I’m not Dr./nurse....I thought the doctor was instructed by the CDC to say ‘cause of death’, say heart attack WITH COVID 19. Then these #s go into the covid category with medicare/insurance paying much more for the WITH COVID 19. And the WITH COVID 19 go into official deaths in all the charts, repeated by msm. Are you saying this is not correct information?
Yeah no, that’s not completely accurate as the real answer is that it depends on the situation.
There are two causes of death on the US Standard Certificate of Death: the underlying cause of death (which is the disease or injury which initiates the chain of events leading directly to death) and the immediate cause of death, which is whatever turned the lights out at the end of that chain of events. They’re listed as the first and last lines filled out in Section 32 of the US Standard Certificate of Death Part 1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/death11-03final-acc.pdf. For an easy example, let’s take a cancer patient. The person loses their battle with cancer and passes away. Section 32 Part 1 will list cancer (the specific type of cancer) on line b, c, or d. Line a is our immediate cause of death, which might be multiple organ failure in our example. In between, we might have other events that happened which were caused by cancer and which resulted in multiple organ failure. But the most important are the last line (UCOD) and the top line (immediate cause of death). In Part 2, conditions that complicated survival for this patient - but were NOT in the direct chain of events - would be listed. Was the patient diabetic? Did they have asthma? If these made it more challenging for this person to survive, but weren’t directly related to the UCOD, they get listed here.
Now let’s take your example of a heart attack. First let’s assume we have a patient with a history of heart issues who comes in with heart pains, has a massive heart attack, and dies. They get tested for COVID-19, comes up negative. Autopsy sees no indication of tissue damage consistent with COVID-19; just progressive damage to the heart and evidence of blockages in various locations. This is NOT listed as a COVID-19 death. COVID-19 is NOT listed anywhere on the certificate of death.
Now let’s modify this example and assume the same patient, same history comes in and dies. Test now comes up positive, however there’s no evidence of any tissue damage aside from that expected in a patient with a history of heart failure. It’s possible the medical examiner would include the positive COVID-19 test on Part II, but probably not. COVID-19 would NOT be included in Part I. This is NOT a COVID-19 death.
Let’s modify this further and say we got a positive test and our deceased patient shows significant damage to the epithelial cells in the lung tissue and clots in various tissues that have NOT been observed in past examination, then COVID-19 is likely going to be listed somewhere in Part I and the death will be included in the COVID-19 stats. Why? Because this looks like a case where COVID-19’s clotting damage has prematurely ended the person’s life.
There are some more gray areas where you’re relying on the best judgement of the medical professionals involved, but CDC’s guidance says exactly that: use your best judgement based on professional training and experience. It’s in the CDC Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19) (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/vsrg/vsrg03-508.pdf). I would encourage you to read it. It’s a pretty short document and pretty easy to understand. They push for testing wherever possible to confirm diagnoses, and they are clearly looking for accuracy rather than pumping up a given number.