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Bill Heath's avatar

Have you looked into lifespan expectations in MA and PR? I seem to recall they were both above the US norm. My first suspicion would be diet.

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norstadt's avatar

Thanks, I'll try to run a regression. MA lifespan is 6th and PR is 15th, but life tables (LEWK4) allow calculating life probabilities for the specific age range 25-44 where MA is looking better. Puerto Rico data is missing. Still, a correlation wouldn't determine the cause. It could be diet or healthcare or exercise or drug use or something else.

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Bill Heath's avatar

I understand the danger of confusing correlation with causation. Coincidentally, we both went to diet first. I have neither the time nor energy to research the major similarities in diet and in minerals in the local soils. Nor, in fact, to look much further into the matter.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Thanks for this. I'm researching the hypothesis this virus was spreading widely months before the lockdowns. If my theory is true, I think there would be some increase in "all cause" mortality especially in the 75 and over demos in, say, December 2019 through early March 2020. I saved data from the first 13 weeks of 2020 in Michigan which seems to show a pretty noticeable spike in deaths compared to the previous five-year norms. I've had problems finding simple "mortality" numbers (by year and week) for many states. Do you happen to have that info? Can you test or look at data from various states and see if deaths were up in December 2019 through about March 1 2020 in any states? I don't think it would be a huge spike, but still noticeable.

I took particular interest in your first graph which shows all-cause mortality for America age 75 to 84. To me, it looks like there is a noticeable increase beginning in late 2019 and going to March (before Covid). Do you agree? I don't see the same bump in other years (except 2018 which was a real bad flu year).

My hypothesis is that some "early" Covid deaths were probably "missed" or attributed to other causes, especially in the 75 and older age cohorts.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

bill rice jr.

My email is:

wjricejunior@gmail.com

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norstadt's avatar

Thanks for the comments. These graphs do show the December 2019 - March 2020 period which doesn't look unusual to me. The data source is linked in the footnote 1. Do you have a particular measure in mind? I can't say that I see the increase for ages 75-84.

FWIW, in the Boston area at least there is wastewater data showing no virus from January 15 through February 26, 2020. However, pre-March validity is unclear. This area was hit early on, as would be expected from the many travelers.

https://github.com/s1rh3nry/covid_calc/blob/main/README.md

https://github.com/biobotanalytics/covid19-wastewater-data/blob/master/wastewater_by_county.csv

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Thanks. Do you have an email you can give me? I've got a Word document/pdf where I have summarized 13 weeks of data/comparisons from Michigan - five years worth of comparisons for number of deaths recorded the same week. I'd like another set of eyes or opinions.

I look at antibody evidence as the best evidence of early cases.

Here's my summary I wrote at my Substack site.

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/early-spread-evidence-in-one-document

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norstadt's avatar

I can be reached at norstadt@substack.com, but apologize in advance for not always timely responding.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Thanks. No rush. I appreciate you talking a look at the document(s) I'll email.

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