Tracking excess mortality during Covid-19 pandemic with World Mortality Dataset

https://elifesciences.org/articles/69336

by jacquesm • 5 years ago

1 3 5 years ago

forcry2• 5 years ago

the largest excess mortality in our dataset was observed in the United States

This is not very surprising given the following practice..

Q Can you talk about your concerns about deaths being misreported by coronavirus because of either testing or standards for how they’re characterized?
DR. BIRX: So, I think, in this country, we’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality, and I think the reporting here has been pretty straightforward over the last five to six weeks. Prior to that, when there wasn’t testing in January and February, that’s a very different situation and unknown. There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem — some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. Right now, we’re still recording it, and we’ll — I mean, the great thing about having forms that come in and a form that has the ability to mark it as COVID-19 infection — the intent is, right now, that those — if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210119100429/https://www.white...

detaro• 5 years ago

Excess mortality is not at all influenced by how deaths are classified, that is the point of why people are looking at it... So that quote makes no sense as a reaction to the statement. If there were a policy of not recording any deaths as COVID-19, the excess mortality would be exactly the same!

forcry2• 5 years ago

True. Got confused.

Tracking excess mortality during Covid-19 pandemic with World Mortality Dataset

Related Stories