Trump Retweets Covidiot's Bizarre Claim That 'Only 6%' Of COVID-19 Deaths Are Real
That's not how comorbidities work!
Experts have been clear from the beginning — people over 70 or with underlying health conditions are at most risk of dying from COVID-19. That is why many of us who were able to do so went and stayed with our parents so that we could go grocery shopping for them and limit their exposure. It's why grocery stores implemented special hours for seniors to do their grocery shopping. Lists of conditions that might make one less likely to survive COVID-19 were widely disseminated.
All of this has been known since the beginning.
But now we've got a bunch of Covidiots going around spreading a lie that the CDC "quietly updated" their site to show that we've actually only had around 9,000 deaths from COVID-19, rather than the 186,000 being reported.
This one was retweeted by Donald Trump . And by 48,000 other people.
The screenshot that "Mel Q" shared read:
This week the CDC quietly updated the Covid number to admit that only 6 percent 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, 90% in nursing homes.
That is a pretty big BOOM.
This is not to say it's not real. I'm not debating that. I'm just showing updated numbers. Not here to fight. Will delete messages wanting to fight.
Peace, love & good health to all.
What she is referring to is this:
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.
It's true. People with certain underlying conditions are more likely to die of COVID-19. That doesn't mean that they didn't die of COVID-19.
A quick perusal of Mel Q's Twitter reveals that she also thinks that Barack Obama and Joe Biden imported "overseas terrorists" to start Antifa and believes in QAnon and pizzagate. Not terrifically shocking.
But back to these "facts."
The "quietly updated their numbers" thing? That's not really quite as "sneaky" as this person is making it out to be. One would assume that if this were something they were trying to hide from the public, it wouldn't be on their website to begin with. Were they supposed to do it loudly? Were they supposed to put out a press release?
It probably didn't even occur to the CDC that anyone would jump to this conclusion upon seeing those statistics. Largely because, again, they were very clear, from the beginning, that the people most at risk of dying from COVID-19 were people with underlying conditions.
They even made a video about it back in May!
COVID-19: Are You at Higher Risk for Severe Illness? youtu.be
The narrative these people are trying to push is that these people died of other things and just happened to have COVID-19 in their system at the time. That's not what a comorbidity means. If you have diabetes or heart disease and you die of COVID-19, you are still dying of COVID-19. Thirty-seven percent of the country either has "underlying conditions" that could make COVID-19 more severe or is over the age of 65.
And hell, those are just the people who know they have underlying conditions. We're not counting all of the people who may have underlying conditions but don't know because they can't afford to go see a doctor.
They want to frame it like "Oh well, all of those people were going to die anyway!" but that is literally true of everyone. We are all going to die someday. And all of those people very likely died a whole lot sooner than they would have had they not gotten COVID-19. It's not that they don't understand this, but that they actually just really don't care about other people and want to be able to get back to their normal lives and for the rest of us to not think they are jerks for doing so.
It's getting to the point where it's real hard to tell what the Right sincerely believes and what they pretend to believe in order to get the results they want.
Anyway! This is now your open thread! So talk amongst yourselves and have a nice day!
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All* the sweetest dogs I've ever known have been pit bulls (or similar terriers). A friend at my martial arts studio bred them, and one of his was just like that one; he loved and trusted everyone so much that once he was actually dognapped. Fortunately, he was recovered.
*The exception was Shadow, a half-Labrador half-Newfoundland I gave to my mother when he needed a home and mom needed a dog. He was not only the world's sweetest dog, but one of the very smartest. His memory will always be a blessing.
When the article in question has literally embedded the Tweet and serves to amplify the message to an audience well beyond the already impressive reach it achieved within the confines of Twitter?
Ummmm .... Retweet Plus?