Post your Contentious Virus Posts Here

[mhosea]

I do have a perhaps contentious question, though. Is anyone tracking the data on death rates? I've seen posts on FB about numbers of deaths by other causes than COVID-19 ["C19"] to put C19 deaths in perspective. (Clumsy attempts, usually.) But have the death rates from non-C19 causes been "stable" (that is, as expected given past numbers)? Or have they changed significantly? (Implying, have they gone down, because those deaths are now being attributed to C19?)

I believe the US CDC compiles a report every year, and the delay is considerable. The report on 2018 is out. If it's possible to get more up-to-date data about that sort of thing, I don't know where it could be found. Perhaps some states compile monthly reports? I do not know.

Per CDC guidelines, it is likely that probable COVID-19 deaths in supervised settings are being reported as such. Some causes of death in medically supervised settings, sepsis, for example, would then tend to be replaced by COVID-19 when infection is probable, even though virtually any infection (e.g. an untreated UTI) could have led to the same outcome in short order. Consequently, I would expect to see sepsis deaths reduced from what they would otherwise have been. That's just a "for example". Social distancing and reduction of travel will probably end up changing the accident statistics quite a bit.