Transmillennial

Excess death data through 6/13/20 were released yesterday. I've established, comparing a series of CDC data releases, that the 2020 data up to May 30 are more-or-less complete. Recorded COVID cases through May 30 are 66.2% of excess deaths over the same period. So we're still counting about two COVID deaths out of every three. This is the total death count by week (blue) versus a typical year (orange). The death rate was still dropping on May 30; it was about 925/day. The undercount rate seemed to have steadied by 5/30; it's possibly slightly declining.

I've updated the data to May 23, using the June 17 release of data from CDC. This also adds some counts to earlier data. But the basic picture remains the same. The calculated undercount (Johns Hopkins deaths to May 23, divided by excess deaths to May 23) × 100% is 65.3%, slightly lower than the previous estimate. The curves took a little smoother, ad we seem to be settling down to an undercount of slightly under 75%. The fraction of over 85s (blue) dying has risen somewhat. Still, steady state seems to be that 60% of the deaths are over 75

A few things I noticed about the undercount data ( see first post here ). Firstly, the undercount was severe at the very beginning, but by May 5 (week 18 of year 2020) or so we were counting all or almost all the deaths. Then the fraction counted seems to start dropping again. And the deaths by age are interesting. About 30% of deaths fall into each of the over-85 (blue) and the 75-84 cohorts (orange). Of course, the older cohort has a higher death rate, but the cohort is smaller. And the very old (over-85) seem to have a spike right at the beginning. They die quickly once the surge starts. That makes sense, but it's interesting it's verified in these data.

Every morning, if you like, you can go to the Johns Hopkins dashboard and get the current count of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States. Neither is particularly reliable; we don't test everyone, so we don't know the real number of cases. And COVID-19 deaths are not reliable either. Here's why: At the beginning of the epidemic, in good faith we were failing to code deaths as COVID-19, because the disease was still mysterious at the time Very old people often don't show the canonical symptoms of COVID-19, and simply die unexpectedly. Unless you make an effort to test, you don't know COVID-19 was the cause And finally, some states' governors, all or mostly Republicans, are for political reasons miscoding COVID deaths as pneumonia So these day-by-day numbers, while useful and fairly immediate, don't catch all the deaths. Fortunately there's a more reliable but slower alternative. All deaths in the US are recorded by the CDC as death registration...

In arguing against science -- a predicament in which they find themselves with ever increasing frequency -- conservatives usually resort to finding a denialist, an individual who rejects the scientific consensus and is willing to be hauled out in public. A superior denialist needs some credentials. Joe the Plumber rejects climate change is just not that convincing. And if the denialist's credentials really aren't that impressive, well, boost them a little. This brings us to a denialist named Kurt Wittkowski and COVID-19. Wittkowski is certainly a data scientist, and back in the 1980s and 90s he had some claim to the title of epidemiologist, since he worked on the HIV pandemic in Germany, though his last paper on epidemiology was in the year 2000. He seems to have a legitimate Ph.D from Tübingen, and was habilitated there, though despite his claims, a habilitation is not a DSc. His Linked-In page says he was a C1 (Assistant Professor) an obsolete designation which was imper...

Stochastic terrorism is a sad reality of our century. It even has its own Wiktionary entry : The use of mass public communication, usually against a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism which are statistically probable but happen seemingly at random. The amazing Donald J Trump, our Orange Messiah, has invented a new variant: stochastic poisoning . Here's how it works. At a White House press conference, you make the claim that the antimalarial chloroquine is showing " very encouraging, very very encouraging, early results " in treating COVID-19 (rubbish, by the way), and "it's not going to kill anybody" . So what happens? First, it gets amplified on right wing sites, who inform Trumpkins that it's available as a 'fish-tank additive' . Then, of course, it sells out of aquarium stores , as desperate people buy it. To be fair to Trump, this was already happening, though he certainly added fuel to the f...

Since there have been so many lies p[osted about China 'conceding' the coronavirus outbreak, I though I'd post this. The first report of unusual pneumonias was reported to the Wuhan CDC by Jixian Zhang on December 27, 2019. The World Health Organization was notified on Decemebr 31, 2019. They had it identified as a coronavirus by January 7. They had it sequenced by January 12, 2020 and test kits by January 13, 2020. Source