The Suspicious Discrepancies in Covid Deaths in the United States
(Why is the Death Rate so Much Higher in Certain States)
The Suspicious Discrepancies in Covid Deaths in the United States
(Why is the Death Rate so Much Higher in Certain States)
By
David Gottfried
According to today’s New York Times, Pennsylvania and New York have roughly equal numbers of Covid patients hospitalized at present.
However, Pennsylvania, today, has twice as many daily deaths from Covid
Let me be specific:
A) According to the NY Times of December 25, 2021, Pennsylvania’s daily average of hospitalized covid patients is 4,964. (The Times does not tell us if this daily average is composed of the last 5 days, 10 days or two weeks).
B) According to the same issue of the New York Times, New York’s daily average of hospitalized covid patients is 5,073. (Once again, the Times does not tell us if this daily average is composed of the last 5 days, 10 days or two weeks.)
The death tolls diverge dramatically:
A) According to the New York Times of December 25, 2021, the daily average of deaths in Pennsylvania is 123.9.
(Once again, the New York Times lazily neglects to note how many days go into the computation of this average. Incidentally, since the New York Times is being lazy, what are we to say of most of the papers of bleach blonde lobotomized conservative conformity in these United States of Americas? I’d say that most of the press has all the acumen of George Bush, Bob Dole and Donald Trump taking 14 centuries to do the Monday crossword puzzle of the Times; the Monday puzzles are the easiest.)
B) According to the same issue of the New York Times, the daily average of deaths in New York State is 61.9.
The foregoing numbers make it clear that, at present, the number of deaths in New York, per day, is about half the number of daily deaths in Pennsylvania. However, the number of hospitalized covid patients is not very different: New York has a little more than 5,000 covid patients in the hospital, Pennsylvania has a little less than 5000 covid patients in the hospital.
THE DIFFERENCE IN DEATHS CANNOT BE ASCRIBED TO THE OMICRON VARIANT.
In New York, the omicron variant is perhaps more explosive than in any other jurisdiction with the possible or probable exception of Washington DC. (Rhode Island and New Hampshire have had startlingly high levels of infection and consequent illness, but this predates the omicron Tsunami)
Some people might hypothesize that New York’s Death rate is lower because omicron, according to most sources, is less pathogenic, dangerous and lethal. However, this notion is infirm. New York has been inundated with omicron, for the most part, in only that past two weeks. It did not become amazingly pervasive until the past week. Because a fair stretch of time must pass from the date of infection until the date of death -- a) first there is the incubation period, or the number of days it takes to get symptoms, b) then the number of days it takes until hospitalization is warranted, c) then the number of days it takes until one’s respiration is so severely obstructed and occluded that intubation is required, d) then the number of days it takes until the patient dies or is unceremoniously disconnected from his ventilator and allowed to suffocate on the ward – I very strongly doubt that more than a very small percent of seriously ill covid patients, in New York hospitals, are stricken with the omicron variant at this time, December 25, 2021.
THESE DIFFERENTIALS ARE NOT UNIQUE TO PENNSLYVANIA AND NEW YORK; THEY PERVADE THE UNITED STARTES
I was, perhaps, unfairly picking on Pennsylvania and New York. The lopsided differentials are everywhere. For example, in the same issue of the New York Times, i.e., the issue of December 25, 2021, California clocked in at a daily average of 3,979 hospitalized covid patients, fewer than a hundred less than Pennsylvania’s 4,964. However, California’s daily death toll of 57.4 is substantially less than Pennsylvania’s death toll of 123.9. WHAT ARE CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK DOING FOR THEIR PATIENTS THAT PENNSYLVANIA IS NOT DOING ?? Of course, Pennsylvania is not the only ugly duckling. Michigan has fewer hospitalizations, or according to the same issue of the New York Times, a daily average of 3916, and a higher daily death toll of 126.4.
IS THE DIFFERENTIAL IN DEATHS CAUSED BY A DIFFERENTIAL IN EXPERIENCE
Years ago, in order to prove that a doctor was guilty of medical malpractice, one not only had to show that the doctor deviated from good and acceptable standards of medical care. One also had to show that one deviated from good and acceptable standards of medical care in one’s locality. For example, in 1925, on the upper East Side of Manhattan, they may have known more about the treatment of various infectious illnesses than they knew in Huckleberry Huckleshuck or some other little town that reared Lindsay Graham. Hence, doctors in Dixie would be held to a lower standard. However, when I went to NYU law school, in the 1980’s, I was advised that the locality rule was well on its way to becoming an historical curiosity as expedited communications ensured that knowledge attained in the canyons of New York, New York was swiftly disseminated throughout America.
Sometimes, however, I think that doctors in other parts of the country are just not as on the ball as doctors in big metropolitan areas. Every so often, I encounter patients and cases in which people have nearly died because of the rendition of archaic medical practices that up-to-date medicine has superseded. For example, I once litigated a medical malpractice case in which a women sued for malpractice because of a diabetic coma wrought by archaic medicine.
The woman had a stroke. The doctor, following the advice of doctors from the 1960’s who said that stroke patients should be given anti-inflammatory drugs, ordered cortisone. He failed to realize that this advice had been scrapped. What’s more, he seemed to forget that cortisone tended to raise blood sugar, that this patient was diabetic, that he forgot to give the patient the insulin she was getting before admission for the stroke and that the patient’s niece brought in a box of chocolates which the patient ate until she collapsed into diabetic somnolence. Her blood sugar soared to 900.
Since March of 2020, we have learned that patients can benefit from dexamethasone (this can curb the cytokine storms, or over reaction of the immune system, that often kills covid patients), anti-coagulants (covid often attacks the lining of blood vessels, triggering clots), convalescent plasma, monoclonal antibodies, being placed prone, and quite a few other things. New York learned the hard way how to treat covid patients. Do they know this sort of stuff in other parts of the country ? Of course, they should. But never assume that people, who work in a given field, are savvy about new developments in their field. I knew people who were on AZT monotherapy for AIDS years after AZT monotherapy was renounced. Some people who work in a given field are content to churn-out the same failed work product year in, year out. Sometimes an expert can be traumatized when he learns new things about his presumed area of expertise. An expert may learn that what he has been doing has been wrong. This will humiliate him. To avoid humiliation, he will retire into his outmoded and impotent means of treatment.
IS THE DIFFERENTIAL IN DEATHS DRIVEN BY A DIFFERENTIAL IN REGULATIONS AND LAWS STEMMING FROM THE MISERLINESS OF REDDER STATES?
Many federal programs, including Medicare, are administered by the States.
What New York and California may pay for, North Carolina may dispense with.
When life-saving protease inhibitors revolutionized the treatment of AIDS, many Southern and Western States declined to pay for those drugs. The wise old senile sadists in places like Georgia and Alabama knew that it was more important that James C Snottingsworth the 24th be given tax cuts, and daily mint julips on his rolling lawns, than a filthy faggot be spared the just damnation of AIDS.
The father of a friend of mine was almost killed by Medicare of Florida, but he was saved by Medicare of New York
If I recall correctly, he had a small tumor, or perhaps a pre-cancerous lesion, some place in the GI tract. His doctor said it was advisable that additional sites in the GI tract be examined to determine if there was any evidence of metastatic growth. However, Florida was too cheap to check. My friend’s father went swimming in New York’s Jones Beach. was baptized anew as a certifiable New Yorker, New York’s Medicare paid for the scope, the cancer was found, the cancer was removed and my friend’s father’s life was saved.
Given the gravity of covid, and given our longstanding predilection for treating poor people like cattle, we must be alert to the possibility that differentials in covid outcomes are caused by cost cutting run amok.