LeSving wrote:
Anyway, what is this kind of death called?
We used to refer colloquially to people ‘dying of old age’.
Of course no-one actually dies of old age. The crystal in your palm does not change colour and then you expire :-)
There is always a medical cause of death, but whether it is really relevant to the way in which their life has ended is a very tricky question when it comes to compiling statistics – especially so if those statistics are going to be used to inform choices as to which aspects of healthcare we might do differently.
For instance, when a lot of old people die ‘of old age’ the immediate cause of death is probably respiratory failure – their bodies were not strong enough to keep breathing. But if we compiled these as straightforward, non-contextual statistics and then gave them to the press then we’d have a global uproar about why we’re not doing more to prevent respiratory failure!
Off_Field wrote:
I would also assume the same argument that the numbers will be small enough to not be statistically significant
The whole corona situation is not statistically significant in Norway. No excess death can be shown from the statistics. Hence corona does not exist 
Not aimed at anyone in this thread.
This “xx people have died after vaccination, so we should not vaccinate” is the basic statistic illiteracy that drives a lot of the vaccine skepticism.
There are two fundamental fallacies
– not controlling for other causes of death
– comparing the death rate from the vaccine to the death rate assuming the patient does not get the disease
1) Expected deaths from other causes
In a a million people, around 30 people die every day (assuming average life expectancy around 90 years).
If you vaccinate them all, 3 people on average will die the day they receive the vaccine and 20 within a week.
In a million people over 80, around 300 people die every day (assuming average life expectancy around 9 years)
If you them all 80s, 30 will die the day they receive the vaccine and 20 within a week.
Given we vaccinate the elderly and other vulnerable first, there will be THOUSANDS of deaths after receiving the Covid vaccine, and you would have the same deaths even if you pretended to inject salt water.
2) comparing the death rate from the vaccine to the death rate assuming the patient does not get the disease
Of course there WILL be deaths caused by the vaccine. Anaphylaxis as a rare but life-threatening complication will be one in a million, so I expect the headline of some poor sod dying of it in the next 1-3 months. But general stress in vulnerable populations will of course increase their death rate.
So let’s be extreme and assume that maybe 1 in thousand 80+ will die because of the vaccine, and let’s even assume that this is random, and not the ones who would die in the next year anyway. Given that we have vaccinated a few million already, and haven’t had the headlines of ‘thousands of elderly killed by vaccine’ yet, in reality the risk will be much lower.
If infected, the death rate will be one in ten or worse – so AT LEAST 100x more.
Cobalt wrote:
There are two fundamental fallacies
– not controlling for other causes of death
– comparing the death rate from the vaccine to the death rate assuming the patient does not get the disease
Very reasonable points Cobalt, are these points you’re making here not also applicable to the Covid death figures?
The difficulty in separating deaths due to covid and deaths whilst having covid is a tricky one. But from catching the news last night, the interview with the “healthy young person who nearly died from covid” failed to seem to recognise her massive morbid obesity which probably doesn’t help breathing.
Off_Field wrote:
ery reasonable points Cobalt, are these points you’re making here not also applicable to the Covid death figures
The first one (not controlling for other causes of death) – absolutely, but with much less of an effect, simply by the size of the numbers.
Let’s say we have 1,000 representative elderly, and we would expect 1% of them to die within a month (approx. 10% in a year)
Now we infect these 1,000 elderly, and 10-20% of them die.
So while the dead invariably will contain people who would have died anyway, 90-95% would have seen the next month but for Covid.
Once you have infected a sufficient proportion of the population, this will become obvious in excess deaths.
It seems to me recording the cause of death is also far from an exact science. Short of a post morteum, the cause tends to relate to the most obvious symptoms and the time of death, whereas in fact something entirely different may have cuased those symptoms in the first place. What caused you to die, was it the final cause of death, or the cascade of events before?
We can all relate to this. The aircraft crashed because the engine seized. The cause of the crash was a seized engine. All entirely true. The fact that the maintenace shop incorrectly fitted a piston rod which then went through the top of the engine and the oil all bled out, to use the usual FAA terminology was a contributory factor. In reality, it was undoubtedly the real cause of the crash. (apologies for the technical inaccuracies of what would actually happen with a rod going through the engine, but you follow my general drift!)
Cobalt wrote:
and you would have the same deaths even if you pretended to inject salt water.
Not likely. The 13 reported deaths (from yesterday) were explicitly due to side effects from the vaccine. Just too old and frail to handle the additional rising fever and the general strain on the body. Who knows, they could have lived for another couple of months perhaps. As I said further up, they have changed the procedures now, so that old and frail are handled on an individual basis. They will not be given the vaccine if there are no obvious benefits. The reason in the first place to give it to everyone was to make each elderly care home “immune”, not to save each individual from covid.
Cobalt wrote:
Once you have infected a sufficient proportion of the population, this will become obvious in excess deaths.
Yes I think looking at excess mortality is actually one of the good bits of data we have.
LeSving wrote:
Not likely. The 13 reported deaths (from yesterday) were explicitly due to side effects from the vaccine. Just too old and frail to handle the additional rising fever and the general strain on the body. Who knows, they could have lived for another couple of months perhaps. As I said further up, they have changed the procedures now, so that old and frail are handled on an individual basis. They will not be given the vaccine if there are no obvious benefits. The reason in the first place to give it to everyone was to make each elderly care home “immune”, not to save each individual from covid.
How do we know, out of interest? What was done to demonstrate this was the cause?
Off_Field wrote:
Yes I think looking at excess mortality is actually one of the good bits of data we have.
Only if you have excess deaths … Which, in case anyone still wonders, can only be prevented by including strict border control. Excess death is the result of failure to cope with the situation, plain and simple.
