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The university takes its name from 19th-century Maryland philanthropist Johns Hopkins, an entrepreneur and abolitionist with Quaker roots who believed in improving public health and education in Baltimore and beyond.
That report contradicts another study that also looks at death rates from all causes from the past 5 years to this year March 1 to Aug 16. When looking at death rates from all causes, each year should remain about the same unless something new is killing more people. Or something new is preventing more deaths. 2020 is way higher death rate then past 5 years. Something is causing more deaths.
" the US suffered some 275,000 more deaths than the five-year average between 1 March and 16 August"
You can see the chart here. It doesn't show Nov yet:
The way they count deaths seems skewed. Covid deaths may be under-reported because hospitals remove a covid patient as soon as possible. Many covid patients die outside the hospital- in homes, care places.
Maybe the decrease in all other deaths (like heart attacks) they found is that covid killed some people who would have died those ways, plus more. In other words they died of something and reported it as covid. Covid itself doesn't kill, it destroys organs, and that kills you. Lung failure, heart failure, kidney failure, brain, nervous system, etc
"can attack almost anything in the body with devastating consequences,” says cardiologist Harlan Krumholz of Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, who is leading multiple efforts to gather clinical data on COVID-19. “Its ferocity is breathtaking and humbling."
The chart that you posted is meaningless, because it lacks appropriate context of year over year changes. Furthermore your bolded sentence is not true as death rates have changed year over year anywhere from 2-6%. As I've stated many times on many different threads, and even posted the data, a small change in death rate could be random, it could be due to lockdowns, it could be covid19 (although I don't believe so, at least to the degree that its been pushed), or it could be some unknown combination of all 3.
You can't just take raw data and ascribe a cause to it without proof, that's the definition of lazy science.
This should be obvious yet there are very few that are getting it.
Hmm... I don't agree with the left's overreaction to covid for a number of reasons including doing a simply risk/reward analysis shows that the vast majority of people affected are elderly. Had we gone the barrington declaration route instead of this one size fits all approach that you will never get the entire population to comply with for extended periods of time, maybe we actually would have saved more people. Does the media tell high risk people to take extra precautions? Not really.. they tell everyone to wear masks when they go out. That's all they really say, and that's really irresponsible when you consider the age group of people most affected and the demographics.
That said, the OP's article is misleading and was removed for a reason... there are excess deaths this year over previous years. Like most of the stuff that right wing rag puts out, it's misinformation. I'm just being honest. I stopped using it as a reliable source for anything some time ago.
Around 40-50% of total fatalities are from nursing homes, give or take. Given what we know I think it's irresponsible to still be locking down schools and colleges to be honest. Once that vaccine gets released give it to the elderly first so life can return to normal. Keep taking your Vitamin D.
Thanks for the data cite. I'd no initial idea of the Briand's intent but found it difficult on a quick read to connect her conclusions to the data. Your cite and these figures (Human Mortality Database, reference U.S.) appear to match the data in the following Briand statement, that was not cited to a table she presented making it hard to assess her claim.
"Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths." https://web.archive.org/web/20201126...ue-to-covid-19
Her comparison is on a WEEKLY basis (not mentioned). Annual U.S. deaths are around 1.7 million annually. The problem comes from the width of her weekly range. Normally U.S. deaths run around 50,000 a week except during the winter when they can hit 60,000 (Human Mortality database for the U.S., average 2015-2019). https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/e...t®ion=World[/b]
By deciding to use a range up to 70,000 deaths she included the excess covid deaths. And then pronounced that "normal." That would be mathematically accurate but again only because she used a range high enough to INCLUDE the excess covid deaths.
The newsletter explanation why it withdrew the article mentioned her claim was inaccurate, but it did not show how cleverly she attempted to craft a false analysis. This wasn't sloppiness. It was deliberate.
Last edited by EveryLady; 11-28-2020 at 11:11 AM..
2) In another thread I noted that COVID is MOSTLY pushing forward deaths that would have occurred in the next couple of years as many of the victims would have died of other illness. Not ALL, but many. My relative that died of COVID had less than 6 months to live when it took them and their cause of death is listed as COVID. (this is the part of her study that she got right in identifying.)
3) As noted in another thread the number of deaths in the US are approximately 300k higher than through the same number days as the previous 4 years. When you adjust for population growth and random variation, it's clear that there are (as the study you cited noted) about 200k+ *extra* deaths this year.
WHERE HER STUDY WENT WRONG:
Her top graph was *bad*. It's on too granular of a level (weekly) and her choice of graph that normalizes everything to 100% distorts the picture and makes it hard to spot changes in say the orange bands because the others below it are moving.
What this did was mislead her into thinking there was no impact because what she expected (increase in old people deaths AS A PERCENTAGE) wasn't shown by her analysis. What is wrong there is that there are vulnerable people at all ages, disproportionately as you get to older ages. So Covid did kill a lot more old people but still in roughly the same %'s relative to the other groups.
Not seeing a shift in the % distribution is not logical proof for her to conclude there was no real impact. It just proved that COVID was killing in rough proportion to the existing mortality segments. ie) Imagine a basketball player that scores 80% of their points by shots and 20% by free throws. Now they have a breakout year, score twice as much but the percentages stay around 80/20 and the person cites the same 80/20 as proof that they didn't score more. That's a lay example of where she went wrong.
Please note, I've pointed out that accelerating these deaths is not a good thing but at the same time people need to understand all of the collateral deaths (drug abuse, suicide etc.) that are most certainly going to result from shutdowns so if you got this far and really wanted to learn something you can see that I'm not on either "bandwagon" here, just laying out logic and reality.
Like those 200 who signed the letter claiming that protestors had no risk of contracting the virus. When government officials also went along with that, you knew that neither the medical establishment or government had any credibility on these issues. It had been totally politicized. And guess what, we had surges almost everywhere in the country two weeks after the mass protests.
Yet church gatherings, weddings, funerals, motorcycle rallies, anti-shutdown rallies, those are all "super-spreader" events.
What protests? They pretty much were over by August.
The current surges aren’t related to large city protests.
2) In another thread I noted that COVID is MOSTLY pushing forward deaths that would have occurred in the next couple of years as many of the victims would have died of other illness. Not ALL, but many. My relative that died of COVID had less than 6 months to live when it took them and their cause of death is listed as COVID. (this is the part of her study that she got right in identifying.)
3) As noted in another thread the number of deaths in the US are approximately 300k higher than through the same number days as the previous 4 years. When you adjust for population growth and random variation, it's clear that there are (as the study you cited noted) about 200k+ *extra* deaths this year.
That the great majority of excess deaths occurred among the very elderly who also had co-morbid conditions with reduced longevity is undeniable. Her conclusions, however, go far beyond that statement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathguy
I cited noted) about 200k+ *extra* deaths this year.
WHERE HER STUDY WENT WRONG:
Her top graph was *bad*. It's on too granular of a level (weekly) and her choice of graph that normalizes everything to 100% distorts the picture and makes it hard to spot changes in say the orange bands because the others below it are moving.
What this did was mislead her into thinking there was no impact because what she expected (increase in old people deaths AS A PERCENTAGE) wasn't shown by her analysis. What is wrong there is that there are vulnerable people at all ages, disproportionately as you get to older ages. So Covid did kill a lot more old people but still in roughly the same %'s relative to the other groups.
In another thread I also noted the percentage analysis was meaningless. My Comment: Why would the relative percentages of deaths change among age groups? Roughly the same age distribution of individuals die of covid that die of all causes. For example, there are few fatalities among children and young adults who have low overall death rates. Disproportionally more elderly adults die of covid and from all causes. The age distribution would have changed for the Spanish Flu that disproportionally impacted young adults. Not for covid.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathguy
What this did was mislead her into thinking there was no impact because what she expected (increase in old people deaths AS A PERCENTAGE) wasn't shown by her analysis. What is wrong there is that there are vulnerable people at all ages, disproportionately as you get to older ages. So Covid did kill a lot more old people but still in roughly the same %'s relative to the other groups.
Not seeing a shift in the % distribution is not logical proof for her to conclude there was no real impact. It just proved that COVID was killing in rough proportion to the existing mortality segments. ie) Imagine a basketball player that scores 80% of their points by shots and 20% by free throws. Now they have a breakout year, score twice as much but the percentages stay around 80/20 and the person cites the same 80/20 as proof that they didn't score more. That's a lay example of where she went wrong.
Please note, I've pointed out that accelerating these deaths is not a good thing but at the same time people need to understand all of the collateral deaths (drug abuse, suicide etc.) that are most certainly going to result from shutdowns so if you got this far and really wanted to learn something you can see that I'm not on either "bandwagon" here, just laying out logic and reality.
After seeing how she appeared to deliberately manipulate data ranges (above post), I no longer think she simply is a bad statistician or herself became mislead. My assessment now is that the analysis presented in the webinar then later in the student newsletter was but deliberate misinformation.
We can also believe the moon is made of green cheese. Part of what science is that it is a process, comprised of what's called the scientific method. Once again this is NOT an academic study. It was NOT sponsored by JHU. Does that university even have a medical review journal? Academic studies are subject to what is called peer review. With that an integral part of the process of. being accepted for publication by a reputable medical or scientific journal.
Their publication is a strong indicator not that a study is necessarily "right" or "true." But that the scientific methods used were not demonstrably biased or flawed. This is not that.
No, it was not real science. Real science may start with questioning the mainstream narrative. Creating an alternative hypothesis. But that does not mean that the scientific process then goes out the door. Scientific rigor should remain. Strong methodological analyses continue. Unsupported conclusions not accepted prima facie. What caused JHU to pull what otherwise would have been a generally meaningless student article was that it had been picked by up rightwing media dragging the universities' name and reputation into a bit of a mess.
"Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence. Scientific methodology includes the following: Objective observation: Measurement and data (possibly although not necessarily using mathematics as a tool)"
Again, I'll state that people will only believe what they themselves believe in.
"Though making clear the need for further research, the article was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic. We regret that this article may have contributed to the spread of misinformation about COVID-19."
"Though making clear the need for further research, the article was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic. We regret that this article may have contributed to the spread of misinformation about COVID-19."
As assistant director for the Master’s in Applied Economics program at Hopkins, Briand is neither a medical professional nor a disease researcher. At her talk, she herself stated that more research and data are needed to understand the effects of COVID-19 in the U.S.
Briand was quoted in the article as saying, “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers.” This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years. According to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19. Additionally, Briand presented data of total U.S. deaths in comparison to COVID-19-related deaths as a proportion percentage, which trivializes the repercussions of the pandemic. This evidence does not disprove the severity of COVID-19; an increase in excess deaths is not represented in these proportionalities because they are offered as percentages, not raw numbers.
Briand also claimed in her analysis that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may be incorrectly categorized as COVID-19-related deaths. However, COVID-19 disproportionately affects those with preexisting conditions, so those with those underlying conditions are statistically more likely to be severely affected and die from the virus.
Because of these inaccuracies and our failure to provide additional information about the effects of COVID-19, The News-Letter decided to retract this article. It is our duty as a publication to combat the spread of misinformation and to enhance our fact-checking process. We apologize to our readers.
I can't believe how many are attributing this piece as being some sort of Johns Hopkins research study.
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That's a lay example of where she went wrong.
