Is The CDC Really Inflating Coronavirus Death Statistics?

Conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus epidemic are being generated faster than people can pull toiler paper off the shelves and that’s pretty dang fast these days. One claim making the rounds in recent days is that the CDC is “cooking the books” on COVID-19 by including deaths that were not caused by the virus. This is a pretty astounding claim, but is it true?

I’ve seen many versions of the claim that the Coronavirus death count is inflated, but many seem to originate with Fox News’ Brit Hume, who retweeted a tweet thread that showed that many COVID-19 deaths had underlying medical conditions. The Twitter user, Adam Townsend, who is a self-described “investor,” and “extreme salesman” claims in the thread that “NYC numbers are cooked so that ‘if it died, and it tested positive for COVID-19, book it.’"

https://twitter.com/brithume/status/1245465723591364616?s=20

To determine whether Hume and Townsend’s claim is true, I looked up the CDC guidelines for reporting Coronavirus deaths. The document, “Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19)” from the National Vital Statistics System is not a secret. It is openly available on the internet and describes the procedure for classifying pandemic deaths.

Per the guidelines, Coronavirus deaths are subject to a two-part classification system. Part one of the reporting is where the “immediate cause of death, which is the disease or condition that directly preceded death,” is reported. “Other significant conditions that contributed to the death” are reported in part two.

“If COVID–19 played a role in the death, this condition should be specified on the death certificate,” the CDC guidelines instruct. “In many cases, it is likely that it will be the UCOD [underlying cause of death], as it can lead to various lifethreatening conditions, such as pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In these cases, COVID–19 should be reported on the lowest line used in Part I with the other conditions to which it gave rise listed on the lines above it.”

The instructions continue, “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. These medical conditions do not cause COVID–19, but can increase the risk of contracting a respiratory infection and death, so these conditions should be reported in Part II and not in Part I.”

There has been a chronic shortage of testing kits to confirm Coronavirus infections and the CDC guidelines take this into account as well. The CDC states that “testing for COVID–19 should be conducted whenever possible” if Coronavirus is suspected but allows certifiers to “use their best clinical judgment” if tests are unavailable.

“In cases where 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,” the guidelines note.

In other words, if a Coronavirus infection leads to death, then “COVID-19” is listed as the primary cause of death. Other ailments are not ignored, however, as Hume and others allege. Pre-existing conditions are also listed as contributing factors. Physicians can use their judgment if testing is not available to confirm Coronavirus but those certifications would be identified as unconfirmed “probable” cases.

The CDC guidelines are clearly intended to present both Coronavirus and other secondary causes of death. But what about other infectious diseases? Are they treated similarly? A 2009 paper in the library of the National Institutes of Health, “Estimating Influenza-Associated Deaths in the United States,” sheds some light on that question.

“For several reasons, the number of influenza-related deaths cannot be determined solely by reports of influenza-coded deaths,” the authors say. “First, most adult patients with symptoms consistent with influenza infection are not tested for influenza. Those who are generally receive rapid tests of only modest sensitivity. In addition, many influenza-associated deaths occur one or two weeks after the initial infection (when viral shedding has ended), either because of secondary bacterial infections or because the influenza has exacerbated chronic illnesses (e.g., congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Even when influenza infection is confirmed by laboratory testing, those results are rarely reported on death certificates.”

So, flu deaths are much harder to identify than COVID-19 deaths because most patients aren’t tested for the flu and, even when they are, flu tests are not especially reliable. Further, most flu deaths are due to secondary causes such as bacterial infections that lead to pneumonia or chronic illnesses. Identifying flu deaths sounds a lot like identifying COVID-19 deaths except that there is an added difficulty in that the flu is rarely listed as a cause of death.

Speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox News, Dr. Scott Jensen, a Republican state senator in Minnesota, called the CDC guidelines “ridiculous” and compared them to flu reporting.

“I’ve never been encouraged to [notate 'influenza']," he said. "I would probably write 'respiratory arrest' to be the top line, and the underlying cause of this disease would be pneumonia... I might well put emphysema or congestive heart failure, but I would never put influenza down as the underlying cause of death and yet that’s what we are being asked to do here."

But, as we have seen, computing influenza deaths requires a substantial amount of assumptions and statistical modeling. It makes more sense and is likely more accurate to have doctors at the point of care classify the death as COVID-19 rather than trying to reverse-engineer the statistics months or years later.

Jensen also repeats the argument that a person who tests positive for COVID-19 and dies after a traffic accident could be classified as a Coronavirus death. However, this is false for anyone following the CDC guidelines because the virus would not be the “immediate cause of death.” Even with a positive test, it would be obvious that the virus did not “play a role” in an auto accident death. Any first-year medical student should be able to tell the difference between trauma from an auto accident and a respiratory illness.

Flu death statistics seem much more difficult to calculate than Coronavirus deaths, yet few people have any problem accepting the CDC data for flu deaths. The reason is that flu epidemics are not political hot potatoes. No flu epidemic since the 1918-20 Spanish flu has been serious enough to warrant shutting down the economy and pandemics don’t usually happen to fall on election years. Especially considering the president’s early missteps and the economic upheaval that resulted from the shelter-in-place orders, the Trump campaign and its surrogates have a vested interest in minimizing the death toll both to distance the president from as much of the loss of life as possible as well as to justify reopening businesses as quickly as possible.

What the Coronavirus “truthers” seem to be pushing for is to only count COVID-19 victims with no pre-existing conditions, arguing that those with underlying health problems probably would have died anyway. The truth is that people with underlying health problems are at higher risk for Coronavirus. That isn’t a new or unexpected finding. It’s something that has been known since the beginning (and it also applies to flu patients). Nevertheless, if someone has a heart problem and is living with it but contracts COVID-19 and dies a few weeks later, it can be reasonably said that Coronavirus shortened the person’s life, even if it was not the sole cause of death. If the person had not contracted Coronavirus, they would still be alive.

Not counting deaths that involved pre-existing conditions cooks the books in the other direction. If those deaths are excluded, then the COVID-19 death toll will be artificially low. After all, an underlying health problem doesn’t mean that the person is going to die within a few months. People can live for years with heart disease, lung problems, or cancer.

As a Harvard epidemiologist told FactCheck.org, “There are going to be some people who die of something else, happen to have COVID and get tested, and get counted as COVID deaths but would die anyway. It would be wrong to say that number is zero. However, given current testing shortages and protocols, the number of such cases will be small.”

In fact, the shortage of testing probably means that COVID-19 deaths are undercounted rather than inflated. Per the Washington Post, a large number of deaths due to respiratory illnesses in the early weeks of the pandemic were not counted as Coronavirus deaths because of the lack of testing. Even now, many people who die at home or in nursing homes are not being tested or categorized as victims of COVID-19. In some cases, medical authorities don’t want to waste a test on someone who is already dead. In other cases, tests can return a false negative.

Drs. Birx and Fauci, who lead the Coronavirus Task Force, agree that the death toll is not inflated. “Those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when it’s related to a COVID infection,” Dr. Birx said at a briefing last week. “In fact, it’s the opposite.”

Dr. Fauci went even further, saying, “You will always have conspiracy theories when you have a very challenging public health crisis. They are nothing but distractions. Let somebody write a book about it later on. But not now.”

It is important to note that even though most of the death count conspiracy theorists seem to be Trump partisans, President Trump does not dispute the official record.

“When you say death counts, I think they’re pretty accurate on the death counts. Somebody dies, I think the states have been pretty accurate,” Trump said.

As a final proof, it would be too much of a coincidence that there was such a spontaneous increase in non-Coronavirus deaths that New York had to reopen a mass burial site to cope with a sudden influx of corpses that were totally unrelated to the pandemic. The logical answer is that the increased number of deaths are related to the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1248367716114796546?s=20

Despite the claims, there seems to be no evidence that the government is inflating Coronavirus death statistics. The CDC guidance is very specific that COVID-19 should be listed only if it is the “immediate cause” of the death. Even then, guidelines call for contributing causes of death to be listed as well. If the COVID-19 infection cannot be confirmed with testing, the death is noted as a “presumed” Coronavirus death. In reality, Coronavirus deaths are probably undercounted due to lack of testing and the fact that the large number of deaths is overwhelming medical officials.

We’ll consider this myth busted.

Originally published on The Resurgent

CDC death statistics challenge liberal beliefs

For years, liberals have held that crime was linked to the economy and a person’s socioeconomic status. Although it seems logical that poverty and economic stress could induce people to commit crimes, statistical data observed since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008 challenges the idea.

If there really is a link between poverty and crime, then crime should increase during a major period of economic upheaval such as the Great Recession. The reality, however, is that according to FBI crime statistics, crime rates have actually been falling throughout the past several years.

The release of new cause of death statistical report by the Centers for Disease Control, headquartered in Atlanta, is further confirmation that the link between poverty and crime does not exist. In the new report, homicide is not among the top 15 causes of death in the United States for the first time since 1965. Homicide was replaced as the 15th leading cause of death by “Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids.” In the most recent data for Georgians, Department of Public Health statistics from 1999-2002, homicide was not one of the top ten causes of death.

The declines in crime and homicide are all the more unexpected because of the dramatic increase in gun ownership in the past few years. Gun sales spiked in the weeks and months following Barack Obama’s election victory in November 2008. The trend has not stopped. Atlanta’s 11 Alive reports that, according to the FBI, December 2011 was a record high month for gun sales.

According to a Gallup poll from October 2011, gun ownership is at its highest level in almost 20 years with one in three American adults personally owning a gun. Guns are in almost half of U.S. households. In southern states like Georgia, the gun ownership rate is even higher.

Under prevailing liberal orthodoxy, in a bad economy with gun sales at record high levels, crime rates should be through the roof. As with other liberal beliefs that have recently been discredited, such as the belief that spending is the proper prescription for an ailing economy, it is time to reevaluate the belief that crime is a product of poverty and guns.

Read this article on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/cdc-murder-statistics-challenge-liberal-beliefs

Che’ Guevara: Hero or Mass Murderer?

In recent years, Che’ Guevara has regained popularity. His image adorns t-shirts and posters on college campuses. Barack Obama was even embarrassed by a Che’ flag that a supporter had placed in one of his campaign offices. Who is Che’ Guevara? Is he really someone that people in a modern, progressive and free society should place on a pedestal?

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara Lynch de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina on June 14, 1928. He was the eldest child in a liberal, middle class family. His nickname, ‘Che,’ translates as “buddy,” “pal,” or “the kid.”

Che’ studied medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. While in school there, he spent breaks traveling around South America on a motorcycle with a friend. On such trips in 1951 and 1952, Che’ spends time at a leper colony in Peru. His experiences there convince him that equality can only be realized through socialism. He later writes about his travels in his book, the Motorcycle Diaries. In 2004, the Motorcycle Diaries was made into a movie produced by Robert Redford.

After participating in riots against Argentine President Juan Peron in 1952, Che’ travels to Bolivia and then Guatemala. In Guatemala, he aids in resistance against a coup backed by the CIA (and authorized by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower). After the coup, Che’ flees to Mexico.

While in Mexico, Che’ meets Fidel Castro. Castro is in exile after a failed coup attempt against Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Che’ quickly joins Castro’s band of revolutionaries as a medic and trains in guerilla warfare. In December 1956, Castro launches an attack on the Batista regime, which fails dramatically. Only twelve guerillas, including Che,’ Fidel, and Raul Castro, survive and escape.

The defeat is a defining moment for Che.’ He later writes, “I was confronted with the dilemma of dedicating myself to medicine or my duty as a revolutionary soldier. I had in front of me a rucksack full of medicine and an ammunition case, the two weighed too much to carry together. I took the ammunition and left the rucksack behind." The healer had become the killer.

Che’ becomes Castro’s chief lieutenant and then the comandante of one of the largest guerilla bands. He is ruthless, frequently executing suspected traitors quickly and dispassionately. In a 1957 letter to his first wife (he remarried to a fellow guerilla in 1959), Che’ writes, “I'm here in Cuba's hills, alive and thirsting for blood." In a letter to his father, he writes, “I really like killing.” Che’s instructions to a subordinate are simple: “If in doubt, kill him.”

By 1959, with US aid cut off, the Batista regime is finished. Batista flees the country on New Years Day and the US recognizes the interim government six days later. After a vacation through Africa, Asia, and Yugoslavia, Che’ returns to Cuba where he is placed in charge of Comision Depuradora, which includes the military courts and killing squads for former Batista supporters and government officials. All defendants are considered murderers and the appellate court automatically confirms all sentences. Habeas corpus rights are abolished. Che’ says that rules of evidence are an “archaic bourgeois detail.”

He is placed in charge of La Cabana prison, where the majority of the executions take place. According to the Black Book of Communism, by the mid-1960s, 14,000 Cubans have been executed without fair trials. 500,000 Cubans were incarcerated in labor camps. At one point, in 1961, one of every 19 Cubans was a political prisoner. Che’ plays a major role in developing Castro’s penal system and defends the executions publicly in 1964 after he had ceased to command the prison. He even dismisses his victims as “all CIA agents” before his death in 1967.

During the 1960s, Che’ is instrumental in aligning Cuba with the Soviet Union. Che’ begins meeting with GRU (Soviet military intelligence) operatives, mostly Spanish communists who had fled to the Soviet Union after the Spanish Civil War, soon after the fall of Havana. Soviet agents help to establish Cuba’s G-2 secret police force. As Cuba draws closer to the Soviet Union, the US imposes trade restrictions and, finally, an embargo and travel ban.

Che’ holds several posts in the new Cuban government. He begins as head of the National Bank of Cuba and of the Department of Industry of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform in 1959. In 1961, he becomes Cuba’s Minister of Industry. His economic policies include price controls, heavy taxes on the wealthy, and restrictions on private capital. Land is seized from the rich and given to the government. Virtually everything is nationalized in a war on capitalism and personal property.

Che’s authoritarian economic policies, together with the US trade embargo, cause the once powerful Cuban economy to decline. Che’s plans at industrialization fail, sugar production collapses, and rationing is introduced. Che’s economic deputy, Ernesto Betancourt, later says that Che was “was ignorant of the most elementary economic principles.” Eventually, Cuba relies on sugar exports and Soviet subsidies (the equivalent of eight Marshall Plans, $72 billion) to survive. As the Cuban economy falters, Che’s popularity begans to wane.

Che’ also writes Guerra de Guerilla (Guerilla War). This book serves as a guide for revolutionaries throughout Latin America and the Third World. In Latin America, only one of these movements, in Nicaragua, is ultimately successful. Che’s goal is to spread his brand of Marxism to other countries. After touring the world, he resigns from his duties in Cuba in 1965.

Che’s next move is to lead a group of Cuban fighters to aid in a communist revolt in the Congo. One of his rebel allies there, Pierre Mulele, occupied Stanleyville and was known for murdering everyone who could read or who wore a tie. The people of the Congo do not support the rebellion and Che’ eventually leaves.

Che’ briefly returned to Cuba, but quickly left for Bolivia where he joins another guerilla movement against the government. His goal is to create another Vietnam in South America. In Bolivia, Che’ found virtually no support from the peasants. The Bolivian army, with US support, was soon on his trail.

A series of tactical, strategic, and logistical errors by Che’ and his forces cause problems for the revolt. Even the Bolivian members of his guerilla band do not speak the dialect of the peasants, making recruiting difficult. Che’ wrote that “The ... masses don't help us in anything and instead they betray us." An English journalist and a French writer, Regis Debray, leave the group and are soon captured by army troops. Che’ divides his tiny army and one group is destroyed by the Bolivian army. Che’s health deteriorates in the jungle and he loses his asthma medicine to the pursuers. He is reduced to riding on a pack mule as the remainder of his army tries to escape.

Bolivian Rangers are deployed to the area and, on October 8, 1967, Capt. Gary Prado and his men surround the remainder of Che’s force in the Quebrada de Yuro, a steep ravine near La Higuera. The guerillas try to escape. In the ensuing firefight six guerillas and two soldiers are killed. Three guerillas, including Che,’ are captured. Three guerillas eventually escape to Chile and three elude capture and hide out in Bolivia.

The prisoners are held in a nearby school, and Che,’ wounded in the leg, receives medical treatment. At the time, Bolivia has no secure prison facilities and it is thought that a trial would be media circus and attract other leftists to Bolivia. Bolivian President Rene Barrientos orders the execution of the prisoners in hopes of avoiding further problems.

Che’ and the other two prisoners are executed on October 9, 1967 and buried at an airfield in Vallegrande. His remains were exhumed by the Cubans in 1997 and reburied in Santa Clara, Cuba, the site of one of his most famous battles against the forces of Batista. His summary execution is a fitting end, given his role in Cuba’s executions.

A footnote to Che’s story is that he planned terrorist attacks against New York City long before 9/11 or the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. In 1962, while Che’ headed Cuba’s Foreign Liberation Department, the FBI stopped a plot Cuban UN officials and members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (made famous by Lee Harvey Oswald) to detonate 500 kilos of TNT (five times the amount used in the Madrid bombings) and incendiary devices in Macy’s, Gimble’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Grand Central Station. These bombings, set for the week after Thanksgiving, would have killed thousands of New Yorkers, mainly women and children.

Che’ and Castro’s goal in the New York bombing plot was probably to start a war between the US and the Soviet Union. If Cuba were implicated in the attacks, the US would retaliate. In a war, the USSR would probably intervene to protect its ally. If the conflict had gone nuclear, a distinct possibility, deaths would have numbered in the millions.

The Cuban leaders had tried to start a war the year before during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Che’ and Castro had argued for a first-strike against the US before Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, agreed to withdraw the Soviet missiles from Cuba. They dreamed of telling the Americans, “Say hello to my little friends!” as missiles rained down. In 1962, Che’ told the London Daily Worker, “If the missiles had remained, we would have used them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City."

Che’ Guevara was a sadistic killer. He enjoyed killing and torturing. His writings preach hatred against capitalism in general and the United States in particular. He was also incompetent. He almost single-handedly destroyed the Cuban economy and his only military successes came against the Batista regime, whose army was weak and ineffective, only after the US withdrew support in 1958. According to some reports, Che’ was betrayed in Bolivia by Castro, who instructed the Bolivian Communist Party to pass information on his movements to the army.

Che’s latter day disciples fall into two categories. The first are committed socialists and anti-Americans who eagerly consumed Castro’s propaganda after Che’s death. Many of these people are Lenin’s “useful idiots,” who live in free and prosperous societies, but dream of socialist utopias and look the other way at communist atrocities. This is the same “Blame America First” crowd who cry for appeasement to dictators and Islamic radicals.

The second group is the people who don’t really know or understand who Che’ was. They see the long haired, “Guerilla Hero” image as a symbol of youthful rebellion and social change. Few, if any, fathom Che’s depravity or have any clue as to the number of lives that he destroyed.

On a per capita basis, the number of people killed and imprisoned by Che’ and Castro rivals that of Hitler and Stalin. Che’s legacy is one of mass murder, assaults on human rights, and the enslavement of entire nations. The world is a better place without Che’ Guevara in it.

Sources:
http://www.moreorless.au.com/heroes/guevara.html
http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/guevara01.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2107100
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/index.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200707/NAT20070730a.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200707/NAT20070731b.html
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1535
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1985/SDR.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/09/MNVASLK4R.DTL&feed=rss.news
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