RE:Coronavirus is NOT the leading cause of death in America
US and much of world reporting Is Counting Death of Anyone with Coronavirus as a COVID-19 Death, Regardless of Other Conditions
1. Professor Neil Ferguson [ whose statistical model, projections and recommendations triggered the worldwide economic shutdown/quarantine] has subsequently reduced his model estimates of English deaths by a factor 25. Further he has stated that model that he employed is 13 years old, large sections of the code are undocumented, and that the model and the data would not be available for peer review for at least several more weeks.
2. Italian data indicates that 97% of their reported deaths that were attributed to Corona virus had other serious underlying conditions that were more influential, and fhat only 3% of their reported deaths could be directly attributed to the coronavirus as the main cause.
3. Currently issued federal guidelines on reporting cause of death states that even when a patient has multiple severe underlying conditions , when a patient dies who had a coronavirus infection present at the time of death, the prime cause of death should be listed as coronavirus. This scoring decision on “cause of death” is not new but it makes much of the reporting as to” cause of death “ meaningless for any true analytical purposes.
Dr. Birx: Gov’t Is Counting Death of Anyone with Coronavirus as a COVID-19 Death, Regardless of Other Conditions
By Jack Davis
As health experts develop statistics and models to track the impact of coronavirus on America, anyone who has the disease and dies will be counted as a COVID-19 death, regardless of what actually killed them.
Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, explained at Tuesday’s daily news briefing that not all countries are doing things the same way.
“I think in this country, we’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality, and I think the reporting here has been pretty straightforward over the last five to six weeks,” Birx said.
“Prior to that, when there wasn’t testing in January and February, that’s a very different situation and unknown,” she added.
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CDC Tells Hospitals To List COVID as Cause of Death Even if You’re Just Assuming or It Only Contributed
By C. Douglas Golden
The problem with making informed decisions about coronavirus is that we don’t have a whole lot of data on it at the moment.
The data that we do have, meanwhile, could end up being terminally skewed, particularly the data that’s been coming out of China.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance on determining COVID-19 as a cause of death isn’t going to help those numbers.
Issued March 24, the guidance tells hospitals to list COVID-19 as a cause of death regardless of whether or not there’s actual testing to confirm that’s the case.
Instead, even if the coronavirus was just a contributing factor or if it’s “assumed to have caused or contributed to death,” it can be listed as the primary cause.
The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, or ICD, has established the code U07.1 for death by coronavirus infection. There’s a secondary code, U07.2, “for clinical or epidemiological diagnosis of COVID-19 where a laboratory confirmation is inconclusive or not available,” according to the CDC guidance.
“Because laboratory test results are not typically reported on death certificates in the U.S., NCHS is not planning to implement U07.2 for mortality statistics.”
Therein lies the problem.
“The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate. However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID- 19 being the underlying cause more often than not,” the guidelines read.
Is this new CDC guidance problematic?
“COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. Certifiers should include as much detail as possible based on their knowledge of the case, medical records, laboratory testing, etc.,” the guidance continued.
“If the decedent had other chronic conditions such as COPD or asthma that may have also contributed, these conditions can be reported in Part II.”
Author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, one of the few well-known figures to question some of the statistics on COVID-19, questioned the new CDC guidelines as well:
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump and members of his coronavirus task force announced that they were expecting a death toll of between 100,000 and 240,000 from coronavirus.
In an article on Friday, The Washington Post said some experts didn’t think the White House’s prediction models were accurate. It wasn’t because those experts thought that figure was too high or too low: It’s just because they didn’t think there was enough data to determine a death range yet.
“We don’t have a sense of what’s going on in the here and now, and we don’t know what people will do in the future,” Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist whose work was used by the White House to determine the death ranges, said.
“We don’t know if the virus is seasonal, as well.”
It doesn’t help that data when the guidelines for determining who’s actually died of the coronavirus are profoundly vague.
For instance, what happens when an elderly person with numerous underlying conditions comes into the hospital and dies?<
For months, scientists have been poring over data about cases and deaths to understand why it is that COVID-19 manifests itself in different ways around the globe, with certain factors such as the age of the population repeatedly popping up as among the most significant determinants.
Now, one of the largest studies conducted of COVID-19 infection in the US has found that obesity of patients was the single biggest factor, after age, in whether those with COVID-19 had to be admitted to a hospital.
Full Article: https://www.zdnet.com/article/nyu-scientists-largest-u-s-study-of-covid-19-finds-obesity-the-single-biggest-factor-in-new-york-critical-cases/
LIZ WATSON Said:
I agree! The massive use of available and yet to be available therapeutics should be employed especially wrt to patients that would expire anyway and expanded out if even partially successful to early detections and all medical and first responders as a preventative. When new efficient therapeutics become available they should be fast-tracked and employed. Nobody can guarantee the success of any vaccine not yet available or any one specific therapeutic. AIDS virus treated in this manner and no vaccine has been developed successfully to date….
Open up economies, schools …service and protect as secure as possible those most at risk and free up the rest to carry on with their lives with as little or as much restriction as needed….. Forcing world economic depression more harmful than the disease…
@ LIZ WATSON:
Liz,
I think you and I both will be happy when this inconvenience ends. Thank you for your very civil remark. Meanwhile, have you seen the COVID-19 version of “Romeo and Juliet”?
https://dxh95l71i5z45.cloudfront.net/pub/uploads/2020/04/07085204/200104901_UK-Virus-Lockdown-Act.mp4
@ Michael S: For the record… I believe that the failure to act [“as soon as necessary”] was due to the bureaucratic inertia of the US federal health establishment and that all attempts by the media and by Democratic Party governors to blame Donald Trump are purely political hype which are damaging to our country. [I also believe Trump derangement syndrome the Democratic Party and the media is undercutting our nation in its military and diplomatic endeavors. ]
… I also believe that the hysteria is unwarranted and that the United States should never have shut down and should re-open as rapidly as possible. Costs of the destruction of our economy and the damage to individuals and to families far exceeds any possible damage from the virus.
@ LIZ WATSON:
No, Liz, you cannot read my character. My read on YOUR character, is that you are trying to discredit our President and his administration during a time of national crisis. I wish you the worst of luck in this.
@ Michael S:The article that you question clearly reproduces the information provided by Jack Davis and C Douglas Golden; directly links to Alex Berenson and to the Washington Post; AND it links directly to three directives which clearly give these exact instructions from the CDC which you can read in their entirety. What kind of article? Well documented! What kind of comments were yours: lazy . Also, if I can read your character you are trying to discredit an argument that you know is true but cannot counter.
“Bommer and Vollmer[Professors at Gottingen University in Germany who conducted a study of Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus statistics] estimated that on 31 March 2020, Germany was likely to have actually had 460,000 infections. Based on the same method, they calculate that the US probably had more than 10 million, Spain more than 5 million, Italy around 3 million and the UK about 2 million coronavirus infections.”
No author, no attribution. What kind of article is this?
“Millions of coronavirus infections left undetected worldwide – study
Researchers from a German university have said countries have only found on average about 6% of coronavirus infections. The real number of infected people globally may have already reached tens of millions of people.
The total number of coronavirus infections is likely to be drastically higher than the figures officially registered by health authorities worldwide, according to a new study.
Christian Bommer and Sebastian Vollmer from Göttingen University in central Germany analyzed data from a recent study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases monthly journal.
The researchers looked at the estimates of coronavirus mortality and the time from infection until death to assess the quality of official case records.”
According to the German researchers, the data showed that countries have only discovered on average about 6% of all coronavirus infections. They claimed that the true total number of people infected with coronavirus may already have reached some tens of millions of people worldwide. ” Thiis is a summary of the study in Deutche Welle’s English edition.
This could mean that many cases of COVID-19 illnesses and deaths have not been reported. But it coud also mean that the number of people who have been infected, but are unsymptomatic (haven’t gotten sick), and those who have recovered and are now immune to the disease, have been underreported.
“CORONAVIRUS BECOMES NUMBER ONE CAUSE OF DEATH PER DAY IN U.S., SURPASSING HEART DISEASE AND CANCER
BY NEWSWEEK | APRIL 09, 2020”
https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-becomes-number-one-cause-death-per-day-us-surpassing-heart-disease-cancer-1495607