The CDC’s latest COVID-19 provisional counts, covering February 1 through August 22, say that 164,280 Americans have suffered deaths “involving COVID-19.”
That, of course, can mean anything from having had a recent positive COVID-19 test (which may or may not have been accurate) to having tested positive months earlier to simply having been declared positive based on symptoms (with hospitals facing strong financial incentives to claim COVID-19 deaths).
For the sake of argument, however, let us assume that the CDC’s numbers are valid. Out of those 164,280 deaths, the CDC calculates that just six percent of them, or 9,857, were caused solely by COVID-19. “For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,” the agency says. In other words, 94 percent of those who died with COVID-19 already had two or more other serious health issues such as hypertension or diabetes.
On top of that, age was a major contributing factor. Ninety-two percent of deaths involving COVID-19 occurred among individuals aged 55 and older. Persons 75 and older accounted for 58 percent of such deaths.
Hence, it is hardly surprising that 22 percent of COVID-19 deaths occurred in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, where most residents are both aged and infirm. That number is considerably higher in states that ordered these facilities to accept COVID-19 patients and would be higher still in New York if that state had not changed its counting method to disguise the order’s deadly results.
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