The Dependent Media is Concealing Reality: According to the CDC, only 6% of the Total COVID Related Deaths in the US had COVID Listed as the Sole Cause of Death on the Death Certificate

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

According to Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., having killed 170,000 of the 5.4 million Americans who had tested positive as of August 2020
Research shows anywhere from 250,000 to 440,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical errors, far more than COVID-19, especially if you exclude those with comorbidities. While unrecognized, medical errors have, for many years, been the third leading cause of death
Many who died from COVID-19 were victims of medical error. As of May 2020, 42% of all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. had also occurred in nursing homes, primarily in states where governors had forced long-term care facilities to accept infected patients, which is yet another mistake
According to the CDC, only 6% of the total COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificate
Medical treatments showing significant promise have also been censored and even barred from use based on falsified and seriously flawed studies, thereby raising the death toll

From [MERCOLA PDF] According to Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S., killing more Americans than "accidents, injuries, lung disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and many, many other causes."1,2

This claim is said to be based on data from Johns Hopkins University which, at the time Frieden made that statement in August 2020, reported that about 170,000 of the 5.4 million Americans who had tested positive had died.3 At the time of this writing, Johns Hopkins reports4 the U.S. has recorded 7,916,099 positive tests and 216,872 COVID-19-related deaths.

Medical Errors Dwarf COVID-19 Concerns

There are many reasons not to panic over Frieden's claim. I'll review mortality statistics in just a moment but, first, I want to highlight a leading cause of death that continues to be swept under the proverbial rug, namely medical errors, because medical errors also play a role in the death toll attributed to COVID-19.

In 2016, a Johns Hopkins study5,6 found more than 250,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical errors, effectively making modern medicine the third leading cause of death in the U.S. I reported these findings in "Medical Errors: Still the Third Leading Cause of Death."

In 2017, medical mistakes were found to affect 1 in 5 people. Common examples of medical mistakes included receiving the wrong medication, having the wrong procedure done, waking up during surgery or acquiring a hospital-related infection.

Other research7 has estimated the number of Americans dying from medical mistakes may actually be as high as 440,000. The reason for the discrepancy in the numbers is because medical errors are rarely noted on death certificates, and death certificates are what the CDC relies on to compile its death statistics.

As a result, the severity of the problem goes unnoticed. Either way, whether it's 250,000 or 440,000, medical errors still claim more lives than COVID-19 has, and it does so on an annual basis.

Medical Errors Responsible for Most COVID-19 Deaths

We also need to remember that a large portion of those who died from COVID-19 were in fact victims of medical errors. As I reported in "Nurse on the Frontlines of COVID-19 Shares Her Experience" and "Frontline Nurse Speaks Out About Lethal Protocols," Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, New York — which was "the epicenter of the epicenter" of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. — grossly mistreated COVID-19 patients, causing their death.8

According to Army trained nurse, Erin Olszewski, who worked at Elmhurst during the height of the pandemic, hospital administrators and doctors made a long list of errors, most egregious of which was to place all COVID-19 patients, including those merely suspected of having COVID-19, on mechanical ventilation rather than less invasive oxygen administration.

During her time there, most patients who entered the hospital wound up being treated for COVID-19, whether they tested positive or not, and only one patient survived. The hospital also failed to segregate COVID-positive and COVID-negative patients, thereby ensuring maximum spread of the disease among noninfected patients coming in with other health problems.

By ventilating COVID-19-negative patients, the hospital artificially inflated the case load and death rate. Disturbingly, financial incentives appear to have been at play. According to Olszewski, the hospital received $29,000 extra for a COVID-19 patient receiving ventilation, over and above other treatments. In August 2020, CDC director Robert Redfield admitted that hospital incentives likely elevated hospitalization rates and death toll statistics around the country.

Irresponsible State Leadership Caused Many COVID-19 Deaths

Another major error that drove up the death toll was state leadership's decision to place infected patients into nursing homes, against federal guidelines.9 According to an analysis10,11 by the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, which included data reported by May 22, 2020, an average of 42% of all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. had occurred in nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care facilities.

This is extraordinary, considering this group accounts for just 0.62% of the population. By and large, nursing homes are ill equipped to care for COVID-19 infected patients.12 While they're set up to care for elderly patients — whether they are generally healthy or have chronic health problems — these facilities are rarely equipped to quarantine and care for people with highly infectious disease.

It's logical to assume that comingling infected patients with noninfected ones in a nursing home would result in exaggerated death rates, as the elderly are far more prone to die from any infection, including the common cold. We also learned, early on, that the elderly were disproportionately vulnerable to severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Yet ordering infected patients into nursing homes with the most vulnerable population of all is exactly what several Democrat governors decided to do, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo,13Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

ProPublica published an investigation14 June 16, 2020, comparing a New York nursing home that followed Cuomo's misguided order with one that refused, opting to follow the federal guidelines instead. The difference was stark.

By June 18, the Diamond Hill nursing home — which followed Cuomo's directive — had lost 18 residents to COVID-19, thanks to lack of isolation and inadequate infection control. Half the staff (about 50 people) and 58 patients were infected and fell ill.

In comparison, Van Rensselaer Manor, a 320-bed nursing home located in the same county as Diamond Hill, which refused to follow the state's directive and did not admit any patient suspected of having COVID-19, did not have a single COVID-19 death. A similar trend has been observed in other areas.

If it weren't for systematic medical mistreatment at certain hospitals and incomprehensible decision-making by a handful of state governors, the COVID-19 death toll may well have been negligible.

Other Considerations When Evaluating COVID-19 Death Toll

We should also remember that a) the vast majority of people died with SARS-CoV-2 infection, not from it, and b) medical treatments showing significant promise have been savagely censored and even barred from use based on falsified and seriously flawed studies.

According to groundbreaking data15 released by the CDC August 26, 2020, only 6% of the total COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificate.

Six percent of 201,141 (the total death toll reported by the CDC as of October 14, 2020) is 12,068. In other words, SARS-CoV-2 infection was directly responsible for just over 12,000 deaths of otherwise healthy individuals. The remaining 94% had an average of 2.6 health conditions that contributed to their deaths.

When you add all of these factors together — the wanton mismanagement of the infection in hotspots such as New York, the decision to send infected patients into nursing homes, the fact that few healthy people died from the infection and that potential medical treatments have been and still are actively suppressed — it kind of starts to look like a manufactured crisis.

Infection Fatality on Par With the Flu

While Frieden is now stoking fears by claiming COVID-19 is the third leading cause of death, and Scientific American is calling the claim that its fatality is on par with the flu "fake news,"16 I would call your attention to research looking at the fatality ratio for the average person, excluding those residing in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. [MORE PDF]