The death rate clearly spiked in the last reported week. I guess it could be argued that this is due to other causes but they’ve clearly marked respiratory problems and Covid. — I like sushi

So

1) A spike in the death rate is only a snapshot at a particular moment. The 6000 extra people who died last week are not now available to form the pool of people who will die next week. This would be irrelevant if Covid-19 did not preferentially target those with underlying problems, but it does.

2) 'crude' here doesn't mean estimated, it means that the actual people forming the deaths are not the same actual people forming the cases in the same week. So saying 'x deaths from y cases this week' is a crude figure. The x deaths came from the amount of cases there were last week (assuming it takes people a week to die).

3) 2000 cases from respiratory conditions is not far off normal. It's the amount of cases with underlying health problems being pushed over the edge that is the real problem here. The key thing there being that we don't know how many of them would have died anyway, nor will we until the year's figures are out.

Anecdotally, I look at respiratory viral panels all the time and it's rare to see more than one virus at a time. — frank

Interesting. I'll dig out the paper I got my figures from when I get home. I may have misunderstood it.

(1) No idea what that means or how it counters anything I said? The figures give are for week ending April 3. Clearly there is a spike in deaths.

(2) I know what ‘crude’ means. Look back several pages where I mentioned this. The figures for deaths (ALL deaths) are not ‘crude’. The deaths for last week ARE crude - meaning they are not official figures because it takes time to account for all deaths.

(3) No, it’s not. I said that we’ll have a better picture soon enough. An extra 500 cases is a significant rise though.

The data is there is black and white: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

Maybe you’re comparing April to Dec and Jan. That is faulty because the death toll during the winter months in the UK is always significantly higher - there is certainly room to question the event of respiratory illness being particularly worse in April for some reason? Perhaps hay fever plays a role in this? Honestly, I’ve no idea. It seems like a reasonable thought to assume that people suffering with respiratory problems may be effected more in hay fever season (I guess looking up the pollen count would clear that up quickly enough - the season falls from March to May, so there may have been a spike in the pollen count that week?)

3) 2000 cases from respiratory conditions is not far off normal. It's the amount of cases with underlying health problems being pushed over the edge that is the real problem here. The key thing there being that we don't know how many of them would have died anyway, nor will we until the year's figures are out. — Isaac

The statistical analysis of this general issue I've seen so far, is that getting the virus doubles your chances of death of the year compared to your risk group. Young healthy people have a low risk of yearly death, so absolute numbers are low but there are still young people dying.

The affect your talking about, if I understand you correctly, also only really kicks in with large numbers and even then the effect is low.

For instance, if there is a risk group with 10% chance of respiratory death this year, and getting the virus increases those chances by double, then there is a of collision between Covid deaths and other respiratory deaths. But if those diseases are distributed randomly the collision is not much. E.i. if this group is 100 people, then the odds that the 10 people expected to die from Covid would happen to be the 10 people expected to die from influenza, is extremely low.

So, even though people dying of Covid are in high-risk groups, it is a mistake to assume "they would likely, individually, go onto to die from respiratory illness anyways, or even any other illness".

It is only true of people in risk categories such as "80% chance of dying next week" who get Covid and die this week; but these risk categories are very small in absolute numbers.

Of course, if Covid deaths are kept low due to extreme social distancing, then the deaths (in this first phase) are mostly sensitive to when the measures are put in place. If the virus is replicating along a pathway of a doubling time every 3 days, then a week delay in required measures will have dramatic effect; 2 week delay and the results are no longer really comparable.

(This is why Trump supporters are not angry about the delays and inventing excuses; they do not understand the basic math, as I'm sure you'd agree).

I'm not sure you're even arguing / implying something against what I emphasize above, or are just compiling all the statistical minutia of relations to consider.

In terms of adding to the list, a big one that can not only nullify the affect of high-risk groups decreasing in absolute size (due to dying), but actually reverse that tendency, is that the virus may cause long term lung damage.

So, if every 70 year old got the disease, all else being equal, we may expect that demographic cohort to have less deaths post-pandemic, simply due to their numbers being smaller or perhaps particularly weak breathers being culled from the heard. However, if long term injury increases the risk-of-death factor for survivors of Covid, then you may end up with more deaths in absolute terms next year due to lung injuries or other long term Covid treatment complications. (likewise for every other demographic cohort)

Long story short, some Covid deaths would have died anyways, but expected overlap is small (extreme bias towards this group getting Covid would be needed for a significant overlap), and long-term injury may compensate, even significantly over-compensate, this overlap by increasing the risk-of-death factor for these risk groups (indeed all risk groups).

(1) No idea what that means or how it counters anything I said? The figures give are for week ending April 3. Clearly there is a spike in deaths. — I like sushi

Yes, my reading of these numbers is the same as yours, there's clearly a large increase in respiratory deaths. Of course, lot's of caveats can tweak things one way or another; I'm not sure Isaac is saying effects he's pointing too are significant or not.

What is clear, however, is that we have a phenomenon that can quickly overwhelm a heath system with (in any remotely plausible analysis) only a small fraction of people being affected by that phenomenon.

There are now 2 million official cases world-wide, and an economic depression has been triggered due to lock-downs needed to keep things remotely within health care capacity. We're 7 billion. So a short back of the envelope calculation of getting to heard immunity with current health capacity is easily dozens of months (even with super-duper high assumptions of asymptomatic; i.e. even if real cases right now are 200 million, is still months and months to process severe cases at that rate). This is what people are currently not understanding ... but they will soon.

An overlooked super spreader. Cool. — frank

Ok. I asked a doctor. They said I'm not increasing the transmission risk by washing the sink how I wash it. Absent a good justification, I'm gonna take their word over yours.

Edit: Ok, that's 2 doctors who agree that it's good to wash the sink how I wash it.

He meant the cleaning station is the super spreader, not you. This is evidenced by his use of the word "cool", if he were accusing you of that he would not be cool about it.

I hope so. I don't think I've ever seen @frank use the word cool when it wasn't sarcastically insulting someone though.

We're going to have to social distance until we get a vaccine. The virus is not going to put up the white flag and leave us alone. That shouldn't be news to anyone at this point. Lockdowns are just one form of enforced social distancing and they'll be ending well before social distancing does. I don't think anyone is arguing we should continue those indefinitely. — Baden

Though I agree with your points about social distancing going to be with us for a while, that "We're going to have to social distance until we get a vaccine" is not a certainty.

Vaccine science and technology is pretty bad in terms of rapidly developing and deploying a new vaccine as well as efficacy in general.

Certain diseases have had no successful vaccines despite decades of work and motivation on them, while other vaccines have really poor efficacy.

True, a lot of effort is going into vaccine for Coronavirus in a short period of time, but the sequential limitations to research and development is generally a trustworthy truism (the "a manager is one who believes nine pregnant women can produce a baby in one month" adage).

There is also serious concerns in the evolutionary community about vaccines with low efficacy. If the vaccine works for some, but simply doesn't work for others and the majority just get a mild form of the disease then (even with 100% compliance) a huge amount of people still get the disease as normal.

What can be much worse, is that a large group getting a milder form of the disease can apply evolutionary pressure to the virus to be "better replicator" and so then cause more severe disease in the people for whom the vaccine simply didn't work at all.

So, with an "imperfect vaccine" (the technical term) it may look good on paper but not actually change anything; it could result in 70% having a milder disease but 30% of people having a much worse disease. It is not a resolved issue of how good an imperfect vaccine needs to be to be worth it.

So, a magic bullet vaccine or magic bullet treatment is possible, but it is not guaranteed on a time frame relevant to us. Some diseases resist magic bullet solutions, some don't, and it's impossible to to know ahead of time.

The alternative to a magic bullet is simply muddling through (more-or-less chaotic social distancing) over about 1-3 years depending on the true infection-fatality-rate.

I meant that if no one cleans the station then one person could potentially infect a bunch of people. So you're helping people stay healthy.

Ah good. I'm glad.

It's generally agreed that power corrupts, and historically we have fought the tyranny of religious institutions and governments by placing strict limitations on their power. In the US, we have decreed certain limitations on government power and described them as inalienable rights endowed by no less than the Creator.

What limitations do we place on the power of the medical community in dictating how the average citizen is to live? Are we really that comfortable in saying that that community is above the political fray and that its only agenda is the altruistic protection of society and that it cannot be bought off, swayed, or led by those with less than pure motive?

All these final decisions are being made by our executive branches (President, governors, and mayors) without legislative act and so far with no judicial oversight. On this board, we sort through various websites and largely agree (with some exceptions) that our executives are considering reliable material and are making proper decisions. This strikes me as wrong, if for no other reason than I think everyone is biased one way or the other (malicious or not), and we have no checks or balances on anything. In fact, anyone who disputes the official line is shouted down as a idiot and murderer.

In the US, we have decreed certain limitations on government power and described them as inalienable rights endowed by no less than the Creator. — Hanover

The rest of your argument falls flat on anyone who doesn't believe in this Creator if that's how you intend to justify it.

All these final decisions are being made by our executive branches (President, governors, and mayors) without legislative act and so far with no judicial oversight — Hanover

You aren't objecting to the way NY arrived at its decisions are you? Just smaller communities where the lockdown is presently causing hardship?

For instance, if there is a risk group with 10% chance of respiratory death this year, and getting the virus increases those chances by double, then there is a of collision between Covid deaths and other respiratory deaths. But if those diseases are distributed randomly the collision is not much. E.i. if this group is 100 people, then the odds that the 10 people expected to die from Covid would happen to be the 10 people expected to die from influenza, is extremely low. — boethius

The latter odds of the two coinciding likely depend on comorbidity to begin with though. I think if you stratified based on comorbidity the reasoning holds though.

P(person dies of flu | confirmed comorbidity presence, risk group) is much higher than P(person dies of flu| risk group).
P(person dies of coronavirus | confirmed comorbidity, risk group) is much higher than P(person dies of coronavirus | risk group)

So long as the confirmed comorbidities are comparatively rare on the population level or within the risk group anyway (so if your idea of "risk group" includes accounting for comorbidity explicitly, that would be fine too).

It's like flipping two coins which can result in heads or tails (heads = death, tails = not death) with loads of blu-tack on tails (blu tack on not death), they'll coincide on heads (death) a lot even if the flipping mechanisms (joint infection probability of coronavirus with another disease, given comorbidity and risk group) are unrelated (P(i have flu, i have coronavirus| comorbidity, risk group). = P(i have flu| comorbidity, risk group)*P(i have coronavirus|comorbidity, risk group))

Edit: also notice the transition between discussing death probability and infection probability, P(infection | comorbidity, risk group) might behave much differently than P(death | comorbidity, risk group), so the causal colliders in one need not transfer to the other, or death might have colliders that infection does not.

The rest of your argument falls flat on anyone who doesn't believe in this Creator if that's how you intend to justify it. — Michael

That's not how I intend to justify it. I justify it by referencing the Constitution. My reference to the Creator is only to point out how fundamental of rights these are considered. The foundation of the laws is the Constitution. It's not really significant for these purposes upon what foundation the Constitution rests.

The latter odds of the two coinciding likely depend on comorbidity to begin with though. I think if you stratified based on comorbidity the reasoning holds though. — fdrake

Yes, the reasoning is based on the empirical data that the virus seems to simply double your chances of death this year, whatever your risk group; that this is the best predictor for most people.

If the virus only tended to kill people about to die of a heart-attack, or who have late stage cancer, then the overlap with "people who are likely to die anyways" would be more significant.

I think "comorbidities" has given a lot of people on the internet the impression that most people who die from Covid are essentially on deaths doorstep and the virus was a, perhaps even in their minds a merciful, coup de grace. However, these underlying conditions that increase the probability of death are very large, fairly banal groups; people with heart disease, diabetics and cancer survivors that have relatively long life expectancies. Large groups where there's no reason to believe those that would die of some respiratory disease anyways, not to mention just any cause of death, are significantly more likely to get Covid fist.

Edit: also notice the transition between discussing death probability and infection probability. — fdrake

What do you mean by this?

If you reference my term "infection-fatality-rate", it is simply reference to the unknowns on asymptomatics. More asympotomatics makes the disease harder to control, but faster to process the whole population -- whether in a controlled or uncontrolled way.

Right now we only really have "okish" data on the cases, infections that manifest to the tracking system in some way. The factor of asymptomatics can be played with to radically decrease the true infection-fatality-rate. But from what I understand, based on the spread pattern it's not very plausible to postulate numbers much more than double symptomatic cases. Double is a lot, but it isn't so high as to be able to process the entire population anytime soon, and lot's of asymptotics is a double edge sword as they require more extreme social distancing to control the spread.

Not that I know or even have a better guess than the professional to any of these factors. But my point was subtle things like Isaac's point can be illusory, especially at these small number of cases and relatively small odds and the disease affects seeming to be well mixed in the population; and, we can also think of subtle factors that might go in the opposite direction of the effect, such as lung injury -- which then might be the confounding "comorbity" creating a new risk group of Covid survivors that keep the general risk-profile of society the same post-pandemic, or potentially even higher.

So many unknowns. Why not investing in containment such a crazy idea.

You aren't objecting to the way NY arrived at its decisions are you? Just smaller communities where the lockdown is presently causing hardship? — frank

I was purposefully vague enough not to specify what I was objecting to, but more concerned with the lack of oversight and what appears to be a naive assumption that these experts wouldn't steer us wrong because they are somehow the world's only neutral, objective people, devoid of any political gain in the situation.

You have a king now. You don't need a constitution.

I was purposefully vague enough not to specify what I was objecting to, but more concerned with the lack of oversight and what appears to be a naive assumption that these experts wouldn't steer us wrong because they are somehow the world's only neutral, objective people, devoid of any political gain in the situation. — Hanover

That was way too vague to be an accusation of anti-Republican bias favoring blowing the economy up prior to a presidential election. But that would probably make a good movie. Could we also add in an alien that has no structure of its own but rather absorbs and displays the structures of other lifeforms and then explore what happens when that alien plants itself on earth and starts absorbing and displaying the human psyche in combination with fungi and combinations of plant and animal life? I'm reading that book right now.

Exactly right. This is why I never listen to my doctor and instead get my medical advice from Judge Judy. That's to say, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. The medical and scientific community have made some mistakes, but you can safely presume politicians and pundits are more likely to intentionally mislead us than eggheads dragged from their labs and papers to deal with real life.

I think "comorbidities" has given a lot of people on the internet the impression that most people who die from Covid are essentially on deaths doorstep and the virus was a, perhaps even in their minds a merciful, coup de grace. However, these underlying conditions that increase the probability of death are very large, fairly banal groups; people with heart disease, diabetics and cancer survivors that have relatively long life expectancies. Large groups where there's no reason to believe those that would die of some respiratory disease anyways, not to mention just any cause of death, are significantly more likely to get Covid fist. — boethius

That wasn't my intention.

I was just talking about whether partitioning the data based upon risk group removes the collider bias you mentioned, and giving some justifying statements that comorbidity complicates the attribution of the deaths to coronavirus, seeing as it also contributes to deaths from influenza.

This applies especially if we're analysing only people who have died, will die, or would die, that group's going to have corona virus presence collided with other virus presence because it's already known that health outcome severity is influenced by comorbidity presence and severity. Anything regarding population infection rates at large isn't going to remove it (at least, I don't see an easy way to control, the randomisation introduced by infection risk won't touch the death risk given infection and its influences; we're already conditioning on infection for one of the considered groups!)

The relevant scenario to consider is whether a person with a given comorbidity is more likely to die (or other health outcome, or increased prevalence of larger values of negative health outcome) from coronavirus than from influenza, rather than considering the population at large based on risk groups that do not track comorbidity while still being influenced by it (through the dependence introduced by subsampling based on death)

That wasn't my intention. — fdrake

Sorry, should have clarified I wasn't attributing this to you; was really talking about lot's of people on the internet. The word comorbidity seems "really bad" if you don't know the definition, so a lot of people seemed to take it to mean on deaths door step.

I was just talking about whether partitioning the data based upon risk group removes the collider bias you mentioned, and giving some justifying statements that comorbidity complicates the attribution of the deaths to coronavirus, seeing as it also contributes to deaths from influenza. — fdrake

From what I understand, there's no other way to do it, as there's no way to "know" who really will die absent Covid. We can only put people into risk groups and then calculate the probability of death from Covid of people in their respective risk group.

Lot's of people at risk of respiratory disease, or death from any other cause, this year, of course won't actually

This applies especially if we're analysing only people who have died, will die, or would die, that group's going to have corona virus presence collided with other virus presence because it's already known that health outcome severity is influenced by comorbidity presence and severity. — fdrake

Yes, we're in agreement that disentangling is not clear-cut.

My point about overlap is perhaps best summarized as overlap is only significant, or potentially significant:

1. Early days with low numbers and cause and effect is not clear, the disease could be simply correlated with the other comorbities but not causal.
2. A disease that has enormous bias towards killing the terminally ill, but essentially no one else -- such as a hospital disease.
3. A super high mortality rate and completely out of control epidemic that has large overlaps with other "would be causes of death" simply due to killing so many people. For instance, many people dying in an Ebola outbreak are genuinely people who would have died anyways in the short term; so there's lot's of overlap but the effect is now small because total deaths are so high anyways -- doesn't do much for lowering attribution of death to the disease.

If a disease is in the Covid range where we now know it's not a correlation mixup, know it's not highly specific to terminally ill, and know it's not crazy high mortality, then expected overlap is low: most people dying of Covid are not people who would have died anyways; there is simply a large number of additional deaths from Covid and the risk profiles going forward remain constant, as far as we can expect at this time; it could be lower or it could be higher.

However, this expectation is not taking into affect social distancing. With social distancing deaths may go down due to people staying at home and relaxing; less air pollution, etc.. Apparently there are less deaths during a recession / depression. So these second order effects of our response to Covid can also add a layer of complication, and could swing the death count back the other way ... or world war III breaks out and we revise these estimates.

I think we're in agreement on all this -- and I'm not even sure I'm in disagreement with Isaac's original comment I was responding to, as if it's just "one effect" among many, and we'll see with time, then I have no qualms -- but I've rewritten this point for benefit of others or in case we do in fact disagree somewhere.

Basically, my purpose is to emphasize your point that these data sets will be analyzed for years and decades to come, we can only really speculate about subtler relations beyond "it bad" at this point.

it's rare to see more than one virus at a time. — frank

Can't find the exact article I remembered so I'll defer to your greater expertise and presume I either remembered it wrong or misunderstood it in the first place. I had a brief look online and it is certainly common to be infected with more than one virus at a time, but the only similar figures to the ones I quoted were for HRV so that might be where I've gone wrong.

No idea what that means or how it counters anything I said? The figures give are for week ending April 3. Clearly there is a spike in deaths. — I like sushi

Yes, but people can't die twice. 10,000 people die every week, different proportions for different cohorts, but with elderly and those with underlying health conditions, the proportions are obviously higher. So if, rather than 10,000, 16,000 dies one week, that's 6,000 fewer people who can die next week (they're already dead). No-one's increased the entry to that cohort (the birth rate wasn't raised in advance 80 years ago), so the effect will be seen in the following week. More so by a year.

The chances of and 85+ person dying are about 1 in 6 annually. So in any given year, one in every six of that cohort are going to die. That's about 280,000. If 20,000 die from Covid-19, the other diseases aren't going to 'seek out' their usual number of victims, they haven't got a quota to fill. There are simply going to be fewer people in that cohort so the percentage of them dying of the same diseases is going to lead to smaller number. If a disease preferentially causes fatality in those with underlying health condition, then that is the cohort against which it's impact should be measured in this sense. Obviously that cohort is not going to be added to at an increased rate, but it is going to be removed from at an increased rate so there will be a much smaller pool for the remaining illnesses to draw their mortality from.

The figures for deaths (ALL deaths) are not ‘crude’. The deaths for last week ARE crude - meaning they are not official figures because it takes time to account for all deaths. — I like sushi

No, still not what I'm getting at. The cohort for whom the deaths in one week are related are not the cohort for whom the case numbers are given. Any in that cohort who are going to die are going to be reflected in the next fortnight's figures.

An extra 500 cases is a significant rise though. — I like sushi

Fair enough. It's pointless quibbling over what 'significant' means, so I won't.

Maybe you’re comparing April to Dec and Jan. That is faulty because the death toll during the winter months in the UK is always significantly higher — I like sushi

No it isn't faulty. The deaths are higher in winter because of flu. So, given that we now have a new flu-like illness (but one not yet clearly seasonal), comparing it to it's most similar condition is entirely appropriate, I think. No-one's saying there's no deaths being caused by Covid -19, the issue (for risk analysis) is how many compared to other diseases we've dealt with. The most obvious comparison if flu at it's worst. That's something we've dealt with before. 2000 deaths a week is not much different from flu at it's worst, so we can use that for response planning.

From what I understand, there's no other way to do it, as there's no way to "know" who really will die absent Covid. We can only put people into risk groups and then calculate the probability of death from Covid of people in their respective risk group. — boethius

Aye. When someone is usually tested based on severity the data's going to have things which will come from colliders, they'll tend to inflate sample correlation between whatever's collided; but it's extremely unlikely that the correlation observed between severity/mortality and comorbidity is explained entirely by the collider bias induced by the testing.

there is simply a large number of additional deaths from Covid and the risk profiles going forward remain constant — boethius

From what I know, I'd agree with that; the disease doesn't seem to have changed nature, and if it already had changed we'd probably be talking about it, though the risk profiles can increase through exogenous stuff like healthcare system failures; if the infection risk goes way up within hospitals due to resource shortages (not sure how likely this is), that increased risk can partially be attributed to COVID presence, but also on the broader stuff that lead to the shortage.

The people with comorbidities are more likely to die if they're in the "we have covid" group than in the "we do not have covid" group. Covid's an extra influence, and its knock on effects can be (partially) attributed to it; quantifying the effect of it on health outcomes should also include its knock on effects on other outcomes. It's like uh.... Hitting someone in the head with a clawhammer, I'm responsible for the brain damage, even though it's an effect of the impact rather than my intention to hit someone on the head with a clawhammer.

The statistical analysis of this general issue I've seen so far, is that getting the virus doubles your chances of death of the year compared to your risk group. — boethius

Where's this? Just on the face of it if this were true then we'd expect to see a doubling of the death rate in all age groups, yet we see absolutely no impact whatsoever in age groups below about 65 (decreasing in statistical significance of course, rather than a single cut-off point).

The rest of your post seems based on this so we'd better sort out what support you have for that assertion first.

I think "comorbidities" has given a lot of people on the internet the impression that most people who die from Covid are essentially on deaths doorstep and the virus was a, perhaps even in their minds a merciful, coup de grace. However, these underlying conditions that increase the probability of death are very large, fairly banal groups; people with heart disease, diabetics and cancer survivors that have relatively long life expectancies. Large groups where there's no reason to believe those that would die of some respiratory disease anyways, — boethius

500,000 people die every year - from which group do you think these deaths are drawn? If these groups do not form the ones who would have "died anyway", then from which group are the 500,000 people who do "die anyway" drawn? Are you suggesting that chance of death is essentially random and not related to underlying health conditions?

Where's this? Just on the face of it if this were true then we'd expect to see a doubling of the death rate in all age groups, yet we see absolutely no impact whatsoever in age groups below about 65 (decreasing in statistical significance of course, rather than a single cut-off point). — Isaac

I will track the source down. However, it's not really a premise to my argument concluding that collisions will be low; it just seemed the best predictor I have seen so far. There can be lot's of variations from one risk group to another, such as men and women (men being already in their own higher-risk group, so compatible with the predictor "doubles your risk of death compared to your risk group"). But I'll get back to this when I have the time.

As to, assuming it is true, doubling death rate to result in double the deaths, for that to happen based on the premise, everyone would need to get the disease, which hasn't happened yet.

500,000 people die every year - from which group do you think these deaths are drawn? If these groups do not form the ones who would have "died anyway", then from which group are the 500,000 people who do "die anyway" drawn? Are you suggesting that chance of death is essentially random and not related to underlying health conditions? — Isaac

Yes, there are risk groups along single metrics: age, diabetes, cancer stage, etc. and of course risk groups combining them. What is random is which individuals will create these patterns, but the patterns are nor random.

Introducing a new pattern that has no causal mechanism to significantly overlap (and thus displace) an existing pattern simply results in more deaths and no first-order reason to believe deaths will be lower when that pattern goes away.

I used the term "terminally ill" in my above analysis to refer to people we are "extremely sure will die in the short term".

If you look at risk groups such as "diabetes" this isn't a terminally ill disease where we'd expect death this year. Likewise, most people at risk of respiratory illness will also not die this year nor people suffering from heart disease. There's no reason to assume the Covid will overlap with the other causal mechanisms that make these risk groups what they are. People will continue to die of hear attacks for instance; there's no reason that Covid is killing people who really would die of a heart attack this year compared to people simply at risk of dying of a heart attack; since Covid doesn't kill enough people to change this risk group significantly in absolute terms, we should expect just as many heart attacks going forward. Likewise for respiratory illness, diabetes, cancer stages or survivor status.

In some cases there may very well be less deaths in the risk group, but this is due to our response to Covid (lowering pollution) changing the underlying causal mechanism impacting that risk group, not because Covid deaths overlapped with "expected deaths". And, as I mention, maybe other second-order effects increase causal death mechanism, such as lung injury.

I guess I don’t understand your point. Either way the next set of figures will give a clearer picture.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/coronavirus-cases-skyrocket-in-south-dakota/

"South Dakota’s coronavirus cases have begun to soar after its governor steadfastly refused to mandate a quarantine.

The number of confirmed cases in the state has risen from 129 to 988 since April 1 — when Gov. Kristi Noem criticized the “draconian measures” of social distancing to stop the spread of the virus in her state.

Noem had criticized the quarantine idea as “herd mentality, not leadership” during a news conference, adding, “South Dakota is not New York.”"

Yall need to bring back public hanging of public officials.

As I was saying, this is the way we'll be going.

"Poland’s borders will remain closed until at least May 3, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday.
Morawiecki said Poland would start easing some coronavirus restrictions from April 20.
Poles will also have to cover their noses and mouths in public until a coronavirus vaccine is found, health minister Lukasz Szumowski announced."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/16/coronavirus-live-news-cases-worldwide-top-2-million-trump-doubts-china-death-toll?page=with:block-5e98b0658f0895d83068f7ca#block-5e98b0658f0895d83068f7ca