| DISCLAIMER: I initially did not have access to the original presentation. The original presentation is far better from what I can tell compared to how it has been represented in both right wing and left wing media at presenting their claims with nuance that has largely been left out of other reports. Many of the conclusions drawn in the paper and in articles reporting on it are overblown or misleading on their own. There was good reason John Hopkins added a five paragraph disclaimer and a "RETRACTED" watermark to this on their own site. If you doubt me or disagree, look at the claim of the paper that has been reported on by various media outlets. It essentially states that looking at cdc data there is drop in other forms of death that was replaced with covid deaths, meaning that there was no actual increase in deaths. Now, go pull up the cdc data that breaks down how many people died of each cause per week for 2019 and 2020 [1]. Using either the on-website graph creator, python notebooks, excel, or your data scientist tool of choice try to recreate a graph showing all causes of death by week that supports this paper. I quickly got a graph that showed a simple reality, compared to 2019 there has been an increase in deaths per week that almost precisely corresponds with the numbers of covid deaths per week. If you want to argue the number of covid deaths is too low to worry about or it was handled well, go for it. Just don't get sheeped into believing that covid deaths aren't real. [1] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-a... EDIT: Apparently the video presentation this paper is based on is out there at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKJN61aflI . Since I have not finished it I've amended the post considerably and added a disclaimer since I used some strong words originally. Many thanks to the commenter who pointed me to the youtube presentation. |
I agree with you that her claims could be wrong, but please watch the original source material (https://youtu.be/3TKJN61aflI) - I think she is being much more nuanced that you're giving her credit for. She is presenting her findings, showing exactly how she did it, and asking for feedback ("I hope I hear more from people who have done more than me" - 43:10).
You can follow her workflow and disagree - and probably will! But that's ok - that's how science works. I look forward to many well-written posts going through her analysis and showing alternate interpretations. I'm guessing she looks forward to this too.