NYTimes: Overly-sensitive COVID tests are dramatically inflating case numbers

pzs'jdgf wrote:

Pan(ic)demic wrote:

[quote]pzs'jdgf wrote:

[quote]*ahem* wrote:

I'm also struck by all the experts suddenly surprised that 37 or 40 PCR cycles were typical. On the other hand, with all the observable mayhem (180,000 dead) its understandable to cast a wide net at least initially until things are better understood.

Very possible now that it's only 18,000 truly dead from COVID.

I don't think so. The excess mortality strongly suggests COVID has killed probably more than 180K. Its probably an undercount.

What excess mortality? What are the number of total deaths in America for March thru July of 2020 vs. that same period in recent years?

Somehow these numbers are not available. Just some vague numbers based on expected deaths. What are the real numbers, the hard numbers?

If there are excess deaths, how many are suicides, overdoses, murders, accidents, and other things associated with the economic collapse due to the lock-downs?

how do you explain the more than 200,000 unexpected deaths that have occured this year? That is the number of total deaths from all causes. Something is causing people to die and if its not covid, I want to know what you believe it is...

all cause mortality way up! wrote:

how do you explain the more than 200,000 unexpected deaths that have occured this year? That is the number of total deaths from all causes. Something is causing people to die and if its not covid, I want to know what you believe it is...

How many Americans have died this year?

How many died in the first 8 months of 2019? 2018?

If you don't have these numbers, how do you know an extra 200,000 Americans died this year?

I've seen no estimates of the excess mortality due to the economy being shuttered and jobs being lost. In The Big Short they claimed that 40k people die for every percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. It's definitely something for people to consider compared to the direct cost of dying from the virus

all cause mortality way up! wrote:

how do you explain the more than 200,000 unexpected deaths that have occured this year? That is the number of total deaths from all causes. Something is causing people to die and if its not covid, I want to know what you believe it is...

Remember when ERs and doctor's offices emptied out overnight and stayed that way for the entire spring? You think people suddenly stopped having heart attacks, strokes, and other conditions that require immediate medical care?

Of course they didn't stop having them. They just died from them at home because they were too afraid to seek treatment. Add additional deaths attributable to the stress and mental health deterioration caused by living under lockdown and panic conditions, and I'm sure that produces a pretty large bump in mortality.

Word salad? I am sorry you have a hard time reading beyond a third grade level; I will try to write in more simple sentences for you the next time. Go ahead though, and keep starting all of your posts with insults in order to try and give your opinion more credibility. Rule one in a debate, you can express an opinion without providing evidence....demanding everyone believe you would be stupid without evidence, but hypotheses should be perfectly welcome.

I did not say there is no asymptomatic spread. The evidence for it though is weak and that alone is also the reason even the WHO claimed two months ago that it is not that significant.

Yes, I understand the CDC and WHO estimate flu cases each year; that same strategy should not be used with SARS-02 because we have approached the tracking of it in such a different manner with much much less reliable tests. Personally, I think it is safe to say we have already overestimated both cases and deaths, others like yourself may claim the opposite.

Pan(ic)demic wrote:

all cause mortality way up! wrote:

how do you explain the more than 200,000 unexpected deaths that have occured this year? That is the number of total deaths from all causes. Something is causing people to die and if its not covid, I want to know what you believe it is...

Remember when ERs and doctor's offices emptied out overnight and stayed that way for the entire spring? You think people suddenly stopped having heart attacks, strokes, and other conditions that require immediate medical care?

Of course they didn't stop having them. They just died from them at home because they were too afraid to seek treatment. Add additional deaths attributable to the stress and mental health deterioration caused by living under lockdown and panic conditions, and I'm sure that produces a pretty large bump in mortality.

This is a valid view for certain.

Allen53 wrote:

Pan(ic)demic wrote:

Very possible now that it's only 18,000 truly dead from COVID.

The CDC currently states that only 6% of Covid deaths died from "only Covid." Of those 94% there were 2.6 co-morbidities per deceased. Virtually all were elderly and most of those from nursing homes where policies destroyed these fragile people. Investigations will reveal the % from nursing homes is far higher than what we are currently being told.

The "pandemic" narrative is crumbling. We wouldn't even be having these types of conversations if we truly had a pandemic commensurate with the severity of the policies we are seeing.

We need investigations of the WHO, Imperial College, CDC etc...and all the pertinent individuals who were responsible for these crimes including media. The damage has been tremendous and it is going to accrue until enough people speak up.

If you’re living peacefully with a disease or some underlying ailment and you contract Covid-19 and die before you would’ve died, then you were killed by Covid 19. Why don’t ppl understand that? Stop saying that’s not a Covid death. “Oh they were obese”. So what??

If you’re living peacefully with a disease or some underlying ailment and you contract Covid-19 and die before you would’ve died, then you were killed by Covid 19. Why don’t ppl understand that? Stop saying that’s not a Covid death. “Oh they were obese”. So what??

PORTLAND, Ore. — Fred Creasy was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at the end of June. Doctors gave the 81-year-old just 30 days to live. He died at the end of July while in hospice care at Avamere Rehabilitation Facility in Newport.

“They told my daughter you better come down here because it's going to be today. And within five hours he was gone,” said daughter Rhonda McCrary.

McCrary said her father tested positive for COVID-19 around the same time of his cancer diagnosis.

“He had no symptoms. He wasn't even quarantined,” said McCrary.

McCrary said her dad died from advanced cancer and Avamere considered Creasy recovered from the coronavirus. A few days after his death, Lincoln County Public Health reported Creasy as the county’s ninth COVID-19 death.

Lead Foil Hat wrote:

Personally, I think it is safe to say we have already overestimated both cases and deaths, others like yourself may claim the opposite.

Regarding deaths, researchers would disagree with you:

Pan(ic)demic wrote:

pzs'jdgf wrote:

[quote]*ahem* wrote:

I'm also struck by all the experts suddenly surprised that 37 or 40 PCR cycles were typical. On the other hand, with all the observable mayhem (180,000 dead) its understandable to cast a wide net at least initially until things are better understood.

Very possible now that it's only 18,000 truly dead from COVID.

Why so many excess deaths this year? Hard to explain away that.

rocky mtns wrote:

Lead Foil Hat wrote:

Personally, I think it is safe to say we have already overestimated both cases and deaths, others like yourself may claim the opposite.

Regarding deaths, researchers would disagree with you:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/about-30-covid-deaths-may-not-be-classified-such

Nobody said researchers don't claim this, but these claims are based on many assumptions and models being applied in a very different scenario. They also assume that all actual case reported are as such and that all covid deaths are covid deaths; then they apply inflationary assumptions to say the number is an underestimate. The problem all along with this pandemic is that researchers have been making bad assumptions, why should we trust them now....because are scientists? News flash, science and scientists are not infallible truther dealers.....they are all operating on assumptions; some decent, some no so....I disagree with the scientific hypothesis that we have under-estimated deaths due to covid and believe we have already drastically overestimated the scenario due to (1) poor test reliability, and (2) the assumption that all people who die with covid died from covid....this 100% cannot be true yet the assumption has be mostly applied across the US.

Why so many excess deaths this year? Hard to explain away that.

People dying at home b/c the fearmongering media has made them afraid to go to a hospital/ER when they are having a heart attack. There are approximately 1.5 million heart attack and stroke victims in the US per year. Someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds.

In the spring and early summer, these people VANISHED from emergency rooms. You think they just stopped having heart attacks?

So if there are way fewer cases than reported does that mean the mortality rate is higher that we thought?

If tests aren’t effective or fast enough how could one contain the spread more effectively?

This information suggests that social distancing and masks are even more critical that we realized!

in esta wrote:

Pan(ic)demic wrote:

Very possible now that it's only 18,000 truly dead from COVID.

Why so many excess deaths this year? Hard to explain away that.

Still waiting for someone to tell me how many Americans have died this year and how many died in the first 8 months or recent years that allows us to calculate the number of excess deaths. I cannot find this data anywhere.

stuff on the internet is always true wrote:

So if there are way fewer cases than reported does that mean the mortality rate is higher that we thought?

No, because COVID deaths are likely inflated by the same factor (10x, according to the article). Remember, anyone who has a positive COVID test at the time of death is usually counted as a COVID death, regardless of severity.

The Unkle wrote:

Still waiting for someone to tell me how many Americans have died this year and how many died in the first 8 months or recent years that allows us to calculate the number of excess deaths. I cannot find this data anywhere.

You're not looking very hard. Here's the first paragraph from the article I posted above:

"In the first 3 months of the US coronavirus epidemic, the number of excess deaths in the United States was 122,300, 28% higher than the reported number of COVID-19 deaths, according to an observational study published today in JAMA Internal Medicine."

Lead Foil Hat wrote:

We do not test for the flu and count asymptomatic cases, if we did there would be 100x as many flu cases each year.

This is false.

The CDC officially estimated that 60.8 million Americans were infected by the 2009 flu (which eventually killed ~13,000 in twelve months). If you're saying that the CDC's estimate represented only 1% of those actually infected, then "100x as many flu cases" would work out to six-plus billion--roughly twenty times the total American population at the time.

So it is *not* the case that "[w]e do not . . . count asymptomatic cases" of the flu--UNLESS you're saying that virtually all cases of the flu are symptomatic, which we know is emphatically not the case.

*ahem* wrote:

Lead Foil Hat wrote:

We do not test for the flu and count asymptomatic cases, if we did there would be 100x as many flu cases each year.

This is false.

The CDC officially estimated that 60.8 million Americans were infected by the 2009 flu (which eventually killed ~13,000 in twelve months). If you're saying that the CDC's estimate represented only 1% of those actually infected, then "100x as many flu cases" would work out to six-plus billion--roughly twenty times the total American population at the time.

So it is *not* the case that "[w]e do not . . . count asymptomatic cases" of the flu--UNLESS you're saying that virtually all cases of the flu are symptomatic, which we know is emphatically not the case.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html

Ahhh yes, I remember when we closed schools, completely shut down the country, and forced everyone into masks over H1N1.