase in the non-covid death
| rate for vaccinated people, but no one in the health authorities
| seemed to notice or feel the need to explain it.
|
| Previous discussion here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28532552
| draw_down wrote:
| smartplaya2001 wrote:
| i wonder if it has anything related to the covid vaccine rollout?
| The timing coincides.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| A much simpler explanation is that this is a side effect of the
| pandemic itself.
|
| The timing of the vaccine roll out is of course related to the
| timing of the pandemic. So it's expected that we would see some
| loose correlation in timing between the different events
| related to the pandemic.
|
| Things such as increase in mental issues and increased drug
| consumption due to loneliness, lack of medical care due to
| overflowed hospitals or loss of income etc. all took time to
| build up once the pandemic started. Just as it took time to
| manufacture and distribute a vaccine once the pandemic started.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| If they are comparing deaths in 2020 when everyone except
| "essential workers" was stuck at home for 3/4 of the year, to
| 2021 when many more people were back to their routine of driving,
| work, recreation, etc. I would not be surprised to see a spike in
| deaths for young people who are back into doing a lot more things
| that can cause accidents.
|
| If they are comparing 2021 to something like a 10 year average
| death rate and seeing a 40% jump, then that is more interesting.
|
| Also raw numbers matter. Two deaths from some rare cause this
| year vs. one last year is a 100% increase, but doesn't really
| mean anything in a state with 6.5 million people.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| He says it's going to cost the company more but could there also
| be an increased incentive for covered employees to increase their
| coverage and thus increase the premium revenue to OneAmerica? I
| am generally dubious when the CEO of a (private) company that's
| bottom line is so closely tied to death rates publishes an
| article with such a nice round number increase in the death rate.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Would you feel more at ease if he said 38.23%?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It sounds rather like a public explanation for pricing changes.
| The pricing changes would be based on changes to underwriting,
| and reinsurance costs.
| Flockster wrote:
| Unavailable from the EU.
| ur-whale wrote:
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Why?
| derefr wrote:
| Presumably because sites not available in the EU aren't
| legally obligated to annoy everyone with cookie consent
| banners.
| oneplane wrote:
| They aren't legally obligated to track people with
| cookies either. It's always their own choice.
| dazc wrote:
| But they have a cookie consent banner regardless of
| whether they are tracking people of not.
| hansel_der wrote:
| Fixed that for you:
|
| But they are tracking people regardless of whether they
| have a cookie consent banner or not.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Why would a site available in the EU be obligated to
| annoy everyone with cookie consent banners. Many probably
| do, but it's laziness on their part, but there's no legal
| obligation to do so.
| rob74 wrote:
| IANAL, but I doubt that sites not available in the EU are
| legally obligated to annoy non-EU visitors with cookie
| consent banners? Of course, it's easier to annoy
| everyone, but if you can block EU visitors based on their
| IP you can also show the cookie consent banner only for
| these IPs?
| derefr wrote:
| Because the banners are targeted at EU citizens, not
| people geographically within the EU. You're required to
| show the banners to e.g. EU citizens living in the US.
|
| ETA: under GDPR, blocking the EU geographically (e.g. via
| GeoIP), in combination with requiring user registrations
| to specify that they're not EU citizens, would be
| considered a "good-faith effort" to avoid collecting the
| data of EU citizens.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Good luck extraditing.
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, that's pretty absurd and technically impossible, but
| blocking users from the EU, as many US sites do, does not
| "fix" for this issue, because EU users living in the US
| will be able to use the site without getting a cookie
| banner.
| dazc wrote:
| The burden of complying with EU privacy laws that benefit
| no one aside from a powerful lobby group of EU-based media
| businesses.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Huh? Personally, as an EU citizen, I like the laws, and
| feel like they benefit me.
| ur-whale wrote:
| We're not talking about the laws here but about the dumb
| pop-up you anyway click OK on systematically and
| therefore serves exactly no purpose.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Well, actually what I do almost always is click reject
| all on the GDPR ones, then tab over to the legitimate
| interest tab and object to all of that too. I can't speak
| for the behaviours of others.
|
| If you have a _real_ legitimate interest, you don 't need
| my consent, so I feel entirely justified in objecting to
| their fake-ass "legitimate interest" (i.e. please let us
| do what we want).
| kreeben wrote:
| To send a signal to the EU that US based web sites wish to
| continue to steal their users' PII and sell it to whomever
| they wish, without users having to give their consent,
| because that's how you make money when you don't have good,
| quality product.
| dazc wrote:
| This would be a good argument but for the fact that
| everyone just clicks OK anyway.
| OJFord wrote:
| Unless they use an ad-blocker and don't even see it.
| (It's (supposed to be) opt-in.)
| ummonk wrote:
| A sizeable chunk of this is from fentanyl poisoning, which is now
| the leading cause of death amongst 18-45.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Well, I'm sure there is a little bit of significance, but you
| have to take into account that it's a relatively small number of
| deaths compared to the population size, and the person giving you
| the news about "DEATHs ARE UP" sells LIFE INSURANCE.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Life Expectancy in U.S. Declined 1.8 Years in 2020, CDC Says
|
| https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/life-expectancy-in-u-s-decl...
|
| This is for 2020 - COVID-19 deaths are more for 2021.
|
| Really wild numbers if you think about it.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| It also hints that covid-19 related deaths are undercounted in
| the us.
| Redoubts wrote:
| The NY Times used to do a breakdown, and found yes they are:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/14/us/covid-19-d.
| ..
| lostlogin wrote:
| The Economist article posted here a few days ago had the US
| at a bit over 1 million deaths.
|
| https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-
| excess-...
| FabHK wrote:
| Assuming that COVID deaths are fully accounted for, that
| would mean about 200k excess deaths due to other,
| presumably COVID related, factors (suicide, drug overdose,
| ...).
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's a big assumption though. Some places had death
| rates decline for many 'normal' causes of death.
|
| Suicide, flu and car crashes caused less deaths than
| usual where I am, and the lockdowns led a negative value
| for 'excess deaths'. I'm in New Zealand.
| cmurf wrote:
| That's what the CEO is quoted as saying: _What the data is
| showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as
| COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among
| working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID
| on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge
| numbers._
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It could also hint that excess deaths from lockdown policies
| are higher than expected. COVID deaths are almost certainly
| undercounted by some factor, but suicides and drug overdoses
| are skyrocketing. These numbers would make sense if the cure
| is worse than the disease too.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Assuming that all covid deaths are accounted for and all
| the rest of the excess deaths are from lockdown, there
| would have to be at least as many excess deaths as covid
| deaths to start saying the cure is worse than the disease.
| From the numbers it seems like there would be about 800k
| covid deaths to 200k excess (in the USA), so that would
| indicate the disease was 4x worse than the cure. Of course
| those are all assumptions that I don't think are accurate,
| but using your own logic.
|
| But one thing we probably can agree on is that at this
| point covid is endemic and most people have given up trying
| to get to zero cases.
|
| For me, I personally just integrated into my worldview the
| fact that I can't trust most humans to give a shit about
| others (like following simple mask and vaccine guidelines)
| and have to protect my family however best I can, even if
| that means less social interaction for the rest of my life.
| tedsanders wrote:
| What is your source for the claim that suicides are
| skyrocketing? How do you quantify skyrocketing?
|
| In the US, it looks like suicides fell slightly, according
| to provisional data:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf
|
| Even if these statistics are updated upward, I don't see
| how they can be interpreted as skyrocketing.
|
| Please do your best to stick to facts and source them when
| convenient.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Or that second order effects from covid prevention policies
| have led to many extra deaths. e.g. suicides, alcoholism,
| drug overdose
|
| Have to look at the numbers to understand
| throwaway4good wrote:
| If you look at the global numbers not all countries had a
| similar drop in life expentency (ie. Denmark and New
| Zealand had no drop) but went through similar or more
| severe lockdown and vaccine policies.
| Riseed wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Lockdowns and vaccines are not the only
| covid prevention policies. Stimulus checks and
| unemployment compensation (along with their universality
| and the ease and speed of obtaining them), testing
| availability, and general healthcare access also fit into
| the "covid prevention policies" category, and can be
| reasonably suspected to have had some impact on life
| expectancy.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Missouri coroners proudly admit they aren't counting any
| COVID deaths. It's definitely being undercounted. I know
| someone who died in Wisconsin but the hospital said he didn't
| have COVID then a year later they admitted they'd done the
| test wrong and actually didn't know. None of the data
| provided is reliable. More people should be worried about how
| unreliable our healthcare system.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| With few exceptions, if you want to know what's really going on,
| the insurance companies are the numbers to draw from. They have a
| vested interest in knowing what's happening and people usually
| have a vested interest in reporting to them to collect resources.
|
| (The exception is when there are secondary effects. Auto
| insurance reporting under samples minor accidents, because people
| don't want to risk their perfect driving record rate bonuses on a
| fender-bender. But there are no incentives to refrain from
| collecting on life insurance.)
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Note that life insurance isn't going to be a good model--there
| are two selection biases at work here.
|
| 1) Those in ill health likely can't afford life insurance.
|
| 2) Life insurance is mostly to provide for dependents--which
| means people in good enough shape to have dependents and people
| are young enough to still have dependents. (Once the kids are
| grown there's much less reason for term life insurance.)
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Good point. You've highlighted two ways in which these
| numbers might under count COVID fatalities based on what we
| know about correlation with both age and prior health
| conditions and morbidity with this disease.
| anttisalmela wrote:
| https://archive.is/VIzFv
| WriterGuy2021 wrote:
| I don't know what's going on and I'm scared.
| blihp wrote:
| People aren't getting as much exercise, sitting around more
| eating cheetos and drinking beer, doing more drugs and getting
| more depressed. I'm not suggesting that all of those are
| happening to everyone, but each of them is a risk factor and
| due to the pandemic they're occurring to different segments of
| the population at the same time.
| [deleted]
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Why should we believe this biased source?
|
| >Davison said the increase in deaths represents "huge, huge
| numbers," and that's it's not elderly people who are dying, but
| "primarily working-age people 18 to 64" who are the employees of
| companies that have group life insurance plans through
| OneAmerica.
|
| So he sees the data for non elderly people, because those are the
| people who have his company's plans. So he doesn't have the data
| to compare against to say elderly people _aren 't_ dying at
| higher rates because _they aren 't his customers_
| omosubi wrote:
| Why must it be a comparison? A 40% increase in deaths for any
| population is mind boggling
| k2enemy wrote:
| It really isn't if you are starting from an extremely low
| baseline.
| loeg wrote:
| Depends on historical variance, no? The baseline was half a
| percent _of hundreds of millions of people._ It's a lot of
| additional deaths.
| omosubi wrote:
| So we should just ignore these numbers? Does this not
| warrant more information about what is causing these
| deaths?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I suspect you misunderstood the parent's point. Not being
| mind-boggling doesn't imply we should ignore it.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Because the quoted source is literally making the comparison,
| which I am saying is incorrect because his data is biased.
| Please reread the piece I quoted to see the comparison
|
| >that's it's not elderly people who are dying, but "primarily
| working-age people 18 to 64"
| zo1 wrote:
| You're being oddly pedanti? He could mean any number of
| things with that mention of elderly people.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Because he is making claims of fact based on his
| available data. I am saying the statement is incorrect
| zo1 wrote:
| He also, in the article, mentions that he is looking at
| other companies in the market. "We are seeing, right now,
| the highest death rates we have seen in the history of
| this business - not just at OneAmerica".
|
| Anywho without more info about what access to data he is
| making his observations on, we're just speculating.
| Definitely can't say he is factually wrong with the vague
| and open bits of info from the article. It's just quotes
| that could mean almost anything.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Also this is a $100 billion company that is private and with
| only 2400 employees? Something doesn't smell right.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Roblox has a market cap of 60 billion and less than 1500
| employees(it was private until less than a year ago)
| gbronner wrote:
| Life insurance is mostly a passthrough from the living to the
| families of the dead Most people never use the product.
| [deleted]
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Probably this is assets under management, not yearly sales or
| net income.
| carls wrote:
| I think the $100bn number does not refer to the company
| revenue. According to the company, in 2016 revenue was close
| to $2bn [1]. It may instead refer to total assets under
| administration (which was $74bn in 2016, according to the
| same source).
|
| -------
|
| [1] https://www.oneamerica.com/newsroom/news-
| releases/oneamerica...
| [deleted]
| xojoc wrote:
| How many new young customers do they have? Maybe more people
| than before think about getting a life insurance and for
| whatever reason the more "fragile" ones are getting one.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| These are most likely group life policies where the employer
| pays the premiums for a base amount for all employees. Since
| there is no charge to the employee for the base coverage,
| most would accept the coverage.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| If the employee base changed it could end up being
| unrepresentative of the broader population, but it's hard
| to imagine what that might be. Healthier people quit?
| Healthier people left Indiana? A competitor insurance
| company signed all the healthier groups?
| whatever1 wrote:
| Big employers in the US offer group life insurance to their
| employees without the need to opt in. Of course they have opt
| in add ons to increase the coverage, but in any case if you
| are employed and you die (knock wood) the insurance company's
| phone will ring.
| the_optimist wrote:
| He is not saying that elderly people aren't dying. He's saying
| elderly people are not in his sample set. In other words, you
| read this incorrectly. Also, you do not justify your claim of
| bias.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| >that's it's not elderly people who are dying, but "primarily
| working-age people 18 to 64"
|
| "that's it's not elderly people who are dying"
|
| Am I missing something? Is this _not_ a comparison?
| the_optimist wrote:
| Yes, you miss the context of the conversation. No, it is
| _not_ a comparison.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| If elderly people are not in the data set, why are they
| mentioned at all?
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's a literary construction, emphasizing that the 40%
| increase is not an observation about elderly people.
|
| It's not intended to be taken alone as a statement about
| the elderly.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| He is making a statement on his data and saying that
| elderly aren't dying at the same rate. How is it possible
| to take that any way besides literally?
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I dunno what the disconnect is but you may be the only
| one struggling with the meaning behind the words. I don't
| see him referring to the death rate of people outside
| 18-64 at all.
|
| You could say his information is biased because it is
| limited to folks that have insurance through his company,
| but he's up front about that.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| >it's not elderly people who are dying
|
| Quoted verbatim from the source article. This is a plain
| statement on the death rate of that specific age group.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Do you think he's saying elderly people aren't dying?
| Because that's what those precise words would mean when
| you take them out of context. In context, it's clear that
| he's not talking about elderly people at all.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| I've had to chop up the quote to point out the exact part
| I take issue with. The entire quote is a comparison of
| age groups, of which he does not appear to have data for.
|
| Also as others have mentioned, this part may have been
| added by the reporter who definitely doesn't cite Amy
| source for the comparison. Either option equates to poor
| reporting.
| the_optimist wrote:
| As others point out here, this is a literary construction
| flagging that in his specific context, he is not
| referencing old people. He is making the very point that
| he is above accused of not making. Just as if I were to
| chop the quote in your sentence "this part may have been
| added by a reporter" (which is not a self-reference to
| your own quote possibly having been edited by a
| reporter), the context is important. The reporting here
| is causal but being able to interpret such statements is
| part of basic reading comprehension.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| It is a literary construction that makes the sentence
| contain incorrect information. A correct statement would
| have not mentioned elderly people at all because they are
| not included in the data:
|
| "There has been an increase in deaths of working age
| 18-64 year olds."
|
| Full stop. No need to mention the elderly.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Sure. Is this true: (WHERE 18 <= age <= 64) is the same
| as (WHERE 18 <= age <= 64 AND NOT 64 < AGE) ? This is
| what he's saying. It's emphatic, not pedantic to make
| such a point.
| hllooo wrote:
| No, he's making a statement saying that his data shows
| working age people dying at a higher rate. It says
| nothing about elderly people.
|
| The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company
| OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from
| pre-pandemic levels among working-age people.
|
| ...
|
| Davison said the increase in deaths (that his company
| sees) represents "huge, huge numbers," and that's it's
| not elderly people who are dying (to account for this
| increase), but "primarily working-age people 18 to 64"
| who are the employees of companies that have group life
| insurance plans through OneAmerica.
|
| Plus, he actually could say "that elderly people aren't
| dying at the same rate" in his dataset and be technically
| correct. The elderly are not part of his dataset, so it's
| vacuously true.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Yes, he is making a comment on _his data_ and as an
| insurer this data only includes working age people, not
| the elderly.
|
| So of course he doesn't see elderly deaths because _they
| aren 't in his data set_
|
| But since his data set is limited, we just can't draw
| this conclusion
| the_optimist wrote:
| You are simply reading this wrong. If you want to prove
| that to yourself, call up this guy and talk to him. He
| will tell you you're stating something totally obvious
| and making a very silly distinction. You're agreeing with
| him violently. Come back in a couple of years and re-read
| this, you'll realize your interpretation is wrong.
| austinkhale wrote:
| What claim do you believe is being made that utilizes this
| source in a biased way? It seems to me that in his remarks he
| was pretty clear about this data applying to the vertical of
| participants in employer plans, in a specific age group.
|
| I don't think it's any secret that the last two years have been
| poor for people's mental & physical health. It stands to reason
| that we're going to be feeling the consequences of the pandemic
| & pandemic mitigation efforts for quite some time.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| >that's it's not elderly people who are dying, but "primarily
| working-age people 18 to 64"
|
| He's literally claiming that elderly are not dying at the
| same rates, based on his internal customer data
| austinkhale wrote:
| I think you're misinterpreting his statement. He isn't
| making a claim about elderly death rates. He's saying the
| pandemic (both the disease and other effects) is affecting
| a younger, working cohort as well, based on their available
| data.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| I am saying that comparison is wrong, because he is
| missing data for the age group that he is comparing
| against.
| austinkhale wrote:
| I believe where you are interpreting it one way and the
| rest of us are interpreting it another is perhaps due to
| missing the quotation marks.
|
| ...deaths represents "huge, huge numbers," and that's
| it's not elderly people who are dying, but "primarily
| working-age people 18...
|
| Davidson, the CEO in question, directly said "huge, huge
| numbers" and "primarily working-age people 18..." in his
| address. However the author of the article, Margaret
| Menge, added the "that's it's not elderly people who are
| dying" piece.
|
| Essentially Margaret, as explained in another comment,
| used a literary construction to tie the quotes together.
| The sentence is being used to convey that contrary to the
| popular narrative that the pandemic is only killing the
| elderly, here we have evidence that it's affecting other
| cohorts as well.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| If that is true, them this changes the meaning of the
| quotes. In my opinion this is just as bad because the
| entire article centers around these claims and she is
| adding claims that her source did not make.
|
| Horrible reporting
| whatever1 wrote:
| Are we reading the same sentence?
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| So how do you interpret it?
|
| My interpretation is that this guy runs an insurance
| company who insures working age people through their
| employers. That is the source of the data, so he is
| _missing data on elderly people_
|
| Yet he makes a claim that the people he does not have
| data on are dying at a lower rate than the people he
| _does_ have data on. This makes no sense, as you can 't
| make a comparison when you simply don't have data on the
| group you're comparing against
| GaveDrohl wrote:
| Can you share the quote from the article that you're
| referring to? Not saying it's not there, but I'm just not
| finding it.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| I have it quoted in multiple comments here, including my
| top comment. Here it is again:
|
| >Davison said the increase in deaths represents "huge,
| huge numbers," and that's it's not elderly people who are
| dying, but "primarily working-age people 18 to 64" who
| are the employees of companies that have group life
| insurance plans through OneAmerica.
|
| Here is the specific part I take issue with:
|
| >it's not elderly people who are dying, but "primarily
| working-age people
| [deleted]
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Mortality rates are basically up in all countries (at least those
| who can adequately measure it). My bet is that "after Covid" we
| will see rates under the pre-pandemic value for a couple of years
| as Covid was most lethal to those that would have died the next
| 0-5 years anyways without it.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Yes excess mortality it will probably go down in the older
| groups that died slightly pre-maturely. But the deaths in the
| 18-64 is not just from Covid-19 but from things exacerbated by
| it on the society level; Delaying treatment/tests, Drug
| Overdose, Alcoholism, Depression, Suicide, Traffic Accidents
| etc. Those are net-new and not necessarily ones that would have
| happened in the next 5 years.
| erichurkman wrote:
| Don't forget to add in the folks who technically recovered
| from COVID but are suffering lingering conditions like
| scarred lung tissue, kidney damage, atrial fibrillation,
| myocarditis, [...]. Those will add more sad stories over the
| coming years as those conditions will make recovering from
| other ailments harder.
| ceva wrote:
| And rate for age between 1-100 i 99,9% lol
| nop_slide wrote:
| I can already see this being used as a source that the vaccines
| are the reason for the increased deaths.
|
| Could anyone point out if how vaccines as the casue could be
| ruled out by this data?
| cced wrote:
| Why are you asking to rule it out and not question wether or
| not it _might_ be a contributing factor (however that might
| be)?
| nop_slide wrote:
| Sure let me rephrase.
|
| Does this data provide any support whether vaccines could be
| or not be a contributor?
| FabHK wrote:
| You could check for excess mortality among vaccinated and
| unvaccinated people. I think the data is very clear:
| vaccination does not lead to excess mortality (unlike COVID).
| nu11ptr wrote:
| I think that would be very tricky to decouple variables here.
| The vaccine seems to reduce mortality from COVID, but if the
| vaccine were killing x% itself, the vaccine would only have
| to be more effective at saving from COVID than killing for
| that safety signal to be lost. In short, comparing vaxxed vs
| unvaxxed mortality alone isn't likely to tell you if you have
| a vaccine safety signal.
| FabHK wrote:
| You're right, you'd have to test whether people in each
| group are infected with COVID, and correct for that. Should
| still be doable. Would also need to correct for age and co-
| morbidities (doable), and also for differences in behaviour
| (hard).
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| What data are you citing?
|
| There's official data showing the opposite (I personally
| checked each data point in that graph):
| https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-
| adult...
| Flankk wrote:
| I'm convinced you could show data that every single person
| that received the vaccine died and these people would still
| say it's safe. Objectivity is gone and health care is now
| political. The sheer irony that Trump was blamed for
| everything except for the worst thing that he actually did.
| Operation Warp Speed rushed the scientific process and
| caused bad medicine to be released to the general public.
| omosubi wrote:
| wayoutthere wrote:
| It's a mixed bag there; a lot of despair can come from being
| forced to be around people who you don't like. Working from
| home has definitely given me a new perspective and I don't
| dread working the way I used to. To paraphrase Sartre,
| sometimes hell is other people.
| loeg wrote:
| Additional deaths of despair are on the order of 1-10% of COVID
| deaths. I agree they are tragic, but the numbers do not support
| your conclusion.
| msandford wrote:
| Well how they are distributed is also important IMO. If you
| kill one young person for every 10 elderly you save that's a
| clear tradeoff situation. I don't know what the right answer
| is of course but it's not as though lockdowns are cost free
| as some have suggested.
| loeg wrote:
| Keep in mind, it isn't obvious that killing more of their
| parents and grandparents would lower deaths of despair in
| youth -- Covid itself is (IMO) depressing, not just
| lockdown measures.
| kenferry wrote:
| Your comment made me interested to see what happened to the
| suicide rate.
|
| For 2020 it was down a touch.
|
| https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-incre...
| [deleted]
| theli0nheart wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. Suicide rates for under 35
| males were significantly higher.
|
| Per the original source data from the CDC [1]:
|
| > _For males, the age-adjusted suicide rate dropped 2%, from
| 22.4 per 100,000 in 2019 to 21.9 in 2020. Rates for males in
| age groups 10-14 and 25-34 increased by 13% and 5%,
| respectively, although only the 5% increase for those aged
| 25-34 (from 28.0 to 29.3) was significant. Rates for males
| aged 45-54, 55-64, and 65-74 declined (Figure 3). Although
| essentially unchanged from 2019, the rate for males aged 75
| and over was the highest of all age groups at 40.2 in 2020._
|
| [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf
| yissp wrote:
| On the other hand, overdose deaths were up significantly,
| which I think would also be fair to categorize as "deaths of
| despair" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/20
| 21/...
| ebiester wrote:
| There are multiple interpretations here.
|
| For example, if those disabilities are due to long COVID, then
| that would indicate that the cure is indeed not worse than the
| problem itself, but rather that the problem is even worse than
| we thought.
|
| Why is the total deaths up? Are cancer deaths going up because
| the system is stressed by COVID? Are the people who are dying
| people who had COVID, or people who didn't?
|
| Are people dying because they have more stress and less
| exercise? Are people dying because of the restrictions due to
| the pandemic? Are people dying because they have lost their job
| and no longer have access to health care? Are people dying
| because of hidden effects of a vaccine? Are people dying
| because social isolation causes follow-on problems?
|
| That's not even to talk about Fentanyl and meth addiction, as
| mentioned above, which seems to be a confounding factor that
| started before COVID.
|
| Perhaps there is a complex interaction of issues that will lead
| everyone to their own interpretation.
|
| This data doesn't tell us any of those things. And it certainly
| doesn't say, one way or the other, if the cure was worse than
| the disease, or even what cure we are talking about.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| My point was the comparison between age groups is flawed.
| Nothing to do with cause.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Apologies. I replied to the incorrect comment thread
| loeg wrote:
| FYI, you can delete comments less than an hour old. Click
| the time stamp.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| I've read the article - I don't see where it specifies the
| cause of the reported deaths.
|
| I interpreted it as deaths caused by Covid. Do you have a
| reason to interpret it differently?
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I don't think they provided enough information to say either
| way. My gut hunch is that Covid and delayed health care are
| involved but I don't have a guess as to what degree.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Cancer drug sales have been way down by a massive amount so
| that and operation per year would be one method
| goodcanadian wrote:
| They didn't really specify the causes, but they did indicate
| that COVID was generally NOT on the death certificates.
| k2enemy wrote:
| I'm actually surprised it is not higher. For 40-64 year old in
| the US, the annual chance of death is about half a percent
| (before covid) so a 40% increase is still a very low mortality
| rate.
|
| https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data/deathrates/index.php?stat...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Define "very low". I think the "half a percent" number can seem
| "artificially" low because it's just looking at the probability
| of death in a single year. Looking at US actuarial tables, even
| an 80 year old has an annual chance of death of less than 5%.
| Just looking at that number alone may make one think that is a
| "low" death rate, but nobody is surprised when an 80 year-old
| dies.
| toss1 wrote:
| spamizbad wrote:
| People really need to multiply that death rate against a
| population of people who are likely to be infected. And they
| are skipping this step for whatever reason.
|
| A death rate of 20% isn't bad if it's a rare disease that has
| a 10 cases worldwide (2 deaths), whereas a 0.2% death rate is
| devastating for a highly contagious virus that spreads
| rapidly over the planet (millions of deaths)
| toss1 wrote:
| That was already done, and specified in the comment.
|
| >>"Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-
| sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10%
| increase over pre-pandemic," he said. "So 40% is just
| unheard of."
|
| In fact, it was the entire point of the article - this
| disease is so bad because the entire population of people
| is subject to infection, and the death and disability rate
| is very substantial.
|
| >>whereas a 0.2% death rate is devastating for a highly
| contagious virus that spreads rapidly over the planet
| (millions of deaths)
|
| We've got that. Here. In this topic and case.
|
| So, I'm really struggling to see the point of the comment.
| ?
| csee wrote:
| > a significant portion end up losing 7-10 IQ points just
| from dementia
|
| There probably is an IQ drop, but I question this figure. I
| recall a study doing the rounds here which showed this figure
| as a ballpark and it was very low quality.
| toss1 wrote:
| From direct accounts, the figure is likely low. A good
| attorney friend has a friend who used to be one of the
| sharpest and most witty attorneys he knew. Months after a
| "mild case" (no hospitalization), the friend is not all
| there, fading in and out - he'll literally fade in and make
| a witty comment almost like before, then seconds later not
| remember it..., and hasn't been able to get back to work.
| That sounds like a lot more than 10 points, more like
| 140->95.
|
| Even if the effects are temporary, and even if it's "only
| five points", I'm not interested in that risk, and you
| shouldn't be either.
| csee wrote:
| Was that attorney vaxxed?
|
| > I'm not interested in that risk, and you shouldn't be
| either.
|
| Well, I share your anxiety about it at least. It's my
| biggest concern about COVID as a young person. Even 2
| points is too much given the asymmetric payoff at the
| margin.
| cma wrote:
| Half a percent is Russian roulette with 2.9 do-overs.
| [deleted]
| jb1991 wrote:
| I'm surprised it is as high as you claim! You're saying that
| for that age group, in a given year, the chances are 1 in 200
| of dying? That seems like pretty bad odds on something that is
| literally life and death.
| brilee wrote:
| Assuming risk is evenly distributed between birth and death,
| you would expect a 1 in 80 chance of dying in any given year.
| But since the risk is loaded towards the later years of life,
| 1 in 200 during the earlier years sounds about right. Perhaps
| it's 2x higher than I would have guessed otherwise, but it's
| the right order of magnitude.
| brianwawok wrote:
| No that is bad math around 1/80.
|
| If the average person had a 1/80 chance to die each year,
| the average life expectancy would be 40 years.
|
| Think about this another way. You have a gun with 80
| chambers and 1 bullet. How many times on average can you
| point it at your head and pull the trigger before it goes
| off? Would you still argue 80 times? On average it is the
| last chamber?
| leni536 wrote:
| That's not how it works. For a geometric distribution
| with p=1/80 the mean or expected value is indeed 80.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution
|
| Your gun example has a uniform distribution between 1 and
| 80 with an expected value of roughly 40 if you don't spin
| the chamber each time between pulling the trigger. If you
| spin it each time, then it's again the geometric
| distribution and the expected value is 80.
|
| If you don't spin the chamber between each time, then
| each time you pull the trigger the probability of dying
| at that round is not 1/80, the probability goes up and up
| at each round, it's only 1/80 on the first round.
| capitalsigma wrote:
| "evenly distributed" implies uniform distribution
| notfbi wrote:
| To be fair, they said the _risks_ are evenly distributed,
| not that _deaths_ are.
| adverbly wrote:
| I had the same initial thought, but this isn't quite a
| perfect model... that distribution averaging assumes that
| the only factor at play is covid... but there are other
| chances of death with highly irregular probability
| distributions as a function of age... with other
| nonlinear weightings as a function of age you could get
| pretty different numbers in the end...
| [deleted]
| i_cannot_hack wrote:
| Your last example is not applicable.
|
| The question is comparable to a gun with _infinitely_
| many chambers, each with a 1 /80 chance of containing a
| bullet: How many times on average can you point it at
| your head and pull the trigger? The differences are that
| you have no guarantee that the first 80 chambers will
| contain exactly 1 bullet, that more than one chamber can
| contain a bullet, and that you can pull the trigger more
| than 80 times.
| adverbly wrote:
| Are you sure? Is it not the same as this:
| https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1009490/average-
| num...
|
| E = p/(1-p)
|
| So pretty close to 80 years, no?
|
| I guess it gets more complicated because you'd die of
| other reasons as you age so there's no point including
| the eventualities where you reached 120 for example... I
| guess it gets pretty complicated in the end...
| minitoar wrote:
| I think motor vehicle related mortality really shifts the
| risk forward.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Probably highly skewed to the upper end of that age range.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Well, also consider that people live to be roughly ~100 years
| old. The population is roughly stable, so every year ~1% of
| the population must die and be replaced by a ~1% is born.
| benlivengood wrote:
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html has the
| actuarial table by age, which is indeed a base rate above
| 0.002 from age 46 onward.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Wow, remarkably the Queen, who is 95, is unlikely to make
| it to 100. In fact her annual hurdle rate is greater than
| 1/5. Am I reading this wrong?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| zuminator wrote:
| That's true, but 0.002 is 1/500, not 1/200.
| kragen wrote:
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html confirms that.
| In the US, it's about 1 in 400 for men at 40, 1 in 600 for
| women; at 50 it's 1 in 200 for men and 1 in 300 for women;
| and at 60 it's 1 in 90 for men, 1 in 150 for women. About 17%
| of US men, and 11% of US women, who make it to 40 are dead
| before 66. These are all pre-covid rates (from 02017).
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| think of it this way, 1 in 200 means the chance that you will
| not die is 99.5% When put that way, sounds pretty good,
| right?
| chucksmash wrote:
| Think of it this way, 1 in 200 means the chance that you
| will die is 10x worse than that of someone base jumping[0].
| When put this way, sounds pretty bad, right?
|
| [0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17495709/
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| No, I mean, 1 in 200 chance here refers to living, which
| includes all activities, including BASE jumping
| lordnacho wrote:
| How old are you? How many people from your high school years
| have passed? Say, in your year and the years adjacent, where
| you might be told the news?
|
| Out of about 90, I can count 4. Graduated 1999. 1 in 200 per
| year sounds like it might be ballpark, though of course from
| my limited set it's hard to tell. Assuming the rate is low at
| around 40 but a fair bit lower when you've just graduated,
| and a fair bit higher as you pass 60.
| encoderer wrote:
| > Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a
| one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-
| pandemic," he said. "So 40% is just unheard of."
|
| Do we have an actuarial crisis on our hands? We've seen the same
| thing in finance, disaster preparedness and other unrelated
| industries. We have "once in 200 years" events happening it seems
| far more often than once in 200 years.
|
| And how does it even pass muster that a 10% increase in deaths
| would be a "once in 200 years" event. When has there ever been a
| 200 year period without major war, disease or disaster? What
| exactly are they smoking?
| hericium wrote:
| > We have "once in 200 years" events happening it seems far
| more often than once in 200 years.
|
| Past performance is not indicative of future results.
| joelbondurant0 wrote:
| nn3 wrote:
| Maybe it's similar to the well known "more likely to be hit by
| a meteorite than to win the lottery" style statements.
| Obviously that's completely wrong: i've never heard of anyone
| being hit by a meteorite, but people win the lottery every
| month.
|
| I'm not saying that they're actively lying, but it seems some
| assumptions in these frequentist's numbers are just not
| correct.
| irrational wrote:
| https://astronomy.com/news/2020/05/death-from-
| above-7-unluck...
|
| Just last year a woman had just gotten out of bed when a
| meteorite came through her ceiling and hit her pillow where
| her head had been.
| nn3 wrote:
| I was actually aware of that story. But she wasn't hit, so
| it doesn't invalidate my statement.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| They're not lying. It's just meteorite kills are very clumpy.
|
| I'm not a lottery player so I can't give a good estimate on
| the number of lottery winners, but for the major jackpots
| I'll guess many per year.
|
| AFIAK we have no documented meteorite deaths--but it looks
| like the destruction of Sodom (of biblical fame) was a
| meteorite. While obviously we have no death toll it's
| obviously a *lot* of years of major lottery wins. The
| atmosphere stops most of the stuff but when something's big
| enough to get through it makes quite a boom. (Chelyabinsk was
| half a megaton but was high enough up the blast only caused
| harm by throwing broken windows at people. Tunguska, however
| was a few megatons and got low enough to be a city-killer.
| All it blew up was forest for probably zero deaths, but had
| it fallen 7 hours earlier the world would be a different
| place because it would have wiped out Leningrad.)
| nn3 wrote:
| AFAIK the Sodom story was pretty much debunked
|
| https://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/01/criticism-engulfs-
| pap...
| ehvatum wrote:
| There's a confounding effect arising from the difficulty in
| comparing false negative rates between person-meteor-strike
| and person-lottery-jackpot. Whereas lottery-jackpot events
| are rarely misinterpreted as some prat dropping rubbish onto
| person, person-meteor-strike too often is.
| withinboredom wrote:
| A lot more people try to win the lottery than jump in front
| of meteorites.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > And how does it even pass muster that a 10% increase in
| deaths would be a "once in 200 years" event. When has there
| ever been a 200 year period without major war, disease or
| disaster? What exactly are they smoking?
|
| I don't know if it's a once in 200 years event or not, but this
| is a US insurance company, presumably talking about numbers in
| the US. Aside from ww2, in which the US had around 400,000
| deaths, the number of Americans who have died in wars or
| disasters has been fairly small relatively.
|
| Even the 400,000 for WW2 was over four years, whereas the US
| has had around 400,000 covid deaths a year for the last two
| years, and even more if you just look at excess mortality
| (however the population is obviously larger now than during
| ww2).
| WalterBright wrote:
| More than half of the covid deaths were the elderly.
| uncletaco wrote:
| I'm guessing your comment is about people who died since WW2
| but an estimated 750k died in the civil war.
| nkmnz wrote:
| > We have "once in 200 years" events happening it seems far
| more often than once in 200 years.
|
| "Experts" making such a statement usually assume the variable
| in question to be standard distributed - which is close enough
| to the truth for non-extreme outcomes. But a lot of variables
| do not behave like the perfect standard distribution at all:
| due to non-linear effects and self-enforcing feedback loops,
| their distribution deviates more and more from the standard
| distribution the more extreme their values gets (they are "fat-
| tailed"). Referring to the n-sigma of such extreme events is
| plain and simple stupid, because there's no such thing as a
| standard deviation (or variance) for a fat-tailed distribution.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Many probability distributions have a variance[1], not only
| the standard distribution. Why do you think there is no
| variance for your "fat-tailed distribution"?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance
| cperciva wrote:
| I doubt there's an actuarial crisis brewing, for the simple
| reason that changes in life expectancy are a known risk which
| can be hedged. In the case of life insurance companies, the
| usual solution is to also sell life annuities; if insurance
| payouts go up, annuity payouts go down.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >We have "once in 200 years" events happening it seems far more
| often than once in 200 years.
|
| I just don't take it seriously anymore. Track 200 factors, 200
| businesses, or 200 industries and you will see 1 event per
| year. Track all of the above and you will see 40,000 such
| events in a year.
|
| More to the point, their actuarial model was probably wrong,
| not reality. Somewhere buried in their model were assumptions
| excluding black swan events
| peteradio wrote:
| Ok, but the important ones are resource limited and possibly
| highly correlated. So if you see 1/200 for all sorts of
| (possibly correlated) events you might be misreading the
| implication.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| You can pretty much blame six sigma for these braindead once
| in 200 years predictions. When you beat your effecency
| numbers into the ground then have to explain a .000001
| varianc will only happen in 200 years based on this totally
| detached from real world statistic model is hew you get here.
|
| The person that sold that idea cashed out and left the
| company long ago.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I think the more thought-provoking question is what exactly
| _is_ the Black Swan event? If only 37% of their ICU beds are
| used for COVID patients then why are so many more people
| dying right now?
| fabianhjr wrote:
| It is the US so unlike most of the rest of the world even
| if there were a lot of surplus ICU beds most people can't
| afford the 100K USD with insurance or 1M USD with under-
| insurance or no insurance it would cost them out of pocket
| to receive treatment.
| baryphonic wrote:
| > most people can't afford the 100K USD with insurance or
| 1M USD with under-insurance or no insurance it would cost
| them out of pocket to receive treatment
|
| Where are you getting these numbers? I know multiple
| people in the US who have needed a COVID ICU bed, and
| they certainly weren't paying $100k out of pocket to do
| so. In most areas of the US, $100k could buy you a small
| house.
| praestigiare wrote:
| Three years ago, 0% of ICU beds were used for COVID
| patients. Now it is 37%. If ICU admission correlates with
| risk of death, and those beds would have been empty
| otherwise, or used for lower risk patients, a 40% increase
| in deaths seems reasonable. Certainly not a rigorous
| analysis, but it passes the smell test.
| hattmall wrote:
| Homicides are up, In Atlanta it's 65% from 2019, other
| cities are similar. I think car fatalities as well. Then
| the isolation, COVID fears and economic issues have made
| worse an already growing drug and suicide problem.
|
| I've known of quite a few deaths of youngish people
| recently and only one was COVID related. Car crashes, ODs
| and other medical issues. Like I've known two girls both
| about 30 that died unexpectedly of non-covid medical issues
| last year.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| 1) 37% of ICU beds for Covid means about a 50% increase in
| ICU patients.
|
| 2) If you go into the ICU for Covid you're probably leaving
| via the morgue. The survival chance for a Covid patient in
| the ICU is a lot lower than the typical ICU patient.
| welcomealex wrote:
| I'm not sure about the case at hand here, but one reason for
| hearing about these events more often than once every 200 years
| might be because they are uncorrelated.
|
| E.g. a "once in 200 years drought" in California might happen
| at the same time as a "once in 200 years over-mortality event"
| in Indiana.
|
| News would tend to report on these, so we see many of these
| even though they are rare.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yup. There are a *lot* of events to have a 1 in 200 chance
| of. Each is a separate chance, the odds add up.
| addaon wrote:
| Keep in mind that "once in two hundred years" is (an estimate
| of) the probability of a given event. The more events you
| track, the more "once in two hundred years" events you'll see
| in any given year. If you're tracking (or reporting on) many
| events...
|
| Think of the number of hundred year floods you see reported on
| each year. Then look at the number of floodplains that your
| news source would report on...
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| We might. Could be a Black Swan event. Just the same, all along
| we should have been asking about "collateral damage." We
| ignored it. That's sadly suspicious.
|
| Obviously, we don't have other pandemics' data to lean on. But
| we did have the economic crisis circa 2007 - 2008. There was
| plenty of analysis about the socio-economic impact of that
| event. That is, for example, poverty rate goes up, so does X, Y
| and Z.
|
| If we can model a pandemic, can we not also - at least try - to
| mobel the impact of "the cure" and possible collateral damage?
| jamses wrote:
| I'd guess war is usually excluded from insurance policies.
|
| I wonder if the 1 in 200 year example wasn't communicated very
| well; it could be the actuaries view a long-lasting 10%
| increase to be the 1 in 200 year event; it does sound low for a
| single year stress.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I commented on this elsewhere, but I think your point is fair.
| Many real-world processes follow power laws, but they are
| modeled as normal distributions. The issue with that is that a
| power law can "look like" a normal distribution, except it has
| fat tails, where you get these "once until the heat death of
| the universe" type events much more frequently.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| You might enjoy this video:
|
| Nonlinearity Breeds Contempt
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6eX6KaSBjc&list=LL&index=32.
| ..
| chmod600 wrote:
| _Black Swan_ by Nassim Taleb is an entire book about this
| very common mistake.
|
| It's a case where highly-educated people often make errors
| that laypersons would not.
| [deleted]
| richardw wrote:
| I think Taleb's point was more that humans don't have a
| good intuition for extreme events, layperson or expert. See
| the housing crisis during which experts and laypeople were
| equally fooled. We're good at understanding eg height of
| people (small variation) but have no sense of wild scale,
| eg stock market movements or a huge bank imploding within
| days.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > See the housing crisis during which experts and
| laypeople were equally fooled.
|
| Not discounting your main point, but there were _plenty_
| of experts and laypeople that were completely unsurprised
| by the housing crisis. If anything, I think the housing
| crisis was more of a case that so many people had a
| vested interest in thinking /pretending the music would
| never stop.
| richardw wrote:
| Totally, I'll claim to have been very pessimistic before
| it happened. Referenced the likely downturn in an
| economics assignment that didn't impress my very
| optimistic lecturer. I missed the bottom though, was
| convinced we were going down a lot further. Don't fight
| the Fed, I guess.
| lumost wrote:
| Anecdotally, I see a lot of pseudo-rigor in Business
| oriented statistics. Leadership selects the statistics and
| statisticians which make the most rigourous _plausible_
| model that achieves the desired outcome.
| [deleted]
| setToNull wrote:
| The excess mortality numbers: https://www.economist.com/graphic-
| detail/coronavirus-excess-...
| mcguire wrote:
| Supporting data: 2020 all-cause mortality was up 20% over 2019.
| (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db427.pdf)
| daenz wrote:
| 18-64 is an extremely broad range. Does anyone have a breakdown
| of smaller ranges? I'd like to know what is accounting for the
| deaths of younger people, since supposedly, statistically covid
| has a very mild effect on their health.
| stakkur wrote:
| What 'data' is he referring to? It's not mentioned in the
| article, and for all sorts of reasons 40% for 18-64 sounds
| statistically fishy.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| I imagine it has something to do with shuttering society for the
| better part of two years now.
|
| Spouses are known to die within weeks of each other, presumably
| due to loneliness/lack of will to live/etc.
|
| If you force people to stop congregating, stop working out, stop
| having fun socially, etc... it's kind of the same thing, no?
|
| It must have some effect on people's health.
| whack wrote:
| Luckily we don't need too vivid an imagination to find the
| answer. The data shows that the main cause of higher death
| rates is covid, not loneliness.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| Source?
|
| The article does not have an answer or provide any data.
|
| It only talks about the uptick in deaths not attributed to
| covid.
| fundad wrote:
| The deaths could all be fire extinguisher attacks
| andrewclunn wrote:
| > "The CDC weekly death counts, which reflect the information on
| death certificates and so have a lag of up to eight weeks or
| longer, show that for the week ending Nov. 6, there were far
| fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago -
| 195 verses 336 - but more deaths from other causes - 1,350 versus
| 1,319."
|
| So last year more covid deaths (particularly among the elderly),
| but while those numbers have declined, the numbers from younger
| "working age" people have increased more than enough to make up
| for it.
|
| > "Just 8.9% of ICU beds are available at hospitals in the state,
| a low for the year, and lower than at any time during the
| pandemic. But the majority of ICU beds are not taken up by
| COVID-19 patients - just 37% are, while 54% of the ICU beds are
| being occupied by people with other illnesses or conditions."
|
| Well a lot of people were avoiding medical care (precisely
| because of Covid concerns), so this makes some sense. Couple that
| with the increased death rate for younger people and something
| has happened to worsen the health and outcomes generally for that
| population. Cue wild speculation and theories.
| divbzero wrote:
| > _Cue wild speculation and theories._
|
| There is uncertainty in many areas of life, but this seems like
| one thing we don't have to speculate about. We will not only
| have definitive data [1] within a couple years, but also annual
| [2] and weekly [3] provisional data much sooner.
|
| [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-
| death.htm
|
| [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm
|
| [3]: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Provisional-Counts-of-
| Death...
| redisman wrote:
| Very anecdotal but me and everyone I know is in crappy shape
| and fallen to different coping mechanisms during Covid
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Within my brothers circle of friends / former friends etc,
| amongst those that participate in recreational drug use, there
| have been a crazy number of Fentanyl related deaths. They're
| all between the ages of 25 - 30. I can't help but wonder how
| much this has an impact.
| 3maj wrote:
| Probably a big one. Drug overdoses have killed more 18-54
| year olds in Canada than Covid has.
|
| Hell, in British Columbia there have been more drug overdoses
| than Covid deaths across all ages.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| US has had both a drug-addiction epidemic, a diabetes
| epidemic and an obesity epidemic.
|
| Each these conditions doesn't just reduce lifespan. They also
| put people in a more fragile life-situation where they need
| more support. And the US hasn't been at maintaining those
| kinds of support during the epidemic.
|
| Edit: The US life expectancy decline relative to other
| advanced nations is relevant. Take a look at the following
| chart in detail. US life expectancy was set back twenty
| years. No other nation was set by more than ten years.
|
| https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-
| lif...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| And makes people more vulnerable when they contract other
| diseases. COVID hits harder if you are diabetic and/or
| obese, for example. The people who try to promote body
| positivity are doing a disservice to the overweight. You
| cannot be healthy and fat, and we should not pretend
| otherwise to spare hurt feelings.
| syshum wrote:
| Body Positivity movement started out with a good goal,
| but went off the rails with the obesity == healthy BS.
|
| However if you want to solve obesity, especially the
| morbid obesity shamming will never resolve that as
| chances are the obesity is cased by an underlying metal
| or medical issue. most often an anxiety disorder of some
| kind, and socially shaming someone that suffers from
| anxiety is not going to cure them, and in fact will most
| likely make their eating disorder worse.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| The primary cause of obesity -- in my experience, as a
| midwesterner -- is a lack of access to affordable,
| healthy food. What people can afford (in terms of
| money/time/opportunity cost) is primarily overprocessed
| garbage. It's mostly impossible to maintain a healthy
| weight in such an environment.
|
| Yes, I'm aware of the twinkie diet guy. Most people
| aren't the twinkie diet guy.
| nerdbaggy wrote:
| Correct!
|
| " The synthetic and highly addictive drug has claimed more
| lives than COVID-19, auto crashes, gun violence, cancer and
| suicide in the year 2020."
|
| https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-
| deat...
| woodruffw wrote:
| Government data does _not_ say that. The CDC recorded 100k
| drug overdose deaths in 2020[1], ~75% of which were from
| opioids. They don 't have a breakdown of how many of those
| 75k opioid deaths were fentanyl, but it's an order of
| magnitude below just the _confirmed_ number of COVID-19
| deaths in 2020[2].
|
| Edit: The reporting in this article is _remarkably_ bad: it
| confuses a two-year range (Jan-2020 to Dec-2021) with a
| one-year range, and itself contains a number that 's
| nowhere near the number of COVID deaths:
|
| > The drug has taken just shy of 80,000 people's lives
| between January 2020 and December 2021.
|
| [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases
| /2021/...
|
| [2]: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211122/us-covid-
| deaths-202...
| mlyle wrote:
| I agree the report makes its point poorly and phrases
| statistics carelessly, but you made a similar mistake:
| they explicitly state it exceeds COVID deaths over ages
| 18-45.
|
| All these media reports were all influenced by this
| underlying factsheet from FAF.
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S0szR2Ua9v0Sr91YhDD7gPrX
| sDk...
|
| Broadly, it appears true: fentanyl deaths look like they
| outweigh all those things in the younger population. And
| it doesn't look implausible that synthetic opioids could
| have killed a total of 64k across the entire population
| in 2021. (I think they were comparing trailing-twelve-
| month data from two dates in each case..)
|
| edit, 3mins: I was distracted and my previous version of
| this reply was word salad.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Thanks for linking the factsheet. These deaths are a
| useless tragedy, and it frustrates me to see them framed
| against _another_ useless tragedy.
|
| The CDC's death count with age breakdowns[1] shows that
| over twice as many people aged 18-64 died of COVID-19
| than drug overdoes, combined across 2020 and 2021. That
| flips when you limit it to just 18-45, which is the
| statistic FAF is using.
|
| [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/inde
| x.htm#Se...
| evv555 wrote:
| >it frustrates me to see them framed against another
| useless tragedy.
|
| The framing is relevant since the increase is arguably a
| product of the lockdown/social isolation. Generally it's
| not Boomers or the upperclass who are having to deal with
| opiate addiction. Is it a coincidence that their needs
| once again supersede the needs of others? Maybe
| mlyle wrote:
| > and it frustrates me to see them framed against another
| useless tragedy.
|
| You know, people need an anchor point for comparison very
| often.
|
| "Holy shit COVID and car crashes are bad, and among
| younger adults -- believe it or not-- fentanyl is even
| worse".
| ineedasername wrote:
| Anchoring like that is a problem when it's used to
| dismiss something: _" Eh, more people die from fentanyl,
| so X isn't so bad"_.
|
| Which disregards that X may be a _new_ source of
| _increased_ deaths, not to mention that when X == COVID,
| the methods needed to mitigate the risk are antithetical
| to a mindset of _" it's no big deal"_ because that
| mindset pushes back against taking even some minimal
| precuations.
|
| So, anchoring can help people understand the magnitude of
| something, but at the same time convey a
| misunderstanding, or short-circuit reasoning as well.
|
| This is precisely why it is a common sales tactic: Go
| into a jewelry store asking for a nice watch as a
| present, and you may be shown a $3k watch. Way over your
| budget, so when you ask to be shown a something else a
| $700 watch seems like a much better deal, even if it
| might still be a bit more than you wanted to spend. Maybe
| the third watch will be an ugly one for $400 to help
| convince you that you need to spend more, putting both an
| upper & lower bound on the purchase.
| evv555 wrote:
| >"Eh, more people die from fentanyl, so X isn't so bad"
|
| The increase in deaths is being driven by lockdown/social
| isolation so it looks more like medical triage. Who do
| you save, upperclass/baby boomers who generally don't
| have these problems or disenfranchised young?
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| >Who do you save, upperclass/baby boomers who generally
| don't have these problems or disenfranchised young? I
| guess we know the answer to that, not that anyone in the
| latter group had any doubt before we ran the experiment.
| mlyle wrote:
| > The increase in deaths is being driven by
| lockdown/social isolation so it looks more like medical
| triage.
|
| This is an argument many make, but it's not a really good
| argument.
|
| - Fentanyl deaths were trending up before 2020.
|
| - The degree to which fentanyl is lacing other street
| drugs is unprecedented and seemingly independent of
| lockdown.
|
| - Look, we don't really have "lockdown" anymore.
| evv555 wrote:
| >- Fentanyl deaths were trending up before 2020.
|
| They were trending up but there was a very sharp increase
| once the epidemic started.
|
| >- The degree to which fentanyl is lacing other street
| drugs is unprecedented and seemingly independent of
| lockdown.
|
| There was precedent before 2019. Seemingly independent
| growth that's also parabolic during 2020? Unlikely
|
| >- Look, we don't really have "lockdown" anymore.
|
| The genie is out of the bottle once people relapse. Maybe
| you don't realize how dependent recovering addicts are on
| rehab programs and social connections to stay clean. For
| some people giving them a steady unemployment income and
| forcing them to isolate is basically a death sentence.
| This was a predicted outcome during the start of the
| isolation.
| mlyle wrote:
| > They were trending up but there was a very sharp
| increase once the epidemic started.
|
| Opioid deaths increased 1014% from 2013 to 2019. This is
| an average compound growth rate of 46.8% per year over
| that span.
|
| Opioid deaths increased by about 50% from 2019 to 2020.
|
| It looks like they increased by less than 40% from 2020
| to 2021. So over the past 2 years we have had the same
| increase rate as from the entire span.
|
| The data don't support your assertions.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Which disregards that X may be a new source of
| increased deaths, not to mention that when X == COVID,
| the methods needed to mitigate the risk are antithetical
| to a mindset of "it's no big deal" because that mindset
| pushes back against taking even some minimal precuations.
|
| I don't think anyone has said, "fentanyl is worse for
| 18-44, therefore COVID is no big deal".
|
| I think the message taken was "two sources of premature
| death shot way up, passing traffic accidents and suicide,
| which we all know are really bad in that age group". And
| maybe "wow, fentanyl is even bigger than COVID as a cause
| of death among young adults".
|
| It doesn't make me take traffic safety less seriously,
| either.
|
| Look, I ain't got time each year to compute loss-of-life
| expectancy numbers, and decide how preventable each and
| every cause is, and then come up with an analytical
| ranking of each cause and its "importance" (I did this at
| one point, but I'm not going to repeat it to understand
| trends).
|
| I don't work in public health, either. Approximation
| based on reasonable anchor points and understood risks is
| just fine.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think it's valuable to have a reference point, and I've
| done that myself in my comments. The frustration comes
| not from the comparison or reference, but as a framing
| designed to excuse irresponsible behavior during the
| ongoing pandemic.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > "The synthetic and highly addictive drug"
|
| Funny use of the word 'synthetic' to add extra spookiness.
| Something like 60% of first-world medicines are natural
| origin or secondary metabolites of natural origin - the
| other 40% are all synthetic. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.spandidos-
| publications.com/10.3892/br.2017.909
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I wondered this myself, since they usually spell out
| "synthetic opioid" when referring to fentanyl and its
| ilk, ostensibly to compare it against naturally derived
| opioids. I have no idea how many in use today are
| naturally derived; maybe "synthetic" was always a scare
| term on that context?
| philipkglass wrote:
| The only two opioids naturally found in the poppy that
| are also used in medicine are codeine and morphine. All
| others are semi-synthetic (chemical modifications of
| poppy alkaloids) or fully synthetic. Even most codeine is
| made by methylating morphine, since the poppy under-
| produces it relative to medical demand.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid#Semisynthetic_and_sy
| nth...
| worik wrote:
| "Synthetic opioid" is used to describe an opioid not
| derived from the morphine in the opium poppy (or the
| codeine in the dried poppy)
|
| I am not a doctor: Of the very powerful "powder" drugs
| heroin is the safest as it has very little effect on the
| involuntary respiratory system which is the route that
| opiates take to kill. "Nodding off" on synthetic opiates
| leads commonly to death (which is why you always prod a
| sleeping junky - wake up!!) but not so much on heroin.
|
| But it is much safer to smoke opium, if you wish to have
| such a habit. Much less chance of death and disease.
|
| So, you cruel, nay, sadistic lawmakers: Legalise opium!
|
| But people popping pills are nearly invisible and die
| quietly - people smoking opium fill up establishments,
| make funny smells and do not conveniently die off in the
| corner.....
| mlyle wrote:
| Note that semi-synthetic is a category too that
| "synthetic opioid" generally excludes.
|
| Natural opioids: codeine, morphine.
|
| Semi-synthetic opioids: heroin, hydromorphone,
| hydrocodone, oxycodone, etc.
|
| Synthetic opioids: methadone (though this is usually
| excluded from the reporting of "synthetic opioid overdose
| deaths" for various reasons), demerol, fentanyl, lots of
| -fentanyl analogs, etc.
| mlyle wrote:
| Here it's reasonable to differentiate between natural
| opioids, semi-synthetic opioids, and fully synthetic
| opioids. It's not a perfect measure, but the degree of
| potency tends to vary with the category and the fully
| synthetic opioids do not rely upon poppies for
| precursors.
| viktorcode wrote:
| In general, "synthetic" drugs are more of a menace due to
| the ease of transportation and production. They don't
| have to be produced in specific geographic regions and
| can be very powerful, which adds up to dangerous
| combination.
| Bud wrote:
| Not to be unkind, but a local TV station as a primary
| source for such a sweeping conclusion on a very complex
| issue is, well, basically worthless.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Yikes. For ages 18-45, since heart disease and cancer still
| lead overall but still yikes.
|
| https://api.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/23/facebook-
| p...
| jeffbee wrote:
| No byline. No sources. Bad article.
|
| The article appears to attribute _all_ accidental poisoning
| to fentanyl. That seems like an error.
| mlyle wrote:
| > The article appears to attribute all accidental
| poisoning to fentanyl. That seems like an error.
|
| I don't think it does. Sure, they throw out the 100k
| overdoses number at the end, which isn't specific to
| fentanyl, but the other numbers they cite are around
| 40k/year and a run rate of 64k/year by Deceber 2021.
|
| Current data is here:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
|
| It's about 62k deaths from synthetic opioids/year
| (excluding methadone) at the end of the series-- the vast
| majority of these are fentanyl. Plus a bunch of heroin
| deaths which are rapidly becoming "really fentanyl"
| deaths. And that's up to April, not December.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That data is for all ages. If you go to WISQARS and
| filter for ages 18-45, which is the subject of the news
| site's article, it looks to me like the numbers they are
| giving in the article are the same as the total number of
| accidental poisoning.
| mlyle wrote:
| They're pulling from this fact sheet:
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S0szR2Ua9v0Sr91YhDD7gPrX
| sDk...
|
| Topic 1 is on ages 18-45: more deaths from fentanyl than
| from...
|
| The later topics are on all ages.
|
| The fact sheet attributes 24k deaths in the age range to
| fentanyl in 2019. WISQARS accidental injuries from
| poisoning in the age range were 38k in 2019. 2/3rds in
| that age range being fentanyl is totally plausible.
|
| https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D157;jsessi
| oni... has the broken down data. They have 36,907 deaths
| in 2020 from 18-45 with T40.4-- "other synthetic opioids
| excluding methadone". FAF is calling all deaths from
| synthetic opioids fentanyl, which isn't quite true but
| it's very likely close to true.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| [1] The person that many hold accountable for the opioid
| crisis was made head of the FDA by the Biden administration
| on his first day!
|
| [2] Most fentanyl (+ precursors) is manufactured in China
| and then comes across the southern border from Mexico.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/28/fda-
| janet-wo...
|
| [2] (PDF) https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/D
| EA_GOV_DIR-...
| sneak wrote:
| A reminder: tobacco use kills 7x as many people every day,
| week, month, and year as opiates in the USA.
|
| If opiate deaths are a problem, tobacco ones are a 7x
| larger problem.
| reaperducer wrote:
| At least the people you know are rational enough to admit it.
|
| A tangential relative died a couple of months ago from a drug
| overdose. Her immediate family tells everyone she died from
| the COVID vaccine.
|
| Apparently now it's a thing among families who can't come to
| grips with a drug death to blame the new vaccines. I wonder
| if this is where the conspiracy theorists get their
| ammunition.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| And it's not just opiate users. People buying coke & 'molly'
| are overdosing too from fent and analogues too.
|
| Why in the world would a dealer put fent into coke. I guess a
| speedball feels great but the average weekend partier doing a
| bump or a pill are not looking to walk that death tightrope.
|
| Just sad all around and we still have a long way to go with
| stigma and science based treatment.
|
| If you happen to be in that scene might be a good idea to
| start carrying naloxone.
| worik wrote:
| A very powerful argument for legalising forms of those
| drugs for recreational use.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| All of the non-COVID deaths I've heard of among younger
| people (<60) from my extended social circle and their
| family/friends have been drug related.
|
| Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability that
| keeps addicts in check. When your coworkers can't see you,
| it's much easier to be inebriated or otherwise suffering from
| addiction-related issues without feeling social pressure to
| correct it.
| syshum wrote:
| This is one of the problem with all the people focusing on
| "excess deaths" as a metric for COVID Deaths.
| romanovcode wrote:
| > Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability
| that keeps addicts in check.
|
| Not only that but the lockdowns making people low-key
| depressed which would also be a reason for using addictive
| substances since they often go hand-in-hand together.
|
| I could be pretty much classified an alcoholic during most
| of 2019-2020 because a six-pack a day keeps the boredom
| away.
| danielheath wrote:
| That's... a substantial way past "pretty much".
| romanovcode wrote:
| I just realized that I was not a real alcoholic when I
| stopped drinking altogether without any withdrawal
| symptoms or anything like that. But yeah, it's a slippery
| slope for sure.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That's pretty normal, at least for the last few decades of
| American life. There is not a major natural cause of death
| for people 18-65. They die of suicide, accidental
| overdoses, and car crashes.
| stavros wrote:
| When we say "overdoses", doesn't it sound like the
| person's fault, when it was probably that they were sold
| a poisoned/cut batch? I wonder how many "overdoses" would
| have been avoided if you could buy drugs at a pharmacy.
| prirun wrote:
| A lot of times an overdose occurs if a person got clean
| for a while then went back to using. They tend to start
| using at their previous levels even though their body is
| no longer used to that level, so it's a sudden jolt that
| kills them. So I've read - I have zero experience with
| drugs, luckily.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, I've read that too, but I have no idea which is
| more frequent. I'd assume the tainted drugs are more
| frequent, just because getting tainted product is more
| frequent than getting clean and relapsing, but I don't
| know.
|
| I'll definitely recommend LSD or mushrooms, though. They
| are lots of fun.
| worik wrote:
| Almost all, if there were some sensible regulation.
|
| People do not die from smoking opium, much. But die a lot
| from popping pills.
|
| Concentrated synthetic opioids are deadly.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability
| that keeps addicts in check.
|
| This is a cruel twist, given that suicide deaths actually
| decreased in 2020[1], probably for the reason you've
| mentioned: spending nearly all of your time with others
| makes you accountable and removes opportunities for self-
| harm.
|
| [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf
| kirse wrote:
| _spending nearly all of your time with others makes you
| accountable and removes opportunities for self-harm._
|
| Never would have seen it coming that encouraging people
| to stay isolated for years at a time and actively fearing
| their own proximity to one another would be detrimental.
| fundad wrote:
| Well economic anxiety you see...
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think you mis-read my comment. The irony is that people
| are actually closer than ever to their family (or house-
| mates) due to COVID, which is pushing suicide rates down.
| kirse wrote:
| I did not mis-read your comment, it was a continuation of
| the commentary on how mandated WFH and government-
| enforced isolation has essentially just moved deaths from
| column A to column B over the long run.
|
| _people are actually closer than ever to their family
| (or house-mates) due to COVID_
|
| Yes, this is the perception for many people who have
| family or housemates. In the same way the rich have
| gotten richer, the socially connected have become more
| socially connected, while the millions who already
| struggled with disconnection or loneliness have become
| even more strained at the behest of numerous politicians
| who mandate their "rules for thee and not for me" under
| the new anxiety-laced normal.
| abyssin wrote:
| I'm not a native speaker, but there seems to be something
| inappropriately judgmental about the wording of "keeping
| in check". Loneliness is hard for many and causes
| suffering, and drugs are sometimes used to try to manage
| suffering. More use is linked to more accidents.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| It's not judgemental - it just is. Many addicts in
| recovery themselves use similar language. I spend a lot
| of time with recovering addicts and alcoholics and
| accountability is an important component of treatment.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I can see the judgemental interpretation, but I don't
| think that's what the GP intended. I read it as "most
| people suffering from addiction benefit from
| accountability, one form of which is the in-person
| responsibilities of work."
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Coincidentally all the natural cause deaths in my circle
| were "natural" diseases like cancer and COVID-19. I'm in my
| 30s now, and no longer really hang out with (non-
| functional) drug addicts anymore though. YMMV.
| [deleted]
| exdsq wrote:
| I read fentanyl killed more people than Covid in SF last year
| - don't think there were any age brackets on that either
| mcguire wrote:
| " _1,350 versus 1,319_ "
|
| Without knowing anything else, I seriously doubt that is
| statistically significant.
|
| The normal pre-COVID ICU bed occupancy rate was somewhere near
| 57-82% (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3840149/).
| 54% is quite low. I suspect that the bar for getting into an
| ICU bed has been raised by the number of COVID patients.
|
| BTW, Indiana has ~1,940 ICU beds
| (https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/indiana-releases-
| specific...). In numbers, that means
|
| * ~173 are unoccupied,
|
| * ~718 are occupied by COVID patients, and
|
| * ~1048 are occupied by non-COVID patients.
| Retric wrote:
| > something has happened
|
| Changes in death rates directly relate to relative vaccination
| rates. Vaccination was initially rolled out to the elderly they
| where also more willing to get vaccinated. It's strange to
| think that 75 year olds grew up in a time period where several
| horrific diseases disappeared due to vaccination efforts. It
| it's clear they have a lot more faith in vaccination.
|
| https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccination-and-C...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Well a lot of people were avoiding medical care (precisely
| because of Covid concerns), so this makes some sense. Couple
| that with the increased death rate for younger people and
| something has happened to worsen the health and outcomes
| generally for that population. Cue wild speculation and
| theories._
|
| Not sure how your first two sentences above aren't speculation.
| It's like you're preemptively attack all the other speculation
| as "wild".
| cik2e wrote:
| It's strange that this article doesn't actually mention the
| number of deaths for each year. They only mention the 40%
| increase for the younger demographic and the source says "the
| increase in deaths represents huge, huge numbers".
|
| Let's assume deaths for older people haven't changed so the
| increase is entirely among the younger group.
|
| x: younger y: older
|
| 1.4x + y = 1350 x + y = 1319 0.4x = 31 x = 77.5 (younger 2020)
| 1.4x = 108.5 (younger 2021) y = 1241.5 (older 2020 and 20201)
|
| So assuming no increase in non-COVID deaths in the older group,
| we have 77.5 deaths in 2020 and 108.5 deaths in 2021 in the
| younger demographic. The actual numbers would be even lower
| since there have obviously been deaths in the older population.
|
| Unless I am embarrassingly wrong on the calculation, these
| figures don't make sense. The source says this 40% increase
| figure is based on his life insurance customers who are
| "primarily working-age people 18 to 64". This being just among
| his policy holders could explain the tiny absolute figures in
| the younger group. But where are the numbers for the older
| group coming from? His statement doesn't exclude the
| possibility of policies for ages < 18 and > 64. But if that's a
| small fraction of their customer base, it would imply a huge
| death rate for the older policy holders.
|
| These numbers seem very fishy. Even if his older members are
| dying at astronomical rates and his numbers are correct, this
| is about as far from a representative sample as you could get
| and cannot be extrapolated to the general population. And I
| assume that's what the source means when he says "the increase
| in deaths represents huge, huge numbers."
|
| By the way, I am not implying that there hasn't been an
| increase in non-COVID deaths among the young and old in these
| last two years. We know that's the because there is actually
| real data on this that the article could have included.
| shrimpx wrote:
| It could be due to random perturbations in the small data
| size. Like if 10 people died last year, and 14 people died
| this year, deaths are up 40%, but the 4 extra deaths could be
| random. You'd have to look at a long trend to infer meaning
| from such small data. But I'm not sure how big the data is in
| this case.
|
| Something similar happened in my town when I saw a huge-
| looking spike in a graph of covid deaths. But when I looked
| closer, deaths had spiked from 0 to 3 on a particular day,
| and the average is 0.3/day. So that crazy looking spike is
| probably meaningless over a longer time window.
| nikkinana wrote:
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Just for background and not trying to malign the source, but the
| was at a press conference where the Chamber of Commerce and
| hospital leaders were imploring state residents to get vaccinated
| as to avoid a vaccine mandate that the state legislature was
| considering for employers
|
| Feels like the insurance guy at this press conference is trying
| to 'scare' young folks into getting the vaccine.
|
| My question is, the life insurance company would see all the
| death certificates, if they don't say Covid, what do they say?
| seoaeu wrote:
| You allege bias, but the CEO of your life insurance company is
| like the textbook example of someone whose incentives are
| aligned with yours...
| maxerickson wrote:
| How come they market whole life policies?
|
| There's narrow circumstances where they might make sense, but
| that's about it.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Good for locking in a customer.
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| Not strictly so. An example of misaligned incentives would be
| an insurance salesman/CEO overstating the likelihood of
| death, and thus overstating the likelihood of a payout to the
| customer. This hypothetical would result in greater margin
| for the insurer.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| In a lot of cases we don't even have a good cause of death.
| There are a lot of areas without a good medical examiner system
| and the systems are overloaded even when they normally are
| good.
|
| Covid is quite capable of killing with a clot when your
| symptoms aren't to the point that you'll be in the hospital
| these days. This will show up as a stroke or a heart attack or
| pulmonary embolism--and if the docs don't put in the effort
| they won't know it was Covid (and for that matter it can't be
| proven anyway--lethal clots happen even without Covid. While
| it's a reasonable presumption that Covid caused the clot
| there's no proof in any given case.) There's also a lot of
| families that don't want Covid on the death certificate--even
| more reason the clot won't be attributed to Covid.
|
| (And, yes, there are plenty of other ways clots can kill--I'm
| just looking at the cases that are likely to kill without ever
| reaching the hospital.)
|
| Undertakers have also been noticing this--lots of bodies
| showing Covid clotting even though they aren't reported as
| Covid deaths.
|
| Edit: I forgot an additional factor. If you do survive your
| Covid hospital stay you have a substantially elevated all-cause
| mortality rate at least for the next year. AFIAK the mechanism
| has not yet been identified.
| yehosef wrote:
| Here's an interesting video about an increase in sports-related
| deaths and heart-attacks. Maybe it's related?
|
| https://rumble.com/vpnxkr-are-these-side-effects-extremely-r...
| [deleted]
| BillyTheKing wrote:
| it's not really a video about increase of deaths and heart-
| attacks - it's just a video that compiles all sorts of sport-
| related deaths and heart-attacks, we do not actually know if
| there's an increase or not, since no data from before 2020 was
| presented
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| [1] is featured on the channel you liked as an expert but it
| appears that he has some issues / trouble being factual.
|
| [1] https://byrambridle.com/
| 542458 wrote:
| Sudden cardiac death has always been surprisingly frequent in
| healthy athletes, so there's a _lot_ of room for observational
| bias here.
|
| (2016) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4969030/
|
| > A recent estimate of SCD incidence ranged from 1 in 40,000 to
| 1 in 80,000 athletes per year.
| daenz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_association_footballer.
| .. 21 in 2021 3 in 2020 3 in
| 2019 4 in 2018 7 in 2017 8 in 2016
| 9 in 2015 5 in 2014 10 in 2013 8 in 2012
| 3 in 2011 9 in 2010
|
| Something is different about 2021. I'm not a data analyst,
| but maybe somebody can quantify how 2021 is an outlier.
| 542458 wrote:
| That's not a complete list for any year, so comparisons of
| counts is meaningless - again, lots of room for biases to
| creep in here.
| daenz wrote:
| >comparisons of counts is meaningless
|
| Even if the data is biased, it's still useful when you
| account for the biases. What are you proposing is the
| bias for 2021?
| 542458 wrote:
| A potential bias for 2021 would be that: In 2021 some
| people are worried about a vaccine->heart link and for
| any given event may be more likely to document it online
| and/or add it to Wikipedia. As such we might not be
| measuring number of cardiac arrests, and actually may be
| measuring public attention paid to cardiac arrest.
| daenz wrote:
| What test could prove or disprove that hypothesis?
| Creating some criteria by which to include a death in the
| statistic? (eg, notability)
| [deleted]
| csee wrote:
| > surprisingly frequent in healthy athletes
|
| More common than in general population?
| jack_squat wrote:
| My understanding is cardiac deaths early in life are mostly
| caused by congenital issues that are more likely to shake
| out under stress, and those late in life are dominated by
| issues acquired via lifestyle.
|
| Among people under 35 (most athletes) athletes are at
| significantly higher risk. It's possible tables turn later
| in life, can't really find a source. Anecdotally I knew two
| people growing up who died suddenly of congenital heart
| issues, and both were athletes.
| newacc9 wrote:
| There's funeral directors on youtube and bitchute that say
| their workload has increased 5x and the deaths are all heart
| related.
| truffdog wrote:
| That's a potential COVID complication, right?
| joenathanone wrote:
| Link(s)?
| newacc9 wrote:
| https://www.bitchute.com/video/d8NJweAfvzEC/
|
| Also I've seen Anglican ministers saying the same thing on
| youtube, so not just funeral directors.
| 542458 wrote:
| That doesn't pass smell test to me. A 5x increase in workload
| for funeral homes would mean ballpark 5x as many deaths. That
| would be apocalyptic and impossible to miss. Every ER doc and
| ambulance driver in the US would be talking about it. For
| reference, the 2020 death rate is only about 1.15x the 2019
| rate due to covid.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| I too get my trusted news from random YouTube sources
| agmsr wrote:
| I wonder what the fentanyl factor is.
| steelstraw wrote:
| It was by far the top cause of death for 18 to 45 year olds in
| 2020 and 2021.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fentanyl-overdose-death/
| whatever1 wrote:
| Fentanyl factor did not start in March of 2020.
| deepnotderp wrote:
| Social isolation is well known to probably be the number one
| factor driving drug abuse (see eg Rat park experiments).
| Lockdowns, no school, etc...
|
| In teenagers this has already caused a spike in mental
| illnesses.
| nick__m wrote:
| Too many fentanyl shipments got sized in 2020, so they
| partially switched to the 100x more potent (and lethal)
| carfentanyl. Since it's so powerful a slightly badly mixed
| product that would have been safe-ish using fentanyl become
| assuredly lethal with carfentanyl.
|
| Have a look at the picture on this page to see how much
| lethal it is : https://www.bioonesantaclarita.com/biohazard-
| and-crime-scene...
| austinkhale wrote:
| 2020 and 2021 both saw a sharp rise in fentanyl seizures at
| the border.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/fentanyl-
| seizur...
| whatever1 wrote:
| Not sure what fentanyl death rates did in a particular
| neighborhood in the US, what I know is that CDC reported
| 100k overdose deaths /year for 2020-2021. That pales in
| comparison to the 600k excess deaths we had in the first 9
| months of the pandemic in the US.
|
| Specially if you consider that the overdose deaths did not
| suddenly appear in 2020.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Numbers are tricky though. There's much less than 100k
| covid deaths for those under 50. Whereas I would guess
| that's the lion share of opioid deaths. 50-64 is another
| weird inflection point. It's totally possible for covid
| to kill 6x as many people but for opioids to have a
| bigger impact of life expectancy. One 20 year old death
| is only offset by 60 or so 80 year old deaths.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| That's simply because fentanyl is cheap enough that the
| drug syndicates in the golden triangle are flooding the
| market with it. It's so cheap to produce in industrial
| quantities using perfectly legal, easily acquired
| industrial chemicals that they really don't care how many
| shipments get seized because a small amount can be cut into
| a whole lot of sellable product, so they don't try as hard
| to smuggle it in.
| bsza wrote:
| You should remove markdown syntax from that link, it messes
| it up.
| austinkhale wrote:
| Thank you. Done.
| austinkhale wrote:
| Fentanyl, P2P meth, and the world being turned upside down all
| at the same time was really a bad combo.
| jfim wrote:
| > P2P meth
|
| For those confused by the P2P acronym as I was, it's
| apparently a synthesis route that was developed in response
| to the crackdowns on OTC ephedrine products. It's apparently
| a lot more pure than the older stuff, at least according to
| https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Huh wasn't that a plot point in breaking bad?
| black-tusk wrote:
| Jesse and Walter steal a barrel of methylamine so Jesse
| no longer has to boost ephedrine across the state. It
| does not, however make the end product blue
| truffdog wrote:
| Yup. Apparently some of the broad strokes of the plot are
| accurate, including the move to industrialized p2p
| production.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Sort of a little case study in how clamping down on
| precursors just drives producers to change the formula,
| while making things more difficult for all the legitimate
| users of the precursor materials.
| austinkhale wrote:
| The Atlantic wrote a really good deep dive piece into the
| differences recently. Highly recommend reading through it.
| There are a lot of unknowns about the long term
| consequences. Anecdotally, people close to me in the mental
| health industry are really distraught about it.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-
| new...
| [deleted]
| martinpw wrote:
| Book by the same author here
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Least-Us-Tales-America-
| Fentanyl/dp/16...
|
| It's a devastating read.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Just idly wondering about information readily available from
| primary sources (CDC WISQARS database) does not advance the
| conversation.
| agmsr wrote:
| I was referring to the Indiana life insurance company's data,
| which doesn't seem to be broken out.
| lazyjones wrote:
| It's the same here in Europe, where nobody talks about
| Fentanyl.
| lettergram wrote:
| People tend not to die in that age range from natural causes.
| Even covid has a relatively low impact in that range. For
| instance, I'd expect higher deaths in 2020 from covid than this
| year, assuming the vaccines are effective and not causing the
| issues (perhaps they are...?)
|
| I'm curious what factors are the major causes. I'm guessing
| mental health, obesity and drugs. Although anecdotal, I know
| multiple people who had a major downward spiral the past 12
| months, particularly in mental health. Delaying treatment the
| last 18-24 months for basic checkups could also lead to some
| major issues.
| throwntoday wrote:
| >assuming the vaccines are effective and not causing the issues
| (perhaps they are...?)
|
| The numbers on vaccine complications are almost certainly
| underreported, you could surmise this just by observing how
| they have made every effort to shut down any negative media
| about it to prevent "vaccine hesitancy".
|
| Perhaps it's not the vaccines even, but mistakes during
| administration from undertrained or exhausted medical workers
| (i.e. malpractice). At any rate the media appears to be making
| no fuss about the increasing number of young people getting
| heart attacks.
| colordrops wrote:
| Another data point that the cure for the pandemic has been worse
| than the disease.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| Well guess we have to build a time machine and run an A/B test
| where we don't do any of the COVID-19 measures to have a fair
| comparison, no?
| Flankk wrote:
| It's called a long-term study. B is the placebo group. The
| Pfizer vaccine was rolled out after a two-month study instead
| of the usual 5-10 years. Slide 12 of this document [1] shows
| an increase in death following the Pfizer inoculation. The
| Pfizer vaccine is causing acute myocarditis in people under
| the age of 50. This is causing people to collapse months
| later when the heart is put under strain with seemingly no
| symptoms. But don't listen to me, I'm just a crazy conspiracy
| theorist. In fact, go ahead and trust science and get
| yourself a booster shot.
|
| [1] https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-
| content/uploads...
| erdewit wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands there's also a sharp increase in the
| excess mortality that can't be explained by COVID deaths.
|
| https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| People not wanting to see a doctor or go to hospital for non
| COVID related health issues out of fear?
|
| Reduced capacity in the health service for stuff like cancer?
| viktorcode wrote:
| Different countries have different methods of determining if
| COVID was the cause of death, but so far if I remember
| correctly only Belgium has excess mortality equivalent to
| attributed COVID deaths, thanks to their cause qualification
| method (if COVID is only suspected but wasn't diagnosed, it is
| attributed to COVID).
| bazooka_penguin wrote:
| Lockdown/wfh related perhaps? I would definitely say I've
| become significantly more sedentary, likewise for many of my
| friends and coworkers, given we're all in tech.
| fundad wrote:
| There's our labor shortage
| hervature wrote:
| My hypothesis is that this is caused from diabetes. I first
| learned about this when my friend was diagnosed with diabetes at
| the beginning of the pandemic. He said that Stanford was
| investigating a potential connection. Now there is a bit more
| literature [1]. If you go to [2] and select "Weekly Number of
| Deaths by Cause Subgroup" and then "Other select causes" from the
| dropdown, you will see that diabetes jumped up at the start of
| the pandemic and has stayed at ~40% increased levels since.
|
| [1] - https://www.nih.gov/how-covid-19-can-lead-diabetes
|
| [2] -
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
| yucky wrote:
| Interestingly enough, over 40% of all COVID deaths are
| diabetics. - https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/diabetics-make-
| up-40-of-covid-...
| snarf21 wrote:
| Well, that makes a lot of sense since covid is particularly
| lethal among those that are immuno-compromised.
| yosito wrote:
| The effects of covid on the pancreas are interesting to me. I
| started having what appear to be pancreatic issues in May. I'm
| wondering if it may have been triggered by an otherwise
| asymptomatic covid infection but I'm not sure how to confirm.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| A good chunk is fentanyl and suicide:
| https://townhall.com/tipsheet/micaelaburrow/2020/07/28/redfi...
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| vmception wrote:
| Fentanyl, most likely.
|
| https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-deat...
| TRossi wrote:
| "Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a
| one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-
| pandemic," he said. "So 40% is just unheard of."
|
| This sounds very strange indeed, I'd like to see the numbers. For
| instance Euromomo https://www.euromomo.eu collects the statistics
| about death rates, here is a plot for the Italian death rate and
| you can see the mortality spikes with the covid waves, but those
| are quite specific for the elderly https://imgur.com/a/8cUdNcb
|
| It sounds very strange that the death spike is "over" 3 sigma,
| which should mean over 3 standard deviations, which is really
| unbelievable, to me this looks like an artefact of some sort
| pletnes wrote:
| If the dataset which went into the <<3 sigma>> had no major
| catastrophes, like WW2 / covid / ... then such an event can
| probably get you into <<3 sigma territory>>.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > It sounds very strange that the death spike is "over" 3
| sigma, which should mean over 3 standard deviations, which is
| really unbelievable, to me this looks like an artefact of some
| sort
|
| Why does the fact that it is larger than 3 standard deviations
| suggest to you that it must be an artifact? If the death rate
| is normally very stable then the standard deviation will be
| small, so it will be easy for any unusual increase to exceed
| that.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think the other thing that may be possible (just guessing,
| I'm not a statistician or actuarial) is that by using the
| term "3 sigma" I'm assuming they're modeling the data as a
| normal distribution. But these types of outlier events often
| follow power laws, such that you get "fat tails" when looking
| at a bell curve.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > that by using the term "3 sigma" I'm assuming they're
| modeling the data as a normal distribution
|
| variance and standard deviation don't only apply to normal
| distributions. and "sigma" is the symbol normally used for
| variance regardless of the underlying distribution.
|
| > I'm assuming
|
| sigh.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yes, I'm fully aware that variance and standard deviation
| apply to any sample or population, and that sigma is
| normally used for standard deviation.
|
| However, in everyday usage, saying something is a "2 or 3
| sigma" event nearly always refers to a normal
| distribution unless otherwise noted, because otherwise
| that information doesn't really tell you anything. Is
| only with a specific distribution that can imply a
| percentage likelihood, e.g. 5% for a 2 sigma event or .3%
| for a 3 sigma event. Also, if you're looking at at annual
| probability, 1-in-200 year event would correspond to just
| about 3 sigma on a normal distribution.
|
| _Sigh_
| FabHK wrote:
| And the number of people dying per (large) unit of time
| is almost certainly well approximated by a normal
| distribution, modulo seasonal variation and events such
| as this (which break the "independence" assumption of the
| CLT).
| worik wrote:
| The point is that you expect a normal distribution
| without fat tails. Fat tails are a sign of non random
| processes. Which lets you know some non random process is
| happening.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| As the sibling comment wrote, it's not non-random
| processes in this instance, it's processes that aren't
| independent.
|
| That is, when generally looking over any death rates in a
| relatively large population, most deaths in a given year
| are uncorrelated, so things look like a normal
| distribution. Obviously with a transmissible virus, the
| fact that two people died in the same year of Covid is
| correlated.
|
| Similarly, if you did the math from the insurance
| company's data, I'd bet you'd find the chance of
| everybody dying in the same year would be like 1 in many,
| many trillions of years. But of course things like
| supervolcanos or meteor strikes are possible. Those
| aren't non-random, it's just that everyone's death would
| correlate with that single event.
| justinpombrio wrote:
| > It sounds very strange that the death spike is "over" 3
| sigma, which should mean over 3 standard deviations, which is
| really unbelievable, to me this looks like an artefact of some
| sort
|
| It's not an artifact, it's incorrect modeling. If they're
| talking about sigmas, then they're modeling deaths as being
| normally distributed. But deaths aren't normally distributed,
| as you can tell by glancing at a graph of deaths over time:
| there's way more probability mass in the extremes than you
| would expect from a normal distribution. This sort of thing
| (modelling something poorly, then getting all surprised when
| reality violates your model) is depressingly common.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/deat...
| jameshart wrote:
| Overall death rates are highly affected by age distribution
| in the population - the proportion of 80-100 year olds in
| your population in a given year is going to have a big impact
| on the death rate that year.
|
| Death rates for an age range (like 18-45) are likely to be
| much more stable.
|
| Also, pretty dubious about that specific dataset - it looks
| like it includes linear interpolations between a much smaller
| set of actual datapoints, so not sure you can use it to infer
| the actual distribution of death rate statistics
| justinpombrio wrote:
| > Death rates for an age range (like 18-45) are likely to
| be much more stable.
|
| Do you have a data set for this to look at? I'm skeptical
| that death rates of any kind are close to normally
| distributed. If nothing else, there are big spikes during
| plagues, like the black plague and spanish flu.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Isn't sigma for normal distributions of data? Is death rate
| normal on a 200-year timescale?
| fallingknife wrote:
| You can't assume a standard normal distribution for something
| like death rates that are know to have a very high prevalence
| of right tail events like famine, war, and disease.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> 3 standard deviations, which is really unbelievable_
|
| People reporting on deaths have to average over a period,
| otherwise you find deaths drop on weekends and spike on mondays
| because that's when the paperwork gets processed. In this case,
| they're averaging over an entire quarter.
|
| I could well believe that the variance in death rates between
| Q4 2008 and Q4 2018 had a standard deviation of 3% - an entire
| quarter is a lot of averaging.
| FabHK wrote:
| If you did it annually, you'd get rid of seasonal effects and
| probably get a smaller std dev. Using quarters gives you the
| full variability of the seasons, so it is a more conservative
| 3 sigma, in a sense.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Doesn't seem that is unbelievable at all to me. Instead I think
| it just highlights how humans can discount the severity of
| something when it moves slowly and continues for years.
|
| Remember the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 that was a major
| catastrophe around the world? According to a Google search it
| killed 227,898 people. Last I checked Covid had killed about
| 5.5 million, which is worse that every single war since WWII.
|
| Of course, I think it's very fair to say the devastation from a
| war is _much_ worse than Covid (a war destroys infrastructure
| and primarily kills the young), but from a pure "number of
| deaths" perspective I think most people have a huge difficulty
| comprehending the severity of the pandemic.
| amelius wrote:
| You probably should use this measure instead:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-years_lost
| atom_arranger wrote:
| Regardless of what measure you're using it would also be
| good to make it per person.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| Covid has obviously caused infrastructure problems, though
| the contrast with a war is similar. There are tons of minor
| maintenance tasks where there are one or two people who need
| to do some thing every week. Maybe all the people who are
| responsible for the task are laid up for a week and incapable
| of doing the maintenance. Multiply that by hundreds of
| thousands of people getting infected every week you end up
| with a lot of missed maintenance. And of course the risk that
| those one or two or three key people die and the task never
| gets done again until the system just hits the failure mode
| that the task was intended to avoid.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| It was definitely a rickety system before Covid impacted
| it. But I suspect any strong shock could have caused a
| similar destabilization.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > but from a pure "number of deaths" perspective I think most
| people have a huge difficulty comprehending the severity of
| the pandemic.
|
| Some 55 million people die each year. An extra 5 million is a
| big deal, yes, but there's almost 8 billion people on the
| planet. I think most people have a huge difficulty
| comprehending just how many humans there are on earth.
| whiddershins wrote:
| I think these numbers are so extreme as to invite skepticism.
|
| Too often (omicron is 72% of cases) unbelievable numbers are, in
| fact, not to be believed.
| yosito wrote:
| Being skeptical doesn't mean that the numbers are not to be
| believed. It means that the numbers are to be investigated.
| Often, unintuitive numbers turn out to be accurate after
| investigation, but unless we do the hard work of investigation,
| we can't know.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The 72% figure was a computer prediction somehow gone wrong, I
| don't know the details of what went wrong.
|
| However, it's obvious Omicron is absolutely exploding--the
| testing system is completely swamped at this point so we don't
| know the real rate. That's enough to say that by now the 72%
| likely is right.
| paragisatool wrote:
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| Careful there, don't want to give fodder to the anti vax crowd
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If the data suggests that lockdowns are causing excess
| mortality, that should be important to public policy
| discussions regardless of how it feels.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I run the same trail for over 10 years. In the last year, I had
| to call 911 for a guy with chest pains and twice for suicidal
| women waiting on the train tracks for the train. Never happened
| before.
|
| I'm a little scared we may be entering a period of mass psychosis
| which is more deadly than any virus. The psychological conditions
| that lead people to burn witches and the rise of dictatorships
| are here.
|
| If I was richer I would probably be buying a home on some tiny
| island in the Caribbean.
|
| Great video on mass psychosis
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M
| mellavora wrote:
| huh, I thought New Zealand was the preferred bug-out island.
| fundad wrote:
| Definitely a period of mass misery
|
| I see it also in the school vandalism, increase in shooting
| deaths and general uncertainty about rule of law
| spenrose wrote:
| This story [1] (NYT paywall) is clearer IMHO:
|
| 1. 600,000 more elderly Americans, or 1 of 100, have died during
| the Covid epidemic than would have died had the epidemic not
| occurred.
|
| 2. 200,000 more non-elderly Americans, or 1 of 1,400, have died--
| but that's mostly ages 15-64, so more like 1 in 1,000 adults of
| working age.
|
| 3. The CDC says adult death rates were up 20%. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/covid-deaths-
| elderly-a...
|
| [2]
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm#secti...
| jtc331 wrote:
| Worth noting that while there is a clear and measurable
| increase, the CDC makes a nonetheless significant error by
| assuming 2019 is the baseline when in fact we see a baseline
| increase every year even without other factors (both because of
| increasing population and because of slowing advances in
| medically extending lifespans).
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Population growth is about 0.4% in the US, so that's probably
| not a big factor. In 2019, the CDC estimated that age-
| adjusted expected lifespan increased by 1.2% [0].
|
| I think the population growth would indicate a lower death
| rate than implied by direct counting, since total pop is the
| denominator. However, I think the increased lifespan would
| work in the counter direction - Americans should live longer
| in 2020 than in '19 without C19.
|
| So while the CDC made methodological mistakes, I don't think
| it would affect the conclusion.
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/20
| 20/...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > 600,000 more elderly Americans, or 1 of 100, have died during
| the Covid epidemic than would have died had the epidemic not
| occurred.
|
| The article does not say this. The substantial majority of
| Covid deaths occur among people close to or beyond the typical
| life expectancy [1]. It's hard to measure how many people would
| have died during this time frame due to complications other
| than Covid, and the NYT article you linked to did not claim
| that these are additional deaths beyond what "would have died
| had the epidemic not occurred."
|
| 1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
| mcguire wrote:
| The "typical life expectancy" is not a terribly useful number
| (unless you are considering emigration). A much more useful
| measure is the life expectancy _at a person 's current age_
| (which will always be greater than their current age).
|
| And I note it is quite easy to figure out how many people you
| _would expect_ to die from complications other than Covid---
| as a first order approximation it will be the same as in 2019
| (unless you happen to know of a significant change other than
| COVID).
| dv_dt wrote:
| I wonder if vaccination status is going to be an policy pricing
| input
| frellus wrote:
| Pandemics are defined by "excess deaths" so nothing really
| surprising here.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Covid is vanishingly unlikely to kill people in this age group.
| I always find it hard to find a clear number when I Google for
| a recent IFR, but it's a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Death from any cause is unlikely in this age group. When the
| denominator is already small, small changes mortality can be
| cast as an alarming-sounding "40% increase" you really need
| to look at the raw numbers.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| The problem is the age group they gave is very wide: 18-64.
| It would be helpful if they could sub-divide this to give
| better perspective to which age group is seeing the largest
| shift.
| csee wrote:
| What is your best guess based on what you've read, and for
| what age group is that figure for specifically? I have also
| been googling and have found no good source.
| BillyTheKing wrote:
| I feel like article like this one are commonly used by the anti-
| vaccine community. They point to those ominous, rising death
| numbers and understand them as evidence for the dangers of mRNA
| vaccines. It would therefore (among other reasons) be helpful to
| understand where exactly that rise in numbers comes from, is it
| vaccines (which I don't think, else we'd be seeing a similar
| spike in, say, Europe)? Or is it being caused by other factors,
| such as fetanyl?
| halfjoking wrote:
| You're right - I'm anti-vaxx when it comes to mRNA vaccines and
| I often link to mainstream articles like this:
|
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/analysis-thousands-more-usual-dyi...
|
| Mainstream articles are biased with the spin of the situation
| but the facts are there. It goes over some causes of deaths -
| mostly heart/clotting issues, exactly what you'd expect from
| the vaxx. That's why we call it the "clot-shot"
|
| In England people who took the vaxx are twice as likely to die
| as those who don't:
|
| https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adult...
|
| If you want an opposing view of that data read this fact-check:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-britai...
|
| Notice how they don't deny the statistic. They just say it's
| taken "out of context" because covid deaths, and vaccines save
| lives. No matter how they spin it they can't deny government
| data says vaccinated 18-59 are much more likely to die. That's
| a fact, even though it's marked as false by Reuters.
| jack_squat wrote:
| Doesn't that all make sense? I'm not sure what the issue is
| here.
|
| The statistic that vaccinated people 18-59 are dying at twice
| the rate presumably true, so of course the reuters article
| doesn't deny it. The Reuters article presents a totally
| believable explanation, which is also in the original
| article's comments. What they are saying is that this can be
| true for the age range 18-59, but simultaneously not be true
| for any specific age brackets within that range.
|
| This is called Simpson's paradox. The explanation is that
| vaccination rates are higher among the elderly than among the
| young, and that the elderly have a higher baseline rate of
| death, and the Reuters article breaks out the numbers to
| demonstrate this. What's the big mystery exactly?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| Simpson's paradox is fascinating. If the result above does
| not seem intuitive, think of an extremely simplified
| version: imagine that half of everyone in their 50's is
| vaxxed and no one on their 20's is. Next imagine that of
| 1000 people in their 50's, 100 of 500 vaxxed people die
| from non-covid sources, 100 of 500 unvaxxed people die from
| non-covid sources, plus 50 unvaxxed people in their 50's
| die from covid and no vaxxed people do. And imagine that 0
| out of 2000 people in their 20's die from anything.
|
| 150 out of 2500 unvaxxed deaths in 18-59
|
| 100 out of 500 vaxxed deaths in 18-59 (higher rate)
|
| But: 150 of 500 unvaxxed deaths in 50-59
|
| 100 of 500 vaxxed deaths in 50-59 (lower rate)
|
| It would be true that more vaxxed people died than unvaxxed
| in the 18-59 age group without the vaccine causing any
| death, but only because the larger number of surviving
| young people swamps the higher relative death rates among
| the higher relative vaxxed elderly.
| [deleted]
| jollybean wrote:
| You are confusing your data badly.
|
| Each of your references are saying completely different
| things.
|
| 1) non-covid excess mortality
|
| 2) mortality _rate_ between those vaxxed and not vaxxed.
|
| 3) Reteurs was not 'debunking' point 2 or point 1. They are
| 'debunking' crap statements on Joe Rogan Podcast about the
| absollute numbers of those dying from COVID in general.
|
| Alex Berenson is terribly misrepresenting information.
|
| So when you say "That's a Fact" - you don't even seem to be
| sure what facts you're referring to, and they are obviously
| taken out of context, at face value.
|
| A)
|
| For point 3, the Reuters debunking of 'Most of the COVID
| deaths are those vaccinated' (Alex Berenson on Joe Rogan
| Podcast misinformation).
|
| Suppose 100% of the citizens of the UK are vaccinated.
|
| The vaxx is good, but not perfect - so some will die.
|
| Are you going to run around saying '100% of those dying were
| vaccinated - therefore the vaxx is crap'.
|
| That would be 'a fact' i.e. '100% of deaths are those who are
| vaccinated'.
|
| But how helpful is that fact? It's not.
|
| It'd be like saying '99% of those dying from car accidents
| were wearing seatbelts, therefore seat-belts are dangerous'
|
| B)
|
| Data point 2, which shows that 'Vaxxed people aged 10-59 are
| dying at 2x the rate those unvaxxed' - is also misleading.
|
| (FYI they are talking about 'death rates' not absolute
| deaths, which is why it's different than the Joe Rogan
| Podcast misinformation.)
|
| The likelihood of someone being vaccinated goes up
| dramatically with their likelihood of dying from COVID.
|
| 59-year-olds are vaxxed at a much higher rate than 10 or 20
| year olds.
|
| Especially those with underlying conditions.
|
| And it's going to be overwhelmingly people in those
| situations that die from COVID.
|
| Here's an analogy:
|
| People aged 50+ and those 30+ with underlying conditions are
| going for a 'dangerous car ride'.
|
| Everyone else is going for a 'safe car ride'.
|
| Everyone is asked to wear their seatbelts.
|
| Some people, particularly those going on the 'safe car ride'
| - are not wearing seatbelts.
|
| As a result: all the 'big crashes' are in the 'dangerous car-
| ride' cohort.
|
| That means almost all of the deaths will be among those who
| are wearing seatbelts, because, well, they were going on a
| 'dangerous car ride'.
|
| The kids who didn't bother to wear seatbelts, were mostly
| going on the 'safe ride' and there were not many accidents at
| all.
|
| If we popularized the notion of 'People with seatbelts more
| likely to die' - it would be totally misleading, because
| people would come to believe that 'Seatbelts Kill You' -
| when, the total opposite is true - seatbelts save lives.
|
| ...
|
| People that are smart enough to know the difference, and
| continue to propagate it, are deliberately misleading people.
|
| People that aren't bright enough (or don't have the time) to
| spot the difference ... shouldn't be propagating information.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| lazyjones wrote:
| Official numbers for Europe are available at
| https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
|
| They have graphs with excess deaths by age groups and you can
| see that 2021 looks worse than 2020, with a noticeable upwards
| trend starting around week 16 of 2021.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The anti-vaccination people don't need facts, so anything that
| creates FUD works for them.
|
| I live in a protest corridor, and the "freedom lovers" were
| demanding that we sacrifice the weak and old so that they could
| enjoy not getting a vaccine. It's a gross type of mental
| illness.
| csee wrote:
| > "freedom lovers" were demanding that we sacrifice the weak
| and old
|
| Isn't it the opposite? I recall various right-leaning figures
| talking about 'sacrificing' the _young_. Release them in
| order to get natural immunity, while locking up the old until
| that process is done. I think that was a rather bad idea,
| especially with the hindsight of knowing how quickly the
| vaccines were ready, but that 's separate.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Like I said, they don't make a lot of sense. I think
| there's a few different branches of that approach.
|
| Why people were picketing a hospital with "sacrifice the
| weak" signs was very puzzling. But they were!
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The vaccine does not prevent anyone from getting or spreading
| covid. In Ontario same case rate of covid per 100k residents,
| in unxxed as vaxxed and heading higher. 3rd graph.
|
| https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0.
| ..
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I don't think that is seriously questioned with the Delta
| and Omicron variants. Vaccines do seem, however, to reduce
| the probability of having a serious infection that requires
| hospitalization or ICU admission. It's a novel virus and it
| and the situation around it evolves very quickly.
|
| The anti-vax crowd conveniently ignores that detail, and
| unfortunately the people who give them credence are paying
| the price through needless suffering or even death.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| "The anti-vaccination people don't need facts" but pro-
| vaccination people will downvote the official data.
|
| Edit: ...as the parent comment was downvoted when I wrote
| this
| manwe150 wrote:
| The page also shows that vaccinated people are far less
| likely to be in the ICU, which is an even more important
| metric.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| This is the only metric still left, which ma be just time
| delayed.
|
| Also people in ICU with covid may not be the same thing
| as people in ICU because of covid. It may likely just be
| that very sick people in hospitals are refusing the
| vaccine and catching it. Hospitals are confined spaces
| that aid in transmission of all kinds of diseases.
|
| The difference is 40 people out of a population of 14.5
| million. So small it could literally be people with
| terminal diseases catching covid on their death beds.
|
| To use this to advocate for any preventative effect in a
| healthy individual in the general population would be
| misleading. Very likely the difference is just sampling
| bias.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It could be many things.
|
| The simple explanation, that getting a vaccination that
| prevents or reduces the impact of a disease makes more
| sense. To the point that it's a no-brainer.
|
| It's a moot point now, as this phase of the pandemic is
| played out. People embraced fear, ignorance and doubt in
| the name of freedom. Many will needlessly suffer as a
| result.
| Developerx wrote:
| sudosysgen wrote:
| We can look at stats. The US isn't the only country with
| vaccines.
| Developerx wrote:
| Stat from who? Are you sure you can believe the official
| stats and so called opendata? I'm not
| sudosysgen wrote:
| So you don't trust any data from any country in the
| world?
| Developerx wrote:
| nu11ptr wrote:
| There are statisticians who have made such claims by
| modeling many highly vaccinated countries. I am not
| claiming they are right or wrong, but there are people who
| claim they have found this signal in the data using
| statistical methods.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Link?
| Developerx wrote:
| civilized wrote:
| This may well be true in some suitably qualified sense, but it's
| odd to be hearing it from an insurance company first. General
| population death records would enable government health agencies
| to catch such large statistical shifts more quickly than an
| insurance company. I suspect what they're seeing is real, but
| they're exaggerating how representative it is of all geographic
| regions and socioeconomic strata. Maybe there's another wave of
| fentanyl ODs hitting the Rust Belt / Appalachia.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Key word: should
|
| I'm not suggesting they are suppressing or missing anything,
| but I would suggest we stay open to both possibilities.
| wjnc wrote:
| Working as an actuary. The only way I can make sense of this
| headline (GDPR block) is: normally for age X deaths Y. Of those
| Y there are many with health preconditions that can't get life
| coverage. Now a disease hits that kills some and effects
| everyone (this is somewhat contrary to the usual view of
| corona). You can have a massive increase in deaths without
| preconditions even if the absolute rise is small. So their
| deaths are up 40% compared to the expectation of the insurer
| (not general mortality).
|
| In other words: because of selection at the gate for long life
| you can get up to 50-70% lower premiums than the standard table
| assumes. So this insurer is having quite the scare.
|
| It's one of the reasons why many EU insurers have balanced
| portfolios (and are strongly favored by regulation to be
| balanced). Long life, short life, pensions all in a basket with
| reinsurance to get these risks of the books. Throw in some P&C
| and A&H books as well (lower incidence of traffic accidents for
| example) and the company could be robust to corona. Now the
| interest rate and inflation, that's a different story.
| [deleted]
| red_trumpet wrote:
| This let's you circumvent the GDPR block: https://web.archive
| .org/web/20220102164149/https://www.thece...
| civilized wrote:
| They're in group life so selection should be limited. And
| they said the deaths are mostly not COVID.
| wjnc wrote:
| From the article: "working-age people who are employees of
| businesses with group life insurance policies" - that's a
| quite comparable effect although indeed not via the
| individual health screening thus less pronounced. Those not
| working are quite more likely to die.
|
| What I don't under from the article: they mention a $100
| million loss on disability, but the effect of this size on
| mortality should be many billions.
| civilized wrote:
| Somewhat smaller denominator, sure, but changes in the
| numerator should also be smaller for similar reasons:
| healthier population, employed, therefore more shielded
| from socioeconomic stresses around the pandemic.
|
| I sort of agree that the insurance financial risks
| associated with a low mortality population can be high in
| unusual situations, but it's not a blanket explanation
| for any particular situation.
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