Nature supports Joe Biden for US president (opens in new tab)

"With the nation’s death toll now exceeding 215,000, the coronavirus has killed more people in the United States than anywhere else."

It's problematic because it's not very clear how this number has been calculated. CDC themselves say this about their own number:

"For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death."

Also, from the same page:

"When COVID-19 is reported as a cause of death – or when it is listed as a “probable” or “presumed” cause — the death is coded as U07.1. This can include cases with or without laboratory confirmation."

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

So, 94% had other additional conditions (including heart disease, diabetes, and sepsis). And even then, not all cases had been confirmed/

It seems to me like 215,000 (probably/presumably) died _with_ COVID-19, but not necessarily from it.

In some countries in Europe, including the UK and some Scandinavian countries (I haven't been able to find the method for US), the number of deaths are counted in the following way:

"Deaths = the statistics on fatalities include deaths recorded within 30 days of the detection of COVID-19 infection in the individual. However, COVID-19 is not necessarily the cause of death."

https://www.sst.dk/en/English/Corona-eng/Status-of-the-epide...

I believe this number was previously 90 days, but in my opinion, it's not a very scientific way to calculate the severity of COVID-19.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying nobody dies from COVID-19. Even numbers from Europe shows this clearly: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

But when Nature is using the number 215,000 in the way they did, it does not look very credible. Take a look at the whole statement:

"With the nation’s death toll now exceeding 215,000, the coronavirus has killed more people in the United States than anywhere else. Even adjusting for population size, the country has fared spectacularly badly. Despite having vast scientific and monetary resources at his disposal, Trump failed catastrophically when it mattered most."

To me that looks more like it's driven by Orange Man Bad, than by science.

The affordable care act included chiropractor and acupuncture.

California is under a strict lockdown that has been admitted in their documents that it will never return to green and the WHO is returning to their previously held statement that lockdowns hurt the poor disproportionately and do not provide ultimate success.

Masks do not work, then work, then only special types of cloth (two layer gaiters no, two layer cloths, yes).

HCQ with zinc does work in early treatments until endorsed by a party leader, opposition locks out doctors (trained medical professionals) from using the drug in certain states with no scientific backing.

Science in the political realm is non existent if it interferes with the scoring of political points.

It is not Republicans / Democrats are anti science, it is the political positions each side is beholden to that drives these narratives and then are used to make the opposing side look dumb.

The purpose of their stance is clear, but from this point on anything nature publish will have to be taken in the context of a political objective to get Joe Biden votes, with the side effect of benefiting scholarly independence once he is elected. That carries grave risks that people trust in the science decrease because the motives behind publications will be questioned based on political alignment rather than scientific evidence.

That's not a very clever stance. The overwhelming leftism of academia is a matter that academics have themselves studied. It's not a secret. What this position boils down to is:

"Having successfully got rid of most conservative academics, we're going to push left wing narratives. The priorities of the people paying for it shouldn't matter. Anyone who isn't as leftist as us is from now on 'anti-science'."

I've been reading more papers from Nature, Science and The Lancet this year, due to COVID. They are politicised trash. The editor of the Lancet routinely goes on major anti-Trump rants on Twitter, so it was no surprise when he published the Surgisphere paper which took about 24 hours before an actual journalist (at the Guardian no less) noticed it was completely fake. Other papers push ideological positions using all the tricks of bad science.

The fact that academics consider these outlets respectable is very telling. They publish soo many bad papers.

Science magazine published a blog post where they pondered suppressing papers that had anti-lockdown conclusions or data because it might encourage people to be less afraid. Other scientists have reported their papers indeed being rejected for that given reason - not the quality of the science but the fact that it wouldn't support social policies popular on the left.

Social science is famously poor quality.

https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with...

It's very sad that the natural sciences are so publicly hitching their reputation to it.