This seems like what-about-ism.
You could look these numbers up easily on the CDCs death data, and then you could formulate a coherent thought.
Instead, it seems like you're just trying to derail the conversation with as little effort as possible.
You could look these numbers up easily on the CDCs death data, and then you could formulate a coherent thought.
Instead, it seems like you're just trying to derail the conversation with as little effort as possible.
OP made the link to Covid-19, which seems very plausible, but it’s not clear if they have facts to support this or it’s just a guess. Suicides and overdoses are two of the leading causes of death among young Americans. It’s irresponsible to discuss a 40% increase in deaths and imply this is all Covid-19 without any evidence.
“Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths … there were far fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago – 195 verses 336 – but more deaths from other causes – 1,350 versus 1,319 … the moving average of daily deaths from COVID-19 is less than half of what it was a year ago”
“Lazy” is not reading the article. And if “derailing” an unfounded assumption to better understand these deaths is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
But why has everyone switched like thi? Freyr is correct. The OP put forward the proposition, it's up to them to provide data that makes the case.
I would guess a lot of that 45% is due to Covid, but how much would be a guess, and I suspect OP is just guessing too.
Overdoses are historically one of the leading causes of death among people in this age range, and we’re also setting records for overdose deaths this year [0], but that gets no almost coverage compared to Covid. I think it’s reasonable to keep in mind that overdoses could also be contributing to that 45% uptick, unless we have evidence to the contrary.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/opioid-crisis-202...
In order to say that a significant number of these are drug and suicide deaths, you’d also have to be positing a theory that drug and suicide deaths are also for some reason elevating themselves in precise timing with the Covid surges. I’m not going to claim this is impossible, but it does seem extremely far fetched to me, and I suspect seeing the data laid out like I describe would probably make you abandon your theory. (Edit: using ‘your theory’ colloquially here. I know you havent posited any specific theory here, but your line of reasoning and skepticism is clear)
Edit to add: I actually don’t doubt that excess drug and suicide deaths are partially responsible for general elevated death numbers. Lockdowns, isolation, job losses, etc are all certainly driving some of this. But these are slow and steady drivers, not ones that rise and fall precisely with the number of Covid cases, which takes me to the conclusion that they are in the noise compared to Covid itself. (And the CDC death categorizations happen to agree with that)
For interpretation, the orange line is average expected deaths for that week, and you'd expect weekly deaths to cluster around that. Red is the "upper bound threshold", ie deaths over this are way out of the norm.
You can also switch the dashboard to "Excess deaths with and without COVID-19", which shows the same bar chart but with reported covid deaths stacked on top of non-covid reported deaths. It makes it clear that (1) excess deaths line up very well with reported deaths and (2) the US has done an overall good job of reporting covid deaths, outside of some probable undercounting at the very start.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
There’s definitely a significant rise in excess deaths among 25-44 year olds coinciding with the Delta peak in August/September.
Something interesting though: In the Covid “valley” of June/July, when Covid-related deaths were at a record low nationally, 25-44 year olds still had a ~35% increase in excess deaths. I’d expect a drop in excess deaths close to prepandemic levels if they were being driven mainly by (short-term) Covid effects during that time. It seems like the baseline death rate increased independently of number of active Covid cases.
Covid deaths were accompanied by a steady increase in overdose deaths starting in early 2019 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm), rising from from 68k to 97k over the course of the pandemic.
I don’t have time at the moment to do the math, but I’d suspect most of the increase we’ve seen in the past year is due to Covid, but with the increase in overdoses and other causes contributing much than noise since 2019. This could explain the higher death rate that persisted throughout the summer.
It seems reasonable to speculate that younger people are able survive longer with respiratory problems and probably have less co-morbidities.
In the same way, COVID puts pressure on the hospital system as a whole. Nurses who could have been monitoring a post-surgery recovery are instead monitoring ventilators in the COVID wing, or are quarantined after being exposed. The crash cart arrives a little bit slower to a heart attack, because the closest one was already in use. If the available nurses are on longer shifts, that contributes to sleep deprivation, making it easy to miss details that would otherwise have been caught.
This is true across all age groups. As of September, while COVID had 4.6 million direct fatalities, there had been 15 million excess deaths. Determining the final scope of COVID will be a matter of long research, and certainly isn't something that can be resolved in a short internet argument. Dismissing it as "Seems unlikely." when not even comparing between the same same type of measurement seems premature.
[0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/06/econ-s06.html
It would be more accurate to say "COVID-19 impacted years" than "incredibly strong correlation between Covid".
A lot of government and public policy changes were quickly made during these times. Are you willing to say with complete certainty that the lockdowns and associated increase in poor mental health had no impact?
We also had global supply chain crunches which affected food and medication availability (among other things). Are you willing to say that having certain brands of prevention / life saving drugs completely unavailable (forcing people to consult doctors for substitutes or go without) had no impact?
Does it in any way make sense to you that Covid cases falling by X% in a given week would directly cause an immediate corresponding drop in depression, drug overdose, or prescription drug supply chain issues? That would be absolutely incredible to me. It did however cause an immediate corresponding decline in excess deaths, regardless of assigning any cause. That tells me something.
Did it, though? We see deaths increase in August/September during the Delta wave, but we don’t see them decline when Covid cases fell drastically earlier in the summer: https://imgur.com/a/b4Pobrh
That suggests 25-44 year olds may be experiencing an elevated death rate that persists even when Covid cases were low.
However, injuries are far more likely to be life threatening if health care resources are scarce, as they have become in Indiana.
This is precisely the challenge presented by a pandemic. That's precisely why the lethality of the pandemic virus is largely irrelevant. The threat from a pandemic is the overwhelming of health care resources.
So it's kind of splitting hairs to worry about whether the cause of death is COVID-19 or not. Either way, it's the pandemic. There's a literally historic shift in the death rate among the young that correlates very well with the the availability of care... and we have the people working in the hospitals saying that this is the underlying problem.
Maybe young people have had a 40% increase in deaths from injury, from suicides, from overdoses, or from tipping over vending machines. The specific COD isn't the problem.
Does he count as a covid death.