Kabonk, The uncertainty of individual cause of

Kabonk,

The uncertainty of individual cause of death is the reason that excess death has such value.

Many deaths for Covid, where patients had underlying heart disease, dementia and/or diabetes were listed as due to the underlying disease as states tried to minimize the apparent impact of Covid (i.e. former Governor Cuomo).

Certainly overdoses increased (again) last year and many did not seek timely care for stroke, MI, etc., inflating the excess deaths as a result of covid but not from Covid.

The aggregate date is pretty compelling with excess deaths during the second wave over 40% (26K weekly) above normal, which correlates well with peak daily covid deaths of ~4k.

Seeing as RSV and influenza were essentially absent last year, there are few plausible explanations other than Covid for the excess deaths.



You are correct that there are always incentives to game the system, with health care systems compensated for treating covid patients while others would deny the impact of Covid.

I'm not surprised about the high number of hospitalizations for mild patients, as only a small percentage become critical or severe. All the more reason that we need leronlimab, rather millions of doses of neutralizing antibody infusions to essentially replicate the immune response from widely available vaccines.