Originally Posted by
MWM
spacediver, I accept that the true rate of excess mortality most likely lies somewhere in between the published death toll and the 12% of cases mentioned. However, pointing out the issues with general influenza attribution as you've done only strengthens my case, because it suggests that the published seasonal flu statistics may be lower than reality. Regardless, you miss the point by pinning the weight of my argument on whether or not Italy's coding of the death statistics is unusual either for their country or for this virus. The point is that those statistics make the virus appear to be much more lethal than it probably is, because they are not published in any sort of medical/statistical/epidemiological context. If the virus is extremely widespread, as many experts now believe it is, and 1,000 people died on one day after testing positive for it in Italy, then you must ask how many of those deaths are in excess of the ~1,800 average daily death rate for that country.
It could be that not a single one is in fact an excess death, because so many people have the virus that they are bound to make up a significant portion of the normal daily death rate, and even those directly killed by the virus would have died anyway on the same or a similar timeframe from another cause. You could use statistics in a similar way to paint prostate cancer as a terrifying killer of old men, except that the vast majority of men who have it will not be killed by it, but will die of something else. But here's the rub: Covid19 is probably more likely to kill someone than prostate cancer, but when it does, how can we be sure that such a person would not have died from any other widespread coronavirus, or other kind of flu, or any other natural cause whatsoever? We all have to die of something. Once again, this is not the Black Death, and nor is it the Spanish Flu.