How do they count Covid deaths? (w/ Hank Green)
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2024
- After four years and dozens of studies, we know everything we're going to know about the death toll of the Covid pandemic.
WELCOME TO HOWTOWN! Our small but mighty team of two (Joss Fong and Adam Cole) digs into the evidence behind commonly held facts and claims in the news.
We're grateful for the generous support of the Patreon Town Council:
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SOURCES: docs.google.com/document/d/1P...
Chapters:
00:00 hank’s question
01:00 death certificates
02:24 uncertainty
05:25 excess mortality
08:17 the global picture
11:36 closing thoughts
13:14 meanwhile on patreon - Наука та технологія
Thank you for watching! The extended discussion is available here: www.patreon.com/posts/howtown-hall-ep-106073911
Well researched and well produced! I was a frontline worker in the COVID ICU at Mount Sinai in March 2020 and filled out numerous death certificates. At the time, was pulling my hair out at people minimizing the disease - "it wasn't COVID that killed my family member, it was respiratory failure!". The extremely limited understanding of infectious disease and the lack of confidence in science and medicine was upsetting.
I think medical workers and other crisis workers need to have their voices heard, and their abuse recognized. It was like a war or an invasion. When people go to war, they have trauma. It is made worse when people deny that trauma.
I fight these deniers at work constantly. I think they ignore the facts to ease their own minds. They don't want to worry about it, so if I make something up or tow the line of the easy path, I don't have to think about it. It frustrates me to no end.
So did Andrew Cuomo count all those deaths in the nursing homes?
Upsetting but unsurprising. The lack of critical thinking exhibited by a huge faction of our society is downright terrifying.
Its only gonna get worse from here
My friend died of a non-COVID condition when he was not able to continue hospital treatment in 2020. This would not have been listed as a COVID death because it was not due to the virus, but it may have been related to the strain on hospitals because of the pandemic. Thank you for bringing up excess deaths among people who couldn't get other healthcare treatments.
Same happened to my neighbour. He might not still be alive today in either case. But without COVID, he had a good chance of a couple more years. He died of cancer in late May 2020
Something incredible I’ve been noticing is how the wastewater data and positivity rates have been rising and falling in concert with Covid waves but now that data is decoupling. We are seeing spikes in the wastewater now that are being completely missed by testing as it’s become so limited because the “pandemic is over”
Proud and honored to be one of the first subscribers of Howtown
😂
Yeah like when I die I'm gonna have to pass on this account to my grandkids
fo
Joss is back! Missed you at Vox. You have the most pleasant voice to listen to and your stories are always great. This channel will certainly reach the levels of the former Vox journalists turned independent UA-cam journalists (Johnny Harris, Cleo, etc).
this is such a feast of data visualization - what a fantastic job! No one piece of the puzzle is *that* hard to grasp, but the situation as a whole has so many moving pieces that it can become difficult to grasp, and you managed to bring it back to something you can understand, where the graphs and the details and the numbers actually tell the story
So informative. The visuals in your pieces are top-notch, beautiful and help explain the concepts effectively. Love that Howtown exists.
Oh. My Gosh! This describes my husband’s death on 6/17/22! It started with Covid on 7/31/21. He was vaccinated and went into the hospital with Covid, then went downhill. His charts definitely say Covid and Pneumonia and three cardiac arrests and then lungs getting worse after Rendesivir and then on a ventilator until his death 10 1/2 months later. The doctor who signed off on his death certificate was mad at me and a friend because I refused to change my husband’s DNR. My husband would start to get better many times like breathing on his own for 16 1/2 hours and a month later back to one hour after being forced to go to a SNF that didn’t take care of him. This same doctor signed off on my husband’s DC but refused to list COVID as the underlying death. Now FEMA will refuse to refund burial costs because the DC doesn’t list COVID as the underlying cause of his death. Excellent video!
Ugh, that's a lot of tough things to go through. I hope you're doing alright currently.
I'm so sorry to hear this & grateful that you shared. -joss
"it's hard to know stuff"!"
excellent explainer - reminds me of a newspaper editor, a 60-something i knew in a small town in a conservative area. he mentioned how he was sick of people who say that covid was overblown or even fake. i can't remember his exact words but he essentially said "we ran extra full pages of obituaries for weeks. it's not like there's any other explanation" - this video does an excellent job on levels of narrative and scholarship and common sense all at once 🚀
Joss has the voice to either make me super interested in the topic or so soothing that's like a lullaby for me to sleep
That pinch-to-zoom-in effect was so slick 💯
I've watched it multiple times lol
I really like this format of talking to experts, and discussing what you learned with a "layperson" (like Hank Green). It reminds me of the science communication that Alan Alda has done!
Loved not only the data gathering, analysis and reportage, but also the delivery, turning what could be dry coverage into a story with a heartbeat.
5:30 the following anecdote has helped me explain excess deaths to people; I share it so that others might be able to use it as well:
My Dad died of cancer on November 23, 2019 in Phoenix, Arizona.
The crematory that Dad went to apologized profusely to me soon after they received him.
They told me their morgue was full, and that it would be a while before they could process him.
I asked the cremator if this was common. She said no, that she had never seen anything like this in her five years at the crematory.
She said that there was usually an uptick in the winter due to the influx of snowbirds (retirees vacationing to escape the winters bite) and winter disease, but the morgue was never full. This was *different*
Looking back, they suspect it was Covid overage, even before the world was aware.
I’ve talked to other long term funeral professionals in large cities in the US, and they have mentioned similar experiences!
(Disclaimer: Anecdotes are not data, but they can help tell the story!)
Isn't the Phoenix Metro population growing quite quickly?
If existing facilities aren't being expanded this surely explains some of this backlog issue.
But interesting, I haven't heard of the idea that covid was causing such havoc that early
Phoenix is not expanding _that_ quickly that we wouldn’t be able to keep up with baseline levels of death.
Covid existed and had been rapidly spreading for 4 months in China, being reported on as severe pneumonia, before the US public was told by the government to start taking precautions in March 2020. (I remember near the end of 2019 I was relaxing on my sofa listening to a news summary from my brand new google home speaker on how 40 people in China had died from this new mysterious pneumonia. That memory will stay with me for a very long time. Those were just the deaths, not including the early stages of illness nor asymptomatic spread.) No one was quarantining anyone traveling to or from anywhere in that time, unless it was directly from Wuhan, and even that took some time for governments to get started. We don’t have the population density per square mile like NYC has, but the Phoenix metro area is the 5th largest city in the US, it’s completely reasonable for us to be hit hard and early too given how the pandemic got started.
Wonderful production quality. Thanks for presenting this information in such an easy to understand fashion
This channel rules
This channel is going to be an ADHD addiction. I have so many questions all the time and a channel like this will be answering so many of my questions
Love that we now have one more channel that gives high quality content on the not so easy to answer questions!
Omg the editing and effects is PERFECT
Well done. Glad to have this as a resource to help explain why the COVID deaths were not exaggerated. I also love the work of Debunk the Funk in this area.
can you do a video on how do flys always get into homes but never know how to leave
Survivorship bias. Flies have the same problem getting INTO homes but we do not see them (because they are not where we are obv)
Flies are notoriously poor, uneducated, and orphaned, so they don't have much experience with glass. They want to leave, so just remove the glass and they'll promptly leave.
Yeah, and then do the same for brothers-in-law. I want my couch back, Terry!
They don’t want to leave! Too much yummy stuff in the house 😂
At this point Vox is an incubator for UA-cam talent , and thats great !
Such a fascinating, thorough, and well-explained video. Came here from the We’re Here newsletter, and cannot wait to see what’s next from this channel
This was so interesting! I clicked out of curiosity because i'd heard good things about this show, but didn't honestly expect to learn half as much as i did. During COVID I was in touch with lots of healthcare workers, epidemiologists, even morticians. But this explainer was brilliant & the info on the data in the last part was new to me. Thanks!
I'd be interested to know what the death numbers would be like if people worldwide used no mitigations: No masking, no distancing, no vaccines, etc, and carried on like it was 2019.
Woa satan hold your horses
You can compare the US to Canada. People in Canada were willing to comply with distancing, quarantine, masking, vaccination, etc at a very high rate. There was very little denial of COVIDs existence or seriousness. The mortality rate due to COVID was about 1/3 that of the US. Also consider countries like Japan, Singapore and South Korea which did even better at mitigation.
The animations, sound design, and paper show is like a piece of candy for my eyes and ears😮
Thank you Hank for bringing attention to this awesome channel.
I love the use of paper, acetate, and editing to mimic digital effects!
Great video idea! Love seeing you guys swinging with the channel brand!
I quite rarely comment on videos, but I just want you to know, that this was an amazing video. The data visualisation was incredible. Please keep going!
Thank you! comments actually help a lot, so we appreciate it
amazing product, the focus on the process of science is exactly what we need
Joss, you’re out here FLEXING on people with your physically animated graphics. You told these other youtubers “who needs skewmorphism when you have this level of VISION.” People have been ripping off you for years but you never stop making something new. I’ve been a fan for a decade, can’t wait to see where this channel goes.
this is a very well made video that takes care to clearly explain complex things while remaining entertaining. I feel like this channel deserves way more subs
This is so well-done, thank you!
And Joss, I have always loved your voice. I would love if you read audiobooks! Your voice presenting science and data and journalism? The best.
How many people are aware that life insurance policies do NOT pay out for deaths due to a Pandemic?? A patient may have had lingering symptoms or died from them, while no longer testing positive for C19. By the time China started building "field hospitals", phone companies reported that 20M+ Chinese people no longer had mobile phone service... There are over 300M in the U.S. and how many of us know people who have died? I know EIGHT! My own brother bearly survived. My cousin did not.
This is all a complete lie. You should be ashamed of yourself the life inurance companies absolutely paid out benefits during the pandemic. Reporting your comment for rabid misinformation.
I really liked the format of this video!
The discussion of wrong data reminds me of Hans Rosling. He used to say that we were completly misinformed about the state of the world, and that chimpanzees made more accurate guesses!
please keep making videos on controversial topics like this, it honestly is amazing, i don't know if you will get the best engagement (for obvious reasons). but honestly this is perfect!
Editing and visual style are so nice! New subscriber
Wow! This channel quality! Thanks for all the work, super interesting episode.🏅
This channel is going to be massive. Vox but more human and thoughtful? Dang.
Data viz analog transparencies with digital effects, be still my heart.
this channel’s gonna pop off soon i just know it will
This was such a challenging time. It seems like collectively society is still recovering from some of the mental trauma from the isolation.
Joss is an incredible journalist.
Great production. Following and looking forward to more!
Yaaay new Howtown video!
I’ve always loved your videos Joss, so excited to see your own channel!
Love this channel concept, demystifying the facts we know and showing the processes we use to come to those conclusions. Brilliant science communication
Such an exciting channel! I have followed and loved Joss' work on Vox for years and to see more of it is amazing! Cannot wait for more.
I was thinking about this recently! Thank you!!
This was sooo good! Fantastic work!
Very Nice Video! I like your Editing Stil ❤
Fantastic video ! Really good stuff.
Very interesting video and beautifully made!!👏🏼👏🏼
This would be a perfect video to dissect in several school classes. How are statistics calculated, interpreted, presented. How can they be manipulated or misinterpreted. How can facts be used to drive a certain narrative and how do we find out if those are real facts? Which biases can cloud our judgement. Global implications, different health care systems that generate - or don't - these numbers.
Real-world problems and how to deal with them will be a lot more engaging to students
But are you sure you wouldn't rather have prageru teaching about how slavery wasn't actually that bad?
@JasonAtlas I don't know what you mean by that question. Is it irony, as in "these would be excellent problems to teach, but we are stuck with this slavery isn't bad narrative"? /genuine
@@KiraCatlady it was irony. Ive seen some really bad "educational" material from prageru and now it can officially be used in schools in some states.
@@JasonAtlas I didn't know Prageru is an educational platform, I'm not from the US 😶
this kinda ended like a vlogbrothers video and I loved that. great question, super answer!
YES! Give me ALL the Howtown stories 🙌🏼
This channel is awesome. Thank you!
13:37! Nice
This is wonderfully made
This channel deserves more attention and subs! Have you told about this channel to your friends yet?
Very enlightening!💡
I mean every staff who ever worked in Vox and they makes new channel is always have amazing style of making interesting videos
Really great video!!
I have been trying to explain it to people for years and I just fail. Great job with the content im going to be saying to watch this video to people from now on
Can’t remember subscribing but here we are. Might as well enjoy the content
Que orgullo llegar aquí antes de los 30ksubs!
Already a fan 🙋❤
I love Joss, and I love Hank. This episode is perfect.
Good stuff!
That "doctor" from the Montana video was giving major fake vibes. "Look at my stethoscope! Doctors use those sometimes! I needed mine for this press release."
Good video
when it first started Spain was all over the news with so many people on the ventilators, then it stopped. then you never heard anything from spain. the only thing that they said was, it just stopped all of a sudden
good start to the channel i wish
Wow, that was super interesting. Not looking forward to the conspiracy comments...
SOOoooooooo good!
Wow, wow!
When Joss' VO enters *Chef's Kiss
Joss the Boss!!!!
I see Joss, I like
Joss data vid at its best 🎉
well made video! horrifying stuff
I'm so angry at people with power and/or influence (big side eye at uhm I'm not gonna say it) who minimize this virus
The music playing in the "background" from ~11:00 is too loud, and makes it difficult to hear what is being said. Just as feedback for future videos. :)
I didn't personally have an issue with it - listening with headphones so not sure how it would be on mobile.
thanks for the feedback!
I found the music before the closing thoughts section very distracting. Great vid.
One question I had when watching the section regarding excess deaths was, how many fewer deaths were happening in 2020 due to so many people not driving and the deaths due to accidents were so much lower. (But of course other causes of death you mentioned went up)
I was also wondering about this and when I looked at the data for the US, I found that car accidents went up during the pandemic, not down! I'm not sure why. -joss
gl
11:06 Wrong interpretation...
This was such a fantastic video and felt really vindicating because when I saw it becoming a political stance at the time, regarding where you stood on COVID and its severity, it infuriated me to see the levels of ignorance that were spouted with complete self assured arrogance. I'm a scientist and during COVID was working in a clinical microbiology lab and when I saw people talking about tests not being accurate or representative it was like watching armchair doctors who 1 month ago didnt know what PCR stood for, and probably still didnt, now being the foremost experts.
When the whole "reporting of deaths" conversation started, I remember thinking how stupid it was that people genuinelt believed that if you died from anything else, with a positive result, that the cause of death would be listed as COVID, people thouhht if you have a positive COVID result and were in a car crash, that it would be COVID on your death certificate. The internal logic was ridiculous too, how many people did they think were dying from all these excessive reasons, during an enforced lockdown enough to cause the spike anyway?
But I looked into exactly what you've talked about here for the UK, where i live. regarding how death certificated are filled out, and how the office for national statistics went about using that data from the NHS to collect the COVID data. and as expected from any cautious central goverment body, they felt they could only work with and publish exact knowns.
And when I was reading throuh all their stuff and how they would discount certain factors when they defined COVID deaths if they couldnt be exactly certain it was the primary cause, such as the timing of a positive COVID result needing to be a certain time period from death etc. Etc. I was like "holy shit its actually the exact opposite of what everyone is spouting about, the numbers arent inflated, if anything their caution on being accurate has put so many restrictions that theyre under reporting it". The ONS even recognised this themselves at the time and, bevause it was VERY early on, said while their official numbers state 35,000 COVID deaths with their tight criteria, it was more realistically 75 to 80,000
I know people that had covid but i don't know anyone that died from it. Someone in my family had it and it probably worsen her state she died sometime after felling better.
❤
I know your voice from another channel somewhere
Proud to be subscriber of @Howtown and @Search-Party you guys seriously make the best entertaining and informing content!!
How do they know dinosaurs made sounds?
Another Shameful expose for Modi and his incomptence
Unfortunately, COVID death statistics can't cover people who die months or years later due to organ damage from COVID. Perhaps some statistics could be extracted showing people dying from various diseases associated with aging with mean age lower than would be expected before the pandemic. The disability toll from COVID is another statistic that doesn't seem to be evaluated. Long COVID is bad enough, but some people end up with apparently permanent disabling problems. I was talking with a physiotherapist recently who is working with a group of women age 18-25 who have dysautonomia mostly secondary to COVID. These young women experience dangerous tachycardia at the least exertion and have to spend most of their time lying down. It's enough to keep me wearing a mask indoors in public places.
Is it true that you could get paid for reporting COVID cases? I wonder if that had an impact on the numbers.
Harder to get a clear picture on this because of all of the political corruption... Makes me extra skeptical about everything.
Good news is that the excess deaths statistic doesn't require you to trust anyone. It doesn't give us a precise number but it broadly confirms the scale of the deaths in the US. As to your question, the doctors did not receive more money for covid patients. The hospitals received government assistance for medicare patient stays from covid (not patient deaths). If you think enough doctors would care enough about their hospital's revenue to lie, and that it would happen on a scale large enough to show up in the million -plus death toll, then I'd just recommend looking at excess mortality to get a general sense of how many we lost. -joss
@@Howtown You make very good points... Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Exceptionally polished as always, Joss!
dggL good video
أنا من أول متابعين القناة
Props for those graphs.
They were 🌟sexy🌟.