The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not “backpedal” on the number of deaths caused by COVID-19, reducing the figure from nearly 154,000 to just over 9,000, as social media posts claimed.
The term “Only 6%” trended widely on Twitter over the weekend as supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory promoted tweets that falsely suggested the CDC had updated its records to show that only 6% of U.S. deaths tied to COVID-19 were legitimate. President Donald Trump was among those who tweeted the information, which was later taken down by Twitter for violating platform rules.
The posts, which received hundreds of thousands of shares online, were based on a regularly updated CDC data table showing underlying conditions for those who died of COVID-19. The conditions included high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, as well as problems that are caused by COVID-19 itself, such as respiratory failure and pneumonia.
The CDC data table is based on an analysis of death certificates that mention COVID-19 as a cause. For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned, the CDC notes.
The other 94% list COVID-19 and other conditions together. Among those deaths, there were, on average, 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death, the public health agency said.
As of Aug. 26, the CDC said, there were 161,332 deaths where COVID-19 was listed on the death certificate. Social media users over the weekend posted an older screenshot of the data that showed 153,504 deaths. The posts used the 6% figure to claim the U.S. death toll was much lower — 9,210.
“CDC just backpedaled (quietly) and adjusted the U.S. COVID deaths from 153,504 to 9,210. Admitting that their numbers are so (expletive) that they are off by a whopping 94%,” said a post being shared on Facebook Monday.
But such claims misrepresent the data. A death isn’t excluded from the COVID-19 tally just because the person was obese or had diabetes or dementia. Someone with heart problems can still be killed by COVID-19, and the death certificate could mention both as contributing.
Experts say it’s not surprising that so few people who died from COVID-19 had no underlying conditions listed on their death certificates. It is rare for people not to have multiple medical issues at death.
“The underlying cause of death is the condition that began the chain of events that ultimately led to the person’s death,” Dr. Robert Anderson, who oversees the CDC’s death statistics work, said in a statement. “In 92% of all deaths that mention COVID-19, COVID-19 is listed as the underlying cause of death.”
Also, while death certificates are supposed to list any causes or conditions that contributed, past research has shown that the documents aren’t perfect. Doctors might not know – or specify – all the reasons behind a particular death.
More important, the CDC figures show what medical professionals have been saying since the outset of the pandemic — that the virus tends to have a more severe impact on people with underlying conditions.
For example, people died with diabetes not because of it, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-diseases expert at Vanderbilt University.
“If it hadn’t been for the COVID virus infection, these people would be living today,” he said. “So yes, although they have contributing underlying chronic health factors, it’s still the COVID virus that killed them.”
(AP)
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6 Responses
YWN peddling its materialistic propaganda as usual. The CDC’s new report does change how COVID has been reported by propaganda outlets like YWN. People think COVID killed 180,000 healthy people but this is not the case. Healthy people are not affected by the disease and the lockdowns are unnecessary.
Some sites need to hype nonsense in order to boost their ratings even though it’s clearly nonsensical fiction.
Such baloney it’s unbelievable. How anyone falls for this stuff is really the question here. So if someone has diabetes and gets corona and then dies so they say well if not for corona he would’ve lived. So corona is the cause. Well how about if not for diabetes he also would’ve lived. Because only with other conditions do they die. So it’s the diabetes. It’s really immaterial generally because it’s usually not that important to know the exact cause of death. Unless you have a huge conspiracy going on and you need to inflate the numbers politically. So all this proves is that all the knows were subjective. Nothing objective. Then add in the fact that hospitals got $12k from the feds per corona death and now we know exactly what happened. Fraud murder negligence everything. And by who? Our heroes! The first responders!! עולם שקר
All the numbers
The day the CDC said that hospitals and medical clinics need not to confirm whether people really died of Covid and that just the mere suspicion of it is enough to list it as a covid death that’s the day the accuracy was destroyed forever .
I personally don’t think we have anywhere remotely close to 161,000 deaths , i don’t trust the CDC or the W H O at all Especially when they hosted event 201 and came up with the rules and lingo even giving the contract tracing deal out in January before plandemic !
Do you realize that both the CDC and the W H O both attacked Trump for his Jan 31st travel bans , both said it was a gross OVERREACTION.
Both are pro globalist organizations .
This article is clarifying the issue, but ignoring the underlying sham. We have been in pandemic mode for a long time, but if otherwise healthy people who comprise the great majority of our population are at negligible risk of dying or even getting severely ill from it, what is the justification for continuing the farce? Where is (or ever was) the justification to shutter businesses and close yeshivos and shuls? Wouldn’t simple logic tell us to protect the vulnerable and let the rest of the world live? The newly-updated numbers make it statistically clear that the pandemic mentality we have been subscribing to has been a grave error, while until now it was only clear to the more intelligent and un-trusting among us.
But thanks just the same, YWN, for clarifying the facts. There is a lot of noise out there where people seem to think the whole virus death count was being declared false, and that needed to be set straight.