COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It sounds to me like they just made this life expectancy calculation based on the 2020 data and nothing else.  In other words, they are assuming that 2020 represents the new normal going forward, and that covid will be the 3rd leading cause of death in the US for the foreseeable future.  Which is just unbelievably stupid.

Hmm?

Life expectancy is just an average. Weighted maybe, but an average. If a bunch of people die unexpectedly, however that happens, life expectancy goes down because of it, even if we know that won't repeat.

Right, but certainly not enough people died of covid just in 2020 to reduce overall life expectancy by 2%.   Less than 0.2% of Americans died, and they probably lost on average something like 10 years of life, since most were over 65 already.   Given this, the actually loss of life expectancy due to covid should be closer to 0.02%, not 2%.  It might be more like 2% if you assume 500k people are going to die of covid every year going forward.

If hundreds of thousands of people die who otherwise would not, then such reduces life expectancy. So far we are counting almost entirely direct kills of COVID-19 and perhaps some side kills (like suicides and drug overdoses due to economic and social distress).

The full effect of COVID-19 upon subsequent morbidity of survivors is not yet known. We know that certain conditions such as diabetes and cirrhosis shorten the life expectancy of anyone who has them. Likewise, anyone who has had any heart attack, stroke, or cancer is prone to more of the same.

People may not survive unscathed.

You are right that if hundreds of thousands of people die who otherwise would not, this reduces life expectancy.  But it cannot possibly reduce life expectancy by this much.  It’s off by several orders of magnitude.  

In order to reduce life expectancy by 2%, a virus would have to kill AT LEAST 2% of the entire US population.  And in reality, it would need to kill a lot more than 2% of the entire population, because it is mostly killing old people.   Given the age profile of covid deaths, it would need to kill more like 20% of the entire population.  But it didn’t kill 20%, or 2%; it killed 0.2%

I don’t care how many secondary effects you care to count; it still doesn’t get anywhere close to this estimate.  Has anyone defending this actually tried to think through the numbers they are implying?

Around 3 million Americans die annually or about 1% of the population.

What would be the effect if that were reduced to 0% so that nobody died - ever.

What would be life expectancy? Methuselah would be a youngin.

Going from 0% to 1% reduces life expectancy from 969+ years to 80 years. Why do you think that going from 1% to 1.2% would only reduce life expectancy by 0.2%?

An extra 0.2% of people dying per year would indeed reduce life expectancy by more than 0.2%; and depending on the age of the people dying, it might indeed reduce it by the 2% suggested in this study.

Howevr, 0.2% of people don’t die of covid per year.  0.2% of people died of covid in one particularly year. 

If people generally lived 1000 years, and then in one year a virus killed 1% of them, but then the other 99% went on to living 1000 years, this wouldn’t reduce life expectancy to 80, it would reduce it to about 990.

And this is exactly what I’ve been suggested is wrong with this study.  I think it is assuming that 2020 is now a representative year, and that if 0.2% of people died of covid that year, we should assume thjat 0.2% of people will keep dying of covid every year going forward.  And this is just silly.

[emailking]

And this is exactly what I’ve been suggested is wrong with this study.  I think it is assuming that 2020 is now a representative year, and that if 0.2% of people died of covid that year, we should assume thjat 0.2% of people will keep dying of covid every year going forward.  And this is just silly.

But is it assuming that against best practices for calculating life expectancy, or is that just how a life expectancy calculation works? In other words, don't the other years where the extra Covid deaths don't happen have to elapse first before they have the impact you suggested, even if we're highly confident they will elapse that way?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Kansas City hospitals turning away patients due to COVID surge

Like other hospitals in the Kansas City region, the University of Kansas Health System is turning down transfer patients because its beds are full, setting up a potential crisis, its chief medical officer said Wednesday.

“I think we’re at a tipping point,” Steve Stites said during KU’s daily briefing. “If we don’t take it seriously, we could easily end up back where we were in November.”

The hospital is “running full steam,” like others in the metro, because of an increase in COVID-19 patients and others returning to the hospital who may have stayed away at the height of the pandemic.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

And this is exactly what I’ve been suggested is wrong with this study.  I think it is assuming that 2020 is now a representative year, and that if 0.2% of people died of covid that year, we should assume thjat 0.2% of people will keep dying of covid every year going forward.  And this is just silly.

But is it assuming that against best practices for calculating life expectancy, or is that just how a life expectancy calculation works? In other words, don't the other years where the extra Covid deaths don't happen have to elapse first before they have the impact you suggested, even if we're highly confident they will elapse that way?

I don’t know. But if that is the assumed best practice for how to calculate life expectancy, then in this case the best practice is simply wrong and we shouldn’t be reporting this story as though it represents someting real.

[emailking]

Here's the CDC report:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR015-508.pdf

Nothing jumps out at me as an error. It seems that's just how it's calculated. I don't think there's an issue with reporting it. You've given the caveats. Covid deaths will likely decline so life expectancy will likely go back up.

[pbrower2a]

Here's the CDC report:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR015-508.pdf

Nothing jumps out at me as an error. It seems that's just how it's calculated. I don't think there's an issue with reporting it. You've given the caveats. Covid deaths will likely decline so life expectancy will likely go back up.

The charts explain much. Changes in life expectancy that result from COVID-19 dwarf everything else. COVID-19 is new and it ravaged Hispanic populations more than it did non-Hispanic whites or even blacks. Hispanic populations in America had made rapid increases in life expectancy in recent years due to improving economic circumstances. But Hispanics tend to live in more-crowded communities which may make personal networks stronger but also make those networks excellent conduits for a respiratory disease that proves unusually contagious and lethal. As an example of the strength of such networks, a heat wave that killed large numbers of poor people in Chicago killed relatively few Mexican-Americans. What happened? Mexican-Americans were looking out for each other and making sure that the poorest among them at the least had fans and could keep windows open for circulation -- and were checking up on the most vulnerable of them, especially the elderly, to ensure that they were OK. Blacks and poor whites were less likely to have people looking out for them. That made the difference, and that dwarfed any differences of poverty.

A culture that works well for some things might fail for others. Many Hispanics work in activities such as food processing, hospitality, and retailing in which they are exposed to any bug that might circulate. This time it was COVID-19.   

COVID-19 dwarfed other forms of death as a new cause. Maybe people to some extent were dying of COVID-19 instead of something else, like cancer or strokes; COVID-19 certainly ravaged vulnerable people such as those with organ damage or impaired immune systems (as from HIV-AIDS). Even so, COVID-19 caused far more deaths that would not otherwise have happened.

COVID-19 will die when it has no new people to infect. Right-wing media have been slow to push inoculation, but the numbers may start to look bad for them. When someone like Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity tells people to get inoculated, then people who never got the message before or thought themselves charmed will start getting the message. As people who thought that Divine Providence would do more to protect them than would a couple of inoculations start getting immunity from COVID-19 because they get inoculations, COVID-19 will die off. But in the mean time, those who have endured partial suffocation while sick with COVID-19 will have organ damage, diabetes, and perhaps mental loss that makes them vulnerable to much else. Such will reduce life expectancies until those people are extinct.

Nobody has the full story yet; it will take perhaps twenty years to get a coherent picture of the full effect.     

[Dr. Arch]

The Department of Health of Puerto Rico, via administrative order, is mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for anyone 12 or older and who is coming back to an in-person educational institution for the fall semester.

If you want an education and to not put anyone else in danger, vaccinate yourself in the same way that it was required for Polio, Measles, etc. Otherwise, skip out.

More of this is needed nationwide.

[jamestroll]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1418235650101415943

I love drew!

[Del Tachi]

It sounds to me like they just made this life expectancy calculation based on the 2020 data and nothing else.  In other words, they are assuming that 2020 represents the new normal going forward, and that covid will be the 3rd leading cause of death in the US for the foreseeable future.  Which is just unbelievably stupid.

Life expectancy is calculated as the average length of life for a hypothetical cohort of people assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed for one particular period of time (in this case the year 2020.)  Higher total mortality rates will always decrease life expectancy when it is calculated this way. A population that has more total death has lower life expectancy.         

Remember that life expectancy is a function of observed deaths, not the survivorship or age of the living (i.e., we can safely assume that everyone will die at some point, lol.) 

Even if we assume COVID didn't change mortality rates for the cohort of people younger than age 80, it would still lower overall life expectancy because more 85 or 90-year olds would be dying.  The change in mortality would mean we'd expect fewer 30-year olds to live to age 90 (and all subsequent ages, too) which decreases the total population life expectancy.  This should seem intuitive once you remember life expectancy is an average.  If we engaged in gerocide Children of Men-style and murdered everyone on their 90th birthday life expectancy would go down because we'd be "moving up" all deaths that would have happened at age 91, 92, 93, etc. 

[Donerail]

Masks back at my place of employment and at most non-chain restaurants and retail, regardless of vaccination status.

[emailking]

NFL says coronavirus outbreaks among unvaccinated players may lead to forfeits this season

If a National Football League game cannot be rescheduled and is canceled due to a Covid-19 outbreak among unvaccinated players, that team will have to forfeit and will be credited with a loss, the NFL said in a league-wide memo obtained by CNN.

The new rule makes being unvaccinated a competitive disadvantage this year, all part of the league's push to get players and staff inoculated ahead of the coming season. The NFL has also said that any team that vaccinates 85% of its players and staff can relax their safety protocols and has applied looser rules to vaccinated players.

"If a game cannot be rescheduled within the current 18-week schedule and is cancelled due to a Covid outbreak among non-vaccinated players on one of the competing teams, the club with the outbreak will forfeit the contest and will be deemed to have played 16 games for purposes of draft, waiver priority, etc. For the purposes of playoff seeding, the forfeiting team will be credited with a loss and the other team will be credited with a win," the NFL memo sent Thursday states.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/sport/nfl-covid-forfeit-vaccine/index.html

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1418235650101415943

I love drew!

Well, that is not exactly wrong. If there are renewed restrictions, the same idiots who ignored them earlier will also ignore them now.

However, it is effectively the same sort of argument as the argument that you should not bother voting (and voting for Democrats specifically), because even if you do vote for Democrats, and even if they do get a trifecta, they won't bother to do anything to stop "Republic"ans from rigging the electoral system (and the judicial system) in their favor, and consequently they won't be able to do anything regarding any policy issues in the future either, even if you continue to vote for them, and even if they suddenly changed to the point where they would actually do something if you did vote for them and if they did in the future actually manage to overcome all the obstacles that they previously (i.e. now) failed to eliminate that block them from doing anything - along with (probably/presumably) additional obstacles that "Republic"ans will probably add as soon as they re-gain power.

Likewise that appears not to be wrong either. It is also is essentially defeatist, and amounts to giving up. I can understand the impulse, but..... It is also like saying after Pearl Harbor that we may as well give up, because doing otherwise would be incredibly costly and difficult. And true, it was incredibly costly and difficult.

Or like saying at the start of the civil war that it is not worth bothering to keep the Union together and end the scourge of slavery, because the south would just continue to cause problems in the future (also not exactly wrong).

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It sounds to me like they just made this life expectancy calculation based on the 2020 data and nothing else.  In other words, they are assuming that 2020 represents the new normal going forward, and that covid will be the 3rd leading cause of death in the US for the foreseeable future.  Which is just unbelievably stupid.

Life expectancy is calculated as the average length of life for a hypothetical cohort of people assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed for one particular period of time (in this case the year 2020.)  Higher total mortality rates will always decrease life expectancy when it is calculated this way. A population that has more total death has lower life expectancy.         

Remember that life expectancy is a function of observed deaths, not the survivorship or age of the living (i.e., we can safely assume that everyone will die at some point, lol.) 

Even if we assume COVID didn't change mortality rates for the cohort of people younger than age 80, it would still lower overall life expectancy because more 85 or 90-year olds would be dying.  The change in mortality would mean we'd expect fewer 30-year olds to live to age 90 (and all subsequent ages, too) which decreases the total population life expectancy.  This should seem intuitive once you remember life expectancy is an average.  If we engaged in gerocide Children of Men-style and murdered everyone on their 90th birthday life expectancy would go down because we'd be "moving up" all deaths that would have happened at age 91, 92, 93, etc. 

If covid only changes the mortality rate for people over 80, it should only have any effect on the life expectancy of 30-year olds if covid is still a raging pandemic 50 years from now.  And that appears to be what this study is assuming.  

If you think this is a reasonable assumption, then I suppose the “everyone needs to wear masks everywhere forever” policy is right on the mark.

You say life expectancy is an average, and obviously this is true.  But the big question is “an average of what?”.   To answer this, we need to ask what range of data represents the best reflection of what we think the future will look like.  Is 2020 the best reflection of the future, or will some wider lens give us a more reasonable estimate?  I would suggest that 2020 is -not- a representative year, and we’ll get a much better prediction by, for instance, averaging the last several years.

The report we were given is somewhat like saying “Life expectancy in New York City fell 40 years on September 11, 2001”.  And indeed, if you assume, based on data from that day, that 3000 NYC residents will die every day in terrorist attacks going forward, this might be a reasonable claim.  But the assumption is obviously ridiculous, and makes the conclusion worthless from a practical standpoint.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1418260805527736320

Excellent approach.  If someone chooses not to get vaccinated, they can still attend such events -- but they have to have a negative test, and they need to pay for it.  People who want their freedom to not vaccinate should bear some responsibility for that choice.

[pbrower2a]

Too many people have yet to get inoculated, so it might be good to have mask mandates in areas in which COVID-19 is ravaging the public.

[Del Tachi]

It sounds to me like they just made this life expectancy calculation based on the 2020 data and nothing else.  In other words, they are assuming that 2020 represents the new normal going forward, and that covid will be the 3rd leading cause of death in the US for the foreseeable future.  Which is just unbelievably stupid.

Life expectancy is calculated as the average length of life for a hypothetical cohort of people assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed for one particular period of time (in this case the year 2020.)  Higher total mortality rates will always decrease life expectancy when it is calculated this way. A population that has more total death has lower life expectancy.         

Remember that life expectancy is a function of observed deaths, not the survivorship or age of the living (i.e., we can safely assume that everyone will die at some point, lol.) 

Even if we assume COVID didn't change mortality rates for the cohort of people younger than age 80, it would still lower overall life expectancy because more 85 or 90-year olds would be dying.  The change in mortality would mean we'd expect fewer 30-year olds to live to age 90 (and all subsequent ages, too) which decreases the total population life expectancy.  This should seem intuitive once you remember life expectancy is an average.  If we engaged in gerocide Children of Men-style and murdered everyone on their 90th birthday life expectancy would go down because we'd be "moving up" all deaths that would have happened at age 91, 92, 93, etc. 

If covid only changes the mortality rate for people over 80, it should only have any effect on the life expectancy of 30-year olds if covid is still a raging pandemic 50 years from now.  And that appears to be what this study is assuming. 

If you think this is a reasonable assumption, then I suppose the “everyone needs to wear masks everywhere forever” policy is right on the mark.

You say life expectancy is an average, and obviously this is true.  But the big question is “an average of what?”.   To answer this, we need to ask what range of data represents the best reflection of what we think the future will look like.  Is 2020 the best reflection of the future, or will some wider lens give us a more reasonable estimate?  I would suggest that 2020 is -not- a representative year, and we’ll get a much better prediction by, for instance, averaging the last several years.

The report we were given is somewhat like saying “Life expectancy in New York City fell 40 years on September 11, 2001”.  And indeed, if you assume, based on data from that day, that 3000 NYC residents will die every day in terrorist attacks going forward, this might be a reasonable claim.  But the assumption is obviously ridiculous, and makes the conclusion worthless from a practical standpoint.

Lol, this study is not "assuming"...this is how life expectancy is calculated as a basic statistical measure

You seem to think life expectancy is a prediction about the future.  In reality, it is a measure of the present, based on the current total mortality curve for the entire population.

Surely you understand why we cannot predict when people will die 30 or 40 years from now?  lol 

[pbrower2a]

COVID-19 kills directly and damages its survivors. People who survive partial suffocation or anoxia often have severe consequences that last a lifetime. This is so with partial-drowning victims, "huffers" such as glue and solvent sniffers, and people put on ventilators for other conditions. Even those who climb high mountains lose mental capacity as a consequence of shortness of oxygen.

Survivors will get conditions likely to short3en their lives.

[pbrower2a]

I have posted this elsewhere:

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thread-6002-post-78058.html#pid78058

Some conclusions that I draw...
 
1. It may surprise many of us that Hispanic populations have overtaken non-Hispanic whites, let alone blacks, in life expectancy. That may reflect culture. Hispanic culture seems much more optimistic and life-affirming than the non-Hispanic mainstream.

(snark not related to this thread on Talk Elections)

2. So what causes the higher life expectancy among Hispanic-Americans despite being poorer as a whole? First, not smoking as much. The second-lowest state in the percentage of smokers is California, which has a surprisingly-large Mormon population (that is part of it; Utah is 51st among the States and the federal district in consumption of tobacco products, and California is a distant 50th), and Hispanics account for much of the low smoking rate in California. Not smoking offsets the effects of air pollution in infamously-smoggy L.A. Texas, which has some very poor populations as in states to its east from Oklahoma in the west to North Carolina and Georgia in the east, is below average in tobacco use and the states to its east are all above average. (Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia fit this pattern, too of poverty and heavy smoking). Texas Hispanics, largely Mexican-Americans, are really-light smokers. That explains much. Another factor is that Hispanics have more tightly-knit communities. One is not alone, which explains how Mexican-Americans were much less-likely than others to die during a heat wave in Chicago in 2015. Someone was looking out for elderly Hispanics to make sure that they had fans and could keep their windows open. Blacks and poor whites often got neglected... and died for that neglect.

3. The strengths of Hispanic communities depend upon them being close to each other. With COVID-19 that may have been too close in housing, let alone many workplaces (as in food-processing places in which many of them work) or in the hospitality business and retailing in which they see everyone, infected or not. COVID-19 ravaged Hispanics as it did not ravage non-Hispanic whites or even blacks. Non-Cuban Hispanics vote heavily Democratic irrespective of economic status, and if they endured a disproportionate number of deaths from COVID-19, then that made have made the 2020 vote closer in Arizona and Nevada than many of us expected.

4. Declines in life expectancy by ethnicity and gender were as follows:

Hispanic male -3.7
non-Hispanic black male -3.3
Non-Hispanic black female -2.4
Hispanic female -2.0
non-Hispanic white male -1.3
non-Hispanic white female -1.1   

Political consequences are possible and even likely. This may have made elections in Arizona (Hispanics), Georgia (blacks), Michigan (blacks), Nevada (Hispanics),  Pennsylvania (blacks), and Wisconsin (blacks) closer than one might have expected in January 2020.  COVID-19 might have made a difference in Florida and North Carolina, which many liberals thought might go D. Texas, which has large numbers of blacks and Hispanics, might have been much closer without COVID-19. Most deaths were of people of voting age, so political effects would be felt in 2020.

I'm not accusing anyone of political manipulation. COVID-19 certainly disenfranchised black and Hispanic voters discriminatorily, whether the effect was design or accident. Draw whatever conclusions you wish.

5. People may have been dying of COVID-19 instead of something else, like cancer, strokes, HIV, cirrhosis, diabetes, or dementia. For people in weakened conditions, COVID-19 might have been the official killer on a death certificate -- but COVID-19 dwarfs those causes combined.

6, The most obvious limitation on this study is time.  We do not know what effects will arise in the future, but they cannot be good. Maybe the distribution of vulnerable people will change from 2020 to 2021. COVID-19 survivors often endure complications that themselves shorten life. Compromised organs and brains will cause trouble for decades among relatively-young survivors. Diabetes is a multi-organ plight. If COVID-19 does not kill outright it can still shorten life. 

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This Senator Cruz didn't live up to its guarantee. Where can we exchange it for a new one?

https://twitter.com/BadCOVID19Takes/status/1418179020412362755

[pbrower2a]

This Senator Cruz didn't live up to its guarantee. Where can we exchange it for a new one?

https://twitter.com/BadCOVID19Takes/status/1418179020412362755

Maybe he could admit that he was wrong. Maybe he could tell people that COVID-19 is real and deadly... and if you have not gotten fully inoculated yet, then complete the task!

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

There isn't a cure for the common cold and never was that's why we still in this Covid Recession, but people are taking it to the extreme, Doctors cannot cure the Common cold when you are at the Hospital, going to hospital over Covid, doesn't solve your problem

It has to do with your A1C level, high sugar levels maintain fevers

That's why injections and protein shots that are in the freezer and meds bring down your A1C levels to eradicate the virus

The same meds they use in IVs is I'm the Covid shot, so stop going to ICUs, I went one time and that was it

[jamestroll]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1418235650101415943

I love drew!

Well, that is not exactly wrong. If there are renewed restrictions, the same idiots who ignored them earlier will also ignore them now.

However, it is effectively the same sort of argument as the argument that you should not bother voting (and voting for Democrats specifically), because even if you do vote for Democrats, and even if they do get a trifecta, they won't bother to do anything to stop "Republic"ans from rigging the electoral system (and the judicial system) in their favor, and consequently they won't be able to do anything regarding any policy issues in the future either, even if you continue to vote for them, and even if they suddenly changed to the point where they would actually do something if you did vote for them and if they did in the future actually manage to overcome all the obstacles that they previously (i.e. now) failed to eliminate that block them from doing anything - along with (probably/presumably) additional obstacles that "Republic"ans will probably add as soon as they re-gain power.

Likewise that appears not to be wrong either. It is also is essentially defeatist, and amounts to giving up. I can understand the impulse, but..... It is also like saying after Pearl Harbor that we may as well give up, because doing otherwise would be incredibly costly and difficult. And true, it was incredibly costly and difficult.

Or like saying at the start of the civil war that it is not worth bothering to keep the Union together and end the scourge of slavery, because the south would just continue to cause problems in the future (also not exactly wrong).

So you are advocating for lockdowns that still won't stop the spread ?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1418274325405241350

[Hammy]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1418235650101415943

I love drew!

Well, that is not exactly wrong. If there are renewed restrictions, the same idiots who ignored them earlier will also ignore them now.

However, it is effectively the same sort of argument as the argument that you should not bother voting (and voting for Democrats specifically), because even if you do vote for Democrats, and even if they do get a trifecta, they won't bother to do anything to stop "Republic"ans from rigging the electoral system (and the judicial system) in their favor, and consequently they won't be able to do anything regarding any policy issues in the future either, even if you continue to vote for them, and even if they suddenly changed to the point where they would actually do something if you did vote for them and if they did in the future actually manage to overcome all the obstacles that they previously (i.e. now) failed to eliminate that block them from doing anything - along with (probably/presumably) additional obstacles that "Republic"ans will probably add as soon as they re-gain power.

Likewise that appears not to be wrong either. It is also is essentially defeatist, and amounts to giving up. I can understand the impulse, but..... It is also like saying after Pearl Harbor that we may as well give up, because doing otherwise would be incredibly costly and difficult. And true, it was incredibly costly and difficult.

Or like saying at the start of the civil war that it is not worth bothering to keep the Union together and end the scourge of slavery, because the south would just continue to cause problems in the future (also not exactly wrong).

So you are advocating for lockdowns that still won't stop the spread ?

There are many, many measures between "do absolutely nothing and let the virus spread unstopped" and "lock everything down"

[Progressive Pessimist]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1418274325405241350

Chip Roy is another, of many, underrated atrocious House Republicans who deserve more infamy.