The last wave amplified the difference. In the UK for example the last wave doesn't show up in the ICU patients chart [1], while it's clearly seen in the death chart [2]. The last wave seems to simultaneously correspond to a sudden spike in death statistics [2] and a sudden drop in excess mortality [3]. Point being, "deaths with COVID" doesn't mean a causal relationship any more, you need to look at other statistics to see how many people are dying as a result of COVID.
It's quantitatively much different now.[0] There's been a crowd pushing the idea that the hospitalization numbers are highly misleading for two years now, and they're trying to claim that they were right all along based on numbers that are only happening after a year or vaccination campaigns and a less-lung-oriented strain emerging.
"About 7% of L.A. County’s total staffed ICU beds are taken up by COVID-19 patients, compared with 15% during the summer Delta wave and more than 50% last winter. "
"In early November — before Omicron swept around the world, and Delta was still dominant — 75% of coronavirus-positive patients countywide were in the hospital for COVID-related medical issues, Ferrer said.
By late December, the same was true for 45% of coronavirus-positive hospitalized patients, Ferrer estimated."
"During last winter’s COVID-19 surge, about 80% of coronavirus-positive patients in the emergency department at L.A. County-USC Medical Center were being admitted to the hospital, and nearly half of those went to the ICU, Spellberg said. Now, about a third of coronavirus-positive patients are admitted, and 20% to 25% are going to the ICU."
Well, excess mortality was high earlier and is now low. The current Covid strain is both more infectious and less deadly so we should expect this change
No, people were always saying it but have only accidentally become correct now due to sufficient vaccination and omicron's lower fatality. The risk of death from COVID is now a bit less than the flu.
Note it's still bad, you don't want to catch it. But you don't want to catch the flu either. People who think the flu is nothing are confusing it with a common cold - I got a flu Jan 2020 and couldn't get out of bed for days.
This line of argument doesn't hold up to the slightest scrutiny. First of all, it's quite pedantic and naive to assume that governments and medical bodies in the richest and most advanced countries haven't worked through similar issues of causality with innumerable other diseases. More to the point, the peaks in COVID deaths magically align with proportionately large spikes in all cause mortality not seen in prior years that have yet to be explained by anything else.
Here in New Zealand a gang member was shot to death and was recorded as a covid death because he tested positive posthumously. This is apparently in line with international practices. If you don't see the absurdity in that then I don't know what to say.
It’s not really true if you read further into it. Think about it - if you get nasty infection while under surgery - was cause of death surgery or infection.
I have looked into it, and what I said is absolutely true. From your linked article,
> "The clinical criteria will continue to be guided by WHO definition which is basically to report any death where the person had an acute Covid-19 infection regardless of what the cause of death might be," Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told RNZ.
The death was reported as a "death with covid" in accordance with WHO guidelines. Again, if you don't see the absurdity then you can't be helped.
> Think about it - if you get nasty infection while under surgery - was cause of death surgery or infection.
How on earth is this relevant? The victim was not showing symptoms and did not undergo surgery.
It's important to record died with covid. We might later find out there's a mental component. Maybe he experienced covid madness and undertook riskier behavior.
There is still the determination that he was shot, so it's not like we are going to forever think these deaths were just attributed to covid.
> More to the point, the peaks in COVID deaths magically align with proportionately large spikes in all cause mortality not seen in prior years that have yet to be explained by anything else.
The person you responded to mentioned all-cause mortality. Remove the base rate, then you're left with excess deaths. How do you explain excess deaths if they are not covid?
And that's not to say an explanation other than covid is impossible, but it would need to be compelling.
> How do you explain excess deaths if they are not covid?
Delayed medical care because of Covid fear. I missed my annual physical two years ago and ended up with a heart attack I barely survived last October. People were delaying routine screenings such as mammograms, physicals, and other preventative care.
There are also increases in suicide, deaths of despair, especially in younger people. Addiction especially.
Nobody wants to talk about vaccine injuries and related deaths. But that is non-zero.
If you just look at the all-cause mortality increase, it neatly works around this problem, and looking at it that way gives a staggeringly higher number than the official tolls
Covid sucks. My toddler (for various shitty reasons I was unable to prevent) got it three times in the last 12 months.
Even vaccinated (and never testing positive), the immune response I got from taking care of a highly infectious toddler screaming in my face was terrible and really brutal. I’m not old, fully functional immune system, etc. and it had me out for weeks, brain fog, exhaustion, off and on high fever, you name it. I suspect I still am suffering side effects from the last infection in Jan.
If I hadn’t been fully vaccinated just before the first time he got it, I’d probably be dead.
Pretending that someone who was not as strong or healthy, gets it, then dies didn’t ‘die from Covid’ is probably disingenuous at least 90% of the time.
We all die eventually, it’s the norm for whatever obvious change occurred to be blamed for it, not ‘inevitable entropic reality’ or whatever.
At the end of the day, someone has to made a judgement call about the appropriate factor in a complex system.
Statistically, people don’t have a screaming peak infectious toddler in their face without a mask let alone proper PPE for an hour+ (before I could even attempt basic precautions).
Statistically, Li Wenliang shouldn’t be dead either.
The statistical results reflect the range and distribution of the entire populations exposure and immune responses, which by their nature have outlier situations and responses.
Most diseases, the more exposure you get, the more chance it has to take hold before the immune system can fight it, and the worse it gets.
I’m pretty confident, but I guess the only way we could know for sure is find a statistically significant population of infected toddlers and unvaccinated otherwise healthy middle aged adults to hold them for an hour.
> a statistically significant population of infected toddlers and unvaccinated otherwise healthy middle aged adults to hold them for an hour.
Oh yeah we did that, it was 2020. Turns out basically none of the toddlers died, and for the middle-aged adults, "probably be dead" is > 51% chance, not < 1% as it was in reality.
Probably whatever you want the number to be. If somebody dies while Covid-19 positive you can either blame it on COVID or you can blame it on other conditions or somewhere in between.
Doctors already have a protocol for this since senior citizens often die of multiple causes. Turns out there is usually one “proximal” cause (the “killing blow”) and multiple “distal” causes. Presumably, they use the same evaluation protocol here to determine primary cause of death.
This great tiktok doc broke it down a year and a half ago.
You also need to take into account the fact that that most of the deaths in the US are amongst the unvaccinated (something like 20:1 last I checked) so your personal risk of death, if vaccinated, is very different from the overall death rate.
There is a huge difference between "dying with COVID" and "dying from COVID".