The NY Times generates another baseless tale, this time about what they claim is a misinterpreted death toll. They claim:
Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.
Here are some facts.
1. Many deaths occurred with cancer and cardiac patients due to failure to treat. For example, ERs in NYC saw a massive drop in MI and stroke patients during April and May. The death rate did not change, they just died elsewhere and more than likely the ME called it COVID. Was it really? Cancer patients delayed life saving treatments and operations. A 3 month delay in prostate surgery may not be critical but three months in a melanoma is a death sentence.
2. The CDC and the MMWR has always been a sore point. It is late, inaccessible, and at best a compilation of a compilation. The demand to move the data collection to HHS may actually be an essential change. CDC in my opinion and my experience lags dramatically is data capability. You get what they digest, and that may not be adequate in a fast moving pandemic.
3. Timeliness and accuracy in death reports has always been a problem. As we have noted for months, in New Jersey reports are not timely, often well under reported on weekends and over reported when they appear. Infection rates are equally confused since one does not know when the test was taken just when it appears.
4. The lack of open source data is a serious problem. With thousands of competent data analysts in private and academic settings one would think that having as many eyes and computers on the data would be helpful. The CDC obfuscates its data and thus it is meaningless. Any reliance on a conclusions drawn from the CDC data in my opinion is of little use.
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