Far-right conspiracy theorists say 94% of US COVID-19 deaths don't count because those Americans had underlying conditions. That's bogus. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/far-conspiracy-theorists-94-us-115300455.html The CDC's weekly report on US COVID-19 deaths breaks down fatalities by age, sex, race, and comorbidities — health conditions that increase a person's risk of a severe case. Because only 6% of Americans who died of COVID-19 had no preexisting conditions, some people think those are the only people who the virus has truly killed. That's false. Even President Trump retweeted, then deleted, once such erroneous statement. Health problems like diabetes and heart disease make COVID-19 more deadly. Those who die with comorbidities were still killed primarily by the virus, though. Nearly 200,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working to track and study those deaths in as much detail as possible. Each week, the agency updates a provisional report that compiles coronavirus mortality data based on patients' death certificates. The report breaks down US coronavirus deaths by age, sex, race, and location based on information submitted to National Center for Health Statistics. It also includes patients' comorbidities: preexisting health conditions like diabetes or kidney disease that are known to raise a person's risk of a severe infection. The August 29 update to that report noted that in "6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned," meaning no other health conditions were "mentioned in conjunction with deaths." That means only 6% of the 153,504 Americans who'd died by that date had no underlying health conditions. But that line was widely misinterpreted — in fact, it set off a conspiracy-theory firestorm. Countless social media users — including many associated with the far-right, pro-Trump conspiracy-theory group QAnon — suggested the report meant that only 6% of those counted in the US coronavirus death total actually died of the disease. President Donald Trump even retweeted one such claim on August 30, then deleted it eight hours later. He also mentioned the 6% statistic in a September 1 interview with Fox News. The tweet Trump reshared, posted by a QAnon supporter, said: "This week the CDC quietly updated the Covid number to admit that only 6% of all the 153,504 deaths recorded actually died from Covid. That's 9,210 deaths. The other 94% had 2 to 3 other serious illnesses and the overwhelming majority were of very advanced age." But that's bogus. Just because people had, say, heart disease or obesity doesn't mean the virus wasn't their cause of death. If they hadn't gotten COVID-19, those people would probably still be alive. The CDC's report simply emphasizes how dangerous COVID-19 is for the many people who already have other health conditions. In the weeks since the report with that line came out, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have flagged posts promoting this 6% idea as false information. Many preexisting health conditions put coronavirus patients at higher risk of developing severe cases. Overall, patients with underlying conditions were 12 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared to otherwise healthy patients, according to CDC data collected through May 30. Similarly, a March report from Italy's National Institute of Health showed that at the beginning of the pandemic, 99% of COVID-19 patients who died there had at least one preexisting condition. The CDC has found heart disease, lung disease, and diabetes to be among the most common comorbidities when COVID-19 kills. Indeed, a study from Wuhan, China, showed that people with high blood pressure were twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as patients with normal blood pressure. Studies from Columbia University and Public Health England, meanwhile, found that obese people over 60 are more likely to require ventilation or die if they get COVID-19. To think about how COVID-19 and underlying health conditions interact, think of a diabetic person's impaired immune system as a pot of water on a cold stove. If left alone, that pot won't overflow: The person is keeping the stove's flame off by managing their condition with insulin. But now say the diabetic person gets the coronavirus — that turns the stove on, since high blood sugar impairs the immune system's ability to kill invading pathogens. A COVID-19 infection can also cause swelling in the body, which can lead to even higher blood-sugar levels. That in turn further compromises the body's immune response, allowing the infection to worsen. Eventually, the pot might boil over. But if this diabetic person hadn't gotten the coronavirus, they most likely would not have died. That's what the CDC's recent COVID-19 mortality report showed. It was not in any way a revision of the agency's death count. Underlying conditions are one reason the coronavirus has hit Black Americans disproportionately hard The increased risk people with comorbidities face when they get COVID-19 in part explains why Black Americans are being hospitalized with and dying of the coronavirus in disproportionately high numbers. The CDC estimates that Black Americans between the ages of 35-44 are 10 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than their white counterparts. According to data the agency published in April, 33% of the US's hospitalized coronavirus patients were Black, though Black people make up 18% of the overall US population. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said the coronavirus has hit Black communities hardest because of the prevalence of "underlying medical conditions — the diabetes, the hypertension, the obesity, the asthma." Indeed, Black counties in the US have disproportionately high rates of underlying conditions like diabetes and heart disease, a May report showed. Those counties also experience more air pollution, which is linked to asthma. hese higher-than-average rates of underlying health conditions in Black communities are the product of systemic inequality. One recent study found that "structural factors including healthcare access, density of households, unemployment, pervasive discrimination, and others," are driving COVID-19 disparities — and certainly "not intrinsic characteristics of Black communities or individual-level factors." For instance, many Black, Latinx, and indigenous populations are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 simply because they're more likely to have to leave home for work: People of color make up about half of the US's 55.2 million essential workers.
I love the statement: "But if this diabetic person hadn't gotten the coronavirus, they most likely would not have died." You could easily say "if they didn't have diabetes, they wouldn't have died from Corona!" The point isn't who would or would not have died from COVID. The point is the overall risk to those of us who are healthy. When you hear that "200,000 people have died from COVID, and you could be next!" it elicits a behavior of risk avoidance that is damaging to lives and the economy. When someone qualifies that with "but you should know that only 12,000 of those people died with ONLY COVID. The rest were sick with something else", suddenly your risk factor drops precipitously - and rightfully so. A normal, logical person not being driven by a fear-induced narrative would say "Ah, if that's the case and most people who die from COVID are also very sick from other things, I can send my completely healthy child to school. I can go to work just fine, because I am completely healthy." "OH NO!!!" says the fear and panic induced narrative. WEAR YOUR MASK! VIRTUAL SCHOOL ONLY! CLOSED FOR BUSINESS...and all the other horseshit. OBEY. Yeah, piss off.
the "most people died of underlying conditions" argument is too stupid to even address. 1st, we knew the rate of comorbidities a month into the pandemic in Asia. 2nd, no one's ever died of HIV, but we don't dismiss it because another condition ends up killing you due to a compromised immune system.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...p-influence-i-have-never-seen-morale-this-low Despair at CDC after Trump influence: 'I have never seen morale this low' The Trump administration’s bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent efforts to meddle with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are taking a substantial toll on the nation’s foremost public health institution. In interviews with half a dozen current and former CDC officials, they described a workforce that has seen its expertise questioned, its findings overturned for political purposes and its effectiveness in combating the pandemic undermined by partisan actors in Washington. “I have never seen morale this low. It’s just, people are beaten down. People are beaten down partially by a public who not only distrusts us but who actually think we want to infringe on their civil liberties,” said one current CDC employee. “The other factor is the active undermining by senior members of our own administration.” Those who still work at the agency requested anonymity to describe conversations among their colleagues, for fear of retribution from an administration that has punished officials who speak out. They expressed frustration that the CDC, long an independent voice of dispassionate science, has bent to the whims of an administration that does not acknowledge the severity of a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the U.S. They have seen guidance revised or removed — most recently this week, when the CDC took down language that acknowledged the virus mainly spreads through aerosol droplets, something the World Health Organization said months ago. In the early months of the pandemic, senior CDC officials including Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat and Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, were sidelined after sounding the alarms over the dangers posed by the novel coronavirus. President Trump publicly downplayed — and continues to downplay — the pandemic, questioning both his own top medical and health experts and the science that shows mask mandates and social distancing work. In private, Trump acknowledged that the virus was far more deadly, according to interviews published by veteran journalist Bob Woodward. “As I talk to former colleagues at CDC, the feeling I get is just an overwhelming sense of despair. People are working incredibly hard to reduce the impact of the pandemic and the sense that they’re being blocked by people at the political level, and that the work that they’re doing is not being appreciated by the American public,” said Rich Besser, a former CDC director who now runs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “The feeling right now is that public health is not being allowed to lead and to demonstrate the path forward to reduce transmission and increase economic activity,” he said. CDC spokespeople did not return calls and emails seeking comment. Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have publicly questioned the CDC’s conclusions, published in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Those reports are sacrosanct documents meant to highlight the agency’s best work and research. House Democrats have launched an inquiry into potential political interference in the CDC’s publications. The HHS officials who sought changes to those reports included Michael Caputo, who worked on Trump’s campaign and who arrived at the health agency in April, and his top science adviser, Paul Alexander. Alexander has left HHS, and Caputo has taken medical leave after a bizarre rant on Facebook in which he accused CDC officials of trying to harm Trump’s political standing. Some current CDC employees pointed to a directive from HHS in August, when guidance recommending that those who came into contact with someone infected by the virus be tested even if they were asymptomatic was quietly removed from the agency’s website. That recommendation was reinstated, after public outcry. “It’s horrifying. I don’t know of any other situation like this, when things have been dictated to be put on the CDC website that aren’t defensible science. The idea that you shouldn’t test contacts is just indefensible,” said Tom Frieden, who led the CDC during the Obama administration. The political interference in guidance, and Trump’s pledges that a vaccine will be ready soon — a promise that stands in contrast with CDC Director Robert Redfield’s testimony to Congress last week that a vaccine would not be widely available until next year — is raising concerns over whether the public will accept a vaccine once it becomes available. “It’s incredibly sad to all of us that the recent guidance is causing a loss of trust for CDC in general. I’m very nervous about what is going to happen when a vaccine is available, especially if the phase three trials are cut short for political reasons,” said a current CDC employee. “Public health messaging is so important and it’s been disregarded since the early days of the pandemic.” Others at the CDC said political interference has been taking place from the first days of the pandemic. On one incident management call, an official who listened in said Redfield talked about how he had been instructed by Vice President Pence to change CDC guidelines on the size of public gatherings to come in line with the White House coronavirus task force recommendations. A spokesperson for Pence’s office denied that he instructed Redfield to change any guidance. But in March, the CDC changed its guidance from a limit on public gatherings from 50 people to 10 people — three days after the White House’s task force set the limit at 10. The current CDC employees said their faith in Redfield’s leadership had been shaken, both by his inability to prevent changes to recommendations handed down from Washington and for his unwillingness to defend the agency more vociferously. Those employees called Redfield, a prominent AIDS researcher at the University of Maryland before he was tapped to head CDC, both humble and approachable. “It’s become quite obvious that Dr. Redfield is a meek and gentle guy in a context where a fighter was needed,” the first CDC employee said. “He is not seen by anybody at CDC as somebody who will stand up and fight for us, as an agency.” Even Redfield’s predecessors have been critical of his defense of their agency. CDC advises against traditional trick-or-treating during COVID-19 Overnight Health Care: US coronavirus deaths hit 200,000 | Ginsburg's... “What does concern me is that we’re not seeing strong support for the agency from the top, and that can be demoralizing. One role of the CDC director is to have the backs of the scientists and all of the people working hard across the agency, and we’re not seeing that,” Besser said. “I don’t know what Dr. Redfield is doing behind closed doors, but we haven’t been hearing from him out front condemning interference in CDC publications.” CDC sources said there had been no talk of mass resignations to protest the administration’s handling of the pandemic, or its meddling in public health science. Some have joked of moving to New Zealand or Australia, but most say they will continue their work to promote public health. “People in public health by and large are people who just see suffering and want there to be less of it. That’s what drives you into public health. I mean, God knows you don’t do it for the money,” the first CDC employee said. But, the employee added: “The overall tenor of things, the drumbeat is just too disheartening.”
Right, the CDC is upset it can't have more "Unconscious Bias" training. The best part is about the "we want there to be less suffering". From the group that pushes lockdown (which leads to unemployment, depression and suicide) for a virus that doesn't affect the vast majority of the population beyond levels of the common cold.
Dr. Fauci calls out Rand Paul for the constant bullshiat coming out of Rand Paul's mouth (video 1:18 long). "You misconstrued that, Senator. And you've done that repetitively in the past." -- Fauci is out of patience with Rand Paul