Although this is pre-COVID so perhaps the stress was because it was the minority of people at a company who were working remotely, therefore feeling left-out, stressed etc
Increased stress due to joblessness, more family time might mean more abuse for some, lack of schedule can have mental health effects, many people are gaining weight from stress-eating food that is always available, some aren’t sleeping as well.
The link goes in detail, but the main point is that deaths were attributed to covid even if the underlying cause for the death was heat disease. In some states you actually received a discount on medical expenses if you said your loved one died from covid
Tl;dr: "This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19."
even if numbers were inflated due to the monetary incentive, this would only account for numbers in the USA. look at the excess deaths world wide and you can see the average is up everywhere.
We (the US, probably other countries) have pretty good statistics for how many people die every year (and what killed them). We can use this historical data to estimate how many people would have died in a normal 2020. Compare that to what actually happened, and its a pretty good argument for how many people COVID killed.
This is addressed in the article extensively, although with factual error. That said, neither the article or your comment address the fact that 2020 had a large effects on behavior and lifestyle which could effect death numbers.
>We (the US, probably other countries) have pretty good statistics for how many people die every year (and what killed them).
Similarly, homicides are the only type of crime that statistics can be reliably compared across countries, because the definition of "murder" is consistent in a way that other crimes aren't.
Not surprising. There is a strong economic incentive, passed by Congress, for hospitals and providers to milk covid-positive patients. Elective procedures are also down substantially, so they have to make a living somewhere.
Stop using imprecise language to imply unproven conspiracies. Tell us what you really mean. Are you saying that there is widespread fraud in hospitals' reporting of Cause of Death? Why is this more likely than the many other possible explanations for heart disease death reduction?
Briand was quoted in the article as saying, “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers.” This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years. According to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19.
>After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September
Addendum:
> This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years.
Am I the only person confused with the language here? What is the difference between "Total deaths per age category" and "total raw death count"?
> > This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years.
> Am I the only person confused with the language here? What is the difference between "Total deaths per age category" and "total raw death count"?
The article has multiple items of incorrect analysis.
One is that having constant percentages of deaths per age category, does not show that the death count is itself constant.
A separate one is that the claim that “total death numbers are not above normal death numbers” is factually incorrect.
While reading the link, and before reading the retractation, I made myself these exact remarks. One thing I saw in the article, which the retractation implies, but does not emphasize, is that this assertion:
> Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of
deaths was normal long before COVID-19
… is a non-sequitur. The fact that a large number of deaths has been reached in the past, does not imply that it being reached with COVID-19 is normal.
Yes, this link extremely dishonestly links to the Google cache version of the article, specifically in order to not show that it was retracted due to being misleading and inaccurate.
This is 100% malicious misinformation and should not be posted anywhere.
Yes, that prompt me to try to search for it as it was 'odd' if not suspicious.
Further more, if the OP wanted to post it as a way of promoting discussion around covid19 death tracking, he could have used the link with the watermark 'retracted' that is available from the rebuttal article.
DISCLAIMER: I initially did not have access to the original presentation. The original presentation is far better from what I can tell compared to how it has been represented in both right wing and left wing media at presenting their claims with nuance that has largely been left out of other reports.
Many of the conclusions drawn in the paper and in articles reporting on it are overblown or misleading on their own. There was good reason John Hopkins added a five paragraph disclaimer and a "RETRACTED" watermark to this on their own site.
If you doubt me or disagree, look at the claim of the paper that has been reported on by various media outlets. It essentially states that looking at cdc data there is drop in other forms of death that was replaced with covid deaths, meaning that there was no actual increase in deaths. Now, go pull up the cdc data that breaks down how many people died of each cause per week for 2019 and 2020 [1]. Using either the on-website graph creator, python notebooks, excel, or your data scientist tool of choice try to recreate a graph showing all causes of death by week that supports this paper. I quickly got a graph that showed a simple reality, compared to 2019 there has been an increase in deaths per week that almost precisely corresponds with the numbers of covid deaths per week.
If you want to argue the number of covid deaths is too low to worry about or it was handled well, go for it. Just don't get sheeped into believing that covid deaths aren't real.
EDIT: Apparently the video presentation this paper is based on is out there at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKJN61aflI . Since I have not finished it I've amended the post considerably and added a disclaimer since I used some strong words originally. Many thanks to the commenter who pointed me to the youtube presentation.
> overblown, misleading, and potentially outright lies
I agree with you that her claims could be wrong, but please watch the original source material (https://youtu.be/3TKJN61aflI) - I think she is being much more nuanced that you're giving her credit for. She is presenting her findings, showing exactly how she did it, and asking for feedback ("I hope I hear more from people who have done more than me" - 43:10).
You can follow her workflow and disagree - and probably will! But that's ok - that's how science works. I look forward to many well-written posts going through her analysis and showing alternate interpretations. I'm guessing she looks forward to this too.
I hadn't actually found the original source material! I've amended my post to considerably tone down my accusations since it appears I was working with an incomplete picture of what the original presentation was. After an initial flicking through of the presentation it definitely appears that this is more nuanced than what I was working with and what has been reported on!
One thing I find very interesting is the effect of other factors on the total number of deaths. For example, the 2008 recession was linked with over 260,000 excess deaths from cancer alone [0]. All of the things associated with a lockdown - high stress, decreased social contact, less movement, less economic activity - are also associated with serious increases in other deaths. At what point does a lockdown have negative EV in terms of general public health?
To copy a previous comment of mine - regardless of the actual effect of lockdowns, I think this has become such a political issue in the US that the American left would be very hard pressed to publicly change course.
I really hope that statisticians are able to look past their own personal convictions and look at possible ways our assumptions may have been incorrect. (Personally speaking, I wear a mask, I don't think the coronavirus is a giant conspiracy by the lizard people etc. but I do recognize that the modern scientific community has a tendency to think one way, and then remain cemented in that way for a while.)
The positive side to a stubborn scientific community are the money making opportunities it presents. For those who were able to get past the doom and gloom of the media and scientific communities 2020 has been a fantastic year of growth
The study you cited doesn't really support your point - it basically says the 260k deaths would have been preventable with basic universal healthcare in place:
> "In countries with UHC—defined in the study as [...]—the link between unemployment and excess cancer deaths disappeared, suggesting that greater access to health care played a key role in mitigating the problem."
If you are really interested in the effect of lockdown on public health my suggestion is to decouple your thinking from American politics and view it as a global problem. How did lockdown affect public health in {China, South Korea, Italy, Germany, etc.}? As a counter-example, how did Sweden fare?
> I really hope that statisticians are able to look past their own personal convictions and look at possible ways our assumptions may have been incorrect.
Sure it does, as I'm pretty sure the US does not have universal health care right now :)
Also, while many countries have (on paper) universal health care, in reality you will need to go into the private system for quality care. I am definitely a fan of universal healthcare, and it works well in many rich countries, but this is a global pandemic, not just something affecting Europe and America.
> This is pretty vague, what do you mean?
People in general - and the scientific community is no exception - have the tendency to engage in groupthink and maintain incorrect assumptions, and this pandemic has shown that very clearly. For one simple example, look at the messaging around masks: the WHO was very slow to change their response. I think it's very possible that one or more major assumptions are incorrect, for example around transmission mechanisms, the best ways to stop the spread of the virus etc, and that we should encourage a diversity of approaches.
For one example, I am shocked that the countries that are incredible coronavirus "success stories" such as Vietnam only occasionally appear in the news. They just went three entire months with zero locally transmitted cases - what can we learn from them?
Mostly we can learn that when the entire population follows recommendations to wear masks, close businesses and socially distance, those measures work. That "extreme" measures taken early, like closing all borders, can prevent asymptomatic travellers bringing it in and spreading across the country. That being willing to quarantine an entire town can cut off an outbreak early.
It doesn't make a great story, because the audience is already pretty fixed in positions that will produce responses of either "no shit, guys" or "LIES".
I thought your point was that financial downturn leads to diminished public health, which it doesn't (only if you deny people healthcare).
I'm not sure masks are a good example for 'groupthink'. The messaging was inconsistent not because 'all scientists were thinking alike' but because there was a lack of evidence around cotton-based 'community' masks and even medical masks of type II.
Sorry I'm pressing you on this. I agree groupthink does exist and is bad, however in the true sciences it's very rare. So would be interested to get an example related to Covid.
> For one example, I am shocked that the countries that are incredible coronavirus "success stories" such as Vietnam only occasionally appear in the news. They just went three entire months with zero locally transmitted cases - what can we learn from them?
Fully agree with you here. Every country seems to be in their own bubble and rarely look abroad in a deeper manner.
But I'm not talking about some imaginary hypothetical world, I'm talking about the world we live in, where the US healthcare system is what it is. Furthermore, it is pretty much universally acknowledged that financial difficulties can lead to physical health issues, no matter where you live. I live in the Netherlands, a strong social democracy where college is close to free (~$170/month), a healthcare system the American left can only dream of, etc etc. Despite this, my friends and I have been asked about our financial situation by doctors, because that plays a role in your health even here. Not just the huge effects of stress, but also what you eat, how much free time you have, possible risks from your job etc. are all determined by your financial situation.
I think masks are a fine example - even far after there seemed to be evidence for their efficacy, many governments said they were not necessary based on advice from local scientists, and as late as September, you would see as few as 1 in 50 people wearing a mask in much of Western Europe.
> I agree groupthink does exist and is bad, however in the true sciences it's very rare.
Hmm. Most scientists I know are convinced groupthink is a problem in the sciences. One excellent example is particle physics and supersymmetry, which was basically treated as a religion. Some of the brightest minds of the 21st century were behind a theory that wasn't even falsifiable! The hunt to prove supersymmetry has, at this point, easily cost into the multiple _billions_ of dollars. Now, I don't consider it a total waste, but it certainly is a good example of groupthink. There are countless examples out there, but suffice to say scientists are just as human as the rest of us, and prone to groupthink like anyone else.
This article was retracted (referenced in another thread), but it was essentially a summary of the source webinar that is still posted (but oddly unlisted) here: https://youtu.be/3TKJN61aflI
I encourage you to watch that video and judge the analysis yourself. In this video I feel like she is very balanced and is taking a scientific approach ("Here's how I did the analysis and here's what I'm saying - please let me know what you think") vs the media/twitter trying to summarize/polarize.
Yet it is still incredibly misleading and dishonest.
That should really teach you something about relying on the style of presentation for judging whether a claim is reasonable. In this case, it's garbage.
I think you're being over sensationalist. In today's world I think it's healthy to assume someone is trying to reach for the truth instead of assuming malice. She's trying to present her findings and asking for feedback. I don't think that should be demonized - we've all been wrong before. Please watch the video.
Where did she get the numbers of total deaths from? Does the US publish death rates during the year or only afterwards?
For Europe, there's a pretty obvious excess death rate this year with two spikes: https://www.euromomo.eu/bulletins/2020-47
I would be very surprised if the same wasn't true for the US.
These claims are not from "Johns Hopkins" as an institution. The instructor making the claims is associated with a rolling-admission adult extension school, and the article discussing them appeared only in the general-purpose undergraduate campus student newspaper, which does not validate the scientific or academic accuracy of instructors' claims.
Disclaimer: I'm a JHU alum and former staff member of said student newspaper
51 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadAlthough this is pre-COVID so perhaps the stress was because it was the minority of people at a company who were working remotely, therefore feeling left-out, stressed etc
We (the US, probably other countries) have pretty good statistics for how many people die every year (and what killed them). We can use this historical data to estimate how many people would have died in a normal 2020. Compare that to what actually happened, and its a pretty good argument for how many people COVID killed.
Similarly, homicides are the only type of crime that statistics can be reliably compared across countries, because the definition of "murder" is consistent in a way that other crimes aren't.
https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-...
Briand was quoted in the article as saying, “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers.” This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years. According to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19.
>After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September
Addendum:
> This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years.
Am I the only person confused with the language here? What is the difference between "Total deaths per age category" and "total raw death count"?
> Am I the only person confused with the language here? What is the difference between "Total deaths per age category" and "total raw death count"?
The article has multiple items of incorrect analysis.
One is that having constant percentages of deaths per age category, does not show that the death count is itself constant.
A separate one is that the claim that “total death numbers are not above normal death numbers” is factually incorrect.
While reading the link, and before reading the retractation, I made myself these exact remarks. One thing I saw in the article, which the retractation implies, but does not emphasize, is that this assertion:
> Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19
… is a non-sequitur. The fact that a large number of deaths has been reached in the past, does not imply that it being reached with COVID-19 is normal.
This is 100% malicious misinformation and should not be posted anywhere.
Many of the conclusions drawn in the paper and in articles reporting on it are overblown or misleading on their own. There was good reason John Hopkins added a five paragraph disclaimer and a "RETRACTED" watermark to this on their own site.
If you doubt me or disagree, look at the claim of the paper that has been reported on by various media outlets. It essentially states that looking at cdc data there is drop in other forms of death that was replaced with covid deaths, meaning that there was no actual increase in deaths. Now, go pull up the cdc data that breaks down how many people died of each cause per week for 2019 and 2020 [1]. Using either the on-website graph creator, python notebooks, excel, or your data scientist tool of choice try to recreate a graph showing all causes of death by week that supports this paper. I quickly got a graph that showed a simple reality, compared to 2019 there has been an increase in deaths per week that almost precisely corresponds with the numbers of covid deaths per week.
If you want to argue the number of covid deaths is too low to worry about or it was handled well, go for it. Just don't get sheeped into believing that covid deaths aren't real.
[1] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-a...
EDIT: Apparently the video presentation this paper is based on is out there at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKJN61aflI . Since I have not finished it I've amended the post considerably and added a disclaimer since I used some strong words originally. Many thanks to the commenter who pointed me to the youtube presentation.
I agree with you that her claims could be wrong, but please watch the original source material (https://youtu.be/3TKJN61aflI) - I think she is being much more nuanced that you're giving her credit for. She is presenting her findings, showing exactly how she did it, and asking for feedback ("I hope I hear more from people who have done more than me" - 43:10).
You can follow her workflow and disagree - and probably will! But that's ok - that's how science works. I look forward to many well-written posts going through her analysis and showing alternate interpretations. I'm guessing she looks forward to this too.
To copy a previous comment of mine - regardless of the actual effect of lockdowns, I think this has become such a political issue in the US that the American left would be very hard pressed to publicly change course.
I really hope that statisticians are able to look past their own personal convictions and look at possible ways our assumptions may have been incorrect. (Personally speaking, I wear a mask, I don't think the coronavirus is a giant conspiracy by the lizard people etc. but I do recognize that the modern scientific community has a tendency to think one way, and then remain cemented in that way for a while.)
[0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-do...
> "In countries with UHC—defined in the study as [...]—the link between unemployment and excess cancer deaths disappeared, suggesting that greater access to health care played a key role in mitigating the problem."
If you are really interested in the effect of lockdown on public health my suggestion is to decouple your thinking from American politics and view it as a global problem. How did lockdown affect public health in {China, South Korea, Italy, Germany, etc.}? As a counter-example, how did Sweden fare?
> I really hope that statisticians are able to look past their own personal convictions and look at possible ways our assumptions may have been incorrect.
This is pretty vague, what do you mean?
Also, while many countries have (on paper) universal health care, in reality you will need to go into the private system for quality care. I am definitely a fan of universal healthcare, and it works well in many rich countries, but this is a global pandemic, not just something affecting Europe and America.
> This is pretty vague, what do you mean?
People in general - and the scientific community is no exception - have the tendency to engage in groupthink and maintain incorrect assumptions, and this pandemic has shown that very clearly. For one simple example, look at the messaging around masks: the WHO was very slow to change their response. I think it's very possible that one or more major assumptions are incorrect, for example around transmission mechanisms, the best ways to stop the spread of the virus etc, and that we should encourage a diversity of approaches.
For one example, I am shocked that the countries that are incredible coronavirus "success stories" such as Vietnam only occasionally appear in the news. They just went three entire months with zero locally transmitted cases - what can we learn from them?
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/08/1070852
I'm not sure masks are a good example for 'groupthink'. The messaging was inconsistent not because 'all scientists were thinking alike' but because there was a lack of evidence around cotton-based 'community' masks and even medical masks of type II.
Sorry I'm pressing you on this. I agree groupthink does exist and is bad, however in the true sciences it's very rare. So would be interested to get an example related to Covid.
> For one example, I am shocked that the countries that are incredible coronavirus "success stories" such as Vietnam only occasionally appear in the news. They just went three entire months with zero locally transmitted cases - what can we learn from them?
Fully agree with you here. Every country seems to be in their own bubble and rarely look abroad in a deeper manner.
I think masks are a fine example - even far after there seemed to be evidence for their efficacy, many governments said they were not necessary based on advice from local scientists, and as late as September, you would see as few as 1 in 50 people wearing a mask in much of Western Europe.
> I agree groupthink does exist and is bad, however in the true sciences it's very rare.
Hmm. Most scientists I know are convinced groupthink is a problem in the sciences. One excellent example is particle physics and supersymmetry, which was basically treated as a religion. Some of the brightest minds of the 21st century were behind a theory that wasn't even falsifiable! The hunt to prove supersymmetry has, at this point, easily cost into the multiple _billions_ of dollars. Now, I don't consider it a total waste, but it certainly is a good example of groupthink. There are countless examples out there, but suffice to say scientists are just as human as the rest of us, and prone to groupthink like anyone else.
I encourage you to watch that video and judge the analysis yourself. In this video I feel like she is very balanced and is taking a scientific approach ("Here's how I did the analysis and here's what I'm saying - please let me know what you think") vs the media/twitter trying to summarize/polarize.
That should really teach you something about relying on the style of presentation for judging whether a claim is reasonable. In this case, it's garbage.
This is a subject where incorrect information is actually endangering lives. Why keep this up, when it is known to be wrong?
That, to me, implies malice. I do not see any other way to interpret that.
At least Our World in Data website has those numbers:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
These claims are not from "Johns Hopkins" as an institution. The instructor making the claims is associated with a rolling-admission adult extension school, and the article discussing them appeared only in the general-purpose undergraduate campus student newspaper, which does not validate the scientific or academic accuracy of instructors' claims.
Disclaimer: I'm a JHU alum and former staff member of said student newspaper