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As the article explains, the study in question is actually kind of weak in terms of providing solid proof that the excess deaths were attributable to COVID-19, but it's apparently one in a growing number of studies that all have relatively weak "arrows" pointing in the same direction. So, the reason researchers view these studies as evidence that Republican messaging on vaccines is partially to blame is due to the collective body of evidence, not just this paper.
But that’s the thing about excess mortality during COVID, it was mostly due actual COVID
??? Did you even read the article you posted?
The study does not directly attribute the deaths to covid-19. Instead, excess mortality refers to the overall rate of deaths exceeding what would be expected from historical trends.
The excess death rates between groups could be affected by other factors, such as differences in education, race, ethnicity, underlying conditions and access to health care, said Wallace, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health and the lead author.
“We’re not saying that if you took someone’s political party affiliation and were to change it from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party that they would be more likely to die from covid-19,” Wallace said.
Excess deaths can be anything including say blood clots causing organ damage long after you had covid, because who knows what the long term effects were. So you didn't die directly because of covid, but can easily be caused by covid (and not counted). That's kind of why it's measured. But you can also say excess deaths were from not having random doctors visits and randomly catching issues. So no one is willing to say much. But I think it's pretty apparent that a disease that cause severe health issues is going to cause more than the direct deaths.
Anecdotallly, we saw a LOT of this. I had a dialysis patient who survived Covid, but their quality of life was so poor they chose to stop dialysis. Another week recovered from Covid and collapsed their first day back to work with new onset cardiac problems. Another who had multiple hospitalizations for hypotension after a Covid episode when they had been stable on their cardiac meds for decades.
None of those get counted as Covid deaths. They're all "excess deaths"
Also excess deaths include deaths that likely wouldn't have happened before COVID, but due to factors like overworked health care staff or shortage of supplies/medical beds because of COVID patients, happened anyway.
In other words, people didn't just die from COVID, some died from COVID existing.
Maybe, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if that was the case, but the point is the study doesn't actually prove it and it admits that.
It's never going to be provable, that's why it's measured as excess deaths.
I understand the study's basic methodology. It doesn't change my point. And I don't know that it's never going to be provable. Maybe with enough data we could find a very subtle pattern that proves it. The point is, this study doesn't, nor do any of the others on their own, but they collectively provide evidence that the hypothesis may be true.
You realise you’ve just described science there. Nothing can ever be conclusively proven, you can only disprove it, or build more evidence for it.
You are missing the entire point of looking at excess deaths.
No, I'm not. Ironically, I think you are. But I'm tired of debating this with people. It says it in the linked article. Debate with the authors of the study if you want to.
I agree with you, it's in the article. Not sure why people are injecting a new thesis instead of discussing the one presented and researched
Weak compared to what?
In my experience litigating medicolegal causation, this is the nature of epidemiology.
Like, the standard isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt," in my view, it's "preponderance of the evidence," aka "more likely than not."
More likely than not, the excess deaths were COVID. It's like when the weather forecasts a 20% chance of rain. Weak, right? No. It's a 100% chance of rain in 20% of the forecast area.