American mortality: Demographics, disorders and deaths
- Peter Lorenzi
- Feb 1, 2022
- 4 min read
February 1, 2022. The ongoing effort to promote high numbers of Covid deaths has led to to the use of some bad math and to ignoring many of the problems of lifestyle-related death in the United States, as well as in much of the world. The number of lifestyle-created "disorders," starting with obesity, has been behind an increasing hospitalizations and mortality rates as Americans and others rely more on free or subsidized medical treatment to reduce or solve self-created healthcare problems. As one star sign, the UK has recently announced the availability of an injection -- paid for by the public and supplied by the NHS -- to be made available to the morbidly obese, an injections that suppresses appetite to the point of producing meaningful weight loss and this reducing the number of vulnerable people in the population.
The NHS will now recommend a drug to help obese people lose weight after a watchdog approved its use.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) approved the use of weekly semaglutide injections for patients who have at least one weight-related condition and a body mass index of 53 or more.
On an almost humorous, related obesity story: Female inmates at South London prison are piling on so much weight they are breaking toilet seats
Start with the simple proposition that American mortality rates have been increasing steadily since 2013, due primarily to the steady increase in Americans over the age of 65 -- the Baby Boomers -- approaching their natural deaths, with or without Covid.
Now look at what the CDC reported in December 2021:
In 2020, a total of 3,383,729 resident deaths were registered in the United States—528,891 more deaths than in 2019. The number of deaths for which COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death was 350,831 (10.4% of the total number of deaths in 2020).
NOTE: Simultaneously, the CDC reported the 2020 US deaths since Feb 1 as 2,913,144. See report, below:
According to the February 1, 2022 Wall Street Journal:
Since the start of the pandemic, about 6.8 million Americans have died. That’s roughly a million more deaths than would have been expected in that time.
Now go back and look at the first chart, the one showing the natural, expected increase in mortality rates, add in the increase in the American population, and we can estimate the expected deaths in 2020 and 2021, sans Covid. Consider this analysis of Covid deaths, including
As to the United States population, America added twenty-five million people in the past ten years. So do the math. Multiply the mortality rate (0.009) by the population (330,066,000) and that number is 2,975,000. And in counting Covid deaths, recall the original Imperial College estimate of American deaths -- 2,000,000 -- of which, the 'experts' later acknowledge, two-thirds of those people were likely to die in 2020 in any case.
The number of American residents probably continued to increase in in 2021. The United Nations -- pre-Covid -- had also projected a natural increase in mortality to above 0.009. So 'expected deaths' in 2021 would have been in excess of three million. And that projection would continue to increase in 2022. Bottom line is that the Wall Street Journal is using exaggerating when they claim: "Since the start of the pandemic, about 6.8 million Americans have died. That’s roughly a million more deaths than would have been expected in that time." And among that million death estimate, many of those are not related to Covid at all. This is likely due to the WSJ using a low figure for their "expected deaths" in 2020 and 2021. Covid-RELATED deaths in those two years are likely to be closer to 700,000, and that includes deaths assigned to Covid that are actually not caused by Covid.
Let's be harsh for a moment: As we have noted in this blog before, much of the Covid impact has been what has been labeled as "harvesting," a way of describing deaths of the vulnerable, especially the aged and the morbidly obese, deaths that were not really "unexpected" at all, just perhaps a year sooner than expected. The average age of a Covid "victim has been close to or above normal life expectancy; a person dying at an age past 'normal' life expectancy WITH Covid hardly seems to be an unexpected death. [NOTE: The Wall street Journal and the CDC use two different classifications: The CDC uses the noun "residents," while the WSJ cites "6.8 Americans have died." Is every "resident" an American? Or perhaps we might ask, is the CDC implying that every American citizen is a "resident"?]
And, lest we not forget, any forecast that employs an average -- either arithmetic or median -- needs to recognize the concept of variance and the standard error in any arithmetic mean, meaning -- no pun intended -- that the use of an exact or precise point estimate, is more credible as a range. For instance, a forecast of one million deaths would be better expressed as something like "a 95% chance that the actual number will be found in this range, 950,000 to 1,050,000. Just as the "average" temperature history or forecast is actually best represented with a range, e.g., 95% of the time temperatures were between 70 degrees and 80 degrees rather than simply an average of 75.
Consider the extensive analyses and critiques found in the following compilation:
And consider this extensive regression analysis, outlining the primary drivers -- "causes" or co-morbidities -- of "Covid" deaths:
All of this confusion does not even include the confusion propagated by the CDC concerning the role of "risk factors," i.e., threats to one's life that become "co-morbidities" once you die. Depending upon the number of pre-existing co-morbidities at death, e.g., BMI, diabetes, chronic lung disease, the CDC has reported that even among the vaccinated, between 75% and 94% of Covid-attributed deaths were accompanied by two or more co-morbidities. The "primary cause of death" decision is subjective, possibly professional, subject to biases, and incentivized towards claiming Covid as THE cause of death, even without a valid, positive test for Covid.
Kommentare