Replies

--- "the charlatan method of calculating death rate"

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate

"Looking at my family and friends does not give me population level statistical data. That is the kind of data you need to study in order to understand the incidence of a disorder, not anecdotal stories."

That is obfuscation. Individual anecdotes amass from datum to data, such that one could calculate -- looking at your family -- a rate based on that "family" population. Anecdotes are individual datum. "Population level statistical data" are the sum of anecdotes across a larger family -- a population. A state. A nation. The world.

Data are for the U.S.
Number of deaths: 3,464,231
Death rate: 1,043.8 deaths per 100,000 population
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

"1,043.8 deaths per 100,000 population" is equivalent to 1.0438 percent.

"The mortality or death rate is the number of deaths in a population in a period with a particular disease as the underlying cause, such as an annual death rate per 100,000 population."
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-professions/mortality-rate
"Death rate compares the average annual number of deaths during a year per 1,000 population at midyear; also known as crude death rate."
Source: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/death-rate/country-comparison/

--- "Any death rate calculation that is not based on the number of cases is not a real death rate calculation."

This is incorrect. You cite the "case fatailty rate," and call it the "death rate." An "observed case-fatality ratio" is not a "death rate."

You prose indicates your stance: "a pseudo death rate." And yet...

"Mortality is another term for death. A mortality rate is the number of deaths due to a disease divided by the total population."
Source: https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/chronic/basicstat.htm

I think our conversation is at an end. "Charlatan" and "pseudo" when flying in the face of sourced definitions is not a best strategy to convince.

You are confounding the death rate of a population with the death rate from a specific cause. These are two completely different entities and have different uses for public health.

The CDC's "Provisional Mortality Data — United States, 2022. gives the death data and causes of death of the entire population. However, if you want to know how deadly a specific cause of death is, you have to use the number of people who have the condition in the denominator, not the total population. For example, rabies only kills 0.000000606% of the population, but it is 100% fatal. Dividing the number of people who have died (1174570) from Covid by the total number of cases (108288061) is what gives the death rate (0.01085, or 1.085%).

I purposely use the term "death rate" rather than "case fatality rate." That is because a case fatality rate cannot be determined definitively without knowing the outcomes of all cases. Whenever I look at the Covid data, I can enter number of cases and number of deaths into my spreadsheet, but I do not know how many active cases there are or what their outcome will be. Hence, I avoid using the term "case fatality rate."

Anecdotes are not data. Anyone can say an anecdote and there is no way to confirm the story. In addition, anecdotes tell nothing about the incidence or likelihood of a condition. Data is collected through careful scientific inquiry. Was the person definitively diagnosed by a qualified physician using CLIA-certified laboratory testing? Was the outcome of that person's diagnosed condition compared to the outcomes of other people who have the same diagnosis? Was the sample size of people with this condition large enough to extrapolate from them to the general population of others with that condition? Etc. The results of such scientific inquiry range from case studies (which discuss one or a few patients in detail for the education of other physicians and scientists) to large scale clinical studies to population level analysis.

You object to the terms I use to describe those who create and spread antivax and antiscience misinformation. Okay. Those who create antivax/antiscience propaganda usually do have a scientific education, but they purposely misrepresent the science and use it to promote concepts that contradict the conclusions of the people who designed, conducted, and analyzed the research. For example, they might wave around a paper that discusses myocarditis cases following vaccination to "prove" how dangerous vaccines are. But those papers are merely case descriptions written so that other physicians have an idea of what to expect should they come across a case. The deception in such use of scientific data comes in the failure of the antivax charlatans to provide any context. They will never show you this paper, Risk of myocarditis and pericarditis following BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccination which found 79 cases of myo-and peri-carditis among 4,694,765 vaccine recipients, for an incidence rate of 0.00168%. They also will not divulge that the CDC found that People receiving COVID-19 vaccines are less likely to die from COVID-19 and its complications and are at no greater risk of death from non-COVID causes, than unvaccinated people. The charlatans phrase the misinformation in language that appeals to conservatives because they are very good at conning people and the best way to hoodwink someone is to appeal to their passions. It's what they've done for over 200 years. They get away with this because those they target are unlikely to read the scientific/medical literature, look up and analysis the statistical data, or read things like FDA decision memoranda.

I will not use terminology to describe the creators of antivax/antiscience propaganda that in any way implies that they are legitimate scientists. Cherry-picking data and presenting it out of context in order to scare and manipulate people is NOT the work of a legitimate scientist.