COVID-19 Deaths have been overstated

[dan_s]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report late last week showing that just 9,683 Americans, or 6%, died with only COVID-19 listed on their death certificates.

The other 94% of deaths were listed as having at least one additional medical condition linked to their death.

Some of the underlying diseases listed by the CDC include influenza and pneumonia, respiratory failure, hypertensive disease, diabetes, vascular and unspecified dementia, cardiac arrest, heart failure and renal failure.

So....if you are in good health with a healthy immune system the risk of you dying from COVID-19 is less than 1 in 35,000. If you are under 50 it is less than 1 in 100,000.

[dan_s]

Texas has reported 12,510 COVID-19 Deaths. ~90% had other health problems that contributed to their deaths; probably an even higher percentage for those under 50

by age
0-9 = 5
10-19 = 14
20-29 = 86
30-39 = 240
40-49 = 684
50+ = 11,481

Texas population is ~30 million

[cmm3rd]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report late last week showing that just 9,683 Americans, or 6%, died with only COVID-19 listed on their death certificates.

The other 94% of deaths were listed as having at least one additional medical condition linked to their death.

Some of the underlying diseases listed by the CDC include influenza and pneumonia, respiratory failure, hypertensive disease, diabetes, vascular and unspecified dementia, cardiac arrest, heart failure and renal failure.

So....if you are in good health with a healthy immune system the risk of you dying from COVID-19 is less than 1 in 35,000. If you are under 50 it is less than 1 in 100,000.

More misinformation.

Your logic and conclusion are seriously flawed, in part because you continue to fail to understand how information is entered on death certificates and what it signifies. As posted previously, death certificates (the use of which is generally regulated at the state level) list a cause of death and other contributing conditions. Those contributing conditions may or may not have been "underlying" conditions. Often, in fact, they are not "underlying" or "pre-existing."

On the death certificate, some or all conditions that existed that are felt to have contributed to death can be listed. How and in what order they occurred and caused death is often not knowable, and the order in which they are listed is not intended to imply that any one of them, alone, caused or contributed to the death or how they interacted with each other to cause death.

Typically, in fact, COVID-19 patients die from a cascade of conditions from which the body cannot recover, and which conditions are caused by COVID or caused indirectly by one or more of the conditions COVID-19 can trigger. Often, not all involved conditions (there can be many) are listed. In the CDC report you refer to, COVID-19 alone was listed in only 6% of cases. But COVID-19 doesn't itself cause death. It causes other bad things to happen that unfortunately can cause death. If you were to look at the medical records of those 6% of cases, you would find evidence of all sorts of conditions that were involved in those deaths.

Those contributing conditions, again, may have been (and very frequently are) actually caused by COVID-19. COVID-19 can cause conditions such as respiratory failure, renal failure, stroke, and heart failure, to name a few. Often, the occurrences of those conditions are closely related. For example, healthy patients not otherwise at risk for stroke and who become infected with COVID can develop clotting abnormalities leading to strokes and/or renal failure. Such patients could then also develop pulmonary failure (as a result of clots in the lungs, for example). In that example, the death certificate may list as the immediate cause of death "renal failure," with "stroke," "pulmonary failure" and "COVID-19" also listed on the death certificate as additional conditions.

By your logic, you would claim such a death certificate implies such a patient not to be a COVID-19 death, but instead someone who died of renal failure that you would further incorrectly assume was pre-existing. In truth, such a patient died of renal failure caused by clotting disorder, caused by COVID-19, complicated by concurrent respiratory failure and stroke (both also caused by COVID-19). But the death certificate isn't going to explain all of that. And uneducated people will misinterpret the death certificate or data regarding death certificates, as you continue to do.

Further, in many cases, a few conditions (e.g., hypertension, pulmonary compromise) do pre-exist and make it more difficult for the patient to overcome the conditions that COVID-19 can cause. But without COVID-19, those patients would have been fine for many more years. Those pre-existing conditions might be listed on the death certificate. When they are, you would claim that the patient really died of their underlying/pre-existing condition, not COVID-19. Actually, such a patient died of COVID-19's various cascading conditions (like renal failure, respiratory failure, cardiac failure) that they could not overcome because of their underlying condition(s) that otherwise would not have killed them.

Your analysis is so uninformed and overly simplistic as to be absurd. But you continue to publish erroneous commentary like this, misinforming anyone who believes you. Yes, it's your right to mislead your readers, but is it really constructive?

You should stick to what you know something about and stop misinforming your readers. Subscribers are paying for informed commentary about the energy industry, not for misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.

[dan_s]

Here is my point.

Susan's father was a pack a day smoker until he had a major heart attack in his late 50s. After a triple bypass and a pace maker he seemed fine, but he had a seriously damaged heart.
At age 72 he got a cold that lingered and turned into pneumonia. After a month in the hospital he died.
Did he die from a cold? No, he died because he was a heavy smoker and had a bad heart.

If a person tests positive for COVID-19 is so depressed that he commits suicide, did he die from the virus? I think you can make the argument that he did.

If a person's business is destroyed because of the shutdowns and he or she commits suicide, should that be counted as a COVID-19 death?

None of this matters because the pandemic will magically end shortly after the election. "Follow the Political Science".

[dan_s]

Now there is proof that COVID-19 cases are overstated.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/s ... ng-n867152

People are addicted to FEAR and CNN is the pusher. Why? because it is the best "Click Bait" they've ever had.

[cmm3rd]

Susan's father was a pack a day smoker until he had a major heart attack in his late 50s. After a triple bypass and a pace maker he seemed fine, but he had a seriously damaged heart.
At age 72 he got a cold that lingered and turned into pneumonia. After a month in the hospital he died.
Did he die from a cold? No, he died because he was a heavy smoker and had a bad heart.

What does his death certificate say? I'll bet it doesn't include as a contributing condition "cold." Yet, you said a cold began his cascade that led to his demise. (I'm sorry for your loss.) Get my point about what death certificates say and don't say?

Nevertheless you are analogizing the "common cold" to COVID-19. There are tens, likely hundreds, of thousands of families who would tell you they lost a loved one who was sufficiently healthy to have survived a "common cold" but not able to survive COVID-19.

None of this matters because the pandemic will magically end shortly after the election. "Follow the Political Science".

I'll readily agree that in the US, the pandemic has been shamelessly politicized by politicians, their surrogates and the anti-Trump media. But your statement that it "will magically end shortly after the election" will be about as accurate as was your baseless claim (made here a few months ago) that COVID will be gone by the end of July. (Or, perhaps your argument is that the hundreds of thousands globally who tested positive for COVID-19 in August, and the tens of thousands (more) who died of COVID-19 in August, didn't really have COVID or die from its complications.) The politicization hopefully will reduce after Nov. 3, but nature is going to play out its way, and on its own schedule, independent of the US election.

Why you write such outlandish statements here, so damaging to your credibility, is incomprehensible.