It's an example of a common practice. Good straw man, though! +1 for rhetorical fallacies. From the CDC website: "mortality data includes both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19." Translation: test positive or be presumed positive by a physician when you die and you died of Covid. btw, here's the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by over 10,000 health care officials and practitioners - Er... conspiracy theorists - who advocate a herd immunity policy. Please post more rofls and lmfao's to 'refute' these professionals. Obviously this is addressed to those interested in actual stats rather than ad hominem attacks, straw man constructions, and ridicule by emoji. From two doctors attacked for skepticism: "‘You know, it’s interesting. When I’m writing up my death report I’m being pressured to add Covid,’” Erickson said. “Why is that? Why are we being pressured to add Covid? To maybe increase the numbers, and make it look a little bit worse than it is?” Also,“If you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had Covid at the same time, it’s still listed as a Covid death,” Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the director of Illinois's Department of Public Health,explainedto reporters. So, yeah, post another emoji to disprove what is openly being stated by health officials who control the policies determining death counts. Why? "the CARES Act increases Medicare payments to hospitals treating COVID-19 victims." "typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000,” said Jensen, whose claim wasfact-checked by USA Today. “But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000." Please engage with additional rhetorical fallacies, or, if you believe in rational argumentation, provide evidence and reasoning.
I won't address the 2 skeptical doctors. Anecdotal skepticism is just that. Some believe the earth is flat. Go figure. Herd immunity policy? The only country that is actually implementing such policy is Sweden and, at last count, is 12th in the world in death per million for countries of more than 1 million people; that's nearly 6,000 dead while its neighbors Norway and Finland? 275 and 346 respectively. Yup
The overdeath rate is the most reliable indicator. All death people are counted and payments for hospital treatments have no influence on the counting of the deaths. The numbers of previous years, with which the overdeath rate has to be compared, were already available before the Covid-19 pandemic so they were not manipulated. If a patient has any disease and catches Covid-19, in general Covid-19 is a decisive factor when it comes to the survival rate. Many times (most times) the additional Covid-19 disease makes the difference between life and death. In other words: Covid-19 finally kills the patients. So it is a Covid-19 death. https://voxeu.org/article/us-excess-mortality-rate-covid-19-substantially-worse-europe-s
So now you're completely making shit up (and @luisHK you're buying into it apparently?). Dr. Ngozi Ezike is actually on the record saying the exact opposite "Ezike said that the state is being careful to make sure to weed out deaths where the patient had COVID-19, but died in a manner completely detached from the virus, such as gunshot wounds or motor vehicle crashes." (https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/cor...ois-is-over-counting-covid-19-deaths/2270810/) for example! Again, one has to wonder what in the world you hope to accomplish other than showing that you're impervious to reason and will stop at no lengths to demonstration confirmation bias, even to the point of blatantly lying?
Let's put an end to this thread with data from the UK: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ses-latest-b880887.html?utm_source=reddit.com
France authorities stated that people dying while having tested positive for covid were considered covid fatalities last Spring, and they would add the people in care homes who died with compatible symptoms as they hadn´t tested many people in care homes at that time (lots of care home deaths were with covid compatible symptoms even before covid took off on his Celebrity world ride). So yes, I´ll buy the part about fatality numbers being inflated. Spain had a similar method of including all covid positive dead people as covid fatalities and Belgium was supposed to be even more liberal with its death count, hence they got the top spot in Europe last Spring (never locked people inside 24/7 like Spain did though)
If that insinuation would be valid, all hospitalized people that die, should be registered as Covid-19 as it brings them more money. So ALL deaths should be registered as Covid-19, which is clearly not the case. There would only be one cause of death left: Covid-19.
You're a reasonable person. And without knowing myself about the situation in France in the Spring I won't dispute your assertion regarding France without more research on my part. That in no way changes the fact that what @misterkel posted about Dr. Ezike's statements was a complete and total lie, something I demonstrated with a link and which anyone can search and find a large number of statements by Dr. Ezike saying the exact opposite of what @miterkel is falsely claiming. So why, again given that I've found you to be an imminently reasonable person, would you continue to support the lies that @miterkel is posting when you've been provided clear evidence that they're indeed lies? I'm truly baffled.
You might be right about Dr Ezike´s statement and I´m only supporting the part about inflated covid fatalities numbers. A bit busy on other issues right now to research Dr Ezike.