This afternoon.

Covid response critic Ivor Cummins discusses The Sunday Times report yesterday that Mayo coroner Patrick O’Connor (top) believes death figures reported by Nphet “do not have a scientific basis”.

Mr O’Connor, a public information officer for the Coroners Society of Ireland, told the paper

“In reality, a lot of people have terminal cancer or multiple serious co-morbidities. People can die from Covid or with Covid. I think numbers that are recorded as Covid deaths may be inaccurate and do not have a scientific basis.

“When a person is suffering from a number of medical conditions which will or may lead to their death at some short time in the future, if they are unlucky enough to be infected by the Covid virus, that is recorded as the principal cause of death.”

Meanwhile…

Covid deaths data skewed by other illnesses, says Mayo coroner (Sunday Times)

Sponsored Link

43 thoughts on “Skewed

  1. paul

    I’m all for the numbers being reviewed independently but if I have terminal cancer and a bear knocks my head off, the cause of death is ‘bear’.

    1. E'Matty

      Yeah, the bear will have killed you. Covid can play zero role in ones death but having tested positive in the preceding days and weeks would see you classed as a Covid death.

      1. Bruncvik

        I know of a case where the patient had terminal cancer, was being tested every day for Covid, always tested negative, and when he died of cancer, the hospital classified it as Covid-related. The family had to fight to get his death re-classified, and he became one of the “denotified” deaths. Not every family, though, has the time and energy to fight this fight. On the other hand, not all Covid-caused deaths are captured. So, I wouldn’t give much credence to this number and would instead focus on the number of hospitalizations.

        1. Micko

          Hospital numbers can be off too. As in did they catch it in hospital or are they there for something else.

          We’re never really told. I think looking at the deaths in hospital and ICU’s are important.

          Currently:

          2531 have died in a hospital setting with Covid
          447 have died after being admitted to ICU

          Now, who doesn’t get admitted to hospital? And who doesn’t get admitted to the ICU.

          Figures here
          https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/epidemiologyofcovid-19inirelandweeklyreports/COVID-19%20Weekly%20Report_%20%20Slidset_HPSC_%20Week_14%20-%20Web.pdf

          1. Cian

            I know.

            Who do you think doesn’t get admitted to hospital?
            Who do you think doesn’t get admitted to ICU?

    2. Mr. T

      Analogy goes both ways – If I have covid but get hit by a bus, cause of death should be bus.

      1. SB

        What if you collapsed into the roadway because you were gasping for breath from the effects of Covid, and then the bus hit you?

        1. E'Matty

          Except, the issue is that the bus isn’t even hitting people and they are still being deemed bus deaths. It’s an amplifying and exaggerating of the figures to induce fear in the populace.

          1. Nigel

            Or perhaps the issue is trying to quantify the number of bus-related deaths while a bunch of people are claiming to have scientifically proven that buses don’t exist and were made up by Big Train to induce fear in the populace and drive train ticket sales through the roof.

  2. John

    Ah sure give all those already sick people Covid, sure they’re going to die anyway lets make it a bit quicker.

  3. Pat

    Sure dey wudda died soon enough anyway. Take dem off de COVID death list so.

    More attention seeking pish from the Ratlicker fraperoom

    1. E'Matty

      Many will have died at exactly the same time they would have witg or without Covid. Covid may have played no role whatsoever in their death.

      1. Nigel

        ‘Many?’ Or is it ‘lots?’ Or is it ‘some?’ Is it ‘a rake of them?’ Or is it ‘the odd one here and there?’

  4. Joe

    Broadsheet appears to be going down an anti Covid/Corona virus abyss, it is a pity as it has some good columns and articles but it has lost its balance in a very negative way in recent times. It will lose its advertising and support sooner than later if it continues in this path.

    1. E'Matty

      Plenty of pro hysteria on Covid media echo chambers out there for you Joe. Broadsheet stands out as one of the only media of any kind in this country who are in any way deviating from the Black Death narrative, which they should be commended for. Una duce, una voce, we do not want.

    2. dylad

      Yep, when you’re quoting twitter users with 2 followers who in turn quote ‘paleolibertarians’, it’s a sure sign the brainy bus has left.

    3. hansel

      I stopped visiting Broadsheet for a while last year after it went down the conspiracy wormhole.
      This is my first comment in many months. I was surprised the browser still had my details cached.
      Some of the individual article writers still produce interesting pieces: Taft, Boyle, Mooney, etc. I obviously don’t agree with all of them, but they’re making coherent thought-worthy points at least.

      But I don’t trust anything Broadsheet reports any more: I visit despite the Covid/Vaccine content.
      They got rid of leather jacket guy and brought in some kind of a high-frequency “everything’s a conspiracy!” feed.

      Thinking about it as I type, I’m going to put a website-blocker on Broadsheet tomorrow.
      I am so vain as to wait until then, in order to read any abusive replies.

      Thanks for the good articles down through the years, Broadsheet.
      I hope this new angle works out for you guys, it’s simply not for me.

  5. Nigel

    Does ‘The goal of this study is not to impress academics with complex statistics’ mean that some sort of basic statistical analysis would show his methods to be flawed?

  6. phil

    Think it would be helpful to be asked the same question the Jury in the Floyd case is being asked ….

    If the person did not contract COVID, would they be alive today ?

  7. Bitnboxy

    Whatever about Pat O’Connor who hails from a very noteworthy Mayo family with a proud and distinguished heritage of legal service and to whose views I would very much listen, having a bandwagon-jumping, shameless nincompoop like Ivor Cummins hijack O’Connor’s statement to try extract a few more paytriot donations from his guileless and gullible followers, is not something with which any decent person should associate.

      1. Bitnboxy

        Heehee. More than you Mr “high earner”.

        Oh God, but you are a tonic E’Matty, you little belter!

      1. Bitnboxy

        Indeed, Ivor Cummins peddles a significant amount of rubbish – a one man flimflam machine who accepts all major credit cards.

  8. Clampers Outside

    Mr O’Connor’s point is what the story is, not Cummins’ addition.

    So, for clarity, can those giving out about Cummins please ignore him.
    I’d like to hear comment on Mr O’Connor’s point, ta.

    1. Nigel

      Yeah, I’m a bit puzzled by how ‘may be inaccurate’ gets hyped up to ‘no scientific basis.’ The charts being used say absolutely nothing about cause of death, for a start.

    2. Bitnboxy

      +1 I made a similar point. Cummins, the grifter, is trying to repackage Pat O’Connor’s comments as his own and manipulate them for his own agenda of nincompoopery.

  9. eoin

    My only question, at this stage, is ‘what is this really all about?’…what’s the REAL agenda with masks and lockdowns and ignoring the science and faking data and downplaying any positive news etc.?????

    1. Nigel

      My question exactly. Who benefits from driving anti-covid hysteria, anti-vaxx nonsense, anti-lockdown conspiracies? What’s all that about? You get lots of people furious, believeing that all of this has been deliberately done to them, and what does that acheive? It drives extremism, it undermines trust in public institutions, in science, in truth itself. You end up with people paranoid, resentful and rejecting the world around them. You can persuade people like that to believe anything, if you push the right buttons.

  10. DOB

    Ah here! The real facts are my dear learned friends is that is that if you are over 65, Covid is a real threat to your health and outcomes are not particularly strong that you will survive it. If you are under 65 it’s not too bad as long as your not co-morbid with a whole host of other conditions. If god forbid you were over 65 and contacted some other transmissible respiratory ailment such as a viral pneumonia, influenza or a bad rhino virus, which is what we get every year b4 C19, guess what, yeah it could kill yeah. People die and more people die in winter. Fact. It’s excess deaths you need to look at and guess what it’s no higher in 2020. Spare me the bandwagon spoofery and fake outpourings of emotional compassion.

    From CSO data -The CSO’s analysis of the confirmed deaths has found that COVID-19 has had the greatest impact on people aged 65 or over. Almost 92% of confirmed deaths occurred within this age group in the period from 11 March 2020 up to 15 May 2020. The data also shows that in the 0-44 age cohort there were 17 deaths.

    This older age group also accounted for more than 26% of all confirmed cases of the virus. Further analysis found that 14% of all confirmed cases are people aged 80+, despite only making up 3% of the population.

    In almost 88% of deaths there was an underlying condition, the median age of these deaths was 83, the same as that for all deaths.

Comments are closed.

Sponsored Link
Broadsheet.ie