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    Flawed Report Fuels Erroneous Claims About COVID-19 Death Toll

    by Angelo Fichera Apr 02, 2021 9 minutes

    SciCheck Digest

    Viral social media posts cite a flawed paper in falsely claiming the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed death certificate procedures and violated federal law, resulting in wildly inflated COVID-19 deaths. The CDC hasn’t altered how death certificates for COVID-19 are filled out, and there is no federal law governing the process.

    How lethal is COVID-19?

    It’s difficult to know exactly how deadly COVID-19 is, but as the World Health Organization has written, studies estimate that the infection fatality ratio, or percentage of deaths out of all infections, is between 0.5% and 1%. The true rate isn’t clear, since the pandemic is ongoing and not all infections have been diagnosed.

    The case fatality rate, or percentage of deaths out of confirmed cases, was 1.8% in the United States as of March 31.

    An individual’s risk of death may be significantly higher or lower than what these numbers suggest, depending on a person’s age or health conditions. For example, the CDC estimates that the risk of death is more than 600 times higher for someone 85 years and older as compared with someone between the ages of 18 and 29.

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    A conservative talk radio host recently told her listeners that because of a change in death certificate procedures specific to COVID-19, “there is a huge chance that COVID death numbers are exaggerated, to the tune of 94%.”

    That’s false. It’s based on a flawed report whose authors also have penned related claims for an anti-vaccination organization.

    Wendy Bell, the radio of her Pennsylvania-based show. The show was streamed live on Facebook in a video titled, “Has the CDC skewed Covid Fatalities?” It has been viewed more than 34,000 times.

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