600,000+ deaths is the died WITH number, not the died FROM number. The actual death count should be scrutinized more thoroughly. The reason why: In March 2020, the CDC issued a memorandum (through the National Vital Statistics System) updating death certificate guidance. The changes, oddly enough, applied only to Covid-19, and effectively threw in the trash the longstanding Medical Examiner’s and Coroner’s Handbook in favor of new, very broad guidance that effectively inverted the importance of co-morbidities in reporting cause of death. In other words, the new guidance does not distinguish between dying with Covid or dying from it.
Importantly, the CDC likely broke three federal laws in abruptly changing the rules on death certification, changes which require 1) 60-day notice; 2) a public comment period; 3) peer review. According the following study, the CDC did none of those things:
The changes resulted in "a very liberal approach to mortality" in the words of Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. More colorfully, Illinois Department of Public Health director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in April, “Technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had Covid at the same time, it’s still listed as a Covid death. So, everyone who’s listed as a Covid death doesn’t mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had Covid at the time of death.” Huh?
There have certainly been discrepancies within the death counts, but I can accept that as a hazard of having to work with the CDC's numbers. Regardless, the fact that the overall trendline of the winter wave unfolded with very close proportions tells me that my decision to extrapolate historical data rather than attempting to model the impact of NPI changes was the correct choice.
However, one thing in the CDC's favor is that the age distribution of the deaths attributed to COVID tracks closely to what would be expected for a population experiencing pandemic-level case loads, rather than the typical age distribution for all causes of death in a normal year.
600,000+ deaths is the died WITH number, not the died FROM number. The actual death count should be scrutinized more thoroughly. The reason why: In March 2020, the CDC issued a memorandum (through the National Vital Statistics System) updating death certificate guidance. The changes, oddly enough, applied only to Covid-19, and effectively threw in the trash the longstanding Medical Examiner’s and Coroner’s Handbook in favor of new, very broad guidance that effectively inverted the importance of co-morbidities in reporting cause of death. In other words, the new guidance does not distinguish between dying with Covid or dying from it.
Importantly, the CDC likely broke three federal laws in abruptly changing the rules on death certification, changes which require 1) 60-day notice; 2) a public comment period; 3) peer review. According the following study, the CDC did none of those things:
https://jdfor2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/adf864_165a103206974fdbb14ada6bf8af1541.pdf
The changes resulted in "a very liberal approach to mortality" in the words of Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. More colorfully, Illinois Department of Public Health director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in April, “Technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had Covid at the same time, it’s still listed as a Covid death. So, everyone who’s listed as a Covid death doesn’t mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had Covid at the time of death.” Huh?
There have certainly been discrepancies within the death counts, but I can accept that as a hazard of having to work with the CDC's numbers. Regardless, the fact that the overall trendline of the winter wave unfolded with very close proportions tells me that my decision to extrapolate historical data rather than attempting to model the impact of NPI changes was the correct choice.
However, one thing in the CDC's favor is that the age distribution of the deaths attributed to COVID tracks closely to what would be expected for a population experiencing pandemic-level case loads, rather than the typical age distribution for all causes of death in a normal year.