Is The Cure Worse Than The Disease?

[ToraToraTora]

An interesting view from Peter Hitchens here. Has he got a point?

[beso]

As usual, the intelligent posters here talk sense while the usual fools post ignorant nonsense.

[jim360]

How delightfully ambiguous :P

[pixie374]

I agree, nj, the figures are inaccurate both ways. We are not testing those who don't end up in hospital, but are counting covid on death certificates, when it wasn't the cause. It must be hard enough to get proper statistics without these deliberate errors.

[jim360]

It's always tricky to tell what killed somebody. I don't think it's a "deliberate error", in any sense, to note that somebody who died did so when infected by Covid. Still, there's no doubt that more statistics are vital.

[woofgang]

pixie, I don't think that they are deliberate errors. They point up the limitations of the system but nobody is sitting down and saying oh lets get this wrong or lets fudge the figures.

[woofgang]

I think what beso means is that people are posting who agree with him and people are posting who don't agree with him.

[pixie374]

They are knowingly recording wrongly, which seems deliberate to me?
As I said on a previous thread.... 90 year old who had kidney failure for many years, taken to hospital recently with multiple organ failure- no chance of recovering. Contracted pneumonia in hospital and tested positive for coronavirus on dying. Cause of death on certificate was "pneumonia and covid". Even though, she was never going to survive the organ failure.

[Ellipsis]

It does not matter whether somebody dies of it or with it. What matters is when they die, versus when they would have died without it.

Do you want entire care home populations wiped out in days? Do you want thousands dying without even the chance of going into hospital, because hospitals are overwhelmed? Do you want mortuaries, crematoriums and funeral directors similarly incapacitated? Bodies buried in mass buriala, as in New York already?

Do you want our state to sanction the death of its citizens by not doing everything it can to protect them? We are at war, and pretending we're not would be giving up and letting the enemy invade.

[Deskdiary]

It's probably worth re-visiting the article I posted a couple of weeks ago by Dr John Lee.

Granted it's a few weeks old now which, in these fast moving times is lifetime, but the argument he provides remains valid.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The-evidence-on-Covid-19-is-not-as-clear-as-we-think

Eddie Large (78, overweight, an heart transplant patient and in hospital being treated for heart failure) died with the virus - what will his death certificate state as the cause of death? If Covid-19, then that's clearly a nonsense because in all likelihood he was probably already on his way out.

[ladybirder]

I think NJ might mean it is a discrete condition, rather than discreet?

[jim360]

We are getting reports across the world that hospital resources are stretched thin, and people are dying in far greater numbers in intensive care than usual. I'm curious why there is still a dispute that Coronavirus accelerates death, which is more or less identical to causing it. There will be difficulties for sure in understanding the overlap between those who would have died today anyway, and those who died today specifically because of Covid-19, but it's certainly not total.

Given also that not everyone who died from Covid-19 was known to have it there's at least as much reason to suppose that deaths are under-reported than over-reported. In the US, Fauci has said as much several times.

[pixie374]

That was my point, DD. Because covid is notifiable, it will be recorded on death certificates, no matter whether it was the cause or not.

[pixie374]

Jim, no, accelerating is not the same as cause... and neither is that easy to prove. Although I agree, in general, it is probably under-reported... but- we seem to be taking notice of everyone who dies "with" it and using it as a cause, when that is not necessarily the case.

[Ellipsis]

Why do you continue to argue over "with" or "of"? It's not the point.

[Zacs-Master]

When someone dies from pneumonia, respiratory distress or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or anything else, and had exhibited coronavirus symptoms, their certificate will list COVID-19 as a presumed contributing factor, what’s known as comorbidity.

It won’t be listed as the sole cause.

[pixie374]

Zacs, my point was, that the actual cause of this lady's death (and other examples if required), were not noted at all.

[pixie374]

It is, when looking at statistics, ellipsis. Obviously, I'm not saying it's nothing to worry about... just questioning the inaccuracy of recording.

[ichkeria]

One looks at the available stats and there seems to be a massive discrepancy between “the west” and “the rest”
No one yet knows why that might be.

[Ellipsis]

It's a complete red herring, pixie. You are looking in the wrong place, misled by semantics.

New York, the best example of doing too little too late, has gone from 25 deaths per week to 24 deaths per day, and all of those extra deaths are CV-19 associated. With or of, who cares? Just how do you explain those extra deaths?

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-new-york-victims-without-family-buried-in-mass-grave-on-hart-island-11971679

[pixie374]

It isn't semantics, ellipsis. If we want to protect people, accuracy is useful. I don't understand why you aren't bothered by the difference?