By Kelly Victory, M.D., President, Victory Health, LLC.
Like essentially every American with a pulse, I have spent countless hours over the past weeks listening to both politicians and “experts” reporting the “data” and “statistics” on COVID19. Most people now appreciate that testing has been spotty at best and fraught with false negatives, and that therefore, we have likely woefully under-estimate the true number of cases of the virus.
That said, one of the numbers most frequently reported (daily) — and the one piece of data most commonly cited as a veritable certainty — is the number of deaths from COVID. Well here’s the sobering reality: The numbers being reported by the CDC are wrong. In fact, they are very, very wrong – and here’s why:
We now know that the vast majority (likely greater than 80%) of individuals who contract COVID-19 have minimal if any symptoms. A small percentage (perhaps 5%) go on to have severe illness and may ultimately require supplemental oxygen and/or hospitalization. Physicians — including the CDC’s own Dr. Anthony Fauci — agree that if and when death occurs as a result of COVID-19, it happens due to “overwhelming cytokine storm and resulting pneumonia and/or ARDS.” In layman‘s terms, people who die from COVID-19 die from pneumonia or from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) which is a “pneumonia equivalent“.
In doing a deep dive analysis of the data on the CDC website, I found that only 40% of the patients who have reportedly died of COVID19 actually had evidence of pneumonia. Hmmm. Only 40%! So, what was the actual cause of death in the majority — the other 60%?? Presumably, it was complications from underlying medical conditions including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, infection unrelated to COVID19, etc. — In other words, not from COVID-19 at all!
Furthermore, buried in the fine print, I found that in order to be reported as a “death from COVID19”, the patient need not have actually tested positive for the virus; they only needed to have “clinical signs and symptoms consistent with COVID19”. For those who haven’t been bludgeoned with the non-stop public service announcements on the topic, that means fever, cough, headaches, body aches and possibly shortness of breath — symptoms remarkably similar to Influenza and a number of other viral illnesses.
Given that the “experts” —and the politicians relying heavily on their advice — are making potentially life-altering decisions based on the “growing number of deaths from this virus”, Americans deserve to know what those numbers actually are. Therefore, any patient whose death is being attributed to COVID19 should be required to have documented evidence of both pneumonia and a positive test for COVID19. Anything less represents a continued gross mis-representation of the facts.
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