With of from COVID? That is the question. In April of 2020 the CDC gave specific advice to doctors on how to determine the cause of death that should be listed on a death certificate. If a patient died of pneumonia caused by COVID-19, then Pneumonia would be listed as the cause of death and the patient would have died OF COVID. Those who died OF COVID-19 are considered the number of people whose primary cause of death was due to the virus.
If other COVID was considered a co-morbidity like obesity, but the person died from an accident or other cause, then the patient would have died WITH COVID.
We have officially entered the COVID exhaustion phase of the pandemic. People grasp at any straw of misinformation in order to pretend the pandemic is over or never happened. I have seen FOX news hosts claim that thousands of people are dying in motorcycle accidents and they just happen to have COVID. This is just lunacy. A doctor would never claim COVID as the cause of a motorcycle accident.
One patient had cancer and was told he only had months to live. In those final months he caught COVID-19 and was unable to breath. He died OF COVID.
In April of 2021 Dr. Deborah Birx, said, “If someone dies WITH COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.” That lead conspiracy theorists to assume numbers were being inflated. In the spring and summer of 2021 that policy was altered to say that in order for a death to be counted as a COVID-19 death, the disease had to have played a role.
Since the start of the pandemic the numbers of non-COVID excess deaths have been on the rise. Excess deaths are deaths that are above the average number of deaths expected based on an average of the previous 5 years. Many of these rising excess deaths are likely due to COVID causing an increase in heart attacks, strokes, embolisms, aneurysms, diabetes, and damage to autoimmunity. COVID causes damage to the lungs, kidneys, liver, heart. It causes brain damage, brain inflammation, brain autoimmunity. COVID can cause ongoing illness and disability that can be life changing and may be lifelong.
Regardless of weather the death is OF or WITH COVID, when a loved or friend one dies, the cost is incalculable. I don’t understand the need for the semantics. The pandemic is not over and over 500 Americans are dying needlessly every week.