Is the Coronavirus a Joke to some People?

[SD_Prairie_Goat]

I'll just give one example. Its not mega hard evidence as it's information from one source without follow-up investigation so chose at will whether to believe it or not.

One of my wife's patients was a 88 year old man struggling with heart disease. He was stuggling big time and ended up passing away. Never was tested for coronavirus, never showed symptoms, Never complained he was sick other than his complications from heart disease. My wife knew this guy well from many visits to her clinic and decides to open up the obtitury written in the local paper. It stated he died from coronavirus! How is this possible? He died from complications due to heart disease. My wife called the coroners office because she was curious and his death was indeed the result of heart disease. She was also told that they are testing for the virus on every body and reporting the results in every death report. When she asked why they were doing this she was told it was because the State is receiving Federal aid that is directly related to the volume of cases and deaths.

Don't get me wrong, there are certainly deaths 100 percent the result of covid-19. There are also annually 60k to 80k deaths due to various strains of the flu/influenza (again probably a saturated number as a bulk of those deaths are in the elderly). I'm not sure if the actual deaths as a pure result of covid-19 are drastically lower but it sure seems likely that it's quite inflated.

I'll just say that the local paper doesn't report obit's top the federal gov't, or the CDC. In that case you pointed to would not count toward the overall covid count. Sounds like a loved one, who writes the obit, blamed covid.

But I get what you're saying, in life there is error everywhere, but 50% error? Tough to imagine.


As a side note, if a state or hospital really is inflating their numbers to receive additional support from the feds, that would fall into fraud I believe. Bold move if you ask me haha

 

[longbow51]

This is not a binary issue. Dr. Birx herself said the CDC was over-counting by 25% and we hear more instances about shenanigans every day. Serious money involved in over counting covid as cause of death.

Yes, it is real and serious. Yes, the R nought is quite high. We don't know how the R nought compares to influenza (the CDC estimates this number for influenza, it is not based on actual tests) because we only test for influenza in symptomatic patients. The vast majority of new covid cases are in asymptomatic people. Yes, the death rate in the elderly is high (median age of death 78), and worse in those with diabetes, heart disease, etc. Much higher in at risk populations than influenza. In healthy populations, not so much. The head of the CDC said last week that excess deaths from suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse due to shut downs now exceed covid deaths at this point (not in March or April, clearly). And, we don't yet know how many will die from late diagnosis of cancer or heart disease because of delayed screenings. My guess is way more than we lose to covid, but just a guess, but cancer screenings are WAY down.

And no, it is not deadly in children (influenza is MUCH more serious in kids), and kids don't spread it, so the closing of schools is nonsense, and the American Academy of Pediatricians have said said so. Kids will suffer much more from staying home, and we can damage an entire generation if we lock down for another year. Not to mention impoverish families because parents can't return to work if their kids are at home.

As far as masks go, Fauci and the CDC and the Surgeon General have flip flopped so many times I don't know what to believe. Just wear one for now; not that big a deal. This is not the hill to die on IMHO; YMMV.

So there's plenty of science, plenty of pseudo science (remember all the medical journal articles which were retracted because they faked the data?), and don't think for a minute that politics and money don't influence the rash of scientific "studies" that are coming out. Many of these do not pass statistical rigor. And yeah, plenty of politics to go around. To imply some on both sides haven't politicized this creates cognitive dissonance. This is not a D vs R issue, although the MSM/social media are trying hard to make it so, and they outnumber conservative media a zillion to one.

Time for a little common sense. No reason to make this into a war between tribes. That serves no one. None of us, including the so-called experts knows exactly what the virus will do. Fauci has been consistently wrong (just as he was on HIV, by the way).

Let's just relax and do the best we can.

Hunting season (and fall fishing) soon come.

 

[dcopas78]

I'm not gonna get in to estimating how many or how few deaths have been associated with Covid19, but I will relay an event that happened that I personally know is true. I work side by side with the paramedics and the fire chief in our small city. The chief got called out on a EMS run about a month ago in which a lady (who happened to be a former councilman's wife) with a history of heart problems was found unresponsive. She had complained of no prior breathing problems, fevers, etc. When paramedics got there, they had to intubate her because she wasn't breathing on her own. It turns out that she was working on a small step ladder and had fallen, struck her head on a coffee table, broken her C2 vertebrae (aka hangman's break) and never recovered, dying a few hours after getting to the hospital. She was airlifted to one of the hospitals in Cincinnati, tested for covid and came back positive. She is listed as 1 of the 2 covid deaths for the county, even though a broken neck killed her. Take it for what you will. BTW, all the medics came back negative so thank goodness for that.

 

[seeth07]

I'm not gonna get in to estimating how many or how few deaths have been associated with Covid19, but I will relay an event that happened that I personally know is true. I work side by side with the paramedics and the fire chief in our small city. The chief got called out on a EMS run about a month ago in which a lady (who happened to be a former councilman's wife) with a history of heart problems was found unresponsive. She had complained of no prior breathing problems, fevers, etc. When paramedics got there, they had to intubate her because she wasn't breathing on her own. It turns out that she was working on a small step ladder and had fallen, struck her head on a coffee table, broken her C2 vertebrae (aka hangman's break) and never recovered, dying a few hours after getting to the hospital. She was airlifted to one of the hospitals in Cincinnati, tested for covid and came back positive. She is listed as 1 of the 2 covid deaths for the county, even though a broken neck killed her. Take it for what you will. BTW, all the medics came back negative so thank goodness for that.

The elderly man in the story I described is also listed as a death on the state report due to Covid. 1 of only 4 in that county.

 

[Mudranger1]

As a side note, if a state or hospital really is inflating their numbers to receive additional support from the feds, that would fall into fraud I believe. Bold move if you ask me haha

Is it really that far fetched to think fraud is being committed to collect easy money from the government especially when hospitals have lost so much income from being basically shut down for 3 months with no money making patients and surgeries.

 

[SD_Prairie_Goat]

Is it really that far fetched to think fraud is being committed to collect easy money from the government especially when hospitals have lost so much income from being basically shut down for 3 months with no money making patients and surgeries.

at the scale people suggest, yes it is

 

[longbow51]

at the scale people suggest, yes it is

How many hospital discharge (or death) summaries have you coded? Not nearly as cut and dried as you might think. The powers that be have clearly stated on multiple occasions that individuals who die with other primary conditions but had or were suspected of having covid would be counted as covid deaths. Even people on hospice with a few days to live anyway became covid deaths. Birx said that.

As I said in a previous post, this is much more complicated than any of us know.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

@seeth07 This is a precision versus accuracy argument for lack of a better term. (Also misapplying data)

Government needs a count of deaths to allocated resources.
You need to design a system that uniformly collects the data.
Cause of death, is a bit open to interpretation, you have a heart attack and wreck your car, did you die of the heart attack or going through the windshield?
Therefore, to "clean" your data you just make it a binary, did deceased person have the virus Yes or No. Apply it across the board.
This doesn't answer the question of how many died from the virus exactly, but it gives us a good way of measuring the relative fatality rate.

That said people want the question answered and this is the best number we have, that doesn't mean it's accurate.

I agree with you that the number is not accurate, but I agree with the methods used for achieving the original end goal.

As far as the obituary goes , I choose not to included my dads cause of death because I felt it was the least interesting thing about him. YMMV

 

[Scrappy]

We can look on the bright side, we won't have anyone die from the flu this year.

 

[seeth07]

We can look on the bright side, we won't have anyone die from the flu this year.

Pretty much. I just looked up the CDC count and its 344....along with a big note that says they stopped counting it due to Covid

 

[huntnpack]

As a side note, if a state or hospital really is inflating their numbers to receive additional support from the feds, that would fall into fraud I believe. Bold move if you ask me haha

And they only receive additional money if it’s a Medicare patient. Medicaid and private insurance yield nothing.

 

[SD_Prairie_Goat]

Is it really that far fetched to think fraud is being committed to collect easy money from the government especially when hospitals have lost so much income from being basically shut down for 3 months with no money making patients and surgeries.

Here is a good article if you have time to read it that relates to this and also death reporting:

Hospital Payments and the COVID-19 Death Count - FactCheck.org

Q: Are hospitals inflating the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths so they can be paid more? A: Recent legislation pays hospitals higher Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients and treatment, but there is no evidence of fraudulent reporting. FULL QUESTION Are hospitals getting 13,000 per patient if...

www.factcheck.org

Couple highlights:

• “There’s an implication here that hospitals are over-reporting their COVID patients because they have an economic advantage of doing so, [which] is really an outrageous claim,” Gerald Kominski, senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, told us. And, he said, any suggestion that patients may be put on ventilators out of financial gain, not medical need, “is basically saying physicians are violating their Hippocratic Oath … it would be like providing heart surgery on someone who doesn’t need it.”
• Berenson and others we spoke with also said that hospitals have profound disincentives for “upcoding,” which can result in criminal or civil liabilities, such as being susceptible to being kicked out of the Medicare program.
• “Do I think people are misclassifying? No,” Jensen said. He said his concerns centered on what he deemed “less precise standards” for certifying deaths promulgated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and how deaths classified as COVID-19 without corroborating positive test results could lead to an over-counting.
  
  The CDC guidance says that officials should report deaths in which the patient tested positive for COVID-19 — or, if a test isn’t available, “if the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty.” It further indicates that if a “definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as ‘probable’ or ‘presumed.'”
  
  

 

[Mudranger1]

Here is a good article if you have time to read it that relates to this and also death reporting:

Hospital Payments and the COVID-19 Death Count - FactCheck.org

Q: Are hospitals inflating the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths so they can be paid more? A: Recent legislation pays hospitals higher Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients and treatment, but there is no evidence of fraudulent reporting. FULL QUESTION Are hospitals getting 13,000 per patient if...

www.factcheck.org

Couple highlights:

• “There’s an implication here that hospitals are over-reporting their COVID patients because they have an economic advantage of doing so, [which] is really an outrageous claim,” Gerald Kominski, senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, told us. And, he said, any suggestion that patients may be put on ventilators out of financial gain, not medical need, “is basically saying physicians are violating their Hippocratic Oath … it would be like providing heart surgery on someone who doesn’t need it.”
• Berenson and others we spoke with also said that hospitals have profound disincentives for “upcoding,” which can result in criminal or civil liabilities, such as being susceptible to being kicked out of the Medicare program.
• “Do I think people are misclassifying? No,” Jensen said. He said his concerns centered on what he deemed “less precise standards” for certifying deaths promulgated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and how deaths classified as COVID-19 without corroborating positive test results could lead to an over-counting.
  
  The CDC guidance says that officials should report deaths in which the patient tested positive for COVID-19 — or, if a test isn’t available, “if the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty.” It further indicates that if a “definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as ‘probable’ or ‘presumed.'”
  

Presuming something is one thing as j realize doctors are "practioners" but we are also talking something that has the country shut down for less than 1% of the population. Frank died of a heart attack but had the virus and it is counted in death rates from the virus adding more fuel to this. Which is not ok in my book we don't have to agree on the topic its ok with me I understand people are pretty much on both ends of the spectrum I respect your thoughts as anything can be true at this point

 

[Tiredofthebickering]

Presuming something is one thing as j realize doctors are "practioners" but we are also talking something that has the country shut down for less than 1% of the population. Frank died of a heart attack but had the virus and it is counted in death rates from the virus adding more fuel to this. Which is not ok in my book we don't have to agree on the topic its ok with me I understand people are pretty much on both ends of the spectrum I respect your thoughts as anything can be true at this point

My feeling on this goes along these lines. If I take every story I hear like this as absolute fact (and I do genuinely believe you), and I assume that I'm only hearing .1% of the actual cases where this happens (including directly, via news sources, social media, etc.) then that means we only have +/- 158K virus related/caused deaths instead of +/- 170K. That assumes I've heard about a dozen stories of a death being incorrectly attributed to the virus like this. That feels about right to me.

But 158K is still a lot. No matter which way you slice it, it's still a lot. Even if a third of the 158K are incorrectly attributed (+/- 53K), and we're in the middle of what would be called a bad flu year previously (+/- 60K), you're still looking at +/- 45K in additional deaths this year. That's a lot of extra people that potentially would not have died otherwise.

I'm thankful that I haven't lost anyone personally, but I know several who have. My grandfather was in the hospital until yesterday for unrelated items, but I was worried every day that he'd catch Covid and it would be the end for him.

 

[SD_Prairie_Goat]

Presuming something is one thing as j realize doctors are "practioners" but we are also talking something that has the country shut down for less than 1% of the population. Frank died of a heart attack but had the virus and it is counted in death rates from the virus adding more fuel to this. Which is not ok in my book we don't have to agree on the topic its ok with me I understand people are pretty much on both ends of the spectrum I respect your thoughts as anything can be true at this point

Also, 1% isn't a small number when you're talking about the US... That comes to be 3.28 million Americans you're talking about. It's easy to say "well its only 1%" but thats still a very real number of your friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc. Don't let a small percentage skew your view.

Also, its 1% now, no guarantee that it stays at only 1%....



But yes, that's the great thing about the world we live in, we can disagree on a topic. I don't take it personally and hope no one else does either. I enjoy a debate and I enjoy hearing the opposing sides views as well.

 

[BrentD]

Go find a town of 158k. Stand in the middle of it and imagine everyone in it dead. Would that NOT be a national calamity?

Personally, the only misattributes I know of for CV19 go the other way. They are listed as dying of something else. The people I have heard who are in positions to actually know suggest undercounting is considerably more likely than overcountung, especially early on when testing was difficult or impossible.

 

[Mudranger1]

But the numbers are skewed so bad IMO that you are not even talking reality. So say mh friend "Frank" went to the hospital then tests positive up until 2 weeks ago in my county (and ill make my ASSumption here) and many others he would be tested again before leaving or going into any other kind after care facility. And if Frank tested positive again he was counted again as another positive because he had passed his supposed time for the virus. Now they say you could test positive for weeks afterwards. And I use the 1% statistic lights because if you count actual deaths listed ~167000 that is a .0005% of the population i get it people dying really does suck. But to me this is so far out of control its mind boggling

 

[mtmuley]

I just heard on a sports radio show I listen to that some athletes are able to buy test results proving them free of the virus. Should add the info was about college athletes. Scary. mtmuley

 

[BrentD]

But the numbers are skewed so bad IMO that you are not even talking reality. So say mh friend "Frank" went to the hospital then tests positive up until 2 weeks ago in my county (and ill make my ASSumption here) and many others he would be tested again before leaving or going into any other kind after care facility. And if Frank tested positive again he was counted again as another positive because he had passed his supposed time for the virus. Now they say you could test positive for weeks afterwards. And I use the 1% statistic lights because if you count actual deaths listed ~167000 that is a .0005% of the population i get it people dying really does suck. But to me this is so far out of control its mind boggling

Mud, you are making this up. What's mind boggling is the amount of distortion that is being applied in posts like yours and many others. When it hits you and your family, maybe you will catch on, but until then, all you are doing is providing more confusion and resistance to fixing this problem so we can move on again.

 

[seeth07]

I just heard on a sports radio show I listen to that some athletes are able to buy test results proving them free of the virus. Should add the info was about college athletes. Scary. mtmuley

I heard this as well from a friend of mine that was considering buying one to ensure he could get into Alaska for his fishing trip this month...