Covid-19 deaths exaggerated by CDC

Seattle WA

Description

Skepticism about COVID-19 death numbers started toward the very beginning of the pandemic and now the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has admitted that they reported tens of thousands of COVID-19 fatalities incorrectly. Recently, the CDC changed the death count and dropped the death count by 72,277. The error covered 26 states and the CDC included a footnote that said the overcount was due to a “coding logic error.” The Daily Wire’s Mairead Elordi explained, “The CDC also noted that some jurisdictions also included probable COVID cases in their death count and that back in August, the data on COVID-19 deaths was changed after they identified a data discrepancy. So they’re pretty cryptic on what exactly these errors were and why they happened, but the end result is that COVID deaths were apparently significantly overcounted.” Another coding logic error was discovered in March 2021 when the CDC dropped the COVID-19 death numbers by 24% among those under 18 years of age. Elordi said, “The huge change in the pediatric death count drops the estimate of COVID deaths in children down to 1,341 nationwide. Children were about 19% of all cases but only about a quarter of a percent of those cases were fatal.” Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Minn., a physician in Minnesota, was interviewed by "The Ingraham Angle" host Laura Ingraham on April 8 on Fox News and claimed hospitals get paid more if Medicare patients are listed as having COVID-19 and get three times as much money if they need a ventilator. The claim was published April 9 by The Spectator, a conservative publication. WorldNetDaily shared it April 10 and, according to Snopes, a related meme was shared on social media in mid-April. Jensen took it to his own Facebook page April 15, saying, in part: "How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars. Already some states are complaining that they are not getting enough of the CARES Act dollars because they are having significantly more proportional COVID-19 deaths." On April 19, he doubled down on his assertion via video on his Facebook page. Jensen said, "Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it's a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they're Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. 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."