Deaths in Santa Clara county, CA are running at 20% above last year: which is TWICE the mortality gap you'd expect from officially confirmed COVID deaths.

WE NEED FASTER ALL-CAUSE MORTALITY DATA. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/22/santa-clara-county-death-data-shows-20-increase-in-march-suggesting-more-coronavirus-victims-than-previously-known/

Folks if it turns out that California excess deaths come in at DOUBLE reported COVID deaths, and also that CA's first cases were late Jan/early Feb, then we're gonna need a major revision on the CW about California having it mild.

Also if California is experiencing a 20% death spike we will need to revise the CW on "COVID will overwhelm hospitals."

CA hospitals are mostly NOT overwhelmed! COVID kills people *at home*. Not just hospitals.

Silent hypoxia means many peopke feel almost fine until suddenly you can't get out of bed and you die alone.

That's not an "overwhelmed hospitals" scenario!

Given large share of asymptomatics and mild cases, and silent hypoxia as a major killer, and CFR being WAY higher among old people (who live alone more often and are less mobile), the "hospital capacity" emphasis is increasingly seeming a bit overwrought.

We probably needed to worry less about not overwhelming hospitals and worry more about making sure somebody was checking on old people living alone.

What we needed, in hindsight, was to make sure every American over age 60 was using a pulse oximeter and having their temperature checked every 6-12 hours, and had somebody on hand to provide for their needs.

Hospital capacity DOES matter, of course.

But the laser focus everyone had on the theory that we could keep CFRs low by avoiding overwhelming hospitals and that this was THE KEY to saving lives and so Goal #1, 2, and 3 was to stay home to avoid infection....

I'm.... not 100% sure this was the best strategy to communicate to the public, because evidently a vast share of COVID deaths have been old people alone at home with nobody to check on them.

I felt very embarrassed piping up weeks, months ago saying, "Hey, look, social distancing is great and all, but maybe do check on old people." It was very contrarian to say this.

Increasingly convinced I was right and the "avoid old people at all costs" strategy killed many.

At this point one of the most important things state governments can do is PRODUCE VITAL STATISTICS DATA AS RAPIDLY AS POSSIBLE. Researchers need complete vital stats data ASAP to figure out if our COVID-specific data is at all reliable.