DEATHS FROM COVID ARE CERTAINLY BEING LEFT OUT OF OFFICIAL COUNTS
I have wondered about this. Some of it is politics--there is a whole 'cohort' who does not want to know. Then there's class, race, etc. familial considerations too. But I assume it is a dearth of RESOURCES and LIMITED TIME. POST MORTEM analysis and certainly AUTOPSIES take up precious resources and so much time! Asking loved ones to release bodies for research to study later, particularly in unexpected deaths, would be most helpful but time, STORAGE and resources are just too limited. Maybe they can get what they need from blood and tissue samples. The good news they can be computerized, stored and retrieved later. Let's hope that gives scientists the data they can use.
(I'm sure the administration would prefer NOT having a full count)
Coronavirus death toll: Americans are almost certainly dying of covid-19 but being left out of the official count
Medical workers move a body to an overflow morgue outside the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn on Thursday. (Angus Mordant/Bloomberg News)By Emma Brown,
Beth Reinhard and
Aaron C. Davis
April 5, 2020 at 11:05 a.m. EDT
The fast-spreading novel coronavirus is almost certainly killing Americans who are not included in the nation’s growing death toll, according to public health experts and government officials involved in the tally.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.
A widespread lack of access to testing in the early weeks of the U.S. outbreak means people with respiratory illnesses died without being counted, epidemiologists say. Even now, some people who die at home or in overburdened nursing homes are not being tested, according to funeral directors, medical examiners and nursing home representatives.
Postmortem testing by medical examiners varies widely across the country, and some officials say testing the dead is a misuse of scarce resources that could be used on the living. In addition, some people who have the virus test negative, experts say.
As a result, public health officials and government leaders lack a complete view of the pandemic’s death toll as they assess its course and scramble to respond...
Do you know someone who may have died of covid-19? Help The Post track the uncounted.
Scientists who analyze mortality statistics from influenza and other respiratory illnesses say it is too early to estimate how many fatalities have gone unrecorded. For a disease with common symptoms such as covid-19, they said, deaths with positive results almost certainly represent only a fraction of the total caused by the disease...
WK1 3/28-/4 _Cases 301k--Dead 18.1k Lethality 2.72%
WK2 4/5-/13 _Cases 555k--Dead 22.1K Lethality 3.9%
WK3 4/20-/21 Cases 774k -Dead 37.2K Lethality 4.8%
WK4 4/22-/29 Cases 1M --Dead 58.8K Lethality 5.9%
WK5 5/1-/8__ Cases 1.3M -Dead 75.7K Lethality 6.1%
WK6 5/9-16__Cases 1.4M --Dead 85.8K Lethality 6.1%
WK7 5/17-24_Cases 1.7M - Dead 97.6K Lethality 5.9%
WK8 5/28 Cases 1.7M - DEAD 101.2K - Same
Bookmarks