Posted on 04/15/2020 11:33:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
"It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes." It may have been Stalin and it may have been Napoleon. It may have been Boss Tweed. Regardless of the original source, this truism describes government corruption and manipulation to perfection.
Even in the face of a global pandemic and an unprecedented government-ordered economic shutdown, politicians are using their power to corrupt vital needed data regarding the Chinese coronavirus and its deadly toll on Americans.
The latest escapade comes from America's "ground zero" for COVID-19 infections, New York, where the death tally just surpassed 10,000. Or did it?
The New York Post explains how previously unreported deaths are now, suddenly being included in the city's death count, and the reasons deserve scrutiny:
More than 10,000 people have died of coronavirus in New York City, including over 3,700 cases where someone never made it to a hospital, the city’s Health Department announced Tuesday.The Big Apple’s new death toll is 10,367. That figure combines the 6,589 victims who tested positive for the virus plus another 3,778 who were never tested, but whose death certificates list the cause of death as “COVID-19 or an equivalent,” according to city Health Department data from March 11 through April 13.The Post goes on to explain that the victims of probable coronavirus seem to center mostly on individuals 75 years or older, according to the NYC Health Department.
The newly revised death count of 10,367 could very well be accurate. And, of course, it could be wrong. The previous number of 6,589 was the official number right up until the moment it wasn't because government officials decided to widen their definition of a coronavirus death.
The problem - and this is a pretty big problem - is that we are making extraordinary and unprecedented decisions that infringe on our dearly held individual liberties and are stifling our once-burgeoning economy. We Americans are grudgingly willing to make these painful concessions on a temporary basis in the spirit of protecting our fellow citizens from infection or death. But when we acquiesce to these demands on our freedom, don't we deserve sound and reliable data to justify the concessions?
Instead of solid, reliable data, our leaders have constantly moved the goalposts and even the rules of the game. The models shift, the predictions are memory-holed and now even something as seemingly solid as an accurate tally of how many people have died as a result of this virus is being fudged. And it's being fudged in the middle of the game.
It's hard for a cynic (and these days Americans who are relying on critical information from our government and from the news media should be radically cynical) to assume this shift in data is being made not for scientific or public policy purposes, but to satisfy a political agenda.
In the Trump era, hard data is tough to come by when it pertains to information that could hurt Donald Trump's presidency and legacy. There is no doubt that a liberal protocol for counting a COVID-19 death will serve to increase the total number and will be used as a political weapon against President Trump. That's just a fact.
Two and a half years after Hurricane Maria swept through Puerto Rico, we still don't have an accurate death toll because the methodology for determining those numbers was radically modified for the first time in history. And it was modified just as President Trump was touting the relatively low initial death toll as compared with other, comparable storms in American history.
The Puerto Rico death toll immediately became a political cudgel and the media used the new weapon forged with unprecedented death count protocols to hammer the president. Ironically, if many Puerto Ricans died as a result of government negligence post-Hurricane Maria, it appears to have been the fault of the local Puerto Rican officials and not the Trump Administration.
This January, it was discovered that political corruption in Puerto Rico withheld federal aid from people suffering from the hurricane in the weeks after the storm hit the tiny island. But the same media who were making the case that the inflated hurricane death toll was grounds for Trump's impeachment mostly ignored the story. They were too busy covering their latest reason for impeaching the president to be bothered with it.
Direct tallies of individuals who are conclusively found to have perished due to the coronavirus should be executed in a consistent and logical way. If the deceased individual tests positive for the virus and their death came about due to symptoms commonly associated with COVID-19, then they should count. If a person dies in their home and they are over the age of 75, and there is no indication they were exposed to the virus, they should not count. Sadly, in New York, they now do count.
How many people have died as a direct result of the Chinese coronavirus? Sadly, that depends on who's doing the counting.
And how many deaths where Coronavirus may have been contributory but not the actual cause of death...like liver disease, heart attack etc etc..
Where are you getting the idea that someone dying at home is going to get NYC a dime in any kind of aid?
Seriously, on what basis are they handing out “death money?”
Treatment money, yes. You need a test result for that.
Gramma dying in her chair? That’s not even going to get you a new chair.
Thanks....will try to catch it.
You think there might be 3,700 of those, on top of the other six or so thousand recent deaths in New York?
Those comorbidites are well known. Most will die from pneumonia exacerbated by the covid-19 toll on the body.
Agreed I had research and ethics in grad school. Scientific method etc.
worked in corrections where even out directors didn’t understand research ethics and our pro researched kept him out of trouble many times.
I agree.
And these are not even doctors. A death a home is not certified by a doctor (or at least most of them are not.).
In NYC a paramedic calls it, and calls the ME. Then the funeral home. No docs involved. No medicare claim, no “coding.”
I worked with doctors who were among the most honest people I’ve ever seen. They would self report stuff that no one would have ever caught (wrong meds, mistaken codes, etc.)
And I saw my hospital self report errors in coding that resulted in a million dollars fine from Medicare. The auditors told us they probably never would have caught it.
Screwing around with Medicare will Billing will get you huge fines and they will stop paying medicare bills in your hospital. I’ve seen them do it nursing homes. In today’s world—you get shut off from that spigot, you are closed.
thank you commissar
The numbers are rigged by the number they tested since they tested ONLY sick folks.
“maybe they’re playing the game? - I’ve seen it posted that classifying anyone with a cough or fever as covid19 gets an automatic $13,000 100% pay no deduct for hospitals & $33k if they’re put on the ventilator”
I’ve heard that verbally from someone who I guess read the same. Would be nice to get confirmation for the doomers.
First the CDC instructed doctors to list as dying from Covid-19, anyone who died with any symptoms of the C-virus wether tested or suspected, I wonder if that was the case with H1N1 in 2009 or any other previous epidemic.
Probably somewhere less than 2,500,000 Right now we are at 88% of expected mortality due to the shutdown and increased health awareness. The mortality from Wuhan Red Death is mainly being pulled from people who would have died later this year and won't affect the annual numbers much. OTOH the drop from the shutdown is real.
Is she the Ali Watkins of data science? I do not believe anything written in the NYT unless it is accidentally correct, usually on page 18.
YEAH; the guy got hit dead center by a garbage truck, splattered him like a bug on the windshield, but I saw him cough before he stepped off the curb.
Definitely Corona Virus!
The problem is that if all the at home deaths were from Coronavirus, then surely everyone caring for that person has it.
Guess.
I see a lot of people promoting this idea, but many do so in the manner of a man grasping for a straw. What I observe is that many people desperately want America to return to it's normal business, and I suspect that many of these people have been badly hurt economically by this shutdown.
I think many of them are willing to believe anything that they think will have the effect of convincing others to lend their voices in support of ending this shutdown. From their perspective, it's not so important whether they believe it, as it is for others to be convinced that the shutdown needs to end.
I think that's what is driving this. People don't want to look at the problem objectively, because they have a preferred answer, and they want everyone else to arrive at their preferred answer.
To others of us who can sit back more calmly, their conspiracy antics look ridiculous.
And I think this methodology will be "close enough", in the vast majority of cases.
I wonder if that was the case with H1N1 in 2009 or any other previous epidemic.
Probably not, because it didn't cause nearly the damage this thing is causing.
This thing is in a different class than the last several outbreaks of other diseases.
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