Many of you know I wrote a covid news wrap-up at my previous home. While I no longer write much about that particular topic, I still follow the developments fairly closely. There are a couple of WuFlu related items I thought I should share. Both are related to the number of fatalities from the Chinese lung AIDS.
First up is this story out of my home state, New York. Most of you are aware of the disastrous order from Andy Cuomo that turned the nursing homes here into charnel houses. The official count for nursing home WuFlu deaths is just under 6,600. There is very good reason to think those numbers are grossly understated.
Prior to 28 April, nursing home deaths were recorded the same way as every other state. That is, if a nursing home resident got the Chinese coronavirus in the home and was subsequently transferred to a hospital and died, they were counted as a nursing home death. After 28 April, about the time the love Gov started getting criticism for his policy, that changed. A death was only counted as a nursing home death if the individual actually died there.
Bill Hammond, a Senior Fellow for Health Policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, did an analysis of nursing home census data in NY. What he found is somewhat disturbing. From CBS6 in Albany NY:
He spoke to CBS 6’s Anne McCloy about his recent report analyzing numbers surrounding the nursing home debacle.
Anne: “Why is it important to get the real numbers?”
Bill Hammond: “To learn lessons from it.”
Hammond says the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) is only releasing the number of deaths that occurred within the four walls of the nursing home, and is not including deaths at hospitals. So, Hammond pulled different numbers, instead analyzing the number of empty beds, or vacancies.
“A 13-point difference means there are 13,000 normally there who aren’t there,” Hammond said. NYSDOH has the death rate from nursing homes at about 6,600, but with the vacancy rate at 13,000, Hammond says the death count is likely much higher. The agency did not provide CBS 6 the number of nursing home deaths from hospitals.
While I personally doubt there are an additional 13,000 nursing home deaths in NY, another 3-4,000 isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Whatever the total is, it’s way too high. We’ve known for a long time, like early March, that the Chinese coronavirus disproportionately affected those older than 65 and with certain pre-existing conditions. It would have been fairly simple and easy to protect those most at risk.
Next up on the hit parade, we’re going to take a look at how WuFlu deaths are counted.
CBS12 in Palm Beach Florida requested the records for all the covid deaths in the county. Here’s some of what they found:
A 60-year-old man who died from a gun shot wound to the head.
A 90-year-old man who fell and died from complications of a hip fracture.
A 77-year-old woman who died of Parkinson’s disease.
These are some of the deaths in Palm Beach County recently, and incorrectly, attributed to COVID-19 in medical examiner records.
The CBS12 News I-Team uncovered several examples in Medical Examiner reports of people counted as a COVID death who did not die of COVID.
We requested a list of all COVID-19 deaths in Palm Beach County from the Medical Examiner’s office and received a spread sheet of 581 cases.
Each person on the spreadsheet is someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
In each case line, the person’s cause of death and contributing causes of death are listed, if there are any.
The I-Team found eight cases in which a person was counted as a COVID death, but did not have COVID listed as a cause of contributing cause of death.
Of the 581 deaths on the spreadsheet, only 169 deaths are listed as COVID without any contributing factors.
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So, why are the numbers being inflated like this. There are three factors that play into the totals.
First, anyone with the Chinese lung AIDS, regardless of how they died, gets put on the list. It doesn’t matter if they actually died from it or not. Why? Let’s ask Dr Birx and Dr Strangeglove err Fauci
Dr Birx:
If someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.
Dr Fauci
I can’t imagine if someone comes in with coronavirus, goes to an ICU, and they have an underlying heart condition and they die—they’re going to say, ‘Cause of death: heart attack.’ I cannot see that happening.
Second, official CDC direction tells physicians to put COVID-19 on death certificates even without any confirming test so long as they’ve “assumed” the deceased had it.
A March 24 Q&A-style memo from the CDC instructing doctors on how to fill out death certificates was explicit:
Q: Should “COVID-19” be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?
A: COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.
And no, that emphasis is not mine, it appears that way in the memo. Kinda tells you they wanted to make the point doesn’t it. I have to question the motivation behind this, it certainly isn’t for any epidemiological or statistical reason. This editor took several statistical analysis courses to fulfill my math requirements in college, the professor was adamant about one point. Garbage in, garbage out. And these stats are garbage.
Third, one word: Medicare.
Way back in April, Dr Scott Jensen too Laura Ingraham
Right now Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000; three times as much. Nobody can tell me, after 35 years in the world of medicine, that sometimes those kinds of things [have] impact on what we do.
So, there’s a financial incentive for doctors and hospitals to inflate their covid numbers.