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Great News: COVID-19 Death Rates Plummeting
When COVID-19 first hit our shores, cable news showcased daily death counts from the virus. The numbers jumped in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Every day, the total grew.
In May, cable news dropped its focus on total deaths. Instead, “new cases” became the go-to metric as outbreaks hit Florida, Arizona, and Texas. This new, larger number enabled CNN, et al., to intensify their panicked headlines. Better still, they could blast perfidious GOP governors over new cases while giving nursing-home Cuomo a pass.
Two new peer-reviewed studies show the reason for the switch. While still dangerous, COVID-19 is far less deadly than it was in March. All groups hospitalized for the virus, including those most at risk, have seen a sharp drop in mortality.
“We find that the death rate has gone down substantially,” says Leora Horwitz, a doctor who studies population health at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and an author on one of the studies, which looked at thousands of patients from March to August.
The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.
Bilal Mateen of the Alan Turing Institute in the UK says the drop is clear regardless of age, race, or underlying conditions.
“Clearly, there’s been something [that’s] gone on that’s improved the risk of individuals who go into these settings with COVID-19,” he says.
Horwitz and others believe many things have led to the drop in the death rate. “All of the above is often the right answer in medicine, and I think that’s the case here, too,” she says.
Don’t expect the media to drop “new cases” as their preferred metric, especially not before the election. It’s the easiest way to bash battleground states with GOP governors while ignoring the vastly higher death rates in one-party Democrat states like New York and New Jersey. It also stokes fear which helps their ratings.
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Thanks, Jon. I was hearing something similar about deaths in other places, but I love seeing it confirmed. Everyone in the media should be arrested; what they are doing is criminal.
News today= Disaster looms. Details at ten.
It’s all about clicks and eyeballs so pay no attention to the hype.
I’m hearing the opposite – the national news just now has the virus making a comeback all over Europe and the Middle East – new restrictions and some lockdowns. Ireland is locking down for six weeks. Deaths and people going into the ER are on the rise – here in the US too. I’m very concerned.
Been telling my friends this for a while. Even with increase in cases this summer, we had 3 times the cases and 1/3rd of the deaths compared to last spring.
The infection fatality rate is still surprisingly high to me. I had expected treatments to be deployed more widely by now. I think the decrease in fatality rate is from improved processes (ventilators are bad) and a younger population being infected than in the beginning. There is a chance the virus has mutated to be a little less deadly, but it is hard to quantify.
The threshold for an epidemic is >7% of deaths. The US has about 7500 deaths per day, so 7% is 525. We are about there even with aggressive attribution to Covid. In the meantime, I hear that season flu is absent.
There is no longer any flu deaths. All deaths in the US are Covid deaths now.
Jon,
The story is the headline and the headline is the story. None of the facts presented in the story actually will justify the hysterical headlines which suggest that another lockdown is coming. Of course, the first lockdown was a total fool’s errand and that was what the Great Barrington Declaration was about.
We can be excused the first time for being stampeded by the fake news. However, as the old saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Stampedes are ugly things. Lots of people will get damaged or killed in a stampede.
Regards,
Jim
That’s a really interesting way to put it.
An honest person would say “the chances of a hospitalized patient dying from COVID have dropped by about 70% since the start of the pandemic.”
Jon,
As has been pointed out here in several places, old time Kremlinologists would put more stock into what was not stated in news articles. So the story is not really what you read in
Pravdathe New York Times, but what you don’t read. So when they stopped talking about deaths, one knew the numbers were trending in a good direction, as good numbers did not send the message Orange Man Bad. I don’t see death numbers anymore, so I assume they’re going down.On a related note, it is interesting to see where the goalposts have been moved. Originally, the goal was to “flatten the curve”. The new line is that “there may be long term effects from the Wuhan about which we have no idea, so no one can get it”.
Good post.
Tim
4 states account for 33 percent of all deaths
At least 40 percent of deaths are nursing home residents?
the article doesn’t mention Sweden or great Barrington declaration or WHO latest flip flop on lockdowns
We still want hospitals operating at 80 or 90 percent capacity
Death rates decreased when sadists like Cuomo and Gretchen stopped forcing covid positive patients into nursing homes
Yep, Cuomo and Whitmer, two of the biggest idiots ever to occupy a Governor’s mansion.
Regards,
Jim
Thanks for the level-headed analysis, Mr. Gabriel. Why is it the addiction to panic is likely to recede hours after a Biden-Harris victory??
The elite may try to back down, but I don’t think people will give up their fear that easily. We’ll have to wait and see. Of course, if Trump wins, all bets are off and the craziness will ramp up.
It was flatten the curve to make sure the Hospital’s were ok.
It became flatten the curve of resistance to fear of Covid.
After that it became flatten Trump’s economy.
Now it’s flatten the country so that the democratic party can rule all of us.