Covidious Reports: Telling It Like It Isn’t
Written by Elizabeth Moon —
Over the four days of the Christmas weekend, national reports of COVID-19 deaths dropped and appeared to be low–lower than the previous weeks’ low points. Were there really fewer deaths? No. There were fewer *reported* deaths because the sources that should have been reporting them…weren’t. The same is true of the New Year’s weekend, and for the same reason.
In the midst of the overall surge, some county and state health departments (including the county health department in my county) had gone right on taking their weekends off, catching up in mid-week, and then–for Christmas–closing down as early as the day before Christmas Eve, and not returning to full duty until Monday. Same thing for New Year’s. That means at the height of a pandemic a county health department can be shut down eight of fourteen days in that two week period.
In normal circumstances, not reporting births & deaths for 2/7 of the days is no biggie (they’ll tell you), but in a pandemic, with over 3 1/2 million citizens dead of it, and thousands dying every day, it’s a very big biggie. This pandemic has been mishandled by the the Trump Administration, GOP leadership in Congress, GOP governors and legislators, right down to county health departments, including downright lying about its extent, its dangers, and its effects on the country as a whole.
Through January 4 (reported January 5) we had 354,000 reported dead of COVID-19…that we know of. Why suspect there are unreported COVID-19 deaths? Because GOP-dominated states do not want more deaths reported and have taken steps to ensure they’re not. Some states (Florida and Texas, among them) do not report the deaths of those who aren’t *resident* in the state. Do they report COVID deaths to the dead person’s home state? With the correct cause of death? Maybe. We don’t know. Do the states of residence report them as COVID deaths? Maybe. We don’t know.
GOP-dominated states make every effort not to report as COVID deaths those that can possibly be reported as having another cause, or contributing cause. Some states have told hospitals and doctors not to fill out death certificates listing COVID as the primary cause of death even when it is, but to list either co-existing conditions or symptoms: respiratory failure (patient couldn’t breathe), heart failure (heart stops beating), kidney failure, etc. What caused these failures? The virus’s attack on those organ systems. Without COVID, those people would not have died in that way, at that time. They would not have had to die alone, blocked from their families, from any human connection, for days or weeks.
The GOP–used here for the mass of Republican elected and appointed officials running the federal and some states’ governments, plus its related think tanks and media outlets–did not just try to hide the facts about how many people died of COVID-19. They did everything possible to deny that the pandemic was a pandemic, that this nation had more cases than any other, that its symptoms were often serious and lasted longer than the longest cold or flu. They lied outright about the effectiveness of social distancing and masking, and encouraged people to resist all ordinances that tried to make those effective preventive measures required. They labeled less desirable (to them) groups–Blacks, “Hispanics,” the elderly, the disabled, the poor–as unimportant and not worth the effort to prevent *or care for* the illness. And they encouraged their adherents to do the same.
What is needed in any emergency is clear, honest communication.
Instead, the GOP spread conspiracy theories, lies, half-truths, and diddled with the statistics to manipulate the population, encourage reckless and dangerous behaviors, and all for political and economic gain for themselves.
You’re right: the problem is everywhere. Last night on Colbert’s show, Steve and Sanjay Gupta discussed the fact that, even where the vaccine has been delivered, the systems to help people get it are broken. (I called my doctors, the local hospitals and pharmacies because I’m in Group 1B in Texas, and the only answer I got was “we don’t know.”)
This is a travesty.
1The Nazis managed to effectively hide the Holocaust from the world for years.
The Rethuglikans have been running Hitler’s, Goebbles’, Goring’s, et al., playbooks and propaganda for more than a decade.
I’ve seen the subtle ways that local media has distorted the presentation of COVID45 news for months. They all know damned well what they’re doing.
However, they’re all going down with the SS Trumptanic real soon now.
.
2It is 2 weeks, 0 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, 14 seconds until Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 12:00:00 noon (Washington DC, District of Columbia time)
I certainly agree with most of what Elizabeth has said, but I feel compelled to add that I am glad the workers in my local health department took some time off. Living in a small rural county, I know what they do. They are underfunded and understaffed. Since last March, they have been working hard. And I suspect often meet with resistance in their efforts to track cases and educate. Public health has always been a neglected area, I think because the system we DO have does its best for our benefit and we don’t notice it til we need it. Our health department publishes daily numbers in a clear and forthright manner. Except for holidays and weekends. I can live with that. The big picture in the whole country is another matter.
3For the last 5 months or so, there’s been a drastic drop in the number of deaths reported every weekend.
4A couple of months ago I saw an article where a statistical analysis was done of the average death rare since Jan. Even after subtracting the deaths attributed officially to COVID, there was a 19% increase above the normal death rate for all causes.
19% is NOT a statistical anomaly.
Judith @ 3:
Great point about the health workers.
Mike @ 4:
5Do you remember whose article that was?
I’m glad I live in Texas where Gov. Dithers has put the tooth fairy in charge of ordering, distributing and giving the vaccine to Texans – twice!
6Grandma Ada–me, too. I have a lung condition that my doc says will take me out if I get ordinary flu, and my last cold sent me to bed for 4 days, so I *don’t* want Covid-19. But with A-butt in charge, I have no idea when I’ll ever get a vaccination.
7Judith, my point was that the people actually dealing with the surge in cases in Texas over the holidays *do not get any vacation*…they are working long shifts, often back to back shifts: the hospital nurses, doctors, dialysis techs, etc, etc. The state and county health departments who mostly handle data at a safe remove from the hospitals and other care facilities are the ones I think should have worked at least half-days, and should always have been working half-days on Saturdays. The delay in reporting the death stats, the hospital stats, makes it harder to keep up with the data needed to see a surge or a decrease as it starts, harder to reposition people do deal with the changing situation.
It’s not that I hate county health deparments, but the people I’m talking about are not working the long hours, 7 days/nights a week, with no relief.
And I may be wrong.
8Elizabeth Moon@8 …
To all the healthcare workers … thank you. Your long hours, personal sacrifice and assumption of much higher risk has made a huge difference in reducing a death toll.
And I don’t want to throw ANYONE under a bus. Public health officers are working hard AND taking death threats for themselves and threats against family members. And that was in red AND blue states, urban AND rural communities. Doctors, nurses and therapists are working long hours and continue to get ill, with a full range of consequence.
No one is going to have their approach swayed by whether there are 4 or 6 deaths in a hospital in the past day. Some people are oblivious to 350,000 deaths … that is 0.1% of the entire nation taken out in 9 months. In some communities, 1% of those over 50 have died. CDC accumulation makes a note that numbers of deaths “caused” runs a delay of multiple weeks, as the data from death certificates slowly comes to them.
The maskless yokels will remain maskless — no matter how many people died in their state in the past week. FREEDOM!! is everything. Death or disease that happens 3 weeks from now isn’t important to them.
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