Saturday, October 17, 2020

Honest data from South Carolina on deaths; now all we need are ages, and number of deaths with no comorbidities/ABC

 From ABC News:

As of Thursday's latest data, there have been 3,400 deaths from COVID-19 in South Carolina.

Officials said that many of those had one or more other conditions:

  • 60.4 percent had cardiovascular disease
  • 34.6 percent had diabetes
  • 30.9 percent had a neurologic or intellectual disability
  • 22.7 percent had COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)
  • 21.2 percent had kidney disease
  • 13 percent had congestive heart failure
  • 12.3 percent had a previous stroke

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm curious. How do flu deaths compare to this breakdown? Is it similar? Do we have any data on it?

Meryl Nass, M.D. said...

There is death certificate data on flu deaths, max 6515 in worst flu year about 3 years ago, usually about 2K death certs/yr name flu as main cause of death. CDC estimates flu deaths at 12-80,000/year, and those are not real numbers.

unfortunately, the Covid deaths are also not good numbers, and CDC issued new advice for completing death certificates when Covid is involved. Also, due to considerable increased reimbursements for Covid admissions, hospitals are incentivized to list Covid, even if suspected, since the tests are so inaccurate.

So I could only compare using the ESTIMATED infection fatality rates: 0.1% for flu, per CDC, and 0.14-0.2 for Covid. Basically impossible to compare. And Covid is causing many fewer deaths now.