Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Covid does cause the deaths that it has been blamed for. The virus can cause inflamation in all organs of the body including the brain. Problems caused in the brain may not become evident for months or years after apparent recovery.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Ha ha - you are now really showing yourself up for what we see you are. There's only one Dick (or is it Jane?) in this conversation and it's not me.

srt101fan

There is heavy politicization (on both sides) but I don't see any relevancy to my comment. I still think a lot of it is semantics. And why bring up a heart attack death that causes a car crash? Totally irrelevant.

You say "Deaths associated with car crashes are labeled that, and only those deaths are counted toward the total traffic crash deaths." That was my whole point. We keep statistics of "deaths associated with car crashes" without regard for what they died of. Why can't we do the same with coronavirus deaths?

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Because, as you yourself have said, this subject is "highly politicized".

pendennis

Learn to think in a straight line, and quit making unsupported leaps of logic.

It is a non sequitur to assume that because a person tested positive for COVID, that the cause of death is necessarily related to COVID. There numerous false positive tests for COVID, so hanging your argument on that canard just doesn't make the logic muster.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

You are jumping to the conclusion that deaths are automatically attributed to Covid if it is present.

pendennis

COVID is already named as a secondary cause of death if it is indeed involved. However, the immediate cause of death is always the failure of one of the body's systems - heart, pulmonary, renal, gastrointestinal, etc. The tertiary causes would be those underlyers which pre-existed the systems failure - diabetes, various heart ailments, COPD, etc.

If a person has diabetes, for instance, it can cause a host of diseases such as macular degeneration, renal failure, gastrointestinal, and neural problems, among others. Thus, if one died of renal failure, it would be the immediate cause, a secondary cause could be COVID, or some other ailment; the tertiary cause would be diabetes.

pendennis

I did not state, nor imply that. The ASSumption by others, is that COVID caused the death of people already ill with another malady. That is not true. A person who dies of pulmonary failure, may have tested positive for COVID; but it does not follow that COVID is THE secondary cause of death. There are enumerable instances of false positives for COVID, so one can't positively state that COVID was a secondary cause. Without a complete and total post-mortem examination, and blood testing, it's only speculation as to what the cause of death is.

Here's an unrelated aside as to cause of death. My bother, who was 57 (in 2006) when he died, complained of shoulder pain in the days preceding his death. When he collapsed, the EMT's took him to the local ER where the doctor ruled that he died of a myocardial infarction. I requested an autopsy, mostly for genetic purposes, and the autopsy revealed that he died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, not an MI. It made no difference in his death, but it provided our family with valuable genetic health information. I put his cause of death in my own medical history, so my primary care doctor has another tool for my health profile.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

As far as I am aware, only secondary or primary causes of death are counted in my state - I have no idea how they are counted in your state. These are figured out from testing and symptoms - we don't have the resources for autopsies in most cases.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Right. So don't wear an N95 mask with an exhaust valve in public.

pendennis

Michigan is the same. However the only reporting done publicly is that there are/were "X" numbers of deaths from COVID, and that there are/were "Y" number of COVID cases, neither of which provides anyone a great deal of information. First, deaths are not accurately reported, since not all associated deaths are known. Second, reported cases are not total cases; no one will ever know how many cases occurred, since testing will never get close to 100% of the exposures, and even testing is fraught with false positives, and by the same logic, false negatives. As an example, the most closely watched groups are pro sports teams, since they work in a fairly closed environment. They have numbers of reported positives, which after reporting, turn out to be false positives.

As of June there are up to 20% false false negatives (testing errors) in the general population. As testing goes up, false positives also go up in a linear fashion. The fact that hospitalizations and mortality are down while testing results are going up, shows that the virus is not as lethal as first thought.

The best estimates seem to be those which correlate the actual reported cases to the total viral penetration in the population. Viruses spread, regardless the precautions taken, to a percentage of the total population. The best estimates have been somewhere in the 70%-80% penetration rate. After that a virus ceases to be effective for any number of reasons (remember, we don't have a preventative vaccine). People have some natural immunity, or the virus loses its ability to penetrate the body, or folks develop immunities based on exposure. There were studies done by UCLA, Stanford, and others where people were physically visited, data gleaned, and then extrapolated, using computer models. Separate independent studies revealed similar data; that the virus penetration was 40x-50x the reported penetration. If the modeling is correct, then the penetration will approach nearly 250 million people. That makes the death rate around .08%.

Mathematical modeling is all that's available. No one will ever know how many folks actually have/had the virus, those who are/were asymptomatic, and those who died with undiagnosed COVID symptoms which may have contributed to death.

The virus has a 99.9% survival rate, slightly better than influenza, and we already have a number of influenza vaccines available.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

The reports I have heard are more 'conservative' than that. Indiana did some truly random testing, which told them that about 40% of those infected don't have symptoms. Even if the infections are 10 times the known rate, we are a long way from 70% penetration.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

On reflection our heated exchange is regrettable - I hope we are both big enough to get passed it. Feelings will run high in this pandemic - especially among high risk shielders like myself. Keep safe, Del.