Inconsistencies in study about deaths "with" or "due to" COVID-19 in Greece
Authors/Creators
- 1. European University Cyprus School of Medicine
- 2. Institute for Clinical Research Education, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
- 3. Department of Critical Care, Independence Health System, Greensburg, PA, USA
Abstract
An article claiming that almost half of COVID-19 deaths in Greece during 2022 were not actually due to COVID-19 has been amplified by antivaxxers worldwide to minimize the impact of the pandemic. Here we point out several problems with that analysis, including inconsistencies between the article and the associated dataset, as well as an incorrect initial premise for the study. We conclude that the article does not document any overcount of COVID-19 deaths, in contrast to what has been claimed. We further argue that other approaches (such as excess mortality) are better suited to assess pandemic impact, whereas surveillance definitions require simplicity and consistency – more than perfect accuracy – in order to guide public health action.
Notes
This letter was submitted to the journal Scientific Reports as a “Matters Arising” article commenting on a published article (Basoulis et al).
It was rejected by the deputy editor, who assessed our points to be “largely due to misunderstandings or already addressed in the publication itself” and felt that they do not “advance or clarify understanding of the paper by Basoulis et al. to the extent required for publication in Scientific Reports”.
As we disagree with this assessment, we post our letter here unmodified, as well as our data reanalysis which can also be found on GitHub.
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Related works
- Describes
- Publication: 40258935 (PMID)
- Publication: 10.1038/s41598-025-98834-y (DOI)