Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/27/u-s-covid-19-death-toll-passe.html
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I thought we passed it yesterday, according to worldometer.
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I’m sure trump and team are cracking open the Dom Perignon. You know, job well done.
Cases are still rising steadily in my part of the world. Deaths are less clear.
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Different totals based on different datasets.
Of course, the Trumpists are claiming that the total is actually much lower than the reported numbers instead of higher as experts claim because “hospitals are being told to report all deaths as Covid whether a person had the disease or not” since “hospitals get $37,000 for every Covid death they report.”
This is a real claim someone threw my way on Facebook yesterday. They refused to elaborate or provide a source for their claim because “fuck you, look it up yourself” is all the citation they need.
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"Our ruling
A post shared on Facebook claims hospitals have a financial incentive to claim patients had COVID-19, saying payment is three times higher if a patient goes on a ventilator. An article the post links to includes comments from a doctor who suggests the number of coronavirus cases is being padded.
It is standard for Medicare to pay roughly three times more for a patient with a respiratory condition who goes on a ventilator than for one who does not. That has nothing to do with the coronavirus.
As part of a federal stimulus bill, Medicare is paying hospitals 20% more than standard rates for COVID-19 patients.
Indications are that due to a lack of testing and other factors, the number of coronavirus cases has been undercounted, not padded.
For a statement that is partially accurate, our rating is Half True."
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Time for COVID to do a 100k subscriber special Q&A.
I laugh because it’s better than crying…
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COVID flies for free.
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I would like to not get to the point where we look back on that number as the “good old days” but… Yeah.
The man they look up to hasn’t had to provide a fact in his entire life. Why should they?
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It’s not totally untrue, and that is the whole key behind misinformation. The public doesn’t know how complicated medical billing is or even the theory and process behind it, so the misinformants can take real data and twist it into something sinister.
When I have asked the padding numbers people if they understand that this is the way medical billing works, I have gotten two different responses of “I have seen it” and “my mom has been asked to report non covid as covid deaths”. At this point I ignore the question about can a nurse even fill out a death certificate, and instead go straight to “you just admitted guilt to insurance fraud, was this reported properly?”. Unfortunately the conversation is then deflected to something about suicides or freedoms or something.
People have an amazing ability to see only what they want to see.
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100,000 deaths - thanks to the do-nothing/know-nothing Republican Party and their Dear Leader, Darth God-Emperor Cheeto (Thanks to writer, Mercedes Lackey, for that title).
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As a Canadian, I can’t say we’re so perfect, the situation in those Ontario and Quebec senior facilities is a total nightmare… my god. But America… you guys got problems through and through.
Every country is going to lose some people at the start while trying to get a handle on things… that time has passed and leadership is STILL making bad decisions, ignoring facts and best advice.
Just very sad. Do your best to protect yourself and your loved ones. Be a decent human being.
Smiles are free, kindness is priceless.
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Yeah. So storm shelter refugees are going to be packed into tight quarters in VA.
I knew once hurricane season hit (especially bad this year due to this thing called “climate change”) there was going to be trouble down south. Stay safe down there, and (this is directed to only %50) stop voting R you morons.
There isn’t a border wall you can build against Mother Nature. She will extract her price and right now she’s super pissed at these monkeys who are f’ing up her planet.
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Patience. Barring a vaccine or dramatic improvements in treatment, we’ll get there. Unless the overall case mortality is quite a bit lower the total body count should add up to about 2 million.
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At some point in the last few weeks (months? it’s hard to tell anymore) I saw a graph that charted US deaths for all causes over a year long scale with a line for each of the last 5 years including 2020. Aside from this year, the data was fairly consistent between years. Superimposed on that was a line for the covid related deaths. Based on that chart, and where the covid spike was, covid deaths were likely being under reported by about 50%. Despite all the data that is out there now, I only saw a chart like that the one time, but it made it undeniable that covid deaths were being under reported - and by how much. I don’t know the source of the data though, and I have not been able to locate it again.
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This likely isn’t what you saw, but it’s the data from the CDC of excess deaths.
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My wife just found out her brother’s ex-wife let their son attend a sleepover last weekend, and the next day he was feeling sick.
He had a fever of 102, so his dad took him to urgent care, where they tested for a couple of things, including strep since he’s prone to strep, and the tests came back negative. Finally they gave him a COVID-19 test.
The results weren’t going to be available for up to 72 hours, so father and son quarantined together.
It came back negative (hopefully not false negative) so bullet dodged, maybe. I know he wouldn’t have shown symptoms so fast if he had gotten it at the sleepover, I’m more concerned he passed it on to anyone at the sleepover.
Then my brother-in-law found out this weekend his ex is taking their son to Las Vegas to visit with her twin sister and their family.
You can do what you can do to protect yourself the best you can, but you can’t fix other people’s stupidity. We are all at risk from the the stupidest people around us.
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That wasn’t quite it, thought the data may be in there somewhere. It has been frustrating having people yelling at each other about how it’s being under reported or over reported, and the chart I saw showed reported covid deaths and all deaths. Superimposed on the annual trends for several years, what was obviously excess deaths over average became obvious. That is assuming the data was reliable, which is what I wanted to find out. I’m still looking, but it was something like this…
there was a doctor interviewed on NPR yesterday, i believe, who said that he’s bracing for 70-100,000 more deaths before the fall. which, i mean… omg.
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One of the new spins from the Trumperverse is that a very large portion of those excess deaths are actually suicides brought on through lockdown-based depression.
Which is odd, because apparently we’re not supposed to count suicides when we’re calculating the number of Americans killed by firearms.
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