I can't find all the comments I wanted to respond to so here is my response to all of them re: the death rate is wrong
I went and watched the full statement by Dr. Birx, and first, thank you for posting it, I had indeed missed it. However, if you look at was she is saying specifically, I don't think she is saying if a death has a positive test it gets counted as a COVID death. Obviously someone dying in a auto accident with COVID won't get recorded as COVID cause of death. If you look at the full CDC description you get further confirmation of that
[url=https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm][/url]
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htmbased on her wording and the CDC description I believe a fair characterization of the intent of what she said would be that we as a country are not downplaying the COVID deaths by attributing it to the "under lying condition" when there is one. the data backs this up as well, because if we were massively over identifying COVID deaths you would expect our CFR to be more towards the upper echelon of countries, not the lower group. additionally, if it was being so over identified that the data was completely unreliable, you also wouldn't be hearing stories from ER Drs of hospitals being nearly overwhelmed even with everything else shut down and deferred. Here's a section of an interview about her comments:
Quote:
Dr. Michael Baden, a Fox News contributor, said it's reasonable to include the death of someone infected with the virus, who also had other health issues, in the COVID-19 body count.
"In the normal course, autopsies would then determine whether the person died of the effects of the COVID virus, whether the person had a brain tumor or brain hemorrhage, for example, that might be unrelated to it and what the relative significance of both the infection and the pre-existing disease is," Baden told Fox News.
However, the number of autopsies being performed could be low due to the danger of infection, he said.
"Then you will include in those numbers some people who did have a pre-existing condition that would have caused death anyway, but that's probably a small number," Baden said.
not data or evidence in itself, just another viewpoint that coming from a forensic pathologist is more credential qualified than my own.
My takeaway is that the argument that we are over identifying deaths attributable to COVID has some merit. We probably are, and it may even be enough that it will make comparisons to other causes of death difficult when they are close. That said though, the number is not so inflated that it makes the data useless. Her statements, the CDC description, other interviews around her comments, and the data itself would all point to the conclusion, that the data is in the ballpark of the "correct" number, and is close enough to be useful for rough modeling and forecasting purposes. Which honestly is what everyone should expect with preliminary data anyways.
"All models are wrong but some are useful"
-George Box
now back to the charts
