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I have no opinion on this but I have read multiple times now that currently if someone dies, say on Heart Disease, and has positively tested on Covid-19, that t

I have no opinion on this but I have read multiple times now that currently if someone dies, say on Heart Disease, and has positively tested on Covid-19, that the death cause is counted as Covid-19. So depending on how many people are really already infected it would be currently kind of impossible to die of anything but Covid-19. Maybe that's all wrong but at least that's how the deniers argue I guess. Can someone refute this argument please?

sobellian 7y ago
There are also a lot of Covid-19 deaths that haven't yet been counted in NYC because they happen at home away from a hospital. So the uncertainty isn't just skewed downward.
pfdietz 7y ago
The sheer mass of dead bodies will be refuting it soon, if it hasn't already. Unless the deniers want to posit a massive increase in non-Covid deaths that mimics a pandemic.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  That's already been solved by the conspiracy theorists. They'll move to say that it was the result of 5G. Nothing you can do can convince them that the coronavirus is real. They fundamentally deny that it exists even as it knocks on their door.
  - solarengineer 7y ago
    I’m not sure why you are being downvoted. There was a news report today of YouTube taking down a video of a conspiracy theorist who spoke for two hours on how 5g triggered the Corona virus. https://theweek.com/speedreads/907411/youtube-bans-coronavirus-conspiracy-videos-after-livestreamer-falsely-links-virus-5g-networks https://theweek.com/speedreads/907411/youtube-bans-coronavir...
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      Such nonsense. How do they explain the black plague? or the Spanish flu?
    - qwerty456127 7y ago
      I love the fact people are attacking 5G anyway. Although the claims of a connection between 5G and the virus sound nonsensical, 5G still is a privacy catastrophe ought to be stopped.
Insanity 7y ago
First of all, I'm not a medical professional! I think it's impossible (with the current state of technology) to determine the actual cause in patients with comorbidities. The patients died _with_ coronavirus in these statistics rather than _from_ coronavirus. Anyway, it's hard to argue with those people. But if you look at the average deaths a country has per month, and see the increase because of Covid, you should be able to infer something is wrong with just a bit of common sense.
- blackhaz 7y ago
  Not a medical professional as well, but I can imagine a picture of a patient dying from coronavirus - say, due to the lung failure - should be quite different from the one dying from the heart disease. Shouldn't it?
  - Insanity 7y ago
    But what if the weakened immune system because of Covid impacted the severity of the heart disease? Covid would still be responsible in that case, no? People have a tendency to look for 'one' cause for an outcome. Sometimes there's just multiple causes I think.
  - bregma 7y ago
    Lung failure causes a drop of oxygen in the blood, which leads to multiple organ failure. Direct cause of death is often kidney shutdown. Heart failure causes a drop of oxygen in the blood, which leads to multiple organ failure. Direct cause of death is often kidney shutdown.
DanBC 7y ago
You need to look at excess mortality. Currently we have a lot more people dying than normal. We know this because we're building temporary emergency mortuaries. Maybe these would have died within a year or two, but they're not, they're dying right now. When someone has a heart attack and dies how do we know they had covid-19? We're mostly not testing people. We don't test the dead people. So we know or suspect they have covid-19 before they die. This is not a bunch of asymptomatic people dropping dead from expected causes then being labelled as covid-19 deaths, it's a bunch of people with severe symptoms who are dying and having multiple causes listed on the certificate, one of which will be covid-19. Here's a useful thread that looks at the "they would have died anyway" comments: https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1246866119597621248 https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1246866119597621248 > now that currently if someone dies, say on Heart Disease, and has positively tested on Covid-19, that the death cause is counted as Covid-19. We know that covid-19 causes myocarditis, and that this is a significant cause of death for lots of covid-19 patients.
mc32 7y ago
It’d be helpful if they broke the stats down to Covid deaths in healthy people and Covid-related with comorbidity deaths.
- pjc50 7y ago
  I don't think such a distinction can usefully be made? And we don't do it for other things. "Road traffic accident with diabetes"?
  - mc32 7y ago
    It could help develop a strategy and protocol for opening the economy if it mostly of greatly affects people with identifiable preëxisting conditions.
    - bregma 7y ago
      So, "they were going to die anyway." This just in: we're all going to die anyway. When you're lying on your deathbed drowning in the effluvia of necrotic lung tissue at least you can rest easy in the knowledge that your humanity didn't count and you're just a statistic, but at least you helped a wealthy person avoid not making as much money as he could have.
      - mc32 7y ago
        That’s not it. You develop a protocol to avoid as much as possible exposing those who are susceptible to the disease if that can be determined. If we know that one part of the population can withstand the disease well and another is susceptible to it we can develop ways to navigate that.
  - Turing_Machine 7y ago
    Apples and oranges. There is no evidence that having diabetes significantly increases the risk of a traffic accident, but plenty of evidence that having diabetes increases the risk of dying from COVID-19.
faitswulff 7y ago
There's nothing to refute. COVID-19 may cause additional heart damage: https://khn.org/news/mysterious-heart-damage-not-just-lung-troubles-befalling-covid-19-patients/ https://khn.org/news/mysterious-heart-damage-not-just-lung-t... > “Someone who’s dying from a bad pneumonia will ultimately die because the heart stops,” said Dr. Robert Bonow, a professor of cardiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and editor of the medical journal JAMA Cardiology. “You can’t get enough oxygen into your system and things go haywire.” > But Bonow and many other cardiac specialists believe a COVID-19 infection could lead to damage to the heart in four or five ways. Some patients, they say, might be affected by more than one of those pathways at once. > ...But Bonow said the damage observed in COVID-19 patients could be from the virus directly infecting the heart muscle. Initial research suggests the coronavirus attaches to certain receptors in the lungs, and those same receptors are found in heart muscle as well. > In March, doctors from China published two studies that gave the first glimpse at how prevalent cardiac problems were among patients with COVID-19 illness. The larger of the two studies looked at 416 hospitalized patients. The researchers found that 19% showed signs of heart damage. And those who did were significantly more likely to die: 51% of those with heart damage died versus 4.5% who did not have it. > ...That work has already resulted in changes in the way hospitals deal with the cardiac implications of COVID-19. Doctors have found that the infection can mimic a heart attack. They have taken patients to the cardiac catheterization lab to clear a suspected blockage, only to find the patient wasn’t really experiencing a heart attack but had COVID-19.
rjtavares 7y ago
> I have no opinion on this but I have read multiple times now that currently if someone dies, say on Heart Disease, and has positively tested on Covid-19, that the death cause is counted as Covid-19. You have read incorrect information. Only deaths "where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death" [1]. Of course, there will be errors. As with any number, especially one reported daily. BTW: there are also reasons for COVID deaths being underreported, so the bias in the number isn't really one way. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-I...
_ph_ 7y ago
Heart attacks are a common consequence of the lack of oxygen, which is the consequence of failing lungs, be it by Covid-19 or COPD etc. So these things are closely linked.
qtplatypus 7y ago
Dr's are not going to say that person who was asymptomatic but was infected with covid-19 died of it if there was something else. However they are going to record that the person was infected because that information is useful for later medical/epidemiological research. However there is also a good chance that even if covid-19 isn't the only contributor to a person's death. For example a person with heart disease can extract enough O2 from the air to live but because of there disease they are below the normal human amount. Then comes along covid-19 with futher reduces their body's effectiveness and the person doesn't have enought air to live.
- rob74 7y ago
  See also https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/heart-failure/qa/what-is-compensated-heart-failure https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/heart-failure/qa/what-is...
danemorgan 7y ago
Almost no one dies "of" diabetes. It's a stroke, a heart attack, or an infection that kills you. But the stroke, heart attack or infection would never have happened if you hadn't had diabetes. This is the difference between proximate and ultimate causes.

sobellian 7y ago

There are also a lot of Covid-19 deaths that haven't yet been counted in NYC because they happen at home away from a hospital. So the uncertainty isn't just skewed downward.

pfdietz 7y ago

The sheer mass of dead bodies will be refuting it soon, if it hasn't already. Unless the deniers want to posit a massive increase in non-Covid deaths that mimics a pandemic.

fzeroracer 7y ago
That's already been solved by the conspiracy theorists. They'll move to say that it was the result of 5G. Nothing you can do can convince them that the coronavirus is real. They fundamentally deny that it exists even as it knocks on their door.
- solarengineer 7y ago
  I’m not sure why you are being downvoted. There was a news report today of YouTube taking down a video of a conspiracy theorist who spoke for two hours on how 5g triggered the Corona virus. https://theweek.com/speedreads/907411/youtube-bans-coronavirus-conspiracy-videos-after-livestreamer-falsely-links-virus-5g-networks https://theweek.com/speedreads/907411/youtube-bans-coronavir...
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Such nonsense. How do they explain the black plague? or the Spanish flu?
  - qwerty456127 7y ago
    I love the fact people are attacking 5G anyway. Although the claims of a connection between 5G and the virus sound nonsensical, 5G still is a privacy catastrophe ought to be stopped.

Insanity 7y ago

First of all, I'm not a medical professional! I think it's impossible (with the current state of technology) to determine the actual cause in patients with comorbidities. The patients died _with_ coronavirus in these statistics rather than _from_ coronavirus. Anyway, it's hard to argue with those people. But if you look at the average deaths a country has per month, and see the increase because of Covid, you should be able to infer something is wrong with just a bit of common sense.

blackhaz 7y ago
Not a medical professional as well, but I can imagine a picture of a patient dying from coronavirus - say, due to the lung failure - should be quite different from the one dying from the heart disease. Shouldn't it?
- Insanity 7y ago
  But what if the weakened immune system because of Covid impacted the severity of the heart disease? Covid would still be responsible in that case, no? People have a tendency to look for 'one' cause for an outcome. Sometimes there's just multiple causes I think.
- bregma 7y ago
  Lung failure causes a drop of oxygen in the blood, which leads to multiple organ failure. Direct cause of death is often kidney shutdown. Heart failure causes a drop of oxygen in the blood, which leads to multiple organ failure. Direct cause of death is often kidney shutdown.

DanBC 7y ago

You need to look at excess mortality. Currently we have a lot more people dying than normal. We know this because we're building temporary emergency mortuaries. Maybe these would have died within a year or two, but they're not, they're dying right now. When someone has a heart attack and dies how do we know they had covid-19? We're mostly not testing people. We don't test the dead people. So we know or suspect they have covid-19 before they die. This is not a bunch of asymptomatic people dropping dead from expected causes then being labelled as covid-19 deaths, it's a bunch of people with severe symptoms who are dying and having multiple causes listed on the certificate, one of which will be covid-19. Here's a useful thread that looks at the "they would have died anyway" comments: https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1246866119597621248 https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1246866119597621248 > now that currently if someone dies, say on Heart Disease, and has positively tested on Covid-19, that the death cause is counted as Covid-19. We know that covid-19 causes myocarditis, and that this is a significant cause of death for lots of covid-19 patients.

mc32 7y ago

It’d be helpful if they broke the stats down to Covid deaths in healthy people and Covid-related with comorbidity deaths.

pjc50 7y ago
I don't think such a distinction can usefully be made? And we don't do it for other things. "Road traffic accident with diabetes"?
- mc32 7y ago
  It could help develop a strategy and protocol for opening the economy if it mostly of greatly affects people with identifiable preëxisting conditions.
  - bregma 7y ago
    So, "they were going to die anyway." This just in: we're all going to die anyway. When you're lying on your deathbed drowning in the effluvia of necrotic lung tissue at least you can rest easy in the knowledge that your humanity didn't count and you're just a statistic, but at least you helped a wealthy person avoid not making as much money as he could have.
    - mc32 7y ago
      That’s not it. You develop a protocol to avoid as much as possible exposing those who are susceptible to the disease if that can be determined. If we know that one part of the population can withstand the disease well and another is susceptible to it we can develop ways to navigate that.
- Turing_Machine 7y ago
  Apples and oranges. There is no evidence that having diabetes significantly increases the risk of a traffic accident, but plenty of evidence that having diabetes increases the risk of dying from COVID-19.

faitswulff 7y ago

There's nothing to refute. COVID-19 may cause additional heart damage: https://khn.org/news/mysterious-heart-damage-not-just-lung-troubles-befalling-covid-19-patients/ https://khn.org/news/mysterious-heart-damage-not-just-lung-t... > “Someone who’s dying from a bad pneumonia will ultimately die because the heart stops,” said Dr. Robert Bonow, a professor of cardiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and editor of the medical journal JAMA Cardiology. “You can’t get enough oxygen into your system and things go haywire.” > But Bonow and many other cardiac specialists believe a COVID-19 infection could lead to damage to the heart in four or five ways. Some patients, they say, might be affected by more than one of those pathways at once. > ...But Bonow said the damage observed in COVID-19 patients could be from the virus directly infecting the heart muscle. Initial research suggests the coronavirus attaches to certain receptors in the lungs, and those same receptors are found in heart muscle as well. > In March, doctors from China published two studies that gave the first glimpse at how prevalent cardiac problems were among patients with COVID-19 illness. The larger of the two studies looked at 416 hospitalized patients. The researchers found that 19% showed signs of heart damage. And those who did were significantly more likely to die: 51% of those with heart damage died versus 4.5% who did not have it. > ...That work has already resulted in changes in the way hospitals deal with the cardiac implications of COVID-19. Doctors have found that the infection can mimic a heart attack. They have taken patients to the cardiac catheterization lab to clear a suspected blockage, only to find the patient wasn’t really experiencing a heart attack but had COVID-19.

rjtavares 7y ago

> I have no opinion on this but I have read multiple times now that currently if someone dies, say on Heart Disease, and has positively tested on Covid-19, that the death cause is counted as Covid-19. You have read incorrect information. Only deaths "where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death" [1]. Of course, there will be errors. As with any number, especially one reported daily. BTW: there are also reasons for COVID deaths being underreported, so the bias in the number isn't really one way. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-I...

_ph_ 7y ago

Heart attacks are a common consequence of the lack of oxygen, which is the consequence of failing lungs, be it by Covid-19 or COPD etc. So these things are closely linked.

qtplatypus 7y ago

Dr's are not going to say that person who was asymptomatic but was infected with covid-19 died of it if there was something else. However they are going to record that the person was infected because that information is useful for later medical/epidemiological research. However there is also a good chance that even if covid-19 isn't the only contributor to a person's death. For example a person with heart disease can extract enough O2 from the air to live but because of there disease they are below the normal human amount. Then comes along covid-19 with futher reduces their body's effectiveness and the person doesn't have enought air to live.

rob74 7y ago
See also https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/heart-failure/qa/what-is-compensated-heart-failure https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/heart-failure/qa/what-is...

danemorgan 7y ago

Almost no one dies "of" diabetes. It's a stroke, a heart attack, or an infection that kills you. But the stroke, heart attack or infection would never have happened if you hadn't had diabetes. This is the difference between proximate and ultimate causes.