I keep seeing more and more posts about how Covid magically now has fewer deaths than the flu. Please keep in mind a couple of things about data science and Covid.
As Covid deaths reporting continued into 2021 and 2022, more and more data reporters wanted to go "back to normal" and support that narrative, so the definition of a "Covid death" was changed. Depending on the state or other reporting agency, a "Covid death" can be assigned in different ways. For example, in 2021 New Hampshire changed Covid death assignment to only hospitalized patients taking specific meds. If you died from Covid but didn't fit this narrow definition, your death was recorded as something else, and not reported as a Covid death. Using limitations on the definition of cause of death, Covid deaths have been minimized for years by reporting agencies.
Many states and other groups see this type of data reportng and trending as meaningful for only the past 3 years. If the data reporting on excess mortality is presented with limited years, we no longer see the rise from pre-Covid excess mortality into the start of Covid; those years are no longer presented in the graphs and charts. It can appear that excess mortality is steady or even actually dropping, if the data reported are both tainted and limited.
Covid also contributes to deaths in a way that can be hidden for those who deny the affects that Covid has on the immune system and the damage it does to the body internally. This type of damage can be somewhat invisible, since it happens after the acute infection symptoms have cleared up or lessened. With so many people avoiding saying the word "Covid", and especially so many in the healthcare industry, those who are recording deaths on certificates are more likely to put the immediate cause - heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, etc. - instead of the actual driver of those diseases, which is Covid.
I have been present when a hospice worker recorded the death of a family member, and they actually asked me and my husband what they should put as the cause of death on the death certificate! We always want to think it's an official declaration, but given my experience, it could also be a family member stating the recorded cause of death for many people, thus hiding even more Covid deaths if the family do not want to say the word "Covid".
Many people continue to prefer to deny the lethality of Covid. They continue to say "it's mild" and "it's just like the flu/cold/allergies". And now we see this continued into the concept that somehow the flu causes more deaths than Covid. This is going to be repeated over and over, and more and more people will believe it, and then repeat it themselves. They will point to the flawed data and shoddy graphs to "prove" it.
Please keep this in mind as we go through another Covid wave, and enter another Winter season full of unmasked sick people trying to convince you it's best to go into work and school while spreading their illness to everyone. Covid did not stop being dangerous. The data is what became more dangerous.
#Covid #CovidIsNotOver #DataScience #LongCOVID #ExcessMortality #CovidDeaths
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