Tag: Melissa Floyd

Misinformation about COVID-19 Deaths

All of the misinformation about COVID-19 deaths from folks pushing propaganda is easily debunked if you do even a little bit of research.

We are over six months into the pandemic and if there is one thing folks should understand, it is that there have been a lot of deaths from COVID-19.

The number of COVID-19 deaths in the US literally doubled in just a few months this summer, but that's hard to see on this chart because of the scale she used. #propaganda
The number of COVID-19 deaths in the US literally doubled in just a few months this summer, but that’s hard to see on this chart because of the scale she used. #propaganda

Unfortunately, propaganda and misinformation about COVID-19 deaths makes that hard to see for some folks.

Misinformation about COVID-19 Deaths

Fortunately, you can keep from being fooled if you check the data on COVID-19 yourself.

Remember, data doesn’t usually lie.

Melissa Floyd’s graph on daily new COVID-19 deaths actually doesn’t paint the rosy picture she wants. While daily deaths have been down from the start of the pandemic, they then rose again and have just recently declined from those peaks in the past few weeks.

But it can certainly be manipulated or misrepresented though.

See how the type of graph representation makes all the difference?

That’s why some folks don’t realize that even if COVID-19 deaths have decreased a bit in the last few weeks, there are still over 1,200 deaths a day in the United States!

What other misinformation might you hear about COVID-19 deaths?

This should be big news, as these folks are fact checking their own propaganda! They even highlight the explanation from the CDC that “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.”

Have you heard that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths are actually caused by 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.”

Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics

It’s not true.

The CDC was just saying that people who die with COVID-19 often have other comorbid conditions, such as cancer, obesity, and diabetes, etc. But these aren’t just high risk conditions that they had before they got COVID-19.

They include all of the “conditions contributing to deaths where COVID-19 was listed on the death certificate,” including things like respiratory arrest, cardiac arrest, and sepsis, etc. It’s the why you died with COVID-19…

Other propaganda and misinformation about COVID-19 deaths include that:

  • COVID-19 death rates have been inflated and hospitals are reporting all deaths as COVID-19 related to make more money
  • routine use of hydroxychloroquine would reduce COVID-19 deaths
  • the United States has one of the lowest rates of COVID-19 deaths in the world
  • the CDC used flu and pneumonia deaths to inflate the COVID-19 death count
  • in the middle of the pandemic, the CDC reduced the COVID-19 death toll
  • the flu is killing more people than COVID-19
  • all non-COVID-19 deaths have increased during the pandemic because of lockdowns
  • kids aren’t dying from COVID-19
  • the strategy in Sweden proves that we could have done much less and had the same number of deaths

Don’t believe any of it (see below – all of the claims have been debunked over and over again) or the folks that are steering you away from the truth – that COVID-19 is a serious, life-threatening disease, especially for those who are high risk.

Just look at Sweden…

“More than 5,500 people have died with Covid-19 in this country of just 10 million. It is one of the highest death rates relative to population size in Europe, and by far the worst among the Nordic nations. Unlike Sweden, the rest all chose to lock down early in the pandemic.”

Did Sweden’s coronavirus strategy succeed or fail?

They did much less and have far more deaths than their neighboring countries.

And remember that the high number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States could have been even higher, in the millions, if we had done less.

Do more. Don’t listen to or share misinformation from folks pushing propaganda about COVID-19.

More on COVID-19 Deaths

When was the First Case of COVID-19 in the United States?

SARS-CoV-2 was not around last winter. COVID-19 truly is a novel infection.

Why do some folks continue to believe that COVID-19 has been around for a while and that it isn’t as novel a virus as the rest of us know it really is?

Jay Gordon thinks that he might have been seeing a lot of kids with COVID-19 in January, well before the first confirmed cases in the state.

The usual suspects…

When was the First Case of COVID-19 in the United States?

While some are wondering if they were seeing COVID-19 in January, some think they were seeing in even earlier.

#COVidiots are spreading the idea that COVID-19 has been in the United States since December.

Were the first cases of COVID-19 here in December?

“Yeah, me too. I’ve been telling almost every patient I see that, well, you know it’s flu season, but it doesn’t seem like you have the flu, it seems like you have a really bad cough. And everyone I’m seeing, it’s like their coughs are worse this winter. And their coughs are lasting for 3 or 4 weeks, instead of 1 or 2 weeks. And something went around this winter that was not the flu. Flu went around too, but there was a really terrible cold going around and you’re right, it is really possible in hindsight that coronavirus has been here this whole time.”

Bob Sears

What do you think of when you hear Bob Sears talk about seeing kids with a “really bad cough” that lingers for a month?

Since he wrote a book pushing a non-standard, parent-selected, delayed protection vaccine schedule, my first thought is pertussis too…

This has been a fairly bad flu season though, and as early as December, there were high rates of flu in many parts of the United States.

That isn’t the COVID-19 type of coronavirus they are talking about in the cold and flu reports from December!

And since it was cold AND flu season, there were already high rates of other cold viruses, including RSV, adenovirus, rhinovirus, enterovirus, and non-COVID-19 types of coronavirus.

Still, that doesn’t prove that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 wasn’t around in December or earlier.

So what evidence do we have?

Well, we have the evidence that the first strains of SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan, China in November.

“From very early on, it was clear that the nCoV genomes lacked the expected genetic diversity that would occur with repeated zoonotic events from a diverse animal reservoir. The simplest parsimonious explanation for this observation was that there was a single zoonotic spillover event into the human population in Wuhan between mid-Nov and mid-Dec and sustained human-to-human transmission from this point.”

Trevor Bedford on Early warnings of novel coronavirus from genomic epidemiology and the global open scientific response
The first case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus was detected in Washington in January.

And we know that the first cases in the United States were seen in Washington in mid January.

Genomic epidemiological analysis traced the first case in Washington to a traveler from China in mid January.

Wait, how do “we” know that?

“The field of genomic epidemiology focuses on using the genetic sequences of pathogens to understand patterns of transmission and spread. Viruses mutate very quickly and accumulate changes during the process of transmission from one infected individual to another. The novel coronavirus which is responsible for the emerging COVID-19 pandemic mutates at an average of about two mutations per month.”

Trevor Bedford on Cryptic transmission of novel coronavirus revealed by genomic epidemiology

We know that because experts can examine the small mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus when it emerges in an area.

“We know that Wuhan went from an index case in ~Nov-Dec 2019 to several thousand cases by mid-Jan 2020, thus going from initial seeding event to widespread local transmission in the span of ~9-10 weeks. We now believe that the Seattle area seeding event was ~Jan 15 and we’re now ~7 weeks later.”

Trevor Bedford on Cryptic transmission of novel coronavirus revealed by genomic epidemiology

That has helped them track where and when the SARS-CoV-2 virus pops up in each part of the country.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus in each area is different enough that they can trace where it came from, but no, the differences aren’t large enough to affect immunity.

No we don’t have a time machine to test folks in November or December or even earlier, except to test those who submitted specimens in flu studies (which will be done as folks get caught up with testing new samples), but by examining the mutations in the virus, they can tell how long the virus has been spreading in each area.

And that has allowed them to create fairly detailed timelines of SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in the United States.

Do any of these timelines show COVID-19 cases in the United States in December or early January?

Nope.

Is there any good reason you should be listening to the folks pushing misinformation about COVID-19?

Of course not!

Not surprisingly, these are the same folks who are well known to push misinformation about vaccines.

But why do they want you to think that SARS-CoV-2 has been around for awhile?

It’s propaganda to make you think that getting COVID-19 isn’t that serious.

Don’t believe them.

More on the First Case of COVID-19 in the United States

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