I know it’s easy to do — so many distractions! And the powers-that-be are eager for you to cast all caution to the winds! — but this is an ongoing, world-changing catastrophe. So here’s a refresher.
The global COVID-19 death toll may be three times higher than official tallies suggest, according to a systematic analysis of excess mortality during the pandemic.
From Jan. 1, 2020 to Dec. 31, 2021, global deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 reached 5.9 million, yet estimates put excess deaths during this period at a staggering 18.2 million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 17.9-19.6), Haidong Wang, PhD, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and the COVID-19 Excess Mortality Collaborators reported in The Lancet.
India had the highest number of excess deaths (4.07 million, 95% UI 3.71-4.36), an estimated eight times higher than its 489,000 reported COVID-19 deaths, which was followed by the U.S. (1.13 million, 95% UI 1.08-1.18), where the official count reached 824,000 by the end of 2021.
Just remember, human beings, we can deal with more than one problem at once. It’s hard, but problems don’t disappear when a new one rises up.
It is undoubtedly higher in the USA as well.
Quite a few Red states deliberately don’t count Covid-19 virus deaths as…Covid-19 virus deaths.
It is the ostrich strategy. Out of sight, out of mind.
I just read the deaths of children from the omricon variant accounts for a third of all child covid deaths.
This gives the lie to the claim that children do not get omricon, or don’t get a serious case of covid from omricon.
There are a lot of reasons for the known undercount of Covid-19 virus deaths.
One well known one is how the Covid-19 virus patients have overwhelmed the hospitals and ICUs and crowded out the rest of the population. For example, people with “elective” surgery have had to postpone their surgery for months on end. Some of them ended up dying instead.
Another cause is also well known.
We’ve all seen those heartwarming stories of how someone was on a ventilator or ECMO for weeks or months. And then recovered enough to be moved out of the ICU.
Half of those patients will be dead within a year from accumulated damage to various organ systems. Blood clots are common.
Sometimes they are counted as Covid-19 virus deaths, sometimes they aren’t.
Also, Hong Kong has become a petri dish for omricon.
People listened to faux claims about dangerous vaccines, and now it is a perfect study in how omricon rips through an unvaccinated population. As a substantial part of the population are elderly, HK is experiencing a significant death toll.
@1 – Otherwise known as invisible insanity.
Also, pet peeve here: Is three times higher actually three times as high, or four times as high?
Should you worry about the new ‘deltacron’ variant?
@5, “pet peeve here: Is three times higher actually three times as high, or four times as high?”
I understand this peeve, but in this case, it means c.3× as high — using the numbers quoted in the OP, “5.9 million, yet estimates put excess deaths during this period at a staggering 18.2 million” (my added emphasis).
@6 Selkirk – I’m more worried that there are 8 more variants after omicron before we get to the last possible variant – omega. Oh sure you might question my Greek alphabet logic, but that won’t stop the pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi and omega variants. Especially with all the active evolutionary incubators human arrogance and willful ignorance allows to fester both in the US and … places don’t matter because they not the US or poor or worse both.
That which does not kill us mutates and comes back for another try.
Well, this current generation seeks to do what is natural, just surrender.
Meanwhile, China’s seeing numbers that made the initial outbreak look tame, we’re surrendering to a virus and accepting the newest plague as business as usual. It worked ever so well with the bubonic plague, why not try it again?
But, I’ve also learned, a nation of 320 million can’t pay attention to more than one thing at a time. I guess that’s why we lost WWII, as we were ever so confused by facing Japan and Germany…
Oh wait, different generation. Back then, people could both chew gum and walk at the same time.
Until Dec 31 means largely it excludes the death toll from omicron, which is now in March back down to where delta was.
Spain, Italy, Indonesia, Philippines, UK, the list of countries with dubious counts goes on and on. The Economist gave estimates as high as 20 million a couple of months ago, when the “official” death toll was five million. Now it’s six million.
And how many have actually died in Russia where anti-vaxxer nonsense is rampant? The country had at least 600 every single day since the start of July, with highs over 1200 for a few weeks. The “official” 360,000 death toll could be a fraction of reality. Maybe this explains the dependence on conscripts instead of regulars.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00104-8
From the article:
“Our excess mortality estimates reflect the full impact of the pandemic on mortality around the world … not just the deaths directly attributable to SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
In other words, not all those excess deaths were due to Covid, as all the babble in these comments is suggesting. For all we know, most of the excess deaths could be due to other conditions that went untreated because everyone was panicking about Covid Covid Covid.
@13
yes that would be nice but I would not count on that “if’ to be true.
I have this dark foreboding feeling when I see all of the people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine that I can not shake. i hope there is some provision for vaccinating all who are not yet vaccinated yet
3 of the four horseman are loose and running upon the land famine is sure to follow close behind
Not really.
We in fact know many of the reasons why there is an undercount.
Some days in my local area around a quarter of Covid-19 deaths occur at home. That we know of. A lot of deaths at home may well end up being reported as something else, especially if the antivaxxers lie about why their friend or relative died. Which they do a lot.
No one dies from Covid-19 virus infections. They die from lack of oxygen as their lungs turn into scar tissue or heart failure/stroke as they throw blood clots, or kidney failure as the Covid-19 virus destroys their kidneys. (This is sarcasm)
We also know the Plague Rat antivaxxers have overwhelmed the hospitals and crowded out many normal people needing medical care. In some hospitals, they’ve had to triage and turn the hallways into hospital bed space. ER wait times can be 20 hours. A lot of cardiac, cancer, and other patients needing timely care haven’t gotten it. A lot of Rehab and Physical Therapy programs that can make a huge difference have been shut down as well.
torcuato, your grasp of causation is weak.
Do you really not realise that whatever the proportion of the excess deaths was in fact attributable to other conditions that went untreated because everyone was panicking about Covid, then they would necessarily be due to Covid?
(No Covid, no panicking about Covid)