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Comment by magicalist | Hacker News Reader

Considering that 27k residents of NYC alone (not counting the rest of the state included in that chart) died[1] between March 11 and April 25 (not counting the 10 days before included in that chart), I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're working with a made-up chart there.

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d...

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I've seen other variations of that same chart, meaning... the bars/colors/numbers were the same, but dates changed, and the citation data in the footer changed as well.

Whoops - well, nearly the same...

https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/95033463_10217...

If you've ever lived in the Third World, you know that their news sources are total rubbish so people come to rely on the people they trust. But then that was hijacked through SMS/WhatsApp forwards that are things like this (everyone knows you won't type out a link from a picture).

It's actually such good propaganda, and I think it didn't really manifest fully formed (i.e. no one came up with the full concept) but through an evolutionary process as some was more effective than others. I am fascinated by the viral evolution of these things.

Check again. Your link backs up the chart I posted. Medicare paying hospitals 8k per covid patient and 39k per ventilator use simply with symptoms, no test required, also does not help. But keep the downvotes coming.

What do you think Medicare pays for ventilator use for non Covid ICD10 claims?

Further, analysis by the Washington Post examined excess death by all causes. It’s way up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/cov...

Probably ~20% more for covid than non-covid, based on what I've followed from CARES, but I wouldn't focus the incentive problem on ventilators. And you're right. Excess deaths are way up, so I assume there is a problem with my chart. But heart attacks and strokes are also way down, and in every article I've read (NPR, WaPo) there's an assumption that they just aren't coming in. Has nobody read the covid classification guidelines? I stand by that non-covid cases are being massively misclassified as covid.

They are down because they are dying at home, which is captured in the excess mortality.

The excess mortality is higher than the already official Covid tracked deaths.

Maybe, or maybe it's increased suicide, domestic violence, other coronaviruses, and even covid. Suicide for example is about as deadly as the flu during a normal year and peaks right about now. The excess mortality does require an explanation though, agree. I'm sure some heart attacks and strokes are happening at home, but 60-80%? Seems unlikely.

> Check again. Your link backs up the chart I posted.

The chart you posted shows a total of just over 20k deaths in all of New York state between March 1st and April 25th, while the link I posted shows 27k deaths in NYC alone between March 11th and April 25th.

Your chart also shows about 4k non-coronavirus deaths, again across the whole state for that period, while the NYC-only stats show more than 10k "Deaths not known to be confirmed or probable COVID-19" in less than that amount of time.

Now repeat with double the population to account for the rest of the state (with lower coronavirus incidence) and another 10 days (about 20% of the time period in question) that had the normal incidence of non-coronavirus deaths.

So, no, nothing about that chart matches up to reality.

The link you posted shows 11k/16k deaths from COVID. Nothing about 27k. And the chart I posted doesn't show total deaths in NYC, but some selection of morbidities. Is it wrong? Probably. But official data also says heart attacks and strokes are massively down (60-80%), and covid is way up, and there are big incentive problems. I stand by the point.

The nyc.gov link magicalist posted reports:

11460 confirmed covid-19 deaths 5213 probable but unconfirmed covid 19 deaths 10964 not know to be probable and not confirmed deaths (all non-covid deaths)

Which adds up to 27637 total deaths.

Your graph shows ~ 20000 total deaths. That's significantly different.

Also, the sources for the graph you posted are:

1. https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html which as far as I can get it to show, only counts deaths from pneumonia regardless of cause. So I really don't understand why they listed that as a source for the graph as that information isn't displayed.

2. covidtracking.com Which could be the source of their numbers for covid deaths but that leaves no source for their totals.

Thanks for correcting me, and to magicalist. I apologize. This was difficult to find, but here's the breakdown for causes of death each week:

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-a...

In New York, total deaths from heart-related diseases is up, not down, since covid.

I do see some weirdness in other states, but not New York.

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