Two questions come to mind: First, why does anyone want to believe this claim and second, is it true? Answer the second question first, What data are actually being reported and can we trust the source? Here is what Judy Melinek, MD, forensic pathologist and CEO of PathologyExpert Inc, says in her article How Accurate Is the Coronavirus Death Toll? (https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/working-stiff/85925)
So which one is it? Are we undercounting or overcounting? Can we trust the numbers?
It's complicated. In the United States, most death investigation systems are funded and organized on a county basis across hundreds of agencies. Early in the pandemic, when testing was not readily available and community spread was present but not yet recognized, it is likely that, in some areas, patients with underlying disease and poor health may have died from undiagnosed COVID-19 infection. Other regions, the ones that responded to the outbreak by developing widespread testing, might be swabbing every decedent regardless of the circumstances of death, either as a public health screening program to gather data on community spread, or in order to protect morgue workers from infectious disease exposure during an autopsy.
Regardless of the availability of testing at their disparate death investigation agencies,medical examiners and coroners across the country are guided by the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) guidelines for death certification. The NVSS guidelines state,
"If COVID-19 played a role in the death, this condition should be specified on the death certificate."In many cases, it is likely that it will be the underlying cause of death, as it can lead to various life-threatening conditions, such as pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In some cases, survival from COVID-19 can be complicated by pre-existing chronic conditions, especially those that result in diminished lung capacity, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma.
So, pathologists don't certify deaths as due to COVID-19 based solely on a positive nasopharyngeal swab. We get a clinical history of shortness of breath, chest pain, fever,cough. Yes, it is possible that someone could be an asymptomatic carrier and die of heart disease -- but in those cases we would certify the cause of death as heart disease and document the COVID-19 infection as a significant contributing condition, for several reasons.
Number one, COVID-19 can affect the heart (via myocarditis, pericarditis, or the formation of microthrombi).
Number two, it's possible that the death may not have happened without the stress on medical resources caused by the pandemic. People who would've survived heart attacks during normal times died without medical intervention because they couldn't make it to the hospital or because the hospital couldn't treat them in time to save them.
On some level it may be true that some natural-manner deaths being attributed to the virus could be seen as inflating the official COVID-19 numbers, but a failure to acknowledge and examine the pandemic's effect on the diagnosis and treatment of other natural deaths would also be problematic from a public health perspective.
To quote Dr. Ed Donoghue, a forensic pathology colleague at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, "No matter how these deaths are currently being attributed, after this pandemic terminates, an excellent approximation of the true fatality rate of COVID-19 deaths can be made by the calculation of the excess mortality for the period.
Almost certainly, because of the scarcity of testing and other reasons, we will find that the number of COVID-19 deaths has been grossly underestimated."
So who is promoting that the Corona numbers are an exaggeration?
In a report by FOXNEWS,Questions raised over accuracy of US coronavirus death toll provides examples stories of false attribution to COVID abound. However, the article says REAL evidence doesn’t make “the official reports.”
https://www.fox6now.com/news/questions-raised-over-accuracy-of-us-coronavirus-death-toll
So what makes the actual numbers? From the TN Department of Health COVID-19 case is counted in the daily case count, demographics, and outcomes, if it classifiedas a confirmed or probable case.
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/health/documents/cedep/novel-coronavirus/Public-Critical-Indicators-Report.pdf A confirmed case is someone who tested positive (via PCR test) for the virus that causes COVID-19.
A probable case is someone who may have tested negative by PCR, tested positive by another type of test or may not have been tested at all, but has an illness consistent with COVID-19, and may have other risk factors. For example, a person is a close contact of a COVID-19 case and has a clinically-compatible illness, this person meets the criteria to be a probable case
The specimen collection date is the date someone's COVID-19 lab sample was collected. Due to lab turn-around time there may be delays between when a specimen is collected and a confirmed case is reported to the public. Unless otherwise stated, visualizations in this report use specimen collection date as it more accurately indicates when a patient was sick.
Where to get reliable COVID-19 data, now that the CDC doesn’t have it
Hospitals now have to report their data to another federal agency, which won't be making the information public.
https://www.popsci.com/story/health/covid-coronavirus-data-reliable-cdc/
Under the guise of streamlining data, the Trump administration has moved previously available COVID data on hospitalizations out of the public eye. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be compiling the data into a single database. But that database won’t be available to the public.
Though no one in the administration has commented on what they’ll do with the data, the sudden change and the fact that the database will be private has made plenty of researchers and public health experts skeptical that any stats coming out of HHS will be accurate.
Republican or Democrat, Conservative or liberal, when it’s in any organization’s interest to have one particular outcome, we have to assume that they might lie or otherwise obscure the truthin order to achieve that goal. It’s especially important in cases like this pandemic, where the White House has a vested interest in showing that coronavirus cases are decreasing and that people aren’t dying. That’s why transparency is such a big deal: it enables the public to know when their own government might be misinterpreting, misrepresenting, or outright fabricating numbers.
Over the past few months, some organizations have been working to gather data from other sources. They are now well positioned to provide both media outlets and the public with reliable information despite the federal government’s changes. Perhaps the best one is the Johns Hopkins University.
Johns Hopkins University confirmed that their data relies on individual states’ department of health databases within the US,and the World Health Organization for international case data. https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/blob/master/README.md https://covidtracking.com/ It will now be wise to check sources data. Anything that HHS publishes should be treated with suspicion. Misinformation has been undant in the last few months, and it seems we’re now going to have to be more vigilant than ever.
According to Pew Research, Three Months In, Many Americans See Exaggeration, ConspiracyTheories and Partisanship in COVID-19 News https://www.journalism.org/2020/06/29/three-months-in-many-americans-see-exaggeration-conspiracy-theories-and-partisanship-in-covid-19-news/
- 64% of U.S. adults say CDC mostly gets the facts about the outbreak right;
- 30% say the same about Trump and his administration
- Increasing shares of Americans, led by Republicans, believe the outbreak has been overblown; level of attention to COVID-19 news has dropped
- Compared with the first weeks of the outbreak, many Americans are seeing more partisan viewpoints and struggling to know what is true about COVID-19 ·
- Roughly one-third of Americans who have heard about it see truth in the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 outbreak was intentionally planned by people in powe
- Views of the outbreak vary based on the information streams people rely on most
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