Graham wrote:
Still think lifestyle makes no difference to your Covid-19 risk?
It probably does, but from the data you quote it is impossible to tell. The top comorbidities and Covid-19 deaths both correlate with age.
Somebody did the hard work (although now over half a year ago based on US data – has anyone seen something more up-to-date?)
So two takeaways from that:
Graham wrote:
Still think lifestyle makes no difference to your Covid-19 risk?
Mhhhh – let’s do a simple check: If your assumption is right, the Comorbidities for patients which die from other causes should be completely different, right?
Unfortunately, the data tells a different story: Looking at cancer patients, diabetes, COPD, hypertension CHF, etc. are also the top Comorbidities.
Therefore there is only two options. Either Cancer is also to a large extend “lifestyle related” or your list of Comorbidities is just a correlation because people with preexisting conditions are more likely to die of Covid than those with non preexisting conditions and your list is basically the list of such in the general population.
But I actually like your data: As it is clearly shown, Obesity is only on rank 11 with prevalence in 4.4% of the Covid casualties. So the often repeated assertion that Obesity is a major factor for Covid risk is not at all in line with your data.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Either Cancer is also to a large extend “lifestyle related”
Much of it is, or at least your propensity to it is.
Malibuflyer wrote:
But I actually like your data: As it is clearly shown, Obesity is only on rank 11 with prevalence in 4.4% of the Covid casualties. So the often repeated assertion that Obesity is a major factor for Covid risk is not at all in line with your data.
Sigh.
I knew you’d look at that and take it as supporting your position.
Obesity on its own ranks 11. It is also a major (the major) cause of the conditions that rank one, two and four.
Doctors have a free hand in what they choose to write on a death certificate. They don’t write ‘obesity’ unless they’re really trying to make a point.
Graham wrote:
Doctors have a free hand in what they choose to write on a death certificate. They don’t write ‘obesity’ unless they’re really trying to make a point.
The same is true for all other Comorbidities on death certificates – doctors do not need to put anything there. So you are really arguing that they are accurate on CHF, Diabetes, etc. but not on obesity? And this despite the fact, that obesity is the single one comorbidity that is easiest to diagnose (by just looking at the patient)?
Why are doctors trying to make a point on diabetes, CHF, COPD, etc. according to your reasoning, but not on obesity? Is that part of a global conspiracy of the friends of the obese? ;-)
The answer to that is simple: Most of the people dying from Covid are simply not obese! As age still is by order of magnitude the number one driver of death by Covid, it is mostly elderly people dying from it. And elderly people are rarely obese.
You might speculate, that these people might have been obese in the past and this is the driver for diabetes but that is pure speculation.
Malibuflyer wrote:
So you are really arguing that they are accurate on CHF, Diabetes, etc. but not on obesity?
Perhaps something close to that.
I’m arguing that if someone has formally diagnosed diabetes / hypertension / whatever and dies, and their medical records are full of references to it, it almost certainly goes on their death certificate as an underlying health condition. This is not the case for obesity, as a standalone classification. There is no widespread medical consensus of whether it’s treated as a standalone condition (separately to the other things it causes), whether for treatment or post-death statistical recording.
The 4.4% in the dataset I provided emphatically does not mean that only 4.4% of patients dying of Covid-19 were obese. There’s no system that ensures obesity, if it exists, is recorded.
Most Covid-19 deaths are in the elderly. I agree that most of these are not obese and that obese elderly people are rare – because they generally do not survive to extreme old age due to the severe health issues associated with obesity.
But among the non-elderly Covid-19 deaths, the vast majority have underlying health conditions. And the most common conditions are lifestyle-related. Make of it what you will. What it says to me is “don’t have those conditions”.
The claim that 99% of the people are unaffected or not critically affected by Covid is simply crazy, seeing what happens right now in mostly unvaccinated countries, where claims like this have kept people from taking it seriously.250 dead per day in BG, some of those were friends of mine. Thousands in hospital care, by far not all unvaccinated. Why? Because they were told it’s all a scam and healthy people won’t get it anyway.
And even in countries with 60-70% vaccination rates, the disease is totally out of control. Because lots of people thought, it is a problem of the fat, the lazy, the stupid unwashed garbage of mankind, which they could well do without anyway. Oh yea, and all the old people dying horrible deaths, mothers, fathers of some of these, good riddance, so we can save their pension payments? Whatever happened to “honor thy parents?”
And if you add your pet peeves such as obese and cancerous people, who of course are all guilty of not having lived an approved lifestyle, let’s stop treating them, so if they die they no longer disturb the view of a perfect lifestyle?
You can argue that Covid is just a result of the evil ways of bad, unwashed and stupid obese and otherwise unwise people who brought it upon themselves by not living a lifestyle approved by yourself or other gurus around. So why treat them? Better get rid of them, there are anyway too many people on the planet?
Self righteous people often suffer the greatest fall. Self righteous people often sit in judgement, never expecting to be judged themselves. Some find out eventually, if their own children, spouses or parents are affected. Some won’t care even then .
You may call the people I ’ve told you about, friends, family, close acquaintances all being “anecdotes”, a joke in the world of vegans and other super-humans who are obviously immune against all evil just because they are so much better than the undisciplined, stupid, dirty rest of us. I called quite a few of them friends.
Thousands dead every day by a disease which some people still claim is not a problem for 99% of the population. Bah. the world needs to get rid of a few billion anyway, so why not make use of this practical disease?
Well, we can go on as we are and we will have wave after wave after wave, each more terrible than the previous. We can continue to pretend it is an illness of the old, the unwashed, the stupid, the obese, the whoever does not meet with your approval and look down from the high horse how the plebs die.
Thankfully, those health professionals who do not make the difference, who will put their own lifes on the line for those who need their care appear to think differently.
Some of the others may well find out for themselves. Only then it is too late.
you might know this quote of albert einstein:
Zwei Dinge sind unendlich, das Universum und die menschliche Dummheit, aber bei dem Universum bin ich mir noch nicht ganz sicher.
two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, but with the universe i am not completely sure as yet.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The claim that 99% of the people are unaffected or not critically affected by Covid is simply crazy, seeing what happens right now in mostly unvaccinated countries, where claims like this have kept people from taking it seriously.250 dead per day in BG, some of those were friends of mine. Thousands in hospital care, by far not all unvaccinated. Why? Because they were told it’s all a scam and healthy people won’t get it anyway.
Here we go again. It’s not a scam, it’s real, but healthy non-elderly people probably won’t get anything to worry about – vaccinated or not. If they are vaccinated, the chances of getting anything worth worrying about go from very small to vanishingly small.
The population of BG is 7 million. 250 Covid-19 deaths per day is 0.00357% of the population. That same number would have to be reported every day for 280 consecutive days before it added up to 1% of the population. I really don’t think you understand very large and very small numbers, proportions, probabilities, etc.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Self righteous people often suffer the greatest fall. Self righteous people often sit in judgement, never expecting to be judged themselves. Some find out eventually, if their own children, spouses or parents are affected. Some won’t care even then .
I’m sorry you consider my approach to it self-righteous. I’m simply remaining objective and not allowing fear of the virus to drive my assessment of the situation, as it evidently does with you. My own lifestyle choices are far from perfect health-wise, and I’m certainly neither a vegan nor super-human.
There’s no getting away from the fact that, while it kills mostly the elderly, the non-elderly that it kills usually have underlying health conditions and those that feature heavily in the statistics are mostly lifestyle-related. But it still kills very small numbers relative to how many it infects.
Well expressed Mooney. People who run their lives solely by data and the way it can be twisted should in the words of Jeremy Clarkson “be taken out and shot as they serve no useful purpose”😁
You simply cannot ignore people’s feelings and experiences in dealing with any problem, especially from a political point of view.
People do and will look at TV news and see a person lying on his death bed about to pass away saying “i was wrong not to be vaccinated, I thought I was too young to die of Covid”
The data loggers would ban such things as media hype, they will say the data shows "it is a 1 in 100 000 chance of catching it. “Only the stupid believe its worse than the flu” and on an on with meaningless figures and graphs.
There are only 2 figures that are really significant that can be demonstrated
1/ how many people are in hospital with Covid
2/ how many people have died of Covid.
Only the 2nd of these will be recorded in history books.
If we ever get more on long Covid this too might become significant.
Politicians will only be remembered for the numbers who died on their watch.
Data freaks and statisticians will be forgotten.
People who lost family will always remember who they thought was to blame.
gallois wrote:
here are only 2 figures that are really significant that can be demonstrated
1/ how many people are in hospital with Covid
2/ how many people have died of Covid.
Only the 2nd of these will be recorded in history books.
If we ever get more on long Covid this too might become significant.
Politicians will only be remembered for the numbers who died on their watch.
Data freaks and statisticians will be forgotten.
People who lost family will always remember who they thought was to blame.
Actually, the important thing is not simply how many people get seriously ill or die from Covid-19. It is the total effect on society of the disease and the means of handling it.
Make no mistake, if a country gets into an economic recession, more people will die. That has been shown without doubt by the very statisticians that you seem to despise.
