Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by throwaway4good | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

throwaway4good

Life Expectancy in U.S. Declined 1.8 Years in 2020, CDC Says

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/life-expectancy-in-u-s-decl...

This is for 2020 - COVID-19 deaths are more for 2021.

Really wild numbers if you think about it.

View on HN

It also hints that covid-19 related deaths are undercounted in the us.

That's what the CEO is quoted as saying: What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.

Missouri coroners proudly admit they aren’t counting any COVID deaths. It’s definitely being undercounted. I know someone who died in Wisconsin but the hospital said he didn’t have COVID then a year later they admitted they’d done the test wrong and actually didn’t know. None of the data provided is reliable. More people should be worried about how unreliable our healthcare system.

The Economist article posted here a few days ago had the US at a bit over 1 million deaths.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...

Assuming that COVID deaths are fully accounted for, that would mean about 200k excess deaths due to other, presumably COVID related, factors (suicide, drug overdose, ...).

That's a big assumption though. Some places had death rates decline for many 'normal' causes of death.

Suicide, flu and car crashes caused less deaths than usual where I am, and the lockdowns led a negative value for 'excess deaths'. I'm in New Zealand.

It could also hint that excess deaths from lockdown policies are higher than expected. COVID deaths are almost certainly undercounted by some factor, but suicides and drug overdoses are skyrocketing. These numbers would make sense if the cure is worse than the disease too.

What is your source for the claim that suicides are skyrocketing? How do you quantify skyrocketing?

In the US, it looks like suicides fell slightly, according to provisional data:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf

Even if these statistics are updated upward, I don't see how they can be interpreted as skyrocketing.

Please do your best to stick to facts and source them when convenient.

Assuming that all covid deaths are accounted for and all the rest of the excess deaths are from lockdown, there would have to be at least as many excess deaths as covid deaths to start saying the cure is worse than the disease. From the numbers it seems like there would be about 800k covid deaths to 200k excess (in the USA), so that would indicate the disease was 4x worse than the cure. Of course those are all assumptions that I don’t think are accurate, but using your own logic.

But one thing we probably can agree on is that at this point covid is endemic and most people have given up trying to get to zero cases.

For me, I personally just integrated into my worldview the fact that I can’t trust most humans to give a shit about others (like following simple mask and vaccine guidelines) and have to protect my family however best I can, even if that means less social interaction for the rest of my life.

Usually, when people say the cure is worse than the disease, they are suggesting that [cure + disease] is worse than [disease without cure]. I am sorry that was imprecise.

There is an assumption here that the lockdowns have reduced the number of COVID deaths. That is not necessarily the case, and actually the evidence points to the contrary: looking at state data, it looks like strict lockdown policies taken in some states in the US were ineffective at best, and may have been harmful.

I appreciate your comment to clarify the original comment.

That's only assuming the lockdowns were effective compared to alternatives.

I was responding to the claim the lockdowns were worse than the disease, which was not correct. I claimed nothing else.

AU has opened up a vaccine claims scheme explicitly recognising that the vaccine itself can lead to injury/hospitalisation/death.

https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/covid-19-vaccine-claims...

https://www.health.gov.au/news/reduction-in-threshold-of-no-...

"The evidence requirements for claims $20,000 and over, including death and broader operation of the scheme will be published shortly. Claims relating to a death will not require evidence of hospitalisation."

The NY Times used to do a breakdown, and found yes they are: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/14/us/covid-19-d...

Or that second order effects from covid prevention policies have led to many extra deaths. e.g. suicides, alcoholism, drug overdose

Have to look at the numbers to understand

If you look at the global numbers not all countries had a similar drop in life expentency (ie. Denmark and New Zealand had no drop) but went through similar or more severe lockdown and vaccine policies.

Do those countries have drug epidemics?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...

Blaming life expectancy drop on "undetected" covid without any evidence is not very scientific. I can say it's undetected drug overdoses too.

Maybe either root the logic in facts, or don't write off alternative possibilities.

Yes, exactly. Lockdowns and vaccines are not the only covid prevention policies. Stimulus checks and unemployment compensation (along with their universality and the ease and speed of obtaining them), testing availability, and general healthcare access also fit into the "covid prevention policies" category, and can be reasonably suspected to have had some impact on life expectancy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com