The Uncounted Dead

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Why some people who likely died from COVID-19 aren’t included in the final numbers.

The first time Bob Duffy entered the world of epidemiology, he was an amateur scientist. It was 2003. He had retired from the New York City Fire Department and taken a sabbatical from his normal life in suburban Long Island to help his daughter Meghan earn her Ph.D. in Michigan. She was studying the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases, using tiny lake crustaceans as a model organism.

Together, Meghan and Bob would go out in a truck, towing a little, flat-bottomed rowboat. They were studying how epidemics begin and spread under a variety of conditions. They’d unhitch at one lake, and then another, working their way across the countryside as they collected and counted diseased crustaceans and the fish that preyed on them. “Over the course of a few months, you can go through a whole epidemic,” Meghan Duffy told me. Her father was her paid research assistant, and one of his jobs was to catch the fish. After 30 years of running into burning buildings, he couldn’t believe his luck, she said.

The last time Bob Duffy entered the world of epidemiology, he was a statistic.

He died, at home, on March 29, 2020. Officially, the cause of death was chronic lung disease. But there was more going on than just that. A sudden illness had left him too fatigued to leave the house, and he had had contact with multiple people who later tested positive for COVID-19. Yet Bob’s death certificate doesn’t list that disease as a cause or even a probable cause of his death. He never got tested — he didn’t want to enter a hospital and be separated from Fran, his wife of 48 years.

-more-

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-deaths/

[Kitchari]

1. The powers that be

are probably not counting the incarcerated and those in cages at the border. Florida is fudging the numbers--they are tragically deliberately undercounting everywhere they can

[jimfields33]

2. You really think New York or Michigan would fudge numbers

I say both because he lived in New York and visited his daughter in Michigan but may have returned to New York. I just don’t think either state would fudge numbers.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. They do not have the personnel nor the test kits needed to get the numbers right.

[Kitchari]

4. Agree NY and MI would not do it on purpose

however the Sadistic Obfuscator in the White House is happy with inadequate testing resulting in lower numbers everywhere

[Maeve]

5. It will be some time before we get somewhat accurate numbers

And those will be estimates based on the "higher than normal" rate of death seen during this time. Nicholas Kristof did a good article on it in the NYTimes the other week
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/opinion/coronavirus-us-deaths.html

America’s True Covid Toll Already Exceeds 100,000

The reported numbers leave out thousands of deaths clearly resulting from the pandemic.

[Kitchari]

6. Very true n/t