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Well lets say you had a severe condition with a 20% chance of death each year...
But you can do a procedure with a 40% chance of death or full recovery.

If you decided to put that off until after COVID then you would reduce the excess death stats (on average) this year. But for you, waiting is a ticking time bomb, and your overall outcome % is worse for waiting.

Maybe later this year is going to bad for excess deaths when people finally do that risky elective procedure they have been putting off.
Yeah. So far (starting in 2020), the putting it off (or COVID) has increased those death stats substantially. It's certainly possible that we'll have longer term higher mortality from some conditions though.

We'll find out in a year or two. If I had to guess what we'll see is: 1) high excess deaths through about May 2021. 2) Lower than normal deaths the rest of the year - we lost a lot of vulnerable, mostly older people - I think that deficit will actually persist for a few years - we just have fewer old people now than we would have.

(I'm assuming no winter surge here - that's not a sure thing of course. But I do think if there are NPIs still in place we could see continued lower than normal flu mortality for the end of this year as well. Hopefully we get no surge and we have NPIs in place and we also have no flu.)
 
An interesting analysis of the breakdown of causes of death in 2020, and how many might have been uncounted COVID (or due to lack of medical attention and treatment due to COVID). We had an 18% (!!!) higher number of deaths (so far; the 2020 data isn't final) in 2020 than in 2019. 520k excess deaths vs. 380k COVID deaths - so 140k extra non-C19 deaths vs 2019!

It's a decent argument, correlating the non-COVID excess deaths by cause vs. the COVID deaths...and showing the most likely suspects (diabetes, Alzheimers, cardiac, stroke, kidney disease) track very well.

He also has an addendum providing an estimate of the dreaded "lockdown deaths." Seems like it could be on the order of 20-30k excess unnatural deaths (but obviously some of that could be trauma of losing loved ones, stress of dealing with the pandemic independent of lockdown, driving too fast, etc.). But undoubtedly there are some deaths that could be classified as lockdown (loss of job, etc.) deaths. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it seems like the "lockdown" (whatever that means) was the right call (assuming reducing mortality was the goal), though...


In the replies there's also another dataset linked to, looking at the data a different way. As you might expect, the misclassified deaths were largely in the first two surges. Deaths appeared to be much better classified in the surge that ended 2020.
This is a rehash of discussion from a year ago. My mother died in a nursing home in north Jersey in March 2020. Death Certificate says COD was AHD, Alzheimers and anemia. No mention of COVID because in March of 2020 no one could get a COVID test unless they were in a hospital but who knows. She could barely breathe, was already SOB and was on O2 so if she got COVID it probably would have killed her quickly. The nursing homes had all stopped visitation a couple weeks prior so I have no idea how she was doing. Locally our County Coroner had several at home deaths and nursing home pneumonia deaths which again could not be tested. He treated all as potential COVID and was desperate back then to find enough PPE for his staff to do their job. There had to be quite a few such unidentified COVID deaths early on.
 
This is a rehash of discussion from a year ago
Yes, but the numbers involved are now quantified, and the deaths can also be categorized by cause, since the 2020 data is mostly complete now. Previously, incomplete reporting meant a lot of really incorrect conclusions were drawn. And it was hard to know the exact breakdown of what type of deaths were being miscategorized (though it was relatively easily guessed from anecdotal evidence, etc.).

But it does seem that what reasonable people expected had happened, probably happened.

For example, this potentially means something like 650k-700k people in this country have died of COVID so far. How many have been infected? Maybe 35% of the country (we don’t know exactly - maybe this is high)?
 
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According the Mrs. Uujjj, the non-COVID emergency patients in February (as the wave was waning) were definitely sicker than in a typical February. But there were fewer of them. So she does think some of them deferred seeing a physician and others who might have gone to the emergency room in normal times for less serious issues were avoiding it this time around.
 
Besides CSUB that I mentioned, How to schedule your COVID-19 vaccine | UC Davis Health got updated today and would be more convenient for Bay Area people than Bakersfield:
Re: UC Davis, there are many reports that if you don't have an account w/them, you will see no appointments. I confirmed that last night and this morning.

And, the reports are that if you do, you will see appointments. That's according to many reports + a co-worker who got an appointment yesterday and went there today for shots.

Also, for those in So Cal who were going to Cal State LA Briefly Opens Up COVID Vaccines To Anyone Over 18, Then Pulls Back, besides that news report, there have been numerous reports on FB groups and my work that some folks got shots w/no appointment and others got turned away, presumably due to huge demand. Cal State Bakersfield still seems like the best bet for LA folks who aren't eligible yet and want a vaccine sooner.
 
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Mrs. Uujjj's emergency department had at least 8 staff get COVID over the course of the pandemic. At least 3 of them got quite sick, with one male nurse missing work for months, another staff member winding up in the hospital, and a third spending time in the ICU. Among the general population only ~10% of COVID cases are severe, but among the emergency staff it was more like 30% severe.
 
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To illustrate the supply allocation wonkiness in California, I heard the below tonight on local news about my county. From California to See Rapid Decline in Shipments of J&J Vaccine
Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, Santa Clara County’s Director of Vaccinations said they have the capacity to dole out 200,000 shots per week. But they are only getting 60,000 to 70,000 doses from the state.
Just today, I saw an FB post of someone driving from my city to CSUB to get a shot. CSUB is over 230 miles away from my home.
 
More vaccine sites halt Johnson & Johnson shots after adverse reactions

North Carolina health officials said on Thursday that they stopped administering Johnson & Johnson doses at a mass vaccination site in Raleigh and at clinics in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill after at least 26 people experienced adverse reactions, including fainting.

I don't know what qualifies as an "adverse" reaction. Most people I know who had the shots had a reaction. For Pfizer and Moderna it was usually after the second one. I had the J&J shot and had a fever for 2 days. Two weeks after I developed muscle pains in several places and the muscle where the shot went in was paralyzed for a few hours.
 
I don't know what qualifies as an "adverse" reaction. Most people I know who had the shots had a reaction. For Pfizer and Moderna it was usually after the second one. I had the J&J shot and had a fever for 2 days. Two weeks after I developed muscle pains in several places and the muscle where the shot went in was paralyzed for a few hours.

These are far more significant events, generally along the lines of a systemic allergic reaction (i.e. one requiring an EpiPen or visitation to the ER).
 
J&J COVID-19 vaccine under EU review over blood clots, AstraZeneca probe grows

What is it with these two vector-based vaccines?
Certainly there’s something going on (albeit in low numbers) because we haven’t heard of blood clots with the mRNA vaccines.

Sounds like immune response to either the vector or some vaccine additive could be resulting in a sudden clotting response. Apparently this can happen when people are taking heparin, rarely, for example. There it has to do with the immune system response to a complex of molecules, which triggers a catastrophic clotting response.

I don't know whether I would immediately suspect the vector, since there are probably a lot of common ingredients in the vector-based vaccines. But I guess we will see. It does seem that it does not apply to the mRNA ones, since undoubtedly we would have seen reports by now given how widespread their rollout has been.

Still, it seems like these vaccines are still generally very well tolerated in the elderly, which is great. Might just be best to avoid them if you're young, and get one of the other ones instead, if you want to be very cautious.

Once again, we're lucking out in the US by having the Emergent lab destroy all the J&J vaccine before it could be shipped out. Just shows it's better to be lucky than good. (Yes, this is tongue in cheek - it would have been far better to have that vaccine available.)

 
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Sounds like immune response to either the vector or some vaccine additive could be resulting in a sudden clotting response. Apparently this can happen when people are taking heparin, rarely, for example. There it has to do with the immune system response to a complex of molecules, which triggers a catastrophic clotting response.

I don't know whether I would immediately suspect the vector, since there are probably a lot of common ingredients in the vector-based vaccines. But I guess we will see. It does seem that it does not apply to the mRNA ones, since undoubtedly we would have seen reports by now given how widespread their rollout has been.

Still, it seems like these vaccines are still generally very well tolerated in the elderly, which is great. Might just be best to avoid them if you're young, and get one of the other ones instead, if you want to be very cautious.

Once again, we're lucking out in the US by having the Emergent lab destroy all the J&J vaccine before it could be shipped out. Just shows it's better to be lucky than good. (Yes, this is tongue in cheek - it would have been far better to have that vaccine available.)

The number of adverse cases is still very low. But, for various reasons, these cases have been occurring mostly in younger women. Given that, if a woman who is rather healthy and practicing all safety precautions, I would think it’s better for this particular group to wait for a mRNA vaccine if the only choice is J&J or AZ.

I’d be very curious to know whether these adverse reactions only happens shortly after getting the vaccine or can the side-effect manifest itself later down the road (months to years). There’s a reason full FDA approvals usually happen only years after collecting phase 3 data.
 
These are far more significant events, generally along the lines of a systemic allergic reaction (i.e. one requiring an EpiPen or visitation to the ER).

True. Just wondering where they draw the line.

I'd say the fainting they mentioned qualifies.

Though the article only said 4 had fainting episodes. I'm just curious what the other reactions were that they consider serious side effects.

For some people, you can just show them a needle and they faint (no joke). The predominance at this one site, however, merits further investigation.

Years ago I knew a woman who was a civilian nurse at the Bremerton Naval Base. A big part of her job was giving shots to people being deployed overseas. She said the people most likely to faint were Marines. The more macho they looked, the more likely they were to faint.
 
Yet another Helix update today (April 6 data). Minnesota and Michigan now 80%. Texas and Florida now near 70%. California 50%.


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