How accurate is the Covid death count? (w/ Hank Green)

After four years and dozens of studies, we know everything we're going to know about the death toll of the Covid pandemic.

WELCOME TO HOWTOWN! Our small but mighty team of two (Joss Fong and Adam Cole) digs into the evidence behind commonly held facts and claims in the news.

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ASK US A QUESTION

Chapters:
00:00 hank’s question
01:00 death certificates
02:24 uncertainty
05:25 excess mortality
08:17 the global picture
11:36 closing thoughts
13:14 meanwhile on patreon

[euterpent]

My friend died of a non-COVID condition when he was not able to continue hospital treatment in 2020. This would not have been listed as a COVID death because it was not due to the virus, but it may have been related to the strain on hospitals because of the pandemic. Thank you for bringing up excess deaths among people who couldn't get other healthcare treatments.

[jaytan]

Well researched and well produced! I was a frontline worker in the COVID ICU at Mount Sinai in March 2020 and filled out numerous death certificates. At the time, was pulling my hair out at people minimizing the disease - "it wasn't COVID that killed my family member, it was respiratory failure!". The extremely limited understanding of infectious disease and the lack of confidence in science and medicine was upsetting.

[gailbroekhuizen]

Oh. My Gosh! This describes my husband’s death on 6/17/22! It started with Covid on 7/31/21. He was vaccinated and went into the hospital with Covid, then went downhill. His charts definitely say Covid and Pneumonia and three cardiac arrests and then lungs getting worse after Rendesivir and then on a ventilator until his death 10 1/2 months later. The doctor who signed off on his death certificate was mad at me and a friend because I refused to change my husband’s DNR. My husband would start to get better many times like breathing on his own for 16 1/2 hours and a month later back to one hour after being forced to go to a SNF that didn’t take care of him. This same doctor signed off on my husband’s DC but refused to list COVID as the underlying death. Now FEMA will refuse to refund burial costs because the DC doesn’t list COVID as the underlying cause of his death. Excellent video!

[teyleen]

Something incredible I’ve been noticing is how the wastewater data and positivity rates have been rising and falling in concert with Covid waves but now that data is decoupling. We are seeing spikes in the wastewater now that are being completely missed by testing as it’s become so limited because the “pandemic is over”

[byelijahhelton]

"it's hard to know stuff"!"

excellent explainer - reminds me of a newspaper editor, a 60-something i knew in a small town in a conservative area. he mentioned how he was sick of people who say that covid was overblown or even fake. i can't remember his exact words but he essentially said "we ran extra full pages of obituaries for weeks. it's not like there's any other explanation" - this video does an excellent job on levels of narrative and scholarship and common sense all at once 🚀

[Ishanjaber]

Proud and honored to be one of the first subscribers of Howtown

[fiveminutefridays]

this is such a feast of data visualization - what a fantastic job! No one piece of the puzzle is *that* hard to grasp, but the situation as a whole has so many moving pieces that it can become difficult to grasp, and you managed to bring it back to something you can understand, where the graphs and the details and the numbers actually tell the story

[granadir]

That pinch-to-zoom-in effect was so slick 💯

[Homer-OJ-Simpson]

Joss is back! Missed you at Vox. You have the most pleasant voice to listen to and your stories are always great. This channel will certainly reach the levels of the former Vox journalists turned independent YouTube journalists (Johnny Harris, Cleo, etc).

[tingenism]

5:30 the following anecdote has helped me explain excess deaths to people; I share it so that others might be able to use it as well:

My Dad died of cancer on November 23, 2019 in Phoenix, Arizona.

The crematory that Dad went to apologized profusely to me soon after they received him.

They told me their morgue was full, and that it would be a while before they could process him.

I asked the cremator if this was common. She said no, that she had never seen anything like this in her five years at the crematory.

She said that there was usually an uptick in the winter due to the influx of snowbirds (retirees vacationing to escape the winters bite) and winter disease, but the morgue was never full. This was *different*

Looking back, they suspect it was Covid overage, even before the world was aware.

I’ve talked to other long term funeral professionals in large cities in the US, and they have mentioned similar experiences!

(Disclaimer: Anecdotes are not data, but they can help tell the story!)

[flymypg]

Loved not only the data gathering, analysis and reportage, but also the delivery, turning what could be dry coverage into a story with a heartbeat.

[davidshi]

I really like this format of talking to experts, and discussing what you learned with a "layperson" (like Hank Green). It reminds me of the science communication that Alan Alda has done!

[byfernandoh]

So informative. The visuals in your pieces are top-notch, beautiful and help explain the concepts effectively. Love that Howtown exists.

[justaname]

Joss has the voice to either make me super interested in the topic or so soothing that's like a lullaby for me to sleep

[dkaloger]

At this point Vox is an incubator for YouTube talent, and thats great !

[zeniqz]

can you do a video on how do flys always get into homes but never know how to leave

[antoniocastillo]

Love that we now have one more channel that gives high quality content on the not so easy to answer questions!

[b.a.erlebacher]

Unfortunately, COVID death statistics can't cover people who die months or years later due to organ damage from COVID. Perhaps some statistics could be extracted showing people dying from various diseases associated with aging with mean age lower than would be expected before the pandemic. The disability toll from COVID is another statistic that doesn't seem to be evaluated. Long COVID is bad enough, but some people end up with apparently permanent disabling problems. I was talking with a physiotherapist recently who is working with a group of women age 18-25 who have dysautonomia mostly secondary to COVID. These young women experience dangerous tachycardia at the least exertion and have to spend most of their time lying down. It's enough to keep me wearing a mask indoors in public places.

[Homer-OJ-Simpson]

This channel is going to be an ADHD addiction. I have so many questions all the time and a channel like this will be answering so many of my questions

[biomatrix]

I'd be interested to know what the death numbers would be like if people worldwide used no mitigations: No masking, no distancing, no vaccines, etc, and carried on like it was 2019.