Every day, the media is more than happy to report how many NEW DEATHS from the coronavirus have been reported, sort of like what they did when W. was president and we’d lose troops.
If it bleeds, it leads. Especially if you can blame that ‘bleeding’ on a Republican.
Justin Hart has been putting together some fairly phenomenal threads about the data that is actually being used to keep far too many states and ultimately people locked down. This time he tackled the notion of ‘excess deaths’:
1/ Oh this will be fun 🙂
So, lots of people linking WaPo & FT article claiming that they see lots of EXCESS deaths BEFORE the COVID-19 deaths came.
These aren't EXCESS deaths. These ARE the deaths!
You're comparing screen-cap dates to REAL death dates.
Here's their data: pic.twitter.com/YcApRLqmaZ
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
Hart touched on this in another thread Brit Hume shared yesterday.
Keep reading:
2/ I'm thinking to myself. I know the NCHS/CDC data pretty well. What are they talking about?https://t.co/scHtnlyFij
Over the past several month I've screaming at the top of my lungs: the data you see on the popular dashboards is NOT the real data.https://t.co/iezvez7pjh
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
You know, the data … no, the SCIENCE we hear a lot of Democratic governors using to justify their draconian lockdowns.
3/ So… If I pull down the same data to look at (and it's changed since Friday) I can rope off things from March to around Apr 4th like they do.
Here's what I show for national: pic.twitter.com/HbuxPvh79e
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
4/ So yeah… it does look like there are about 15K more deaths than recent years… but it's like a 6% difference in either direction which is well within the crazy bounds this domain commands. And all the data lags..
What else… oh… NYC? Here it is: pic.twitter.com/aYkqz4uqWO
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
5/ And then it hits me!
These guys are comparing DASHBOARD data to the CDC data. The dashboard compares cumulative totals and teh CDC network is picking up on ACTUAL deaths.
Remember our discussion this morning on Colorado deaths?https://t.co/UzWen0zRb3
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
Actual deaths versus REPORTED deaths. Hart is talking about a headline grabbing ‘120 DEAD OVERNIGHT FROM COVID’ in Colorado when in all actuality it was three people.
Which is still tragic but clearly not headline-worthy.
6/ I could be wrong but I think these guys are looking at dashboard data for NYC which shows a streak of days with 500+ deaths from the 2nd and 3rd week of April (chart 1)
Sure enough.. look at the mini-graph from WaPo article (chart 2) pic.twitter.com/69xJtsdN71
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
Huh, look at that.
7/ They're flummoxed with the deaths they see at the BEGINNING of April. Only… here's what they're missing. That's when NYC peaked. And we know this b/c NYC is one of the FEW GEOs which publishes deaths by ACTUAL death date. (see my animation)https://t.co/8Xe3au3dGX pic.twitter.com/Ev2s9kysXc
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
Ding ding ding.
9/ In short. We have professional researches using death dates based on screen-scraped data from dashboards with cumulative death totals and comparing it to CDC data which is measuring actual COVID deaths on actual death dates.
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
Yikes.
10/ But no – they're not picking up EXCESS deaths. They're picking up the ACTUAL COVID deaths – only not where they expected them to be.
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
Not excess deaths, actual deaths just LAGGING.
11/ The CDC notes this about its influenza numbers: "The data on influenza testing can lag up to two years after the end of the season"
It will be years before we know the true number of COVID deaths.
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) April 27, 2020
Especially when they are including ‘probable’ deaths from the virus.
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