In two months, 6,000 Massachusetts residents have died from a single cause

And that's where most of the NY deaths have been.

Within the largest outbreaks, the distribution follows the opposite (the less dense, the more deaths). See today's NY Covid numbers by zipcode for an example; or this tweet for a visualization:

.@nycgov released COVID death rates by zip code today, which gave me the opportunity to see if there was a correlation between population density and COVID deaths (as many have implied). Turns out there's actually a NEGATIVE correlation (denser ZIPs in NYC saw LOWER death rates). pic.twitter.com/1zCImYfyFG

— Chase Tralka(@ChaseTralka) May 18, 2020

On top of that, some of the most dense cities in the US (and the world) didn't see numbers anywhere near NYC or boston even though their densities are similar.

Chalking this up to density is WAY too simple (and dangerously misleading).

Hard to know with the shortfalls in testing and tracing. What were the real vectors into the US?

I do think MA was quicker to a initially slightly stronger response (emergency orders). There had been news, discussion and increasing awareness through the first two weeks of March, really ramping up at levels close to most people during the second half of the week ending March 14th. Significant restrictions went into place the beginning of the following week.

NY and NJ were a week behind that response (though I don't have a firm sense of how differently the developing situation was perceived there than here). Fortunately, the major Saint Patrick;s Day parades were cancelled (can you imagine how bad it would be if they had gone on as scheduled?), but the significant restrictions didn't come until a week later than MA (went into effect the night of Sunday March 22). How different would it have been if restrictions went into effect on the 15th?

More particularly, filled with some of the most at-risk (older, pre-existing conditions) and physical setup of these places is often such that there is little can be done in flu season and such times but batten down the hatches, eliminate outside visitors, restrict interior mixing.

More like 60%. A lot of PPE is being supplied to the nursing homes. As far as staff, the ones that I have met are well trained and professional. They know their shit, they're not stupid. I cannot speak to their pay scale.

Many people have lost their jobs sure, but not anything like a majority of people. Personally, I've been inconvenienced for two months of my life but I haven't lost shit. My kids have had two months of meh education but again no loss.

Love that right wingers are now all about choosing to let people die after all the 'death panel' nonsense about the ACA let alone Terry Schiavo.

What have you lost that wasn't offset by saving the lives of old folks through your personal inconvenience?

while the lockdown is worst for people between 14 and 65

Nope.

Poverty is where the suffering is right now. Either they have to go to work and risk exposure, or work and school are shut down and they're at risk from food insecurity, possible loss of home, and from getting the virus.

Age is irrelevant.

It doesn't have to just be a choice between lockdown where people suffer and an "opening" where people straggle back to try to rescue a crippled economy in stages risking a new wave of deaths. It's only because the republican-led government can only think of using the levers of power to reward their billionaire donors and the democratic party's corporate hacks are incapable or unwilling to loudly advocate real alternatives.

If the federal government guaranteed people's livelihoods during lockdown as they have in places like Denmark and Germany, we wouldn't be forced into these Hobbesian choices of opening up or starving.

No one lost two months. You can still enjoy life. I know that’s hard for miserable conservatives but come on. Having to watch more TV and not get a professional haircut is not a big sacrifice.

If people want to do cost-benefit analysis on lives lost, they should at least consider all factors. I read a lot of comparison asking why __ million people should be unemployed for the sake of 100,000 deaths. Cost-benefit analysis is a pretty cold type of mathematics, but if you do it well it at least can reflect what you, or what our society, thinks and values.

1. The comparison shouldn't be with 100,000 deaths that occurred, but the number prevented, which is an unknown number. I've looked at some hot spots to speculate about what the total deaths could have been in a worst-case scenario, and don't feel like I can share a guess, beyond saying that the stay-at-home orders prevented what could have been a much higher number of deaths.

2. Rather than compare number dead vs. number unemployed, we should compare weeks of unemployment vs. lost weeks of life. The average 80-year-old woman has a life expectancy of approximately 10 years, to age 90. So a death of an 80-year-old woman is a loss of 520 weeks of life. The age range of people who have died, or who would have died without the stay-at-home orders, is a wide distribution, with an average in the 80's., so estimate 500 weeks of lost life for each death.... a cold-sounding calculation, until you think of it in terms of the quality of life lost, to the person, family and wider community. (I think a lot of the protestors underestimate the health, productivity & value of middle-aged and older people by the way.)

3. You could also add in 4-6 weeks of lost productivity for people who are significantly ill and recover.... or who would have been ill without the stay-at-home measures.

4. Compare the weeks lost to illness and death to __ weeks of unemployment for the __ million unemployed to find total weeks of unemployment.

5. The ratio of weeks lost to unemployment vs. weeks lost to illness and death would be a much closer ratio. I've come up with a variety of estimates under different assumptions, such as maybe 10 weeks of unemployment to 1 week of life lost.

6. The next step involves a value judgement. Which is sadder to you: 10 weeks of unemployment vs 1 week of lost life? Would you be sadder if you learned that 10 of your friends or family members are unemployed this week or if you learned that 1 of your friends or family members is dead?

This step is where values come in... public health measures usually don't seek to prevent all deaths, but to take reasonable measures to prevent preventable deaths.... such as worker safety laws, speed limits, seat belts, food safety laws, vaccinations, and other public health measures. We don't want to live in a bubble, but the more we value life, the more we favor reasonable safety measures.

Would love to see other people's take on a cost-benefit analysis.

And you won't know for a while

One of the issues is that nursing homes in MA don't always operate the same way. How many DNR's were there? How many cases were declined by the ME? How many cases were tested for influenza and Covid?

In general if someone in a nursing home tests positive for Covid and they die of pneumonia, the cause of death will be Covid, and that is simply written on the death certificate by the funeral home or nursing home itself since the ME isn't going to take most nursing home deaths cases. Who is correlating all of those death statistics this year and are they consistent?

But what is interesting is finding out how deaths in 2019 or before were classified. If someone died of pneumonia in 2018 but had influenza what did it say on those death certificates? I think that is where some of the range comes in (40k to 80K deaths) instead of an exact number.

Social distancing and masks likely reduce transmission of flu and other communicable diseases as well as Covid-19.

Less travel should mean fewer deaths from motor vehicle crashes and other outdoor accidents.

People staying indoors should mean fewer deaths from gunshots, stabbings, and the like.

On March 22, "O-FISH-L" was yelping loudly that only 2 people had died of COVID-19 and that everyone was overreacting. https://www.universalhub.com/2020/childrens-hospital-shows-other-hospita...

Now 2 months later 6,000 people have died in MA and over 90,000 nationwide and this disinformation troll is ineptly trying to question the # of documented deaths, not a single source in site.

Normal people incorporate evolving facts on the ground into their opinions and consider they might be wrong. Idiots, sycophants, bots, and trolls just keep spouting the party line of their masters no matter what the facts say.

Which one are you, O-FISH-L...I mean of the second category, of course?

Influenza A and B both had their spikes/peaks in cases earlier in the season. I really can't speak for what death certificates have said, since I don't seek those out but people definitely died from influenza earlier in the flu season, before we even knew COVID was here (or even before COVID-19 was named)

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/images/WHOPHL19_s...

You are one of them.

Here's a primer:

1. There are codes for causes of death. They are called International Cause of Death, or ICD Codes. There was no code for COVID-19 until mid-march.

2. Most death certificates have multiple places to list multiple causes of death - main causes and contributing causes. Some even allow listing of notable morbidities that may or may not have contributed.

3. Somebody with an underlying condition might have COVID as their main cause of death and, say, diabetes or cardiovascular disease as contributing causes of death. If they had asthma, that might also be noted.

4. Somebody with an underlying condition might have COVID as a contributing cause - in other words, they might have cardiovascular disease or cardiac arrest listed first, then COVID having brought that on as a contributor. This might be the situation if someone had COVID, was stressed by it but not hospitalized, then had a heart attack.

5. In any pandemic, there is so much stress on the health care system that there are more likely to be UNDERCOUNTS due to lack of testing and people dying at home than OVERCOUNTS. The way we will know this? A careful age stratified analysis of overall non-accidental, non-intentional mortality versus multiple prior year averages. If you subtract out the "usual" level of heart disease, cancer, etc. you get a much clearer picture of the excess and that excess will likely be entirely attributable to novel factors.

6. CDC data lag state data substantially. Some large hospitals report directly, but smaller facilities may not and coroners may or may not. In some cases, like Montana, the state has not reported any deaths because they haven't reached the reporting threshhold. Those are not errors - those are lags. State surveillance systems usually have the more up to date picture.

So, if you see phrases like "downward revisions" or "overcounts" and other blah blah blah like fishy says above? THAT IS RIGHT WING TALKING POINTS BLATHER ATTEMPTING TO MINIMIZE THE DAMAGE THAT TRUMP IS DOING TO OUR COUNTRY. It is spewed by sociopathic idiots to target laypeople willing to believe there is a conspiracy because they don't understand 1-6 above.

82 isn’t well beyond average death here. It’s about only 18 months difference. Perhaps you are thinking of the pathetic average lifespans in shit hole republican states like Mississippi? You would fit in better down there.

Being seriously ill for a month or more is likely to drive you into bankruptcy, assuming you survive.