SocraticGadfly: Coronavirus week 132: Yes but on ethnic death differences

January 13, 2023

Coronavirus week 132: Yes but on ethnic death differences

It is certainly possible, per the Texas Observer, that minorities have suffered many COVID-related deaths that aren't counted on official statistics. But, when you're extending that to things like suicides or drug and alcohol overdoses, why shouldn't at least some white suicides and fatal overdoses also be counted as COVID deaths?

And, while things like diabetes deaths among American Indians may indeed, at least in part, be a legacy of colonialism, they're not COVID or COVID-related deaths.

What this boils down to, like so-called People's CDC claims about Long COVID, is anecdote being substituted for data. It's happening more and more on both of the "two sides" of what are actually more than two sides, per old friend Idries Shah, in the world of coronavirus.

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While we're talking COVID, a friendly reminder from someone as "hardcore" as Skeptical Raptor that the XBB 1.5 is no more deadly than other recent subvariants and in fact possibly less deadly. The People's CDC and Walker Bragman probably still won't tell you that, though. Nor will they tell you that the rolling average of weekly deaths is under 1,500, well below their 2,000 a week claim. Even if we make "adjustments" as big as the Observer proposes, it's still under 2,000 a week.

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