Very sad stories of people who dismissed the pandemic then suffered deaths

https://www.yahoo.com/news/deadliest-place-america-shrugged-off-080110958.html

This is the kind of thing that breaks my heart. All these poor souls got badly misinformed and manipulated by politicians, and now they are paying the heaviest price, with friends and relatives having succumbed to the virus; they now experience survivors' guilt and wish they had taken it more seriously.

This is the kind of thing that made me vote against Trump although I harbor many conservative views. His constant minimizing of the pandemic and his mocking of containment measures bear a large chunk of responsibility for how these poor people in rural America got hurt by the pandemic.

Given how much these same populations look up to him, a different attitude would have helped a long way with getting these poor people to protect themselves. Shame.

 

In Florida, we just had a 90 year old man, driving his car at 9:30PM. He had a 95 year old female passenger. He decided he needed to take a u-turn in the path of an oncoming car driven by a 21 year-old who had his 82 year old granny with him.

All 3 elderly died.

Its really sad for years and years we have families who will not take the hard steps of stopping their elderly parents from driving. This has gone on for years and cost countless lives and injuries.

What's my point? a freakin virus that will run its' course, has been politicized. Where are the leftists and their desire to control our lives when it comes to all of the other dangers we face?

 

????. I don't think you thought that through. Try again.

 

of course I did.

there are lots of things that lead to death. Covid isn't a death sentence by any stretch of the imagination given the population of the USA.

isn't it strange that a virus where locking down and masking up doesn't eradicate it, that govt pushes for those?

If govt wants to save lives, then ban abortion as more babies are killed each year in the USA by abortion than by all viruses (876,000 in 201

In 2018, over 117,000 children were poisoned from cosmetics. That is not a virus but an annual event. Why don't the useless politicians target cosmetics?

Nope, Covid is a great test for politicians to see just how much liberty the people will cede despite the govt being inept at doing anything about the virus.

 

How surprising, another Appeal To Emotion from CF.

Not a word about the 99.9% of those infected who survived. Just fear-mongering and appeal to emotions, following the lead of A. Fauci the High Priest of Fear.

 

wow, to think we made it to 2020 without anyone ever having died from a virus with a low IFR.
Amazing

 

The IFR is low but the Rnaught is high so given the sheer volume of number of infected, we've had 300,000 deaths. That's not negligible and it is not over yet, so don't gloat prematurely. That is more people than American combat deaths in WWII and it's been the same as 9/11 deaths on multiple days. Dismiss it if you will; I don't dismiss it.

 

I sort of blame MSM for this. We are inundated with horrible news 24/7/365. We see movies and tv shows with rampant violence and people dying. We have video games with mass destruction as the goal. This is not all inclusive or totally at blame; however, it's hard to conceptualize 300,000 deaths. It's easier to dismiss because it's not in someone's backyard. That's a sad state of being/thinking but here we are.

 

Thanks mostly to trumpers we have never locked down or masked up. Why would you expect Covid to be eradicated?

 

Millions die every year after common respiratory illnesses. That's what happens when you have low reserve.
And when they died of an MI, or CHF, or DVT/PE, or renal failure, or stroke, or aspiration pneumonia, or nosocomial pneumonia, or a host of other medical coditions, their cause of death used to be the terminal event. But not this year.

 

No, if someone is on the way to the hospital during a heart attack and gets killed in a car crash, the cause of death is car crash. The thing that killed you is the thing that killed you.

These 300,000 deaths are above what is normal and expected.

If you have to spend $8,000 on a new HVAC, you don't say, "well, we are paying mortgage higher than that, anyway." No. It's an additional cost.

 

not with Covid. It is the virus that is coded as killing you, not the pulmonary embolism.

 

Only if COVID killed you. Car crash victims with COVID did not die of COVID.

Before you point to the few mistakes that were made, they were found, and corrected.

 

quote my entire thread. Would you like to address the items I mentioned which account for many more deaths?
Why do Democrat voters think a silly piece of cloth upon the face will save the world? You focus on 1 virus because it was a campaign slogan of the Democrat party. Why not focus on that which claims many many more lives each and every year............killing of babies

 

I've explained this over and over. Do an advanced search here on PF on Death Certificates with me as the post author and you'll see detailed explanations on how we write death certificates and how the ones codified as Covid-19 deaths are correctly assigned that that cause of death. Look for three long posts one after the other. I don't recall the thread name but you can find them.

 

Wrong. Look for the posts I've just mentioned and I even do an analogy with a fat guy and a tornado that is quite handy to explain it.
And by the way, we had 350,000 excess deaths over a similar period one year earlier, so far (and counting).

 

How sad, that all these people, who did as was told to them by the media, wore their masks, socially distanced thinking if they followed everything they were told, no matter how many times that information changed, and still caught the virus, and died.

Unless a person removes themselves from society, they can also catch the virus, and possibly die. Or not. Regardless of wearing a mask, or not.

 

Whats an excess death, specifically, and how is it calculated?

 

Excess deaths is the higher number of deaths by all causes that happen in a given period of time, as compared to the number in a similar period of time, one year earlier.

Say, 200,000 Americans die of any/all causes in February 2019. If 250,000 Americans die in February 2020, we had 50,000 excess deaths.

In the present case, if you look at deaths of all causes from the time of the first US death of this pandemic to now, and you compare that number to the similar period in 2019, we've have 350,000 excess deaths.

This usually happens when we get some ADDITIONAL cause of death that kills people in an out-of-the-ordinary fashion, such as a pandemic.

So, you get all deaths by stroke, myocardial infarct, cancer, opiate overdoses, car crashes, flu, pneumonia, etc. etc. and you ADD to it another 300,000 deaths by a pandemic, plus some 50,000 "collateral damage" (presumably either deaths by Covid-19 that went uncounted as such, or deaths by conditions that got neglected because people were afraid to go to doctors' offices and ERs and catch Covid there, or surgeries weren't done for progressive conditions like cancer, etc.).

The number is useful to gauge if an infectious disease is killing people who would have died that year anyway or if it is truly killing people who wouldn't have died. Unfortunately, for Covid-19, it's the latter.

 

If I understand you correctly, this means that it's false to claim that all deaths are counted as COVID deaths (to get money from the Feds)? I see some posters stating that over and over and it makes no sense.

Just like it makes no sense to me that there are NO flu cases or deaths. I spoke to the health department representative in my area a few weeks back and she said that "COVID mimics other respiratory problems" which lead me to believe that the only way to differentiate a sinus infection from influenza from any other respiratory problem from COVID is through testing. Are people even tested after death to determine if they had it so it can be counted as such?

 

Of course we are not writing false Covid-19 death certificates to make more money. That is preposterous and I've explained it over and over in other posts. First of all, billing is by procedure, not diagnosis. Second, doing that would be a federal felony against Medicaid and Medicare and would result in prison term and loss of license (for no gain). Third, hospitals have risk departments that would frown at this practice and would fire the doctor doing it. Fourth, the CARES act assigned to hospitals a 20% Medicare surplus to offset the cost of treating UNINSURED Covid-19 patients (for whom no payment is collected) so that small regional hospitals don't go bankrupt in the middle of a pandemic. So, that's not to make MORE money. That's to offset the LOSSES. The pandemic has DECREASED our hospitals' revenue (by the need to cancel elective surgeries which are the biggest money maker), not increased as these nincompoops who don't understand the system, keep pretending.

Look, we continue to do flu tests. We typically (like a patient of mine that just had it done today) if someone shows up with an acute upper respiratory syndrome, we test together for the flu, RSV, Strep, and Covid-19. So, no, there aren't cases of flu being fraudulently diagnosed as Covid-19 to make more money. Now, what we've been seeing is fewer flu cases. Why? Because the flu is much LESS infectious than Covid-19, so, the increased social distancing, masks, and hand hygiene, while they only decrease the number of Covid-19 cases but can't eliminate them (they decrease the odds of catching Covid-19 but won't reduce those odds to zero), they are doing a fine job at curtailing the less contagious flu.

Yes, SOME symptoms are similar. Not all. The loss of taste and smell for example is very typical of Covid-19 and doesn't tend to happen with the other upper respiratory illnesses. CT scan infiltrates in lungs also have a configuration that is typical of Covid-19. There are differences.

Yes, it is possible to test after death. But it is also possible, like I explained in my death certificate posts, to very accurately conclude for a Covid-19 death even in absence of testing (say, due to a testing shortage in some small rural hospital), because Covid-19 has a very typical, and by now, very well known disease course.

I further explained that this is not done for some nefarious reason, to politically inflate the numbers or to make more money (preposterous). This is actually how we've ALWAYS issued death certificates for most conditions. Do you think that everybody who dies gets an autopsy done? Typically, only when the Law is involved somehow (suspected foul play, litigation). The overwhelming number of deaths in the US are certified based on DISEASE COURSE and the physician's sound clinical judgment of the facts and exams pertinent to the case.

Like I said elsewhere, if a small hospital ran out of Covid-19 test kits and a grandpa shows up, and we ask the family "what's wrong" and the family says "our son in college came home in a break positive for Covid-19, confirmed. Grandpa who thinks it's a hoax, hugged him, unmasked. Four days latter Grandpa wasn't feeling well, with muscle aches and fatigue and a little fever. In two days his fever spiked to 104 degrees, he lost his sense of smell, and developed shortness of breath. His lips were blue so we rushed him here." Then you test him for the flu and RSV, negative. Then you get a pulse ox and it's 88 and dropping. Then he starts to get severe respiratory problems and shows the typical consolidation pattern in his lungs. We start ventilation. His D-dimmer test is high and he starts developing blood clots. He goes into disseminated intravascular coagulation, multiple organ failure, respiratory failure despite ventilation, and dies.

OK, it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck... It's a duck. The death certificate will say presumed Covid-19 leading to viral pneumonia and cytokine storm, leading to disseminated intravascular coagulation, multiple organ failure, respiratory failure, and death. And the CDC, according to its own (and correct) regulations, WILL count this death as a Covid-19 death, AS THEY SHOULD.

I mean, pray tell, what exactly other mysterious, previously unknown disease would have had this typical course and would mimic the known course of a severe case of Covid-10, in the middle of a freaking pandemic of Covid-19, but somehow would NOT be Covid-19??? If a resident of mine refused to certify this death as a Covid-19 death because there was no test, I'd send him back to medical school.

OK, did he die of respiratory failure? No, that's only the immediate mechanism of death. The cause of death is the disease that started the cascade that killed him: Covid-19.

The misinformed (or politically disingenuous) people who keep saying that this is a fake Covid-19 death to make more money simply have no clue.

I mean, why is this still going on (the doubts?). The election is over. Trump lost. Contrary to what they kept saying, the pandemic didn't magically disappear on November 4th. It is no hoax and has never been. The numbers are not inflated and have never been. Time for these people to understand that the people dying of Covid-19 are ACTUALLY dying of Covid-19. Gee!

 

@CenterField, thanks for explaining this in detail. I suspected as much. It seems like some posters get their knickers in a knot and stick with one train of thought in spite of evidence to the contrary. It makes no sense. What's the point of being involved in a discussion if one isn't willing to consider the possibility they might learn something new or understand another point of view? I don't get that at all.

Thanks to you and your wife for all the hard work you do as front line workers. I'm sure all of you are fatigued and battle-worn seeing this up close. I appreciate my doctors and nurses and I did long before COVID hit the world.

 

The "crisis" exists only in the media and in the tortured minds of the herd. We have been terrorized by the media, which is their job, whether guns or virus.

On the upside, having watched no MSM news for about 2 months now, my anxiety level is much reduced. More TV news = more anxiety.

 

I stopped watching "the news" the day it was reported that Susan Smith drowned her own kids. It was a media sensation at the time as she had claimed that she was carjacked by a black man. I knew something was off because carjackers don't take kids and kidnappers don't need vehicles. I was "done" after that. I reasoned (and was correct) that I would hear about the "big" news anyway and I've avoided hearing the rest of the negativity. No thanks. It boggles my mind how some people seem addicted to the news. No wonder most of the populations suffers from groupthink. It's sad, if not downright scary.

 

We agree on something! I knew we'd get there.