Hacker News Reader

Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

It seems cases and pandemic related deaths are likely dramatically under reported and detected:

https://austingwalters.com/u-s-covid19-less-tests-more-death...

Real deaths seem to be closer to 250-300k at this point (whereas officially it’s 170k-180k).

Also testing is down for those curious... about 25% down from a month ago.

edit: added “pandemic related deaths” - not all deaths are necessarily covid, but could be from lack of healthcare availability, etc.

View on HN

I know for a fact deaths are dramatically under reported (at least in FL) because I have relatives that died of COVID and the nursing homes put congestive heart failure and respiratory failure as cause of death and not COVID. After receiving positive COVID test results...

It's much less clear cut than that. In fact death with COVID ≠ death from COVID every single time, even for elderly people.

Well sure, and that is a perfectly valid comment at the micro level. However, we can relatively clearly see that the COVID-linked death reporting is under-reported from mortality baselines.

Therefore it's highly likely that for a given death it is more likely to be incorrectly categorise as non-COVID when COVID was responsible, than to be incorrectly designated COVID.

For contrast the UK overcounted its COVID deaths

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/britain-says-it-overcou...

It overcounted some of the test based deaths, but in terms of excess mortality there were probably still more covid deaths than have been reflected in test-positive death numbers, so it’s still an undercount.

Here is some data here on excess deaths: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...

The parent is giving an example where it is clear cut.

"Your honor, the man didn't die because I pushed him down the stairs, he died because he hit his head against a wall at the bottom of those stairs.".

In the US if he tested positive for COVID after death, he would have been recorded as a COVID death. Not even joking.

Clearly not, given the grandparent.

From all the varying responses and processes related to COVID-19, there is no single 'the US' policy in any such matter.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm... has a similar graph as your link, but you can mouseover to get weekly numbers.

You would expect those deaths to show a signal in the all-cause, excess mortality. When I last checked, somehow, US still had lower excess mortality than the UK per capita. Although numbers are very low in the UK, whereas they are still pretty high in the US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com