Obviously flawed because it doesn’t fit your narrative? Ha
For the same reason I dont discount everything that gets censored on YouTubeTwatterBookfaceNBCCNN
I don’t trust the folks playing with the numbers...
I didn’t weigh in on the accuracy, I don’t know. But lots of things seem to get “pulled” or censored or discredited that don’t fit the narrative and the folks preaching the narrative seem to get caught in their own hypocrisy just about daily anymore...
@bigredfish, just read the analysis.
I've read the original at
archive.org and the
AIER review. Both are critically flawed. For example:
"“These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively
no effect on deaths in the United States.” "
Uh... wrong. In fact, it's disproved in the chart that follows just below that statement.
Note it shows the difference between most recent all causes peak (two years ago, just shy of 70k), and the April 2020 COVID-19-induced peak, saying that's 11,292. I'm sorry, but There's a significant difference between peaks at about 60k (with two years ago being a particularly bad year) and close to 80k in APRIL 2020. The text doesn't point out clearly that the difference shown of 11,292 is a WEEKLY number, as mostly the article talks about the total up to publishing of over 260k deaths so far this year:
"The spikes in deaths in 2020 are consistent with historical trends, only topping 2018 by 11,292 deaths. There have been over 262,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the United States, yet total deaths have not increased in any alarming capacity; they have only mirrored existing trends. "
This is misleading at best. But it is...
Wrong! the COVID-19 spike (show separately in puke orange color) is DRAMATICALLY bigger than the flu and pneumonia seasonal spike shown and nowhere else does the graph have in a single year the two-lobed double spike (April and again in summer, with a third not yet shown... but when this paper gets revised presumably it will be there).
Also, they created a slope of +908 deaths (per week) per year based on six years of data; there aren't enough data points in this slope to be meaningful. The 2017-2018 flu season was relatively bad and that contributed to a spike that year; if it weren't for that spike the trend (based on the other 5 years) would actually be flat, more or less. It would be much better to give it at least 10 years worth of data (15-20 would be better) before interpolating a rising (or shrinking) baseline; over such scales factoring in population growth would probably make sense too.
Any yutz can look at the data and see this year has been awful. Also, the AIER graph above isn't the same one in the JHU article, at least from what I can see in the archive.org copy (though, they discuss a video, maybe it's from that). The original JHU article is a bit murky as to other causes of death... lots of causes of death actually did go down during the lockdowns...
Bottom line, the original article looks pretty crappy to me (a microbiologist by training with ~12 peer reviewed publications to my name), and the AEIR article jumps to patently false, easily disproven conclusions.
