Perhaps you have heard the news, the CDC finally admitted that it was all a hoax and that 94% of COVID deaths were actually caused by other illnesses...or at least, that is what the twitterverse is claiming. Is this actually true? Let's look at the facts.
In their recent report, the CDC states the following:
For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.
In other words, when you look at death certificates, you see that COVID is listed alongside other causes 94% of the time. Some have used this to try to argue that COVID is really not a big problem and that it is getting added to death certificates when the real cause was something else. There is just one problem...this argument is absolute nonsense.
Listing multiple causes of death is completely normal. You can actually download data about causes of death on the CDC website from previous years (2020 is not available yet). It turns out that these ratios are pretty typical. Below I looked at the totals for 2017.
For the two leading causes of death in the US, heart disease and cancer, most of the deaths (88% and 67% respectively) are listed with comorbidities. For respiratory diseases like influenza (ICD10: J09-J11) and pneumonia (ICD10: J12-J18), 94% of deaths had a comorbidity listed. Why? Because these types of infections tend to lead to and be exacerbated by other problems. Does that mean it did was not the cause of death? No. That makes about has much sense as saying that we shouldn't count gun related homicides because the real cause is blood loss. (Seriously, 0% of homicides/suicides are listed without comorbidities).
I'm glad people are paying attention to the CDC. However, I wish that instead of stopping after finding a statistic that fits their narrative, people would look a bit closer and try to understand the data in context. They might just find that the data tells a different story.
PS. I have been trying to get motivated to write something for this blog for a while now, but to be honest, between the political conventions, the continued violence, and the way that hatred seems to pervade so many of the conversations about these topics, I have been too discouraged. In the meantime, I am praying for change.