Loading ...How fake news spreads
Good piece from today’s Seattle Times:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/from-woodinville-to-the-presidents-thumbs-how-a-false-claim-spreads-like-a-virus/
“When a little-known chiropractor in Woodinville wrote a Facebook post about the coronavirus Saturday morning, it just sat there, not attracting much attention. For the first couple of minutes anyway.
But then, like the virus itself in a crowded bar, it started to multiply. It was a little tentative at first, but once accelerated by some of the superspreaders of social media, it went exponential and reached all the way to the president’s Twitter thumbs in a matter of hours.
By about 2 p.m. Saturday, just five hours later, the chiropractor’s post had been shared by tens of thousands of accounts, which means it potentially was viewed by tens of millions of people. It was then promoted by a QAnon conspiracy believer who has 65,700 Twitter followers, and from there, on Saturday evening, that tweet was shared by the King Superspreader himself, Donald Trump. His Twitter feed has an incredible 85.6 million followers.”
The substance of the fake news:
“This week the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) quietly updated the Covid number to admit that only 6% of all the 153,504 deaths recorded actually died from Covid. That’s 9,210 deaths,” she wrote.
Major parts of that are false. There was no quiet updating or admitting of anything, as the CDC has been running COVID-19 death stats regularly for months. Beyond the implied subterfuge, it also isn’t remotely true that the CDC data shows that only 6% of the total died from COVID-19.
What it shows are what are called “co-morbidities,” or other conditions present at the time of death. Many of these are caused by COVID-19 itself. So, for example, if you catch COVID-19 and it causes respiratory failure and heart failure, the death certificate may list all of that. In other cases, the death certificates list preexisting conditions like hypertension that may or may not be related to the death. Long story short, the triggering cause of death in all the deaths is still COVID-19.”
Just for the sake of some occasional balance to all the conspiracy theories here…
94% have an average of 2.6 co morbidities.
A Co morbidity is most commonly a pre existing condition not a condition caused by covid.
The CDC report says explicitly 6% of Deaths from Covid have No other co morbidities
The rest of the cases
Show me where the CDC says these co morbitities were caused by covid and not pre existing ..
Covid does not cause diabetes nor cancer or alzhiemer’s disease nor morbid obesity …see the list of co morbidities the CDC listed below
94% of all people who died “with ” covid had other medical conditions ( most multiple conditions) which contributed to the death…I go as far to say that covid was co incidental in most these cases …Not the “cause”
You are right about fake news spreading fast though….you just proved it with this post.
Here are just some of the Pre existing conditions directly from the CDC website which these patients had and which most certainly killed most of them covid or no covid .All are serious life ending diseases.
Cardiac arrhythmia I44, I45, I47–I49 10,400 9 23 62 235 757 1,870 3,050 4,394
Heart failure I50 11,056 5 41 86 288 933 1,902 3,060 4,741
Cerebrovascular diseases I60–I69 8,084 7 24 84 285 921 1,814 2,364 2,584
Other diseases of the circulatory system I00–I09, I26–I43, I51, I52, I70–I99 9,241 40 103 220 534 1,199 2,058 2,292 2,795
Sepsis A40–A41 14,918 32 142 374 1,100 2,553 4,101 3,765 2,851
Malignant neoplasms C00–C97 7,805 26 36 94 296 1,059 2,034 2,358 1,902
Diabetes E10–E14 27,528 44 176 630 1,895 4,543 7,393 7,346 5,500
Obesity E65–E68 6,059 84 291 681 1,089 1,509 1,432 753 220
Alzheimer disease G30 5,920 0 0 0 2 51 397 1,720 3,750
Vascular and unspecified dementia F01, F03 19,400 0 0 2 21 293 1,804 5,705 11,575
Renal failure N17–N19 14,529 17 120 305 948 2,151 3,724 3,817 3,445
Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events
Yes, this CDC co-morbidity story does need some clarification, but I’d still say it cuts the death count by at least 50%. For instance, with a type A influenza epidemic, most deaths are not directly caused by the flu but by pneumonia. But it’s the effect of the flu virus that directly leads to the fatal pneumonia infection at the end. It’s like people who get shot don’t die of lead poisoning, they die of bleeding or tissue damage (heart, brain). So Covid-19 and pneumonia is a direct Covid-19 death because the person wouldn’t have gotten pneumonia without first getting Covid-19.
It’s the pre-existing comorbidities that are most relevant as they show that it’s the people weakened -first- by these diseases that are not dying of covid-19 which otherwise would have been a mild illness on its own. These pre-existing ones make up about 50% of the “covid-19” deaths. Seasonal flu works the same way, killing people who are already dying or just unhealthy. For the otherwise healthy, covid-19 is only as much of a threat as seasonal flu and not a threat to public health. The lockdowns and mask bylaws are unnecessary for healthy people since they don’t need to avoid covid-19 and should actually be getting infected so they can become immune and bring an end to the epidemic the way all other pandemics have naturally ended.
“the triggering cause of death in all the deaths is still COVID-19.”…Bullshit Simon…how do you KNOW this !
You just pulled it out of your ass.
Where do you find evidence for this
How about all the cases in UK who died many months after recovering from Covid or who never even had symptoms but just tested positive or the folks killed in MVA’s ( caused by covid ?)
You are out of your league here my friend…with this bullshit
more from the CDC site
Conditions contributing to the death were identified using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICDndash;10). Deaths involving more than one condition (e.g., deaths involving both diabetes and respiratory arrest) were counted in both totals. To avoid counting the same death multiple times, the numbers for different conditions should not be summated.
Deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1
Notice “presumed”…how many were presumed ?
I relayed the discussion I had with my friend a funeral director…he had a case of a 21 year old who was killed in a crash and his death cert listed Covid
His next door neighbor tested asymptomatic positive and he was requested to get tested as well…he never was …but he was presumed to have it.
You might find the “Excess Mortality” numbers on the CDC site to be of interest. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm