Not trying ro get into a battle over what we should have done but more so of how we are to move forward. I just saw this statistic and surprised it hasn't been on here yet but the CDC confirms that only 6% of the deaths caused by Covid are actually FROM Covid and the others are from existing comorbidities who died WITH Covid. That's a little over 9,000 of the 153,000 deaths recorded.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

Its Clay Travis below but decent read if you can ignore the political comments and just focus on the facts he presents.

https://www.outkick.com/cdc-just-6-of-covid-deaths-occurred-without-co-morbidities/

I do not understand why this is a big deal. Anyone who pays attention has understood this to be true from the very beginning.

I agree with your thoughts, but what makes it a big deal is that the CDC is admitting this and not just the common man

There was a thread on this yesterday that got moved to F16. You can probably still find it there.

1. It's been known almost since the beginning that severe cases are linked to certain underlying conditions.

2. About 50% of Americans have one of those underlying conditions.

3. Excess deaths in the US are about 200,000 this year.

What he said.

The take away from this isn't "oh covid is no big deal" it should be "damn! Americans as a whole are a pretty vulnerable group and chasing herd wont be as rosey as the Sweden narrative thinks it will be"

Duncan Idaho said:

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What he said.

The take away from this isn't "oh covid is no big deal" it should be "damn! Americans as a whole are a pretty vulnerable group and chasing herd wont be as rosey as the Sweden narrative thinks it will be"

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Weird that is not anywhere close to my take away. Dying with covid vs bc of covid is a huge difference and all graphs should be updated accordingly.

AW Aggie said:

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I agree with your thoughts, but what makes it a big deal is that the CDC is admitting this and not just the common man

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I guess. I dont know that they are admitting anything new. We have known since the beginning that it kills people with underlying conditions and the amount of Americans with underlying conditions is higher than most people realize. It also kills old folks.

Maybe I missed something but that's what the CDC has always said. Now the media narrative, that's a different story.

I dont think this changes anything. At least not in my mind.

What is the difference between COVID directly causing bad outcomes and COVID stressing a comorbidity to the point the comorbidity causes bad outcomes?

500,000ags said:

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What is the difference between COVID directly causing bad outcomes and COVID stressing a comorbidity to the point the comorbidity causes bad outcomes?

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No difference to some people

and

all the difference to others.

zebros_95 said:

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Duncan Idaho said:

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What he said.

The take away from this isn't "oh covid is no big deal" it should be "damn! Americans as a whole are a pretty vulnerable group and chasing herd wont be as rosey as the Sweden narrative thinks it will be"

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Weird that is not anywhere close to my take away. Dying with covid vs bc of covid is a huge difference and all graphs should be updated accordingly.

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Example:
Renal disease and heart failure are often present in the same people. The disease conditions feed off of each other and make the others worse. It is highly likely the person is also diabetic. Let's say they are 60 years old. They probably have about 10 to 15 years if the disease is managed carefully or even more if better treatment options come along.

Covid comes along, exacerbates the heart and renal failure and the person dies. Covid death? Heart disease death? Renal failure death? Some would classify this as someone merely having Covid and dying of something else so it doesn't count. That makes no sense at all. The person was a functioning adult who had chronic conditions that weren't likely going to kill them in the next 5 to 10 years.

Another example:
Nursing home patient, dementia, unable to swallow well and is constantly being treated for aspiration pneumonia. They get Covid. It pushes them over the edge and they die. Covid death? Much different deal.

I think people are underestimating how many people in United States have chronic conditions. Obesity is a chronic condition. So is high blood pressure. A lot of people with high blood pressure don't even know they have it. The 6% number is irrelevant. The far more relevant number is the number of obese, diabetic, people with hypertension in the United States. And that's a pretty significant amount of people.

500,000ags said:

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What is the difference between COVID directly causing bad outcomes and COVID stressing a comorbidity to the point the comorbidity causes bad outcomes?

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Basically everything.

All along - people who are at risk with comorbidity, and those who live/associate with people at risk should be the ones taking precautions and wearing masks etc...

Everybody else should be living their lives normally so we get herd immunity as quickly as possible - so that those in the first category can go back to normal as quickly as possible.

Hopefully that's the right youtube video. Youtube blocked at work, so not sure. But basically lots of things go on death certificates. The CDC is saying that 6% of death certificates with COVID on it had nothing but COVID on it.


Having atherosclerosis puts you at increased risk of dying from a gun shot wound. Does that mean the CDC should say that your cause of death was more related to the atherosclerosis than the gun shot?

sleepybeagle said:

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500,000ags said:

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What is the difference between COVID directly causing bad outcomes and COVID stressing a comorbidity to the point the comorbidity causes bad outcomes?

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Basically everything.

All along - people who are at risk with comorbidity, and those who live/associate with people at risk should be the ones taking precautions and wearing masks etc...

Everybody else should be living their lives normally so we get herd immunity as quickly as possible - so that those in the first category can go back to normal as quickly as possible.

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Not this again. If 60% of Americans have at least one underlying condition or not diagnosed, how long will it take to reach herd immunity?

Capitol Ag said:

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Moxley said:

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zebros_95 said:

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Duncan Idaho said:

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What he said.

The take away from this isn't "oh covid is no big deal" it should be "damn! Americans as a whole are a pretty vulnerable group and chasing herd wont be as rosey as the Sweden narrative thinks it will be"

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Weird that is not anywhere close to my take away. Dying with covid vs bc of covid is a huge difference and all graphs should be updated accordingly.

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Example:
Renal disease and heart failure are often present in the same people. The disease conditions feed off of each other and make the others worse. It is highly likely the person is also diabetic. Let's say they are 60 years old. They probably have about 10 to 15 years if the disease is managed carefully or even more if better treatment options come along.

Covid comes along, exacerbates the heart and renal failure and the person dies. Covid death? Heart disease death? Renal failure death? Some would classify this as someone merely having Covid and dying of something else so it doesn't count. That makes no sense at all. The person was a functioning adult who had chronic conditions that weren't likely going to kill them in the next 5 to 10 years.

Another example:
Nursing home patient, dementia, unable to swallow well and is constantly being treated for aspiration pneumonia. They get Covid. It pushes them over the edge and they die. Covid death? Much different deal.

I think people are underestimating how many people in United States have chronic conditions. Obesity is a chronic condition. So is high blood pressure. A lot of people with high blood pressure don't even know they have it. The 6% number is irrelevant. The far more relevant number is the number of obese, diabetic, people with hypertension in the United States. And that's a pretty significant amount of people.

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But of the ones that died with Covid, do we really know enough to diagnose that Covid is what exacerbated the Renal, heart or other disease? Were they on course to have a heart attack regardless of whether they also had Covid? Or by stating that there is a difference between with Covid and by Covid, is the CDC saying that the patients "with" died officially of something else besides Covid? B/c that is the first take away I have from it, but I will defer to better explanations...

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If Covid exacerbates a condition that otherwise had a relatively low risk of causing death in the near term, the Covid caused the death. That's usually pretty easily measurable. If someone has diabetes, congestive heart failure or renal failure their baseline is likely well known if they sought treatment for it in the past. When Covid hits and their numbers tank suddenly, far more than what would be typical in a normal disease process, it's the Covid.

But what people need to keep in mind is the course of hospitalization. What we are seeing is people whose lungs are being completely destroyed as a result of inflammation. People with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. have a higher risk for runaway oxidative stress related to this virus.

So the real thing that needs to be considered is: If this person did not get the virus would they have died anyway in the next five years? For a large percentage of the nursing home patients, yes. But for the people we are seeing now who are in their 60s or 50s with otherwise relatively manageable conditions? No. The virus did it.

Zdogg has been awesome with this whole pandemic. He is a great evidence based, middle of the road physician.

The key take away from this for me is the 50-60% of the population that does not have multiple chronic conditions should be unleashed and not have to live in fear and be restricted from living life. This includes children and college students. If the teachers/faculty are high risk they need to take precautions and/or change their job to more virtual and not in person.

My goodness, can anybody read any more? Or is everything just tweet material. Virtually nobody actually dies from corona virus. The CDC is basically saying that 6% of deaths list Covid as the only cause. This just means that about 6% of the medical examiners didn't care enough to write the actual cause, e.g "bilateral pneumonia brought about by Covid-19." It doesn't mean that 94% of patients had an underlying condition.

Think of it like this: nobody dies from HIV. That doesn't mean that if the examiner writes TB on the death certificate that TB was an underlying condition. They would have never gotten TB unless they had HIV first. They died of TB brought about by HIV infection.

Does this make sense?

KidDoc said:

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Zdogg has been awesome with this whole pandemic. He is a great evidence based, middle of the road physician.

The key take away from this for me is the 50-60% of the population that does not have multiple chronic conditions should be unleashed and not have to live in fear and be restricted from living life. This includes children and college students. If the teachers/faculty are high risk they need to take precautions and/or change their job to more virtual and not in person.

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I agree with this. Why should the biggest percentage of the public go bankrupt, get depression, stop living because some other people have issues.

They should make life adjustments not the rest of the population. Ridiculous in my opinion.

DadHammer said:

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KidDoc said:

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Zdogg has been awesome with this whole pandemic. He is a great evidence based, middle of the road physician.

The key take away from this for me is the 50-60% of the population that does not have multiple chronic conditions should be unleashed and not have to live in fear and be restricted from living life. This includes children and college students. If the teachers/faculty are high risk they need to take precautions and/or change their job to more virtual and not in person.

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I agree with this. Why should the biggest percentage of the public go bankrupt, get depression, stop living because some other people have issues.

They should make life adjustments not the rest of the population. Ridiculous in my opinion.

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Except there are places in society where the population that's at high risk need to go in order to live (grocery stores, for example). Everyone would need to take precautions in those kinds of places regardless of personal risk.

And then there's the whole denial of health issues problem - how many of those that are vulnerable would be self-aware enough to recognize their poor health and be responsible enough to take precautions on their own? Shoot, I'm on the borderline of obesity and high blood pressure and most people think I'm quite thin (6ft 190). I've been to Europe - I was huge compared to them. Our American minds are trained to think we're healthier than we actually are.

So what happens when too many people make the wrong choice and have to go to the hospital? It affects everyone because hospitals are burdened and can't do their normal jobs. It's a very nice idea to say that everyone should take responsibility for themselves, but sadly, many won't and their actions will have an impact on others who are making the right choices. That's the real public health concern. It doesn't matter if you're not at risk of Covid if you get in a car accident and the hospital is slammed with Covid patients and can't give you the level of care you deserve.

So the rest of society has to get crushed? Way more people are suffering depression, bankruptcy, poverty, etc than anything covid can do.

That makes no sense. At risk people can go to the store or have groceries delivered. At risk people should stay safe and the rest of us get covid and get over it and get to herd immunity as fast as possible. Its a respiratory virus there is no other choice.

The hospitals are not even close to being over run.

Again - You cant punish the 99% of people that will get covid and be over it in 7-14 days.

Is it a bad virus? Sure but its not worth the destruction we have brought on ourselves. Should people be safe absolutely and no one is saying don't be smart.

deadbq03 said:

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DadHammer said:

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KidDoc said:

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Zdogg has been awesome with this whole pandemic. He is a great evidence based, middle of the road physician.

The key take away from this for me is the 50-60% of the population that does not have multiple chronic conditions should be unleashed and not have to live in fear and be restricted from living life. This includes children and college students. If the teachers/faculty are high risk they need to take precautions and/or change their job to more virtual and not in person.

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I agree with this. Why should the biggest percentage of the public go bankrupt, get depression, stop living because some other people have issues.

They should make life adjustments not the rest of the population. Ridiculous in my opinion.

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Except there are places in society where the population that's at high risk need to go in order to live (grocery stores, for example). Everyone would need to take precautions in those kinds of places regardless of personal risk.

And then there's the whole denial of health issues problem - how many of those that are vulnerable would be self-aware enough to recognize their poor health and be responsible enough to take precautions on their own? Shoot, I'm on the borderline of obesity and high blood pressure and most people think I'm quite thin (6ft 190). I've been to Europe - I was huge compared to them. Our American minds are trained to think we're healthier than we actually are.

So what happens when too many people make the wrong choice and have to go to the hospital? It affects everyone because hospitals are burdened and can't do their normal jobs. It's a very nice idea to say that everyone should take responsibility for themselves, but sadly, many won't and their actions will have an impact on others who are making the right choices. That's the real public health concern. It doesn't matter if you're not at risk of Covid if you get in a car accident and the hospital is slammed with Covid patients and can't give you the level of care you deserve.

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Those are valid points but not worth the damage the draconian measures have caused especially to the population I treat daily. I have seen skyrocketing case numbers of depression, anxiety, and HUGE BMI jumps in almost all of my patients since the shut downs. So far, outside of the initial New York surge, hospital systems in the USA have struggled due to low volumes and loss of income.

We need to be very aggressive about protecting the vulnerable population and those who work with that population. There is some hope in the medical community that the growing public knowledge about COVID risk factors will actually encourage people to address their chronic medical issues, but time will tell.

DadHammer said:

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Actually according to the CEO's of the hospitals in Houston that wasn't the case. Said they had more space to open if needed. Last July they operated at 95%+ capacity. So who knows what real max capacity really is.

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How many extra nurses and doctors did they have to staff all those extra beds?

Notwithstanding the brave face put on by those CEOs - who by the way, had other reasons for putting out that statement that I won't get into here - there absolutely were areas of the state that were out of capacity and had no ability to flex up, mainly due to staffing shortages. The state has spent $100 million a week since late July on contract staffing to deploy to areas of the state that needed it, If that's not a stressed if not overwhelmed healthcare system, I don't know what is. We've seen significant improvement in the last couple of weeks though..

rojo_ag said:

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DadHammer said:

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Actually according to the CEO's of the hospitals in Houston that wasn't the case. Said they had more space to open if needed. Last July they operated at 95%+ capacity. So who knows what real max capacity really is.

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Did Houston and other cities expand the number of ICU beds and hospital beds during this time? I was under the impression that a city like San Antonio increased their ICU capacity two fold.

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Yes, they did expand.

And yes, they had to transfer doctors and nurses from other departments to set up special Covid units.

I know this 2nd hand from a friend of mine who's a nurse and was transferred to one of these units.

If you needed to go to the ICU for a car wreck or whatever back in July, it's hard to imagine you'd have gotten the same level of level of care under those conditions as you would have prior to Covid.

On a positive note though, my friend also reported last week that they're nearly back to normal operations.

The debate can continue about whether or not measures taken actually make a difference, but I find it incredibly myopic for anyone to think that this didn't have an impact on our hospitals at its peak.

94chem said:

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My goodness, can anybody read any more? Or is everything just tweet material. Virtually nobody actually dies from corona virus. The CDC is basically saying that 6% of deaths list Covid as the only cause. This just means that about 6% of the medical examiners didn't care enough to write the actual cause, e.g "bilateral pneumonia brought about by Covid-19." It doesn't mean that 94% of patients had an underlying condition.

Think of it like this: nobody dies from HIV. That doesn't mean that if the examiner writes TB on the death certificate that TB was an underlying condition. They would have never gotten TB unless they had HIV first. They died of TB brought about by HIV infection.

Does this make sense?

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Excellent point. Here's an image to help illustrate that.

Also a medical examiner would probably know better. Most death certificates are filled out by the physician in charge of the patient and is often a primary care type of physician.