Is the number of Covid deaths overestimated? Milena Gabanelli report in the Corriere della Sera
Controversial data, debated counting method, deaths with or from Covid, reimbursements to hospitals for each hospitalization. What Milena Gabanelli wrote in Corriere della Sera
For some, the number of Covid deaths reported by the Ministry of Health is inflated, for others, however, the accounts add up. The question is: how are deaths counted? And then: is this the correct method?
Here is what the journalist Milena Gabanelli writes in her article on Dataroom of the Corriere della Sera .
DEFINITION OF "DEATH FROM COVID"
Gabanelli first of all clarifies that "according to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, which incorporates the recommendations of the WHO, a death is to be attributed to Covid when the following conditions are present at the same time (here the document): positive swab at the time of death, a consistent with the symptoms of the virus (fever, cough, dyspnoea, chills, tremor, muscle aches, headache, sore throat, acute loss of smell or taste), absence of clinical recovery between illness and death, and absence of a clear cause of death other than infection. The problem – the journalist points out – mainly concerns this last point ".
This means that if a person is affected by other previous pathologies (from cancer to diabate) and dies while it is positive, then it is counted in Covid deaths because, recalls the article, "the pre-existing pathologies may have favored or predisposed to a course negative of the infection ".
THE QUESTION OF REFUNDS TO HOSPITALS
As Gabanelli points out, the most malicious have wanted to see in the 138,099 Covid deaths in Italy since the beginning of the pandemic an overestimated number by the hospitals that, starting from 12 August 2021 and with retroactive effect, have received reimbursements for each Covid hospitalization: 3,713 euros per one patient hospitalized in the medical area and € 9,697 if hospitalized in intensive care.
DEATH WITH COVID OR COVID?
Given the easy temptation of some to think: "they say he died of Covid, but he was already sick", Gabanelli, numbers in hand, explains that "on a sample of 8,428 medical records, ISS data show that who is died while he had Covid without any other concomitant pathology is only 2.9% of the deceased, with one pathology 11.3%, with 2 17.9% and with three or more 67.8% ".
So ok, the percentage of deaths with other pathologies also amounts to 97% but, as the journalist points out, this "does not mean that they would have passed away in a short time anyway" because "in Italy, out of a population of almost 51 million of people over the age of 18, over 14 million live with a chronic disease, and of these 8.4 million are over 65 ”.
Trivially, even without a pandemic, the more the years increase, the more people who die without any pathology decrease.
Another essential role, the article underlines, is that played by vaccines which, again based on numbers, show that “the average age of deaths among the unvaccinated is 78.6 years, while in the vaccinated 84.7. It means that even in people who are already sick, Covid can take 6 years of life away ". So, once again, Covid is instrumental in causing death.
THE EXPLANATION OF VILLA (ISPI)
According to ISPI researcher Matteo Villa, "from March to December 2020 the positive deaths from Covid included in the bulletin were about 78 thousand", but compared to the 2015-2019 period there seem to have been 108 thousand more deaths and therefore there would be a difference of 30 thousand. Which suggests that the Covid deaths have been underestimated.
However, "between January and October 2021 the deaths included in the Covid bulletin were about 54 thousand", continues the researcher, with a difference compared to the average mortality of previous years "of about 49 thousand people". This could therefore suggest an overestimation of Covid deaths.
In reality, explains Villa, we have to consider the fact that the flu has disappeared. "If we exclude from the comparison the deaths of flu in previous years, the real deaths more than expected in 2021 were about 63 thousand, that is 9 thousand more than the Covid deaths declared in the bulletin". This, for the ISPI researcher, would show that these are not extra-counts, but "that the deaths included in the bulletin are a good approximation of the people for whom Covid was really the determining cause of death in the last two years" .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/il-numero-di-morti-covid-e-sovrastimato-report-milena-gabanelli-sul-corriere-della-sera/ on Thu, 27 Jan 2022 10:22:47 +0000.