I’m gonna be honest with you. It’s a slow month at the CDC. They haven’t updated the case surveillance file. They haven’t updated a lot of things. I would think with 20,000 employees they might be able to produce on a higher scale. Regardless, here are two interesting charts showing the number of “mentions” of conditions associated with COVID-19 deaths. What you see here are the different types of comorbidities which people typically succumb to in conjunction with Covid.
Influenza and pneumonia... that needs to be splitdown. Pneumonia from covid-19 makes sense. If influenza and covid-19, determining causality is impossible (and really bad luck!). Renal failure=Remdesivir. Respiratory failure=ventilator.
So does influenza and pneumonia mean the patients also had influenza as well as Covid-19 or is that just a lumping together? Interesting that they don't use the term Influenza-like Illness (ILI) that they have used previously to lump things together. Proportion of respiratory symptoms to other symptoms looks similar in all age groups (about half).
How can influenza and pneumonia have so many cases when the CDC explicitly shows that deaths from ALL respiratory diseases have been at the normal 2015-2019 level since May 2020?
Perhaps the EMRs are limited in what is coded so they have limited codes or disease possibilities? I was listening to the Ron Johnson event from the other day about the adverse events from the Covid Shots and one of the "victims" said that in the App they were given to record AEs there was no way to include some of the adverse events they were experiencing. They were limited by a set of pre-determined AEs and so if your reaction was different there was no way to communicate it with this type of medical recording.
Rena failure is an interesting “Comorbidity- is this due to the treatment protocol more than the virus? Remember Remdesivir has a high adverse effect of ARF. And this is what is given to those who have severe disease. So is the protocol worse than the disease?
The data is a mess, period. It has been all along and obfuscates the true nature of this virus and disease, whether done intentionally or through negligence. Unless these are clinically confirmed cases of influenza, pneumonia, and COVID-19... we're talking about diseases with shared symptoms and the data simply reflects an ICD-10 code on death certificates. Recall that just this past Spring, the media reports expressed surprise and excitement that we all but eradicated the flu, and there were questions being raised as to whether or not we should even continue with the mass flu-shot programs. Fast-forward several months and we're back to "everyone should get a flu shot" and with talk of combining flu with COVID.
Personally, I think combining PIC numbers is entirely purposeful and is a way to both cover for sloppy reporting and policies and to justify continued booster programs for influenza and COVID.
To see what I'm talking about, look on the CDC's FluView page for mortality statistics and compare the Mortality Percentage chart for 2017-22 of influenza & pneumonia to the same period but including COVID-19. Also, the Quick Reference guide notes that the three causes merely need to be noted among the causes listed on a death certificate, not as the Primary Cause.
Thanks Justin. Something that I noticed on one of the earlier CDC releases is elevated risk associated with anxiety and anxiety related disorders. Did you find this represented in any way in your data? Thanks for the great info!
I agree with the other commenters, in that most of the items are chronic ailments/conditions, while 'Influenza and pneumonia' is more of a simultaneous event to COVID (and a typical end result of the other conditions listed I believe). It would be interesting to see a re-sized chart with that one factor removed.
Influenza and pneumonia... that needs to be splitdown. Pneumonia from covid-19 makes sense. If influenza and covid-19, determining causality is impossible (and really bad luck!). Renal failure=Remdesivir. Respiratory failure=ventilator.
So... it's the flu?
So does influenza and pneumonia mean the patients also had influenza as well as Covid-19 or is that just a lumping together? Interesting that they don't use the term Influenza-like Illness (ILI) that they have used previously to lump things together. Proportion of respiratory symptoms to other symptoms looks similar in all age groups (about half).
How can influenza and pneumonia have so many cases when the CDC explicitly shows that deaths from ALL respiratory diseases have been at the normal 2015-2019 level since May 2020?
Perhaps the EMRs are limited in what is coded so they have limited codes or disease possibilities? I was listening to the Ron Johnson event from the other day about the adverse events from the Covid Shots and one of the "victims" said that in the App they were given to record AEs there was no way to include some of the adverse events they were experiencing. They were limited by a set of pre-determined AEs and so if your reaction was different there was no way to communicate it with this type of medical recording.
Rena failure is an interesting “Comorbidity- is this due to the treatment protocol more than the virus? Remember Remdesivir has a high adverse effect of ARF. And this is what is given to those who have severe disease. So is the protocol worse than the disease?
The data is a mess, period. It has been all along and obfuscates the true nature of this virus and disease, whether done intentionally or through negligence. Unless these are clinically confirmed cases of influenza, pneumonia, and COVID-19... we're talking about diseases with shared symptoms and the data simply reflects an ICD-10 code on death certificates. Recall that just this past Spring, the media reports expressed surprise and excitement that we all but eradicated the flu, and there were questions being raised as to whether or not we should even continue with the mass flu-shot programs. Fast-forward several months and we're back to "everyone should get a flu shot" and with talk of combining flu with COVID.
Personally, I think combining PIC numbers is entirely purposeful and is a way to both cover for sloppy reporting and policies and to justify continued booster programs for influenza and COVID.
To see what I'm talking about, look on the CDC's FluView page for mortality statistics and compare the Mortality Percentage chart for 2017-22 of influenza & pneumonia to the same period but including COVID-19. Also, the Quick Reference guide notes that the three causes merely need to be noted among the causes listed on a death certificate, not as the Primary Cause.
Great visualization...thank you Justin!
Thanks Justin. Something that I noticed on one of the earlier CDC releases is elevated risk associated with anxiety and anxiety related disorders. Did you find this represented in any way in your data? Thanks for the great info!
Should we be getting the pneumonia vaccine. Don't hear "Public health" yammering about that one. Seams like it would help, no?
I agree with the other commenters, in that most of the items are chronic ailments/conditions, while 'Influenza and pneumonia' is more of a simultaneous event to COVID (and a typical end result of the other conditions listed I believe). It would be interesting to see a re-sized chart with that one factor removed.