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Comment by read_if_gay_ | Hacker News Reader

> there’s good evidence that this is a substantial undercount.

I don’t know about the US, but most European countries count anyone who died with corona as a covid death. No matter how clearly you died to something else.

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The overall flu mortality estimation counts people we guess might have flu, but never seeked doctor. As deaths, they estimate how may other deaths are fly and add them (like % of pneumonia). There is also fuzziness about who counts as death from flu too. For covid, there is no added estimation afaik, if you die without test you dont count.

It is not like one number was super clean and other dirty. Both are dirty and estimations.

While that may be true, most European countries still undercount the true death rates since there are large discrepancies between each country's official covid deaths and excess deaths.

Playing devil's advocate, how are we sure excess deaths are due to covid and not the lockdowns instead? (Suicides, cancelled surgeries, etc.)

Ok, playing systems-engineer here: we'd call those secondary COVID-19 deaths caused by the either de facto or de jure lock-downs.

Why, oh why, are some people so obsessed with lowering the number of COVID-19 related deaths at every possible opportunity? Its weird.

> Why, oh why, are some people so obsessed with lowering the number of COVID-19 related deaths at every possible opportunity? Its weird.

Maybe they want to minimize the amount of secondary COVID-19 deaths?

Fair enough, but WHY?

Here is a less contentious example:

1. consider a severe, long drought

2. this will damage the livelihoods of many in the hinterland - farmers and those in the small town that service them

3. many may be driven to suicide.

Would you not agree that such excess suicides are 'caused by the drought'?

Yes, but it's not quite the same, because the suicides etc for COVID-19 are not directly caused by the virus, but by our reaction to it, and some believe it's an over-reaction.

I'm not an expert on the actual, real dangers, e.g. how many and who will die, so that's not what I'm concerned with. If they're terribly high, doing what ever is necessary to stop it is right, I consider that obvious. "Flattening the curve" makes generally sense to me, in a "let's make sure our hospital system doesn't collapse" kind of way.

I live in a county of a bit over 300.000 people in Germany. We have 10 known active cases in the county. We're still in a very constrained soft-lock-down, i.e. schools not running normally, half the offices not open, mandatory masks, public services on emergency-only-level etc. We're still taking damage economically, obviously. Lots of people are scared to death in a very real way, and are still afraid to leave their houses.

Is it still the right call to remain in this state today? Will it be when we have 0 active cases, but there are counties nearby that still have more than 0? By saying "well, everything that happens happens because of COVID-19", we're removing our agency from the equation.

Not all countries have lockdowns to the same degree, yet they all have discrepancies between excess deaths and official covid deaths.

Clearly, not all excess deaths are covid deaths though, a minority of them are certainly related but not directly caused by it.

If only people with symptoms are being tested, and 80% of people are asymptomatic, how are we not drastically overestimating fatality rate?

Where do you see the data that 80% of people are asymptomatic? You complain elsewhere in this thread of being dismissed even when you have data, yet provide none.

We understand that you think that the lockdowns are bunk and that this is a big non-issue cooked up by the world to ruin our lives; sure, maybe, but where is the data?

Here is a medical journal sufficient?

This is more study than was given to full lockdowns.

This was posted to Hacker News a few weeks ago as well.

https://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2020/05/27/thoraxjnl-20...

"We understand that you think that the lockdowns are bunk "

Correction...lockdowns ARE bunk.

WHERES THE SECOND WAVE?

Why hasn't Sweden followed the model of exponential explosion that was used to justify the lockdowns.

The flat curver movement was unscientific and wrong and you would do well to fight unscientific attacks on your civil freedoms with all of your vigour going forward because this isn't the last time this will be attempted.

Thank you for posting the data. These are both brand new from yesterday, however, so I’m not sure why the tone here is so belligerent. Either way, this is incredibly interesting, and something we should continue to look into going forward. It sure would be nice to ease up on the lockdowns if they are not the correct path going forward.

If you do some research and start questioning the narrative the amount of demonization and arrogant dismissiveness you get for it will make you belligerent. lol

People are scared and when you disagree with the experts even if you're right you get treated poorly.

Additionally, the only closed system study we've had of this, is a cruise ship. And this was replicated there. 80% asymptomatics.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/over-80percent-of-coronaviru...

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