Talk:SARS-CoV-2 surpasses 100,000 confirmed deaths in the United States

Misleading death count
A myriad of sources has reported about the fact that in several countries, including the US and UK, people who (are assumed to) die with COVID-19 are - in many news outlets - often misleadingly reported as if having died of COVID-19. This is an important difference pointed out by these sources, and I bet there's more:

US data on influenza deaths are a mess. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges a difference between flu death and flu associated death yet uses the terms interchangeably.
 * Peter Doshi: Are US flu death figures more PR than science?

In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on  a  death  certificate  as “probable” or “presumed.”
 * United States CDC: Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19)

There are other countries that if you had a preexisting condition and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem some countries are recording as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. [...] the intent is right now that if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.
 * Dr. Deborah Birx: Recording Covid-19 as Cause of Death No Matter What

Many UK health spokespersons have been careful to repeatedly say that the numbers quoted in the UK indicate death with the virus, not death due to the virus – this matters. When giving evidence in parliament a few days ago, Prof. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London said that he now expects fewer than 20,000 Covid-19 deaths in the UK but, importantly, two-thirds of these people would have died anyway. In other words, he suggests that the crude figure for ‘Covid deaths’ is three times higher than the number who have actually been killed by Covid-19.
 * The Spectator: How to understand – and report – figures for ‘Covid deaths’

But Prof Ricciardi added that Italy’s death rate may also appear high because of how doctors record fatalities. “The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus. On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 percent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many had two or three,” he says.
 * The Telegraph: Why have so many coronavirus patients died in Italy?

Laut Experten wird die Anzahl der Todesfälle damit stark relativiert, da die Patienten in vielen Fällen an ihren Vorerkrankungen sterben und nicht am Virus. Daten aus Italien zeigen, dass über 99% der Verstorbenen eine oder mehrere chronische Vorerkrankungen hatten, darunter Krebs und Herzprobleme, und bei nur 12% das Coronavirus auf dem Totenschein als Kofaktor genannt wird.
 * Swiss Policy Research: RKI relativiert »Corona-Todesfälle«

Please note, this number refers to individuals who have died within 28 days of first positive result, whether or not COVID-19 was the cause of death.
 * Public Health Agency of Nothern Ireland: Daily COVID-19 Surveillance Bulletin

COVID-19 is an acceptable direct or underlying cause of death for the purposes of completing the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death [...] For example, if before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID-19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘COVID-19’ as the cause of death [...] In the circumstances of there being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.
 * NHS: Guidance for doctors completing Medical Certificates of Cause of Death in England and Wales

Modanung (talk) 04:33, 1 June 2020 (UTC)