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One More State Amends Coronavirus Death Count and the Numbers Are Significantly Lower: Will WorldOMeter and Johns Hopkins Update Their Websites?
Townhall ^ | 05/17/2020 | Beth Baumann

Posted on 05/17/2020 7:20:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

From the start of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, one of the concerns was how the death count was being tallied. White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said last month that the United States is taking a "liberal approach" to counting coronavirus deaths. Instead of only counting those who died as a result of the virus, they are counting everyone who died who had tested positive, even if their death was unrelated to the virus.

"The intent is right now if someone dies with COVID-19, we're counting that as a COVID-19 death," Birx said at the time. "There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem. Some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death."

The Colorado Department of Health and Environment (CDPHE) was one of those that had padded its data by counting everyone who died and tested positive for the virus as a COVID-related death.

The state had previously said 1,150 people died as a result of the Wuhan coronavirus. After taking out the deaths that weren't attributed to the virus itself, that number now sits at 878.

“We have been reporting at the state, deaths among people who had COVID-19 at the time of death and the cause of that death may or may not have been COVID-19,” Dr. Eric France, CDPHE’s chief medical officer said Friday

The announcement comes after the Montezuma County Health Department let people know that a 35-year-old died from alcohol poisoning but the state slapped the coronavirus label on his death because he previously had the virus.

“The state is reporting that death as a COVID death, but our health department wanted to let people know that even though the person did have the virus, they did not die from it,” the health department said, according to Fox News.

According to Dr. France, the confusion has to do with having two systems of reporting taking place. There's the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System that states use to report Wuhan coronavirus deaths to the CDC.

People across the country have wondered about how accurate the death toll actually is because of the way states are counting deaths. What happened in Montezuma County is a prime example of what Dr. Birx warned about and why the virus' death toll may be lower than currently believed.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Colorado
KEYWORDS: colorado; coronavirus; deathcount
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1 posted on 05/17/2020 7:20:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

17 May: UK Sun: ‘IT’S A MESS’ Professor Pantsdown’s ‘Stay At Home’ lockdown advice based on badly written and unreliable computer code, experts say
by Thomas Burrows
THE coronavirus modelling credited with forcing the government to abandon its plans for “herd immunity” and put Britain into lockdown has been slammed as “totally unreliable” by a series of experts.
Leading figures claimed Professor Neil Ferguson’s computer coding was something “you wouldn’t stake your life on”...

David Richards, co-founder of tech firm WANdisco, told the Sunday Telegraph: “It’s a buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming.
“In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.”
Many have said is almost impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data, using the same code.
It is likely to reignite the debate as to whether the government should have taken into account a greater number of models before putting the UK in lockdown on March 23.

Michael Bonsall, Professor of Mathematical Biology at Oxford University, added: “We’d be up in arms if weather forecasting was based on a single set of results from a single model and missed taking that umbrella when it rained.”...
Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption has claimed the government put the country in lockdown in “blind panic” following Professor Ferguson’s findings...
“The government terrified people into submission by giving the impression that Covid-19 was dangerous for everyone. It is not. It attacks people with serious vulnerabilities. The death rate for those under 50 is tiny.”...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11642959/neil-ferguson-stay-at-home-lockdown-advice-unreliable-code/


2 posted on 05/17/2020 7:22:49 AM PDT by MAGAthon
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To: MAGAthon

17 May: Daily Mail: Computer code for Prof Lockdown’s model which predicted 500,000 would die from Covid-19 and inspired Britain’s ‘Stay Home’ plan is a ‘mess which would get you fired in private industry’ say data experts
•Professor Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College London coding branded ‘unreliable’
•University of Edinburgh scientists ran the same model and had different results
by Luke May
While there was overwhelming praise for the research for triggering a much-needed lockdown, criticism of Professor Ferguson’s research was voiced at the time.
Professor John Ashton, a former regional director of public health for North West England, accused No 10 of relying on a ‘little clique’ of researchers and failing to consult a wider pool of academics.

‘These guys are being regarded as demigods,’ he said in April.
‘Here we are talking about science but this research is being given a kind of religious status, like tablets of stone from the mountain.’...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327641/Coronavirus-modelling-Professor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html


3 posted on 05/17/2020 7:23:33 AM PDT by MAGAthon
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To: SeekAndFind

Honestly, the numbers are irrelevant at this point. It is pretty clear that coronavirus is bad, but not nearly bad enough to warrant a mass deprivation of personal liberty and livelihoods in response.


4 posted on 05/17/2020 7:25:37 AM PDT by The Pack Knight
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To: SeekAndFind

Johns Hopkins is seriously eroding their credibility.


5 posted on 05/17/2020 7:26:38 AM PDT by txrefugee
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To: SeekAndFind

“The Colorado Department of Health and Environment (CDPHE) was one of those that had padded its data by counting everyone who died and tested positive for the virus as a COVID-related death.”

Actually, Colorado did NOT test people and still counted them as COVID. This is Colorado’s homosexual (read: mentally ill) governor trying to do damage control by claiming an administrative SNAFU.


6 posted on 05/17/2020 7:30:22 AM PDT by CodeToad (Arm Up! They Have!)
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To: MAGAthon
The state is reporting that death as a COVID death, but our health department wanted to let people know that even though the person did have the virus, they did not die from it,” the health department said

Just how many deaths were attributed to the corona with no symptoms. I had a dear classmate pass away the other day (heart failure. . .not corona relate). . . his family deserved to experience a proper funeral and burial for their husband, father, and grandfather. A drive-by visitation???? So so sad.

7 posted on 05/17/2020 7:30:34 AM PDT by Maudeen (OUR ONLY HOPE IS JESUS)
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To: MAGAthon

Dear SeekandFind-
Do you seriously have no life? Why do you post covid skeptical garbage every day? Don’t you get bored?


8 posted on 05/17/2020 7:34:09 AM PDT by brookwood (Obama said you could keep your plan - Sanders says higher taxes will improve the weather)
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To: SeekAndFind

This is a good step in the right direction. We are very likely to be be over-counting Coronavirus virus deaths. Maybe by as much as 20%.

But, as a word of caution, this doesn’t change the trends in new daily infections and deaths. Those trends are down but very slowly down. The over-counting doesn’t affect those trends at all. And the numbers are not small even if reduced by 20%.

We are going to have more new infections and more new deaths daily for some time. Right now I’m hoping for a seasonal effect that will cut those rates down. I don’t think we see that yet but the slow downward drifts could well be seasonal. I don’t think we can say one way or another. Not yet.


9 posted on 05/17/2020 7:35:50 AM PDT by InterceptPoint (Ted, you finally endorsed.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Did the Governors finally come to the realization that the higher death counts tend to make themselves look worse vs Trump? Or is the Fed auditing these numbers for reimbursement? They have known all along the numbers were crap, why the correction now?


10 posted on 05/17/2020 7:37:09 AM PDT by dgbrown
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To: The Pack Knight

Agreed.


11 posted on 05/17/2020 7:37:15 AM PDT by ContraryMary (MAGA!)
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To: All

Over attribution of death count to the virus is indeed a maybe, but don’t go overboard. A person who has a heart attack and is virus positive is very likely at a disadvantage for survival vs a heart attack patient who tests negative.

And yes, the 50 to 60 year old age range has only a 1.3% death rate if they test positive. Higher older. But there is way too much talk about younger people under 50 “having nothing to fear”. This is true, provided they have no fears at all about infecting their parents. If their parents have already passed away then yes, nothing to fear. If their parents have not already passed, then there better not be a Christmas visit.

Saying there is nothing at all to fear gets weakened when the word nothing is examined and they have parents they want to visit at Christmas.


12 posted on 05/17/2020 7:37:17 AM PDT by Owen
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To: dgbrown

The cynic in me says, “Pad numbers up front to get the money now. Revise down later to say it’s safe to reopen.”


13 posted on 05/17/2020 7:43:24 AM PDT by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: brookwood

Pot, meet kettle.


14 posted on 05/17/2020 7:53:32 AM PDT by crusty old prospector
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To: dgbrown

I can’t speak to the reason some governors are admitting inflated CV 19 deaths but in Colorado (where I live), the health department in Montezuma county called out the state dept of health on a specific death. The man was a raging alcoholic and died of alcohol poisoning but tested positive so was counted as a CV 19 death. Once that case was made public, the state dept of health really didn’t have a choice but to backtrack.


15 posted on 05/17/2020 8:04:00 AM PDT by luv2ski
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To: BradyLS

“The cynic in me says, “Pad numbers up front to get the money now. Revise down later to say it’s safe to reopen.””

I was wondering why they would suddenly come out with this as well. So many lies to herd the sheeple around - ramp up the panic, calm them down, gather them over here, prep to run through the shoots for their medicine, etc. I think you’ve nailed it.

The social engineers launched a mass global experiment on the back of the virus, and they must be very pleased to find out how well it worked. Now that they’re hitting the wall (overstressed sheeple), they’re pulling back somewhat. The sheeple need pasture, fresh air and such. And the “shepherds” can still bleed this for piles of cash in the coming months, at least until November.


16 posted on 05/17/2020 8:04:59 AM PDT by bluejean (I'm becoming a cranky old person. It really annoys me.)
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I find the people breathlessly watching the death numbers hilarious.

The death numbers are practically meaningless in the grand scheme. There were NEVER going to be huge death numbers when taken across the entire population.

The issue is the contagion factor, the length of stay in the hospitals, and the “gumming up” of the supply chain.

The thing that should have people concerned is not whether or not they are going to die: 99% dont. It is how impacted is the economy going to be—and for how long. Stuff is simply not coming in our out the country.

The small business employing six people is not going to matter at all during the third quarter when LARGE companies start to keel over and die. LARGE companies who cannot import materials, or who support construction overseas, or airlines, or HUGE retail chains.

There are 30 million people out of work. They are NOT going back in any large numbers—and after October when the incentive fund run out, the layoffs will become real. Right after the election (convenient, isn’t it?)

Think about the economy as the hose in your front yard: The faucet is turned off. You can pick up the hose and the water left in the hose will pour out. Until it is gone. THAT is the current economy.

All of the beauty salons and bars in the country can open up tomorrow and they will do fine for a month or too. Then it will become clear the jobs in the factories are not coming back. The healthcare industry will collapse because hospitals have been running at 30% capacity. Getting a loan will be impossible because they are too risky.

But the markets will “look” fine because the Fed is printing money like a fool. They are buying Bond ETFs. If you are in good with the Fed, you will be swimming in cash. But the folks that are in good with the Fed don’t build ANYTHING.

So, we can be worried about death counts, masks, vaccines, and all of this other stuff—but you have taken your eyes off the other hand.

You need to start asking yourself if you are prepared for Boeing, JC Penny, Ford, and CAT going bankrupt. Because that is where we are. And when THEY start defaulting on their bonds...remember what the Fed is buying with all of their printed money.

If you are not prepared for that, the death count will be higher and not from disease—but from the conflagrations that will come with a slow—then sudden—freezing of our economic system.


17 posted on 05/17/2020 8:05:35 AM PDT by Vermont Lt
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To: bluejean

Argh - shoots = shutes!


18 posted on 05/17/2020 8:05:59 AM PDT by bluejean (I'm becoming a cranky old person. It really annoys me.)
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To: SeekAndFind

When this has concluded we are going to find out that we have been had BIG TIME.

The numbers never matched and those pushing for a destruction of America have hyped this for months.


19 posted on 05/17/2020 8:13:04 AM PDT by JayAr36 (Do you want to be a subject or a citizen.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Many ran off the rails, set their hair on fire and invested deeply in Panic. Confirmation Bias will preclude most of them from saying “ooops”...


20 posted on 05/17/2020 8:17:33 AM PDT by TalBlack
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