6% number is not debunked

So first he died from "lung issues" previously unidentified

Then...when it's pointed out that Covid CAUSES lung issues...he supposedly had pre-existing lung issues (that you failed to mention)

And now...he died of loneliness?

Please just stop posting. You aren't helping yourself out here

 

So what was his immediate cause of death?

 

Any suggestion that 6% represents the "real" number of COVID deaths is due to misinterpreting what is a very straightforward set of statistics. Or I suspect, in many cases, simply reading second-hand mistinterprations without looking at the source for themselves.

To sum it up, on the death certificate there are two parts.

Part I details the cause of death - in this case COVID-19 (showing also the course of the disease - the chain of medical events - through to the point of death e.g. COVID-19 --> pneumonia --> acute respiratory distress syndrome)

This is the part that determines if someone's death is counted as a COVID-19 death.

Part II details contributing factors - this details comorbities/pre-existing conditions which may have contributed to but did not cause death.

The statistics refer to what's contained in this part, and show that:

94% of people who died from COVID-19 had something written in Part II
6% of people had nothing written in Part II

100% of these people died from COVID-19, as detailed in Part I

 

It appears you cannot distinguish between truth and propaganda. Fear not, you are not alone.

 

The data tells a story that conspiracy theorists haven't been able to address with any real evidence or logic.

 

Well one of us can't, that's for damned sure...

 

ALL 200,000+ deaths are CoVID-19 deaths.

On PART I of the death certificate - cause of death - 200,000+ have COVID-19 as the cause of death.

In PART II of the death certificate - contributing factors which are NOT a cause of death - 94% had a contributing factor, 6% did not.

For ALL of these people (94% + 6% = 100%) the cause of death was COVID-19, as detailed in Part I.

There are not “plenty of financial incentives” to boost Covid-19 patient numbers. The Cares Act boosts Medicare payments by 20% for Covid-19 cases. Any other perceived extras, like triple the payment for ventilator use, are in fact the normal rates - the same as any patient requiring these types of care. Over and above the existence of checks and balances, there is no evidence whatsoever that hospitals are (or would want to) falsify records for financial gain.

In New York, deaths were not reclassified. The “new” cases were already classified as Covid-19 deaths, on the basis of clinical evidence and judgment, but had initially been omitted because they had not been confirmed by test, due to a shortage of tests.

 

Jesus. I'm sorry for your loss but I can't believe how misguided and in denial you are. It is common for Covid-19 patients to stop being positive after a few days after the start of symptoms, but then, it's the subsequent cytokine storm, hyper-coagulation state, and endothelial lesions left behind by the virus that kill them. I bet that there is a 99.9% chance that your relative died of complications of Covid-19, a disease that goes in phases; the virus replication phase when you typically can get the virus from an oropharynx swab to test positive, is just ONE of the phases. Covid-19 in its late phases can cause massive lung consolidation, lung fibrosis, and pulmonary embolism, with respiratory failure and death, REGARDLESS of the person still testing positive or not, at that point.

I have posted here an explanation on how death certificates are written; if you want to know more, do an advanced search using the key words death certificate and my username, and read my 10 or so posts on it. But here is a summary:

The Part I of the death certificate has a list of events. The top one is the immediate mechanism of death. The bottom one, the one that initiates the sequence, is the real cause of death. Part II talks about predisposing or aggravating conditions but in themselves they do not have the power to produce the event that was the immediate mechanism of death, therefore they are not the cause of death (yes, 94% of death certificates in deaths from Covid-10 have these, as most people of a certain age have other conditions, but it doesn't mean that these people didn't die of Covid-19; they would have survived with those underlying conditions for months and years and even decades in certain cases, if they hadn't acquired Covid-19).

Just you calling this a "flu" betrays your level of misinformation and misunderstanding (given that the flu typically doesn't do that!), so it's not surprising that you got into this massive denial. I almost pity you for the cognitive dissonance. Likely you have wanted to believe in the "WuFlu Hoax" all this time, and when a relative of yours died of Covid-19, the reality risked to put a wrench in your belief system, then you migrated to this idea that "if my relative was no longer positive, he didn't die of Covid-19."

So, say that your relative died of pulmonary fibrosis/consolidation. His death certificate would read more or less like this:

Respiratory failure <-- Pulmonary fibrosis <-- Viral pneumonia <-- Covid-19

In this case it's not that he died of respiratory failure or pulmonary fibrosis. He died of Covid-19.

It's like when someone is shot in the gut and subsequently dies of sepsis in a hospital. The bullet didn't kill the person immediately. The person died of complications of a gunshot wound. The cause of death remains: gunshot wound. Without being shot the person wouldn't have developed sepsis so the gunshot wound is what put in motion the chain of events that caused the person's death.

Or, your relative died of pulmonary embolism:

Cardiorespiratory arrest <-- Pulmonary embolism <-- Intravascular coagulation <-- Cytokine storm <-- Covid-19.

Get it?

Covid-19 typically kills in a delayed manner. It's not the acute phase with the virus circulating everywhere and showing up positive that kills. It's the complications that ensue. This is why peaks in positive cases don't show up as peaks in deaths until at least a couple of weeks later.

Not to forget, unless your relative was uninsured (in which case the hospital would qualify for some limited funding through the CARES act to compensate for care for COVID-19 uninsured patients; in case he died at the time, because ever since, that fund has already dried out), the hospital doesn't recoup more money because of his previous Covid-19 positive testing. Billing is not by diagnosis but rather by procedures, physician time, and materials, which would be the same regardless of the diagnosis. The idea that hospitals inflate the number of Covid-19 deaths for the sake of money is ridiculous. Doing so would be fraud that would result in federal criminal prosecution and loss of accreditation. No Hospital Risk Department would put up with something like this. It's just a talking point from right wingers who are clueless about how hospitals actually operate.

Well, I expect that you'll say "too long, didn't read" because if you do read the above, you'll have to relinquish your denial and you'll have to recognize that Covid-19 is an illness far more dangerous than the flu.

 

If someone dies from cancer, heart disease, kidney disease etc, then that will be the cause of death (detailed in Part I of the death certificate).

If they happen to have asymptomatic COVID-19, that will be noted as a significant other condition which is not a cause of death (detailed in Part II of the death certificate).

So clearly, they would not be counted as a COVID-19 death. Part I says otherwise.

 

I really wish they could explain why there would be such an incentive. It isn't like the people filling out the death certificates are just going to be able to pocket that money. How is it an "incentive" when it doesn't incentivize the one actually performing the action?

 

In the scenario you've given, COVID-19 would not be given as the cause of death.
The cause of death would be high blood pressure --> heart attack (underlying and immediate cause)
COVID-19 would be noted in Part II as a comorbidity - a co-existing condition which did not cause death.

If, on the other hand (as I believe DaveBN was trying to explain) they had COVID-19 leading to acute respiratory distress and death, then that would be given as the underlying and immediate cause of death, while high blood pressure would be noted in Part II as it possibly contributed to but did not cause death.

 

Yes, exactly. Doesn't make any sense, at all, on any level.

 

I just read the second to last paragraph of CenterField's post (#83) which pretty much shows the ludicracy of this talking point.

 

Great points. And let's say you did get the hospital some extra money through that fraud . . . now what? The money still isn't yours to take home . . . so why are you risking fraud charges on something that doesn't even personally benefit you?

 

You are correct. However, we need to see what the excess deaths are in the years following covid to determine how much peoples lives were shortened.
It may be that a lot of these people would have died only a year or two later due to other medical conditions.
This isn't to say that extra year or two wasn't important but to get an accurate and realistic perspective on how dangerous this virus is.

 

More than.. what?
The same time period last year? 2018? 2017?
On average, over the last 10 years, March thru October, inclusive, >167,500 people died from diseases of the respiratory system - how many died in 2020?

What's the medical difference between dying from Covid and dying while infected with Covid?

Oh.... it looks like your "kills 5%% of all who catch it" virus is down to about 2.8% - not including those who have it and aren't tested, of course.
Much to your chagrin.

 

It was never debunked. If you catch COVID-19 and it causes you to die, you died from COVID-19.

Now, if you can find situations where someone got shot in the head and died or something and they happened to be COVID-19 positive, you can write those off as nonsense if they are being called a COVID statistic, sure. And I wouldn't rule out fraudulent death reporting by hospitals looking for funding, but since the penalties from such things extend from the hospital administration on down to the doctor who signs the death certificate, I'd imagine these situations are few and far between. There has certainly been no substantiation at all of that practice being a major factor in deaths reported.

But the lengths folks are going to pretend that COVID-19 is not serious is itself very serious. But since for those folks it's very likely tied to politics and supporting Donald Trump, I suppose it's to be expected. He is, afterall, the Denier-In-Chief.

 

The difference will be in the death certificate. For one, the cause of death will be COVID-19. For the other, it won't.

 

This does not define the medical difference between the two.

 

If you bleed out after the car accident... what killed you... a car accident or a “bleeding event”?

 

If you die "of" COVID-19, you have died from one or more conditions caused by COVID-19 (e.g. pneumonia, acute respiratory distress).

If you die "with" COVID-19, you have died from something else - take your pick. COVID-19 will be a comorbidity.

The death certificate will make it plain which is the case.

 

If you can't find that all by your grown up self then you shouldn't be posting on the internet. I've given you two sources with the appropriate data in them. All you have to do is carefully read them. If that is too much like hard work (and apparently it is) then I've given you the pre-digested version from the NYT....which you apparently won't read. So, I've done more than I need to and I've backed up my claims wiht data.

So, now you have to somehow explain a jump of over 200,000 deaths over the previous year that just happens to start when COVID started and just happened to take place in a number of other bady impacted nations. So far your best shot is 'death rate goes up every year', which doesn't even begin to explain why there has been a large jump well OVER any normal annual increase that just happens to coincide with COVID.

Look, the truth is I'm not expecting an answer. I doubt anyone is. You will throw a few (more) red herrings at this, pretend you haven't been told about the excess deaths, go quiet for a while and then repost the same debunked claims.

 

Given your distinction, above, it is possible to die from pneumonia, but with Covid?

 

But you don't know this is the case - deaths per year, adjusted for population (per 100k) go up and down all the time - even if 2020 has more deaths than 2019, the excess are not necessarily because of Covid.

Yr Deaths per 100k Change
1999 2,391,399 857
2000 2,403,351 854 -3
2001 2,416,425 848 -6
2002 2,443,387 849.5 1.5
2003 2,448,288 843.9 -5.6
2004 2,397,615 818.8 -25.1
2005 2,448,017 828.4 9.6
2006 2,426,264 813.1 -15.3
2007 2,423,712 804.6 -8.5
2008 2,471,984 812.9 8.3
2009 2,437,163 794.5 -18.4
2010 2,468,435 799.5 5
2011 2,515,458 807.3 7.8
2012 2,543,279 810.2 2.9
2013 2,596,993 821.5 11.3
2014 2,626,418 823.7 2.2
2015 2,712,630 844 20.3
2016 2,744,248 849.3 5.3

 

Died only a year or two later?

That means nothing?

They died of COVID. Had they not caught covid they would be ALIVE