Coronavirus Made 2020 The Deadliest Year In Recorded US History

[shockshiok]

https://khn.org/morning-breakout/coronavirus-made-2020-the-deadliest-year-in-recorded-us-history/

Coronavirus Made 2020 The Deadliest Year In Recorded US History


THE DEADLIEST YEAR IN US HISTORY — More than 3 million people across the nation died last year in all, POLITICO’s Erin Banco reports — a 15 percent increase in fatalities compared to the prior year, according to a CDC report to be released soon. That’s the largest increase in a single year since 1918, when hundreds of thousands of people died in a flu pandemic and the U.S. was fighting in World War I.

— Covid, unsurprisingly, was a key force behind the spike. The disease trailed only heart disease and cancer as the top causes of death in 2020, replacing accidental injuries as the third-leading cause.

The CDC as part of its yet-to-be-published analysis will also detail death rates among people of different racial and ethnic groups, as the agency tries to demonstrate what it’s doing to better understand how the virus has affected communities of color.

— The report will be the CDC’s first public acknowledgment of the rising death rate. It’s the first in a series of planned reports focusing on Covid deaths, which includes ongoing work to analyze the hundreds of thousands of “excess deaths” that occurred last year.

HALFWAY THROUGH THE FIRST 100 DAYS — Biden’s remarks memorializing the one-year anniversary of Covid-19’s designation as a pandemic will also serve as both an opportunity to tout his administration’s early accomplishments 50 days into his term.

— The address, scheduled for 8:02 p.m., is not expected to run longer than 20 minutes. Biden is likely to emphasize his success in securing enough vaccines for every American and ramping up distribution of the shots — efforts that began during the Trump era, but which the current administration has significantly accelerated.

He’ll also have two recent wins to plug: a recent manufacturing deal to speed production of Johnson & Johnson vaccines, and Wednesday’s narrow passage of a $1.9 trillion relief package aimed at bolstering the Covid response while also financing a massive expansion of Obamacare coverage and federal safety net programs.

— The speech will also kick off the second leg of Biden’s Covid response. The White House is expected to soon begin its push for yet another massive stimulus bill, this time focused on infrastructure — something Biden has pitched as key to ensuring the nation's economic recovery, though it could face resistance from Republicans and moderate Democrats wary of spending even more. Biden will also need to manage a vaccination campaign that could face new challenges in distributing a growing supply of shots and reaching vaccine-hesitant populations.

Also on Biden’s growing list of health care priorities: confirming his HHS secretary nominee, Xavier Becerra; staffing up the rest of the sprawling health department; addressing a growing migrant crisis at the southern border; and laying out the non-Covid parts of his health care agenda — including how aggressively to pursue a drug pricing crackdown.

FORMER PRESIDENTS HEADLINE VACCINE AD — The Ad Council’s new national vaccine spot features former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter urging Americans to get their Covid shots. It’s the latest major effort to win over vaccine skeptics and play up the vaccines as the path out of the pandemic.

Notably absent from the ad: former President Donald Trump.

BIDEN EASES NURSING HOME VISITATION RULES — Citing the progress of its vaccination effort and the emotional toll of isolation on residents over the past year, CMS released new guidance allowing nursing home residents to visit indoors with loved ones, POLITICO’s Rachel Roubein reports.

The recommendations, developed in coordination with CDC, does still note that outdoor visitations remain “preferred.” But the loosened guidelines apply to all residents, regardless of vaccination status, and specify that visitation doesn’t need to be restricted for all residents if Covid spread can be contained to a single wing of the facility.

Residents who are fully vaccinated, the guidelines say, can have close contact with visitors, such as hugs, while both people wear masks.

— The nursing home industry cheered the recommendations, which come nearly a year after CMS directed nursing homes to restrict visitors amid the pandemic’s initial explosion.

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[QANONSG]

We have worked very hard to kill as many people as possible in 2020, as you can see. Unfortunately 2021 is not looking as good as 2020, the cases and deaths are reducing due to mass vaccination efforts worldwide. We will not stand by and allow the Pandemic to end.

 

[Peiweh]

Holy shit man deadlier than World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam Wars all combined! And who can we thank for this? the PRCs

 

[syed putra]

Holy shit man deadlier than World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam Wars all combined! And who can we thank for this? the PRCs

All problems can be traced back to china.

 

[tiongsrshit]

All problems can be traced back to china.

tiong is the culprit of all wrongs. all road lead back to the tiong

 

[kkbutterfly]

the 3 million death sound hugh.but the nos who died from yearly flu has drop.those suppose to die from cancer last stage died from covid.just a brought forward.what left behind is a healthy gene of human.

 

[Leongsam]

the 3 million death sound hugh.but the nos who died from yearly flu has drop.those suppose to die from cancer last stage died from covid.just a brought forward.what left behind is a healthy gene of human.

59 million people die annually so 3 million is obviously no big deal. If you add to that the fact that the majority were already half dead anyway it puts Covid in the proper perspective.

 

[laksaboy]

Don't worry, the culprit for the pandemic will pay. And it won't be just USA seeking compensation.
It's not just deaths, but the damage done to the economy.

----
PBS documentary: China's Covid Secrets

https://www.ket.org/program/frontline/chinas-covid-secrets/

 

[Hypocrite-The]

Daniel Pockett/AAP
‘Died from’ or ‘died with’ COVID-19? We need a transparent approach to counting coronavirus deaths
September 9, 2020 3.14pm AEST
Authors
Marc Trabsky
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe Law School and Director, Centre for Health, Law and Society, La Trobe University

Courtney Hempton
Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University

Disclosure statement
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.




‘Died from’ or ‘died with’ COVID-19? We need a transparent approach to counting coronavirus deaths
September 9, 2020 3.14pm AEST

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The COVID-19 death toll is reported every day by state and federal governments. These numbers are often used, alongside case numbers, to assess how public health policies are faring in controlling the pandemic, and to gauge the success of various drugs or interventions.

There’s been confusion, however, over whether reported death statistics reflect those who’ve died from COVID-19, or those who’ve died with the virus. Often it’s hard for medical practitioners to determine which of these categories a death falls into.

But the COVID-19 death toll publicised daily on Australian state and territory government websites and reported to the press does not differentiate between the two. It includes all people who’ve died with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in their body. It’s unclear if the federal government currently makes this distinction or not.

Lumping these statistics together makes it hard for the public to understand the true impact of the virus. Clarifying what’s being counted as a COVID-19 death is necessary for understanding the impact of the virus, and for informing public health and clinical responses to the pandemic. If we know who is susceptible to dying with COVID-19 because of pre-existing conditions, public health responses could more effectively target and protect potentially vulnerable people and communities.

Get your coronavirus updates from health experts.
We are not suggesting this is a reason to downplay the seriousness of the virus, but rather that successful public health engagement requires open communication of death causation data, especially in a pandemic. Therefore, we need a transparent approach to counting and reporting coronavirus deaths in Australia.

Cause of death is not straightforward
Federal Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth acknowledged that determining cause of death is complex when questioned by reporters on Tuesday, saying:

I remember as a junior doctor trying to do death certificates – it’s not always an easy thing […] I don’t, by any stretch of the imagination, think it’s a reason to underplay the severe impact that COVID has on people who have [pre-existing] conditions.

Indeed, distinguishing between dying with and dying from COVID-19 may require a more complex investigation into the cause of a death, beyond citing a positive SARS-CoV-2 test that was completed prior to the person’s death.

An electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 particles
It’s not always easy to tell if someone has died because of the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or whether they’ve passed away from pre-existing medical conditions but with the virus in their system. NIAID/NIH/AP/AAP
For example, Victoria’s coroner is currently investigating the death of a man in his twenties, who was widely reported as being Australia’s youngest coronavirus death. The coroner is investigating whether his death was primarily caused by SARS-CoV-2, or whether the virus contributed less substantially to his death.

While this death was reported on August 14 in Victoria’s daily death toll, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, as of August 28 it wasn’t counted in the federal COVID-19 death tally. It remains unclear whether the death has been added to the federal count as of today.

Generally when a person dies a medical practitioner is responsible for indicating the cause of death. The doctor will complete a “medical certificate of cause of death”, and inform the Registry of Births, Death and Marriages in their state or territory.

In some circumstances, the cause of a death can also be reported by a coroner, but they typically investigate deaths that are sudden, unnatural, violent or accidental, or which occur during or after medical procedures. The cause of death may be initially unclear at the beginning of a coronial investigation. Sometimes, the determined cause of death may be multiple, while other times it may change when more information is revealed, for example through a post-mortem examination or toxicology tests, or when new information comes to light about how a virus affects the body.

An image of text saying the Coroners Court of Victoria
The Victorian Coroner is currently investigating the death of a man in his twenties believed to be Australia’s youngest coronavirus victim. Stefan Postles/AAP
We don’t know the true death rate
The lack of nuance in Australia’s COVID-19 death tally means the true death rate may be unknown, and may be adjusted in the future.

For example, on August 31 Victoria recorded only eight COVID-19 deaths from the previous 24 hours, but also added 33 historical deaths to the toll. According to the state’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, this backlog was due to changes in how aged care providers reported COVID-19 deaths, and differences in reporting methods between the state and federal governments.

On September 4 there were six deaths recorded over the previous 24-hours, but a further 53 historical deaths were added to the daily toll, 50 of which were related to aged care.

There is a lack of transparency about why there is a discrepancy between how Victoria and the Commonwealth count COVID-19 deaths.

A spokesperson for federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck suggested delays in data collection and reporting are the primary reasons for the discrepancies. But there appeared to be confusion in early August in the aged care sector about the necessity of reporting “all COVID-19 related deaths, including those involving other causes or comorbidity factors”, according to a letter written to Victorian aged care providers from the secretary for the Department of Health, Brendan Murphy.

Read more: Have there been uncounted coronavirus deaths in Australia? We can't say for sure, but the latest ABS data holds clues

Delays may have been caused by aged care providers struggling to verify not only residents who died from COVID-19, but also those suspected to have died with the virus.

The Victorian and Commonwealth governments are reportedly working to reconcile how COVID-19 deaths are counted and reported. But it may be months or years before detailed death data can be analysed.

In the meantime, we need more detail about what’s being reported in the daily COVID-19 death data, and governments should be transparent about what is (and is not) being counted as a COVID-19 death.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

How are COVID-19 deaths counted? It’s complicated
Patrick Boyle, Senior Staff Writer
February 18, 2021
As the U.S. death toll nears a half-million, confusion continues over whether people die “of” COVID-19 or “with” COVID-19. Here’s what’s behind the numbers.
New section
New section

Staffers at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, transport a deceased patient to a refrigerated truck that the center had to use for the bodies of COVID-19 victims during a surge in the spring of 2020.Credit: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
An elderly man arrived at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital Midtown last month so stricken with advanced cancer that it could take his life within months — but that’s not what brought him to the emergency room.
The man had contracted COVID-19 and was struggling to breathe, recalls Sara Auld, MD, a critical care physician at the hospital. He was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and intubated. “Given his already fragile state, his condition quickly took a turn for the worse” and he died, she recalls.
Was his death caused by COVID-19?
Yes, Auld says: “While he was very weak and frail from his underlying cancer, his death was undoubtedly accelerated and precipitated by COVID-19.”
Such decisions, made every day by doctors in hospitals around the country, are the unseen yet predominant sources for the nation’s most watched and scrutinized health statistic: people who have died from COVID-19.
The official government figure — nearly a half-million as of mid-February — has spurred not only public health measures to battle the disease but also confusion and doubts based on a fundamental question: What defines a COVID-19 death?
The answer can get complicated.
Early in the pandemic, some of the answers provided by public officials — who were scrambling to track the disease as it overwhelmed health systems — fed skepticism. Last April, Deborah Birx, MD, coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said this when asked about people who have COVID-19 but die from preexisting conditions: “If someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.”
That statement, combined with some state health officials saying they follow the same policy, sparked charges that the COVID-19 totals were inflated by deaths from other diseases and even auto accidents if the victims happened to have COVID-19. Federal and state governments gradually altered such policies over the spring and summer to say that in order for a death to be counted as a COVID-19 death, the disease had to have played a role.
Still, people wonder: What determines if COVID-19 played that role? Many people still doubt the official totals, with some claiming they’re inflated as part of a conspiracy.
Just recently, Auld says, she got an email from a relative “informing me that COVID death numbers were grossly exaggerated — that the CDC had intervened” to increase the totals.
“I blew my lid,” Auld says — but she vented only to her husband.
There’s no evidence of orchestrated inflation, but parsing the role that the disease plays in some deaths is not always easy for doctors — nor is the process clear to the public.
COVID-19’s complicated cascade
At the core of the issue is the fact that COVID-19 kills in myriad ways, typically setting off a combination of potentially fatal afflictions.
“COVID-19 can cause an extraordinarily wide range of clinical complications,” Auld says. “While pneumonia and respiratory failure are the most common manifestations, it can also cause blood clots, including strokes and heart attacks.”
When a COVID-19 patient dies, “it’s usually a cascade of events that lead to death — it’s not one thing,” agrees Daniel Handel, MD, MBA, MPH, chief medical officer for Indiana University Health’s South Central Region in Bloomington.
In addition, the disease’s brutal impact on people with other medical conditions — such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart ailments — can make COVID-19 one of several contributors to a death, says Sally Aiken, MD, chief medical examiner of Spokane County, Washington. Aiken has seen cases where elderly people who were in advanced decline due to Alzheimer’s disease and atrial fibrillation contracted COVID-19 and soon died.
When COVID-19 accelerates such a person’s death from other causes, is that a COVID-19 death?
The answer gets recorded on the main document behind the nation’s COVID-19 fatality count: the death certificate.
The death certificate process
Many people think of a death certificate as a precise final verdict. But often, the document reflects a judgment that weighs the roles of multiple conditions, taking into account a person’s medical history along with their most recent medical data and symptoms.
“There always have been cases where there are gray areas of death certification,” says Aiken, immediate past president of the National Association of Medical Examiners.
COVID-19 cases can paint lots of gray. In an instructional video for filling out death certificates in cases that might or might not be attributed to COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises health professionals to “use your best clinical judgment.”
Here is how the process typically works:
Who fills out the certificate
When someone dies in a health care facility, the task of determining the cause usually goes to a physician who oversaw the person’s care or the person’s primary care doctor. Coroners and medical examiners make the determination in various other instances, including deaths that are unexpected, violent, or occur at home.
How death causes are recorded
Part I and II of a death certificate ask what caused a death and what other factors contributed to it. If COVID-19 appears among the causes and contributors, CDC guidance counts that as a COVID-19-related death.
Part I asks for the “immediate cause” of death, followed by any “conditions that led to the immediate cause,” the CDC explains in guidelines for certifying COVID-19 fatalities. For example: In some COVID-19 cases, the immediate cause is an affliction that arose from the disease, such as pneumonia, while COVID-19 gets listed under that as an underlying condition that led to death. In other words, COVID-19 caused the pneumonia.
Part II asks for conditions that did not set off medical events that led to death but contributed in some other way. Here, COVID-19 appears as sort of an accomplice to a fatality that was probably going to occur from something else (such as a preexisting, terminal disease), albeit later than if the person had not contracted COVID-19.
For instance: In Aiken’s example of a patient near death from Alzheimer’s disease before contracting COVID-19 (which she described as taken from several cases, not one in particular), COVID-19 would be a contributing condition, not a cause. “She was already in decline, had a short life expectancy, and COVID-19 may have tipped her over, but just barely,” Aiken says.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services explains on its website why the disease is cited if it played any role at all:
“Whether COVID-19 shortened a life by 15 years or 15 minutes; whether COVID-19 is an underlying or contributing condition, the virus was in circulation, infected an Alaskan, and hastened their death.”
Making decisions
COVID-19’s role in a death is perhaps most clear in an ICU. By the time COVID-19 patients get there, they are suffering severe symptoms of the disease and have probably tested positive for it.
“They might die from septic shock,” Auld says, referring to a faulty immune response that can cause tissue damage and organ failure and has been linked to COVID-19. “But when you go back to the reason they came to the hospital and got so sick, it’s COVID. If you go back to the root cause, it’s COVID.”
The assessment is often less clear in emergency departments. Some patients there are treated with no time to test them for COVID-19, notes Ali Raja, MD, MBA, MPH, executive vice chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Some do show obvious and severe COVID-19 symptoms or have a previous diagnosis of the disease.
“We put that [COVID-19]” on the death certificate in those cases, he says.
Others, however, have no COVID-19 symptoms or previous diagnosis. For those who die — from a heart attack, for instance — the role of COVID-19 might never be determined unless there’s a reason to run a post-mortem test for the disease, Raja explains. As for those killed by traumas such as accidents and assaults, a test wouldn’t matter.
“Whether or not you have COVID isn’t going to change your cause of death when you get hit by a car,” he says.
For medical examiners and coroners, COVID-19’s role in death can also be unclear before an autopsy or investigation. Many people who die at home do not get diagnosed with — or get medical care for — what ultimately kills them, Aiken notes. That’s particularly true of COVID-19.
“If you follow people with COVID, they can have a course that seems mild and rapidly declines. I’ve seen that in some of my cases,” she says.
These are among the reasons that current COVID-19 death totals are inherently incomplete estimates.
Adding the numbers
The CDC uses different sources to post slightly different fatality figures.
Death certificates provide the data for the agency’s daily updates of COVID-19 deaths. In mid-February, the total stood at 462,000.
At the same time, the agency’s COVID Data Tracker reported 486,000. That data comes from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), which gathers information from state and local health departments when a disease is diagnosed in someone in a health care setting. (Estimates vary among media outlets and other organizations because they use various sources, including the CDC.)
Why use two counting methods? The NNDSS provides “real time” awareness of fatalities linked to a disease, Robert Anderson, PhD, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, says via email. He explains that it takes about two weeks longer for death certificate information to work its way up to the daily updates.
“Ultimately, the official numbers will be based on the death certificates,” Anderson says.
Nevertheless, the official numbers don’t capture all COVID-19 deaths, for several reasons.
When tests for COVID-19 were scarce while the pandemic raced across the country in the spring of 2020, many infected people died without being tested. That includes those who showed mild symptoms or symptoms that were attributed to other causes.
“If anything, we’re missing patients who had COVID,” Raja says.
The same is true for deaths that occurred at home, Aiken explains. Even now, tests are usually conducted only if a medical examiner or coroner has a reason to suspect that a coronavirus infection played a role in someone’s death.
“We won’t know for some time” what percentage of people who die from the disease died at home, she says.
In an effort to capture some of the missed fatalities, the CDC measured “excess deaths” — the number of people “who have died from all causes, in excess of the expected number of deaths for a given place and time.” The study found that from Jan. 26 through Oct. 3 of 2020, the United States had 299,000 more deaths than “the typical number during the same period in previous years.” (On Oct. 15, the agency’s official COVID-19 death estimate was 216,025.)
The agency attributed at least two-thirds of those deaths to COVID-19 — because people died either from the disease or from other causes as a result of avoiding medical care because of the pandemic.
Doubts
Still, confusion and doubts persist — delivering yet another emotional punch to the doctors on the front lines of the pandemic.
“It’s frustrating to hear on the news, or from family and friends, that these numbers might be inflated,” Raja says. “I put a lot of thought into them [death certificates]. These are not things I do on the fly.”
Auld has learned not to get into debates with people, such as the family member who sent the email alleging a counting conspiracy. The doubts still sting.
“When people suggest that we are misrepresenting the losses and deaths from COVID, not only does it disrespect our hard work as health care providers,” she says. “It also disrespects the families who have lost loved ones.”

 

[IMHDOCTOR]

We have worked very hard to kill as many people as possible in 2020, as you can see. Unfortunately 2021 is not looking as good as 2020, the cases and deaths are reducing due to mass vaccination efforts worldwide. We will not stand by and allow the Pandemic to end.

You are criminally insane. It is because of people like you that we have the Institute of Mental Health in the first place.

For your own good, turn yourself in before someone gets hurt. We can rehabilitate you and send you back into a productive member of society.

If you wish to learn more, kindly contact us for an assessment:

https://www.imh.com.sg/

Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747

 

[capamerica]

59 million people die annually so 3 million is obviously no big deal. If you add to that the fact that the majority were already half dead anyway it puts Covid in the proper perspective.

that is your stupid opinion. Most of us sane and well adjusted think millions dead is a big deal you jackass

 

[glockman]

Covid cost Trump the presidency.

 

[capamerica]

Covid cost Trump the presidency.

Thank god that maniac is gone.

 

[glockman]

Thank god that maniac is gone.

No more entertainment.

 

[bart12]

No matter how you want to fudge the numbers , overall death still increase with covid19..

 

[Leongsam]

No matter how you want to fudge the numbers , overall death still increase with covid19..

There is a slight increase but nothing that warrants lockdowns, curfews and other draconian measures in response to a virus that does not even cause symptoms in the vast majority of those infected.

 

[QANONSG]

Covid cost Trump the presidency.

This is not true. This is part of the plan. Q has revealed to all believers that the China Virus was specially ordered by our messiah Trump to kill and wipe clean from the earth tens of millions of unclean souls. And so it has come to pass.

Trust the plan. In April our Messiah Trump will arise from the heavens and smite down the enemies. He will return to the White House victorious. The execution of Biden will be publicly broadcast.

How dare Biden attempt to unite and run the country like a real leader? What makes him think we will let him get away with rebuilding the economy and ending the Pandemic? How can this man be so decent and likeable? Will will never allow life to return to normal, Q has a plan.

 

[QANONSG]

LOL! So funny "how dare Biden be decent" is one of the reason I come on this forum.

Sore losers who miss the disgraced 2x impeached one term loser ex President should remember he had a disapproval of only 79% at the end his term

Biden is not President. Decency has no place in our world, after we asked the Chinese to release our custom designed virus to wreak as much damage as possible. We have succeeded in this regard, unbeliever.

 

[Peiweh]

to tell you the truth, President Biden has changed the news cycle so much that I now miss the endless stream of outrageous antics from the disgraced 2x Impeached one term ex President.

Who knew being so stable was actually boring ?

Biden is the polar opposite of Orangeman, the contrast is staggering.