Guest essay by Eric Worrall

There is a significant unaccounted for spike in excess US deaths this year, deaths which have not been attributed to Covid-19. Yale researchers believe a lot of the deaths are misdiagnosed Covid.

Yale Study Suggests COVID Death Toll In US Has Been “Substantially Undercounted”

by Tyler Durden Sat, 07/04/2020 – 19:55

A new study from Yale University published in JAMA Internal Medicine seems to suggest that the number of U.S. deaths that have occurred as a result of the coronavirus have been “substantially undercounted”. 

Recall, we have recently published two studies suggesting that the infection rates of Covid-19 were substantially higher months ago than many people thought. A Penn State study found that the initial infection rate may have been 80 times quicker than we first thought and a Stanford study showed that the media case fatality rate for those under 70 years old could be as low as 0.04%. 

The new Yale study took data from the National Center for Health Statistics and compared the number of excess U.S. deaths from any causes with the reported number of weekly deaths from Covid-19 during the period of March 1 to May 30, according to CNBC. Those numbers were then compared to the year prior.

…

“The 781,000 total deaths in the United States in the three months through May 30 were about 122,300, or nearly 19% higher, than what would normally be expected, according to the researchers. Of the 122,300 excess deaths, 95,235 were attributed to Covid-19, they said. Most of the rest of the excess deaths, researchers said, were likely related to or directly caused by the coronavirus.“

…

Read more: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/yale-study-suggests-covid-death-toll-us-has-been-substantially-undercounted

The abstract of the study;

July 1, 2020

Estimation of Excess Deaths Associated With the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States, March to May 2020

Daniel M. Weinberger, PhD¹; Jenny Chen, BS²; Ted Cohen, MD, DPH¹; et al

Key Points

Question  Did more all-cause deaths occur during the first months of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States compared with the same months during previous years?

Findings  In this cohort study, the number of deaths due to any cause increased by approximately 122 000 from March 1 to May 30, 2020, which is 28% higher than the reported number of COVID-19 deaths.

Meaning  Official tallies of deaths due to COVID-19 underestimate the full increase in deaths associated with the pandemic in many states.Abstract

Importance  Efforts to track the severity and public health impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States have been hampered by state-level differences in diagnostic test availability, differing strategies for prioritization of individuals for testing, and delays between testing and reporting. Evaluating unexplained increases in deaths due to all causes or attributed to nonspecific outcomes, such as pneumonia and influenza, can provide a more complete picture of the burden of COVID-19.

Objective  To estimate the burden of all deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States from March to May 2020.

Design, Setting, and Population  This observational study evaluated the numbers of US deaths from any cause and deaths from pneumonia, influenza, and/or COVID-19 from March 1 through May 30, 2020, using public data of the entire US population from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). These numbers were compared with those from the same period of previous years. All data analyzed were accessed on June 12, 2020.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Increases in weekly deaths due to any cause or deaths due to pneumonia/influenza/COVID-19 above a baseline, which was adjusted for time of year, influenza activity, and reporting delays. These estimates were compared with reported deaths attributed to COVID-19 and with testing data.

Results  There were approximately 781 000 total deaths in the United States from March 1 to May 30, 2020, representing 122 300 (95% prediction interval, 116 800-127 000) more deaths than would typically be expected at that time of year. There were 95 235 reported deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 from March 1 to May 30, 2020. The number of excess all-cause deaths was 28% higher than the official tally of COVID-19–reported deaths during that period. In several states, these deaths occurred before increases in the availability of COVID-19 diagnostic tests and were not counted in official COVID-19 death records. There was substantial variability between states in the difference between official COVID-19 deaths and the estimated burden of excess deaths.

Conclusions and Relevance  Excess deaths provide an estimate of the full COVID-19 burden and indicate that official tallies likely undercount deaths due to the virus. The mortality burden and the completeness of the tallies vary markedly between states.

Read more: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2767980

Before you dismiss this as alarmism, Lord Monckton came to a similar conclusion in April, with his analysis of UK excess deaths.

Respiratory distress is not the only way Covid-19 can kill people. In some cases it causes extreme blood clotting disorders, leading to strokes and heart failure, which likely creates confusion in some cases about the true cause of death. Canadian actor Nick Cordero survived Covid, but his leg was amputated because doctors couldn’t control Covid related blood clotting in his extremities.

Thankfully recent confirmation of the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine provides renewed hope we can bring this awful disease under control.

[Addendum from Charles]

Eric missed this very very important sentence found in the limitations section:

The number of excess deaths reported herein could reflect increases in rates of death directly caused by the virus, increases indirectly related to the pandemic response (eg, due to avoidance of health care), as well as declines in certain causes (eg, deaths due to motor vehicle collisions or triggered by air pollution). Further work is needed to determine the relative importance of these different forces on the overall estimates
of excess deaths.

In simpler terms, with all elective surgery cancelled for months, the delays in heart valve surgery, stent surgery, cancer surgery etc., might be the cause of the increase in deaths and they haven’t a clue if that’s the case or not.

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Guest essay by Eric Worrall

A recent Paleo climate study which demonstrated thriving tropical rainforests in a period when CO2 levels reached 2000ppm (5x today’s level) during the early Eocene has not discouraged UNSW climate scientists from predicting imminent doom.

Climate change threat to tropical plants

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02 JUL 2020   CAROLINE TANG 
Caroline Tang Media & Content (02) 9385 8809 caroline.tang@unsw.edu.au

Half of the world’s tropical plant species may struggle to germinate by 2070 because of global warming, a new UNSW study predicts.

Tropical plants closer to the equator are most at risk from climate change because it is expected to become too hot for many species to germinate in the next 50 years, UNSW researchers have found.

Their study analysed almost 10,000 records for more than 1300 species from the Kew Gardens’ global seed germination database. 

The research, published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography last month, was the first to look at the big picture impact of climate change on such a large number of plant species worldwide. 

Lead author Alex Sentinella, UNSW PhD researcher, said past research had found that animal species closer to the equator would be more at risk from climate change.

“The thought was that because tropical species come from a stable climate where it’s always warm, they can only cope with a narrow range of temperatures – whereas species from higher latitudes can cope with a larger range of temperatures because they come from places where the weather varies widely,” Mr Sentinella said. 

“However, this idea had never been tested for plants.

“Because climate change is a huge issue globally, we wanted to understand these patterns on a global scale and build upon the many studies on plants at an individual level in their environment.”

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Read more: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/climate-change-threat-tropical-plants

The abstract of the study;

Tropical plants do not have narrower temperature tolerances, but are more at risk from warming because they are close to their upper thermal limits

Alexander T. Sentinella, David I. Warton, William B. Sherwin, Catherine A. Offord, Angela T. Moles

Abstract

Aim

Tropical species are thought to be more susceptible to climate warming than are higher latitude species. This prediction is largely based on the assumption that tropical species can tolerate a narrower range of temperatures. While this prediction holds for some animal taxa, we do not yet know the latitudinal trends in temperature tolerance for plants. We aim to address this knowledge gap and establish if there is a global trend in plant warming risk.

Location

Global.

Time period

Present–2070.

Major taxa studied

Plants.

Methods

We used 9,737 records for 1,312 species from the Kew Gardens’ global germination database to quantify global patterns in germination temperature.

Results

We found no evidence for a latitudinal gradient in the breadth of temperatures at which plant species can germinate. However, tropical plants are predicted to face the greatest risk from climate warming, because they experience temperatures closer to their upper germination limits. By 2070, over half (79/142) of tropical plant species are predicted to experience temperatures exceeding their optimum germination temperatures, with some even exceeding their maximum germination temperature (41/190). Conversely, 95% of species at latitudes above 45° are predicted to benefit from warming, with environmental temperatures shifting closer to the species’ optimal germination temperatures.

Main conclusions

The prediction that tropical plant species would be most at risk under future climate warming was supported by our data, but through a different mechanism to that generally assumed.

Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/geb.13117

University of New South Wales is home to Ship of Fools Professor Chris Turney, leader of an expedition to the Antarctic to study melting ice which got stuck in the irony.

I love this new study because in my opinion it is a perfect example of climate scientists discarding or ignoring observations which do not fit their model.

There is no chance anthropogenic CO2 will lead to 1000ppm CO2, let alone 2000ppm, because there is nowhere near enough recoverable fossil fuel available to achieve early Eocene levels of atmospheric CO2. Since tropical plants handled early Eocene temperatures just fine, and we will never achieve early Eocene CO2 levels, there is no chance anthropogenic CO2 poses any kind of existential threat to tropical plants.

But the most extreme climate models predict lethal tropical temperatures by the end of the century.

A few climate scientists have courageously pointed out this contradiction means worst case climate model predictions about future tropical conditions must be wrong. But the rest just seem to blindly follow the output of their computers, and make alarmist statements which in my opinion bear no relationship to reality.

Note: If you ever see the bird in the picture at the top of this post in the Aussie tropics, don’t bother it, get as far away from it as you can. Like most Aussie wildlife Cassowaries want to kill you, and have a good chance of succeeding.

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