The latest freak apparently in our country is the way deaths by Beer Virus are counted: If you have the bug and die of something else, it is counted as death by Wuhan. I really do not see the problem with that unless you were stabbed 15 times and dies of the wounds while having been infected by the virus. But if you die of pneumonia or some heart problem exacerbated by the virus, then it is the virus the cause of death. A dagger to the heart will cause cardiac failure, but you do not reclassify a homicide as natural causes, right? So no, I do not believe they are inflating the numbers.
Now, if you want to see some real creative statistical games, I will refer you again to Ecuador. These are the latest official number of deaths by the virus.
And this was yesterday’s:
If you read the blog yesterday, you saw the bodies all over Guayaquil’s streets and inside homes. You saw the video of people burning the decomposing bodies and stacks of bodies behind hospitals and inside containers. In fact we know their own government officials acknowledge all the bodies.
In fact they have announced the development of cemeteries to bury the estimated 12,000 victims.
So how can the government say they only have 220 deaths by the virus? Simple, none of the bodies collected outside hospitals had an official autopsy made, right? They can “truthfully” say they do not have an official cause of death and due to the circumstances and knowing the helath issue of bodies decomposing, it was necessary to bury the bodies and we may never know the true cause of death. Got it?
Add to that those who died by pneumonia or some heart problem that was exacerbated by the virus, will be recorded as dying by pneumonia or heart problem. Thus we vindicate the awesomeness of our Single Pay Health Care System and Socialism is once again proven to be superior to the heartless Capitalism.
Yes, it is an assumption, but I know the Latin mind and specially when infected by the Red Menace. More than even money that is what they are doing in Ecuador and other countries.
Then again, you should be aware of the limitations of US statistics. Those are made up of state statistics, and not all states do a proper job. For example, MA does not track recoveries. This is mentioned just about every night on TV news (as the explanation why they aren’t giving a number), without explanation. So when you see a number for US recoveries, you should understand that isn’t a correct number. It may be that only one state is incompetent in this area, but I wouldn’t assume that without further evidence.
True, no stat has all the data, specially when they have not yet agreed on what is the data they need to be collection. But ignoring corpses being collected in the street goes much farther than that.
The Chinese play the statistics game as well, when they aren’t outright lying. Many reports from China indicate that relatives are being told that “Grandma died of pneumonia” rather than C-virus, even though it was obviously otherwise. Easy to manipulate the numbers when you control the hospitals, doctors, coroners, media, and everything else.
Pobre gente. 🙁
Another “utopia” thanks to socialism. SMH
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
However, I disagree with you on one point. Just because someone was infected with the virus when the died, unless it was, or could be considered, the primary cause of death, it should not be listed as a COVID-19 death. Chronic heart disease, acute leukemia, bacterial pneumonia, are all killers. If the ticker stops working, and the patient has no symptoms of the WhuFlu, it is the ticker that killed them.
Some certificates will list the COVID-19 virus as a contributing factor, and I am OK with that, as long as it is documented. I am not OK with even as little as 1% of the deaths being listed as COVID-19 solely as a way to inflate the numbers.
In the gun community, we are not OK with listing 16-18 year old gang bangers as children killed by guns. Nor are we OK with listing an early morning gang shootout that spilled over into a school parking lot as a school shooting. We should not be OK with fudging stats in other areas as well.
Especially when artificially inflating the death toll from this disease is resulting in overall panic, economic chaos, etc… People watched with glee as the President added $2T to the national debt because of this panic. And, the idea that more debt is on the way because doctors are being disingenuous with the death toll scares me more than catching the virus does.
^^ This ^^
Locally, we had a lady in Lane County, Oregon, who was counted among the COVID-19 deaths because she died and the post-mortem virus test came back positive for coronavirus. The headlines were quick to point that out.
Actual cause-of-death? Car accident. Almost zero chance the virus was even a contributing factor.
No word on whether she was removed from the “death by COVID-19” count. (I suspect not.)
Expanding on the gun community’s reactions, the FBI has their definition of “mass shooting” (four or more people killed by gunfire in a single event), but the anti-gunners quietly made their own (four or more people SHOT in a single event) to expand the numbers. Give it time and they might amend it to “four or more rounds fired with one or more injuries in a single event”.
Naturally, we’re not OK with this, but we’re also not OK with making our own definition saying that it’s not really a “mass shooting” unless 100 or more people are killed. While politically useful (there’d be no mass shootings on the books, ever), it’s extremely dishonest.
So I’m not OK with China, Ecuador, or any other countries fudging their definitions for political or PR reasons.
If the deceased was a 50/50 shot of living through the next six months, but contracts the virus and dies in the next week, I do not really have too much grief with that. It is the ones with “one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peel” that were not likely to live long enough to see May that are being counted as COVID 19 deaths that bother me.
Someone infected gets run over by a bus, and it gets listed as a COVID-19 death represents a very small percentage that anectdotal stories will not change anything. It is the ones with 6-9 months left that get pushed over the edge by the virus that are the problem. They would not get listed as killed by the seasonal influenza if that virus pushed them over the edge. They should not be listed as killed by COVID-19 for the same reason.
I respectfully disagree. When a country plays with their stats like this, they’re *technically* telling the truth, just not the whole truth.
A lie by omission, is still a lie.
It’s not significantly different from when the U.K. police say violent crime is down. They can say that, because their violent crime stats are counted upon conviction (and recorded as of the date of conviction), not upon occurrence. If nobody is ever arrested and convicted, there’s *technically* no countable crime. Doubly-so if crime happens in one of the “refugee” areas, which are quickly becoming “no-go” zones for police (i.e. can’t arrest or prosecute there).
They can do that because of how they define the terms. But when we’re all using different definitions, there’s no way to compare apples-to-apples. So China and Ecuador define their COVID-19 deaths one way, and the U.S. defines it more broadly (“inclusively”?). China and Ecuador know that, but because it skews the stats and makes them look better, they choose to omit the numbers that meet the U.S. definition but not theirs.
A lie by omission. Still a lie.
(And the WHO, which should have a vested interest in keeping everyone on the same page, allows it. They have lost their legitimacy as an organization and deserve to be defunded and disbanded.)