Fudging the Numbers for Calm Mongering

Leading causes of death have changed over the past four years. In the States, Covid slipped from 3rd to 10th place. Or did it? 

The numbers are from this study and discussed in this article.

Eric Topal looked more closely at the numbers. There were "still 50,000 [official] Covid deaths in 2023. Heart disease and stroke are not declining. Small reduction in cancer deaths."

Topol doesn't highlight it here, but check out that 20% jump in deaths from unintentional injuries. The fact that Covid attacks the brain could have something to do with that, although the article suggests it's mainly driven by drug overdoses and alcohol use that surged. 

Gregory Travis called the article "calm-mongering": 

"Covid is the name of just one of the diseases caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It is just one of many diseases caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection and not the only one. . . . The number one cause of pneumonia is not influenza infection but SARS-CoV-2 infection. What else, besides pneumonia, do SARS-CoV-2 infections cause? Heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, you name it."

Arjit Chakravarty commented that "Model-based estimates suggest the official count is a ~50% undercount." 

Lazarus Long explained,

"Covid has long been missing from death certificates. In 2021, this article pointed to the red states. But there was no hiding the death comparison beetween red and blue states. So many studies dug into that. Until, the Democrats aslo disappeared Covid - all to re-elect Biden. . . . [The decrease in Covid] does not made sense as . . . Omicron was much more transmissible. So, we had huge amounts of transmission. And, if we look at mortality for Delta and Omicron, we have a conundrum. We have 12/100,000 deaths for Delta versus 16/100,000 deaths for Omicron."

Long points to how they labelled deaths:

"April 20, 2020, the CDC included probably deaths. At some point it was NARROWED to: 'Death identified only on vvital records that lists Covid-19 or an equivalent term as an underlying or contributing cause of death without laboratory evidence.' On January 1, 2023, it narrowed further to, 'A positive PCR test (confirmed case) or antigen test (probably case) for SARS-CoV-2 AND Covid-19 listed on the death certificate OR clinical history/sutopsy finding that provide evidence.' If I wanted to make it look like I defeated a virus with minimal effort? Changing the definition of death and mostly ignoring the 200 symptoms of LongCovid goes a long way. To be finished off by having the Dems in LA and New York begin the process of making masks illegal." 

In Canada, from 2018 to 2022 we've seen an overall 14.5% increase in deaths (in order here):

1. Cancer -  3.2% increase to 82,412  (number 2 in the US)
2. Heart Disease - 5.5% increase to 57,357  (number 1 in the US)
3. Covid - 26.6% increase from 2021 to 2022 to 19,716  (number 10 in the US)
4. Unintentional Injuries - 13.7% increase to 18,365  (number 3 in the US)
5. Strokes (cerebrovascular disease) - 2.6% increase to 13,915  (number 5 in the US)
6. Chronic lower respiratory diseases - 4.9% decrease to 12,462  (number 4 in the US)
7. Diabetes - 9.1% increase to 7,557  (number 7 in the US)
8. Influenza and Pneumonia - 43.6% decrease to 5,985  (number 9 in the US)
9. Alzheimers - 19.0% decrease to 5,413  (number 6 in the US)
10. Liver Disease - 21% increase to 4,530  (number 11 in the US)

In total about 7.2 people in 1,000 died in 2018, and 8.4 people in 1,000 died in 2022 in Canada.

Interesting that heart disease isn't top for us. One paper suggested Canada's lower rates of heart disease could be due to an increase in access to antihypertensive meds, better education on hypertension, and significantly lower rates of obesity.

So it looks like we don't fudge our Covid stats as much. Except we have "Legal Intervention" coming in 41st with only 9 total deaths in 2022, and elsewhere stats show 13,241 MAiD death in 2022, which would rank MAiD as the 6th leading cause of death. Those deaths are likely added in to their root cause in the ranking (e.g. MAiD due to suffering from terminal heart disease or from terminal cancer), so, like with Covid, it's important to weed out the numbers.