How Many COVID-19 Deaths Are There?

Depends on whether a person dies of the virus or with it. States should count and publish both numbers.

By John Fund

Deborah Birx, the physician advising the White House’s coronavirus task force, gave voice to a real concern earlier this month. She told officials from the Centers for Disease Control that some of its numbers on mortality and case count could be inflated by up to 25 percent. “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust,” the Washington Post reported Birx saying.

We now know more about what she was talking about, since Colorado has become the first state to publish two different numbers. One number is derived using a definition mandated by the CDC, which issued guidelines on March 24 specifying that “COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.” (Emphasis in original.)

The second is a narrower category called “deaths due to COVID-19,” which is limited to people who actually died of the disease. Counting in this way results in a decline of 23 percent in reported COVID-19 deaths. What’s going on here?..............Colorado has taken the lead. Baisley lit the fire, and Polis stepped up to exercise genuine leadership. All governors, Republican and Democratic, should follow his lead and report both sets of numbers. And the CDC should fix its nonsensical definition — which didn’t even exist until March 24 of this year................To Read More....

My Take - Make sure to keep reading as this gets even more bizarre.