Pandemic’s Death Toll 66% Higher Than Official Counts, inewsource Finds

Speaker 1: 00:00 Officially more than 850 people have died in San Diego County from the coronavirus pandemic, but a closer look reveals that San Diego's overall death toll increased significantly from March through August, indicating an under count of virus related deaths, estimates from an I new source analysis show that roughly 1,181 more County residents died in that time span. Then in a normal year under counting COVID related deaths has happening across the nation. According to the CDC, their new figures report nearly 300,000 more Americans have died this year than in a typical year because of Corona virus. And joining me is Mary Plummer. She's an investigative reporter for, I knew source, which is an independently funded nonprofit partner of KPBS and Mary, welcome to the program. Speaker 2: 00:54 Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1: 00:57 Would COVID deaths be under counted according to your investigation? What are County health officials missing? Speaker 2: 01:04 Uh, the county's official, uh, death numbers only include people with positive COVID-19 tests. So if you were never tested, but died from an infection, you wouldn't be captured in their numbers. Um, our data analysis is much broader and includes people who died from the virus, but were never tested as well as those who didn't contract it, but lost their lives because of the pandemic. Anyway. So it's really giving a fuller picture of the overall loss at an includes. People who died indirectly from the pandemic due to problems caused by job loss isolation or shut downs of vital services. Um, the classic example of this is someone with heart attack symptoms, who is scared to go to the hospital because they think they'll contract the virus and then they die at home from a heart attack that could have been easily treated by a doctor. Speaker 1: 01:56 Mary, can you explain the concept of excess deaths and how they're determined? Speaker 2: 02:01 Excess deaths is a calculation used by researchers to determine how many more deaths have occurred than what is expected in normal circumstances. Basically, you look at the last few years of death data and you see how many more people are dying this year that tells you how many are connected to the pandemic. As I mentioned, the County public health office has been reporting the number of people who tested positive for COVID-19. Our calculation looks at excess deaths, um, which is it's more representative of the full death toll, but they are two different numbers. Speaker 1: 02:36 What percentage higher our COVID related deaths in San Diego County. If you rely on these new numbers, Speaker 2: 02:43 Analysis includes two kinds of people. The people who died directly of COVID infections and the people who died from the pandemic for other reasons, there's no easy way to tease apart how many people there are in each of these two groups. We can say that County officials here in San Diego and experts around the country acknowledged that in the early days of the pandemic, some COVID infections were missed because it was harder to get tested. We do know from our reporting that testing has been a challenge here in San Diego County. We have interviewed families who struggled to get testing and found the followup from public health officials, extremely lacking Speaker 1: 03:24 Communities are being hit the hardest with these related deaths. Speaker 2: 03:29 The uncounted desk that we found in our data analysis are concentrated in minority communities. More than a third of the people missing from the county's deaths. Total are Hispanic and Asian people and black people are also big parts of the dataset with a pandemic is hitting communities of color, even more significantly than what's been previously reported in San Diego. Um, and this is backed up by community sources. You know, we've spoken to at mattress, some of the challenges that people are are living day to day right now, now in your report in your investigation, Speaker 1: 04:02 And you give several examples of people who didn't die of COVID, but who died because there was COVID. And tell us about one of them, tell us about Rosie Sanchez. Speaker 2: 04:14 Rosie Sanchez is an 81 year old who died of post-polio syndrome. In August. We interviewed her daughter, Becky McBride, who explained that Rosie's life was really turned upside down by the pandemic. Rosie was extremely active socially. She was a long time Padres season ticket holder. She was someone who never missed birthdays. She was also a very devoted gym goer. And when the pandemic hit and her routine at the gym was no longer possible her muscles atrophied, which ultimately led to her death and her daughter, Becky believes her mother died prematurely because of the pandemic. And we heard this from several families we talked to who described is that in some cases, really painful circumstances COVID causes in their lives. Um, even for folks who did not, uh, you know, contract the virus itself, Speaker 1: 05:06 You talk to epidemiologists and other public health experts about this. Do they agree? COVID deaths are being under counted. Speaker 2: 05:14 Yes, uh, absolutely eight epidemiologists. We spoke with supported the data analysis we conducted and back the approach, uh, excess death calculations are a widely used tool in many parts of the country. But as we've been talking about, it's not something that San Diego County has used during the pandemic. Our analysis is the first look at this data for San Diego County that we're aware of. Uh, it's also a calculation that's used nationally. The CDC for example, has an access desk dashboard that updates with, uh, totals for each state. Speaker 1: 05:46 What are San Diego County health officials saying about this under count investigation? What's their position. Speaker 2: 05:53 They pushed back on our reporting and it's not totally clear why in an email, a spokesperson for the county's health agency told us the analysis was quote premature and should not be conducted until after the pandemic is over. If at all, um, another staff member from the agency also questioned the findings saying this kind of calculation should be used after floods or wildfires rather than during pandemics. Uh, but we have not found any experts who agree with those concerns. In fact, the experts we spoke with strongly disagreed with the county's statements. And in fact, you've spoken with people that say having an accurate count of the death toll related to the pandemic is very important. Tell us why. Yes. I'd like to play I'm a little bit from an interview I did with dr. Matthew Winnier, he's the director of a bioethics program at the university of Colorado. Speaker 3: 06:45 Having an accurate count of the total impact of a disaster is important for just understanding what we have lost. What has been the toll of this virus so far. Speaker 2: 07:00 And, you know, it's also important in informing policy decisions, um, having accurate counts of where people are sick and where, and why are they're dying, uh, helps inform decision makers on where to send resources, um, from our reporting, we can see that home deaths are up in San Diego County. I've been speaking with Mary Plummer who was an investigative reporter for I news source. Mary, thank you very much. Thank you.