The other day I wrote about the CDC website’s statement that 6% of the now nearly 190,000 Covid deaths were actually caused by Covid alone. In other words, per the CDC’s August 26th update, only 6% of the death certificates listed Covid alone–the other 94% had, on average, 2.6 additional comorbidities on top of Covid.
That story went viral on social media. Twitter removed the first post on the platform that sounded the alarm of the CDC’s update, which was retweeted by President Trump. Facebook also flagged similar posts as “misinformation.”
And now we have the so-called “fact-checkers” trying to debunk the 6% claim. Here’s Politifact’s typically snarky, know-it-all headline on it:
Really? The CDC’s website was pretty straightforward about it. Here’s the quote verbatim:
“For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.”
Only 6% of the 180,000+ listed COVID-19 deaths had zero comorbidities. The other 94% had an average of 2.6 additional comorbidities. It’s pretty simple. This is not hard stuff to understand.
But “PolitiFact” is out here trying to tell you that #ACKSHUALLY, the CDC didn’t really mean what it said:
“A small number of people have COVID ascribed as the sole cause of death. It may be they had no comorbidities or they were just not noted,” said Dr. Myron Cohen, director of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “However, it is also clear that advanced age and several other underlying diseases lead to bad outcomes with COVID infections. The people dying were not going to die but for the acquisition of COVID.”
…
A NCHS report found that, for about 6% of Americans who die from the virus, COVID-19 is the only condition listed on their death certificates. But that doesn’t mean the remaining 94% didn’t die due to the coronavirus.
People with preexisting conditions, such as cancer or diabetes, have a higher risk of dying if they contract COVID-19. Complications from those conditions, as well as comorbidities like influenza and pneumonia, can be listed in addition to the coronavirus on death certificates. In 92% of death certificates that mention the virus, COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death, according to the NCHS.
Okay, but none of this debunks the claim that only 6% of the listed “Covid deaths” were actually Covid and Covid alone.
Nobody is saying that Covid isn’t far deadlier for people with underlying conditions.
We’re saying that otherwise perfectly healthy people are not out here dropping dead because they catch Covid.
The fearmongers would have you believe over 180,000 perfectly healthy people in this country have caught Covid and dropped dead because of it and it alone. But that is not true.
Then the PolitiFact article tries to explain away the “average of 2.6 additional comorbidities” line by saying that when people catch Covid, it causes their respiratory systems to fail, or it causes their hearts to fail (or both), and then respiratory and/or heart failure are sometimes counted as “comorbidities” along with Covid, which is where the 2.6 figure comes from.
Okay, then why does it cause some patients’ respiratory systems and hearts to fail, but not others’?
Could it be that those Covid patients that experienced respiratory and heart failure had underlying health conditions? Maybe those underlying health conditions were not diagnosed prior to the patients dying of Covid? Just because an underlying health condition was undiagnosed does not mean it didn’t exist.
Covid does not cause respiratory and heart failure. It can lead to those complications, but it doesn’t cause them by itself. If Covid doesn’t cause respiratory and/or heart failure in most of the people that catch it, then you can’t try to say that Covid causes respiratory and/or heart failure.
It can wreck someone’s already compromised heart and/or respiratory system. But it does not wreck the heart and/or respiratory system of everyone that catches it.
It’s the same way that some people can die of the flu, while most people that catch the flu each year survive and have mild, or even totally asymptomatic, cases of it. Underlying and preexisting medical conditions play a huge role in how severe the flu is going to affect you. Same with Covid. Same with any illness.
No one is saying people who are already in bad medical shape aren’t especially at risk for Covid.
We’re saying that Covid isn’t causing perfectly healthy people to just drop dead.
PolitiFact and all the other fellow fearmongers want perfectly healthy Americans to be locked down indefinitely over a virus that is only really a threat to the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions (often one and the same).