10-25-2020, 12:28 PM
(10-24-2020, 08:56 PM)BostonCard Wrote: No, a fatal motorcycle accident in a patient who tests positive for COVID-19 during their hospitalization counts as an accident. But a patient with terminal breast cancer on chemo, who develops COVID-19 pneumonia and dies because of progressive low oxygen from the COVID-19 counts as a COVID death, even if they only had months left to live.
Cause of death happens mostly the way you think it does. If a bunch of people were dying from something other than COVID-19 but were being considered COVID deaths because they happened to have a positive test, we’d see more COVID-19 deaths than excess all-cause mortality (total deaths from any cause compared to prior years). In fact, excess deaths compared to expected stand at about 290,000, which means either some people died without ever being tested and were misclassified as heart attacks or something else, or some patients were dying of something else that they would have survived, but for the fact that they didn’t seek care or the hospitals were too crowded in places like New York and they didn’t get timely care, or the care they got was sub-par.
Edited to add a link to my post about excess deaths: https://thecardboard.org/board/showthread.php?tid=20690
There have been 299,000 more deaths than expected to date since the pandemic started. That includes deaths that would not have happened had the patient not contracted COVID-19 and deaths that occurred due to the pandemic (not going to the hospital out of fear of getting COVID, suicides due to isolation, etc.), minus fewer deaths from traffic accidents or accidental kid deaths.
BC
Hmm. I'm having a hard time squaring what you say with what the Dakota dashboard says . . . but perhaps I'm just dense.
Does your chemo example fall in category one or two, below? Or stated differently, what do you think falls in category two below? (And I have no clue what category 3 refers to, other than you know the decedent must have tested positive for Corona).
[b]Deaths Due to COVID-19[/b]
Official number of individuals who died from COVID-19 as stated on the official death record. There will be a delay - by state law, a death record must be filed within 10 days of the date of death.
340
[b]Deaths Where COVID-19 is Not the Primary Cause[/b]
Deaths that list something other than COVID-19 as the official cause of death.
78
[b]Pending Death Records[/b]
The number of deaths where an official death record has not been filed. Per state law, this can take up to 10 days from the date of death.
38
[b]Total [/b]number of individuals who tested positive and died from any cause while infected with COVID-19.
456