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Johns Hopkins Covid-19 Death Toll Does NOT Include States’ Downward Adjustments, Ignores Fundamental Flaws in Data
Gateway Pundit ^ | 05/25/2020 | Jim Hoft

Posted on 05/25/2020 8:55:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

Memorial Day stories in the Associated Press and the New York Times each claim that the U.S. death toll from the Wuhan COVID-19 virus is approaching 100,000.

AP says it’s “nearly 100,000.” The Times, dramatically invoking language reminiscent of the Iraq War, says that “America is fast approaching a grim milestone … of 100,000 lives lost.” The AP directly cites Johns Hopkins’ COVID Dashboard as its data source. The Times also uses the Dashboard’s data, but rarely acknowledges it.

Following these two outlets’ lead, hundreds, if not thousands, of establishment media outlets and leftist platforms act as if the JH Dashboard’s reported death tallies represent the undisputed gospel truth. THEY DO NOT.
Here are three specific known reasons seen recently:

1. As Gateway Pundit noted on May 16, Colorado reduced its reported death count by 278.

2. As GWP noted on Tuesday May 19, New Jersey reduced its death toll by 1,400 at nursing homes from its official tally. The new coronavirus death total for New Jersey’s long-term care (LTC) facilities, which was lowered from 5,700 to 4,295. This funny math was used to make the Democrat state leaders look better as the death toll in the Garden State continued to climb.

3. As The Freedom Foundation in Washington State reported on May 18, the Evergreen State’s “COVID-19 death total is inflated by as much as 13 percent due to state’s practice of counting every person who tests positive for COVID-19 and subsequently dies, even if the death was not caused by COVID-19.” Specifically, “106 (13 percent) deaths involved persons who had previously tested positive for COVID-19 but did not have the virus listed anywhere on their death certificate as either causing or contributing to death.”

It should be obvious that two of these three instances should have led to downward adjustments to state and nationwide death tolls. But the JH Dashboard’s reported death tolls in Colorado, New Jersey and Washington State have increased steadily during the past 10 days without interruption.

Taking a deeper dive into the statistical mess, John Lott and Dr. Timothy Craig Allen published a column on May 16 which demonstrated that “The US is Dramatically Overcounting Coronavirus Deaths.”
Among the specifics:

– The article quoted Illinois’ Director of Public Health, who admitted that “technically even if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it’s still listed as a COVID death.”

– In two of the hardest-hit counties in Michigan, “medical examiners classify any deaths as Coronavirus deaths when the postmortem test is positive. Even people who died in suicides and automobile accidents meet that definition.”

– “The (CDC’s) rules direct them to do this.” Deborah Birx has acknowledged that “if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.” This practice is not consistent with what other countries are doing, nor is it consistent with how CDC told localities to document causes of death before the Chinese virus appeared.

– Beyond that, Lott and Allen note that New York State “is classifying cases as Coronavirus deaths even when postmortem tests have been negative. Despite negative tests, classifications are based on symptoms, even though the symptoms are often very similar to those of the seasonal flu.” Further the CDC has “advise(d) doctors that “it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate” even if the virus’s involvement is only “suspected”! In April, apparently encouraged by this guidance, New York State added “3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive.” Even without evidence of positive tests, Johns Hopkins added these deaths to its Dashboard.

Lott’s and Allen’s bottom line: “Relying on these flawed numbers is destroying businesses and jobs and costing lives.”
Johns Hopkins, despite hard evidence to the contrary, is dishonestly promoting that damaging reliance.

The establishment press, by treating Johns Hopkins’s garbage figures as the undisputed truth with any hint of the many serious problems in the underlying data, is a willing accomplice in this dishonesty.


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: covid19; covidfraud; deathtoll; deathtollfraud; johnshopkins

1 posted on 05/25/2020 8:55:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

don’t trust John Hopkins or any of the figures.
they are mostly inflated which is obvious by how often the FakeNewsMSM says they are under-counted.

talking about deceptive. this guy is getting a beating:

Tweet: Sawyer Hackett, Communications for @JulianCastro. Formerly: @repdavideprice, @HUDgov, @ObamaWhiteHouse, @OFA
Here’s how the two nominees spent their Memorial Day weekend
25 May 2020
https://twitter.com/SawyerHackett/status/1264965185233707010


2 posted on 05/25/2020 9:02:24 PM PDT by MAGAthon
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To: SeekAndFind

What an incredible fraud this all is.


3 posted on 05/25/2020 9:09:39 PM PDT by TigersEye (If you see me wearing a mask ... don't assume I'm wearing it for Covid-19.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Just go away....and get back to real work.


4 posted on 05/25/2020 9:10:28 PM PDT by EagleUSA
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To: MAGAthon

Even if the Johns-Hopkins U. figures are real, if you divide deaths by population the US is barely in the top 10. When you take NYC (Which botched its response) out the US falls out of the top 20


5 posted on 05/25/2020 10:09:40 PM PDT by Fai Mao (There is no justice until The PIAPS is legally executed)
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To: DoughtyOne

Ping


6 posted on 05/26/2020 1:31:42 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: SeekAndFind

More lying from all those so called scientists.

JoMa


7 posted on 05/26/2020 2:31:28 AM PDT by joma89 (Buy weapons and ammo, folks.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Truth takes its time but always reveals itself. We can now say that anything that comes out of the media is looked at with suspicion.


8 posted on 05/26/2020 2:36:31 AM PDT by ronnie raygun
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To: FreedomPoster

Thank you for the ping.

In the international arena, I do run into numbers dropping
from time to time. I’ve seen France do it, and I’ve seen
Ethiopia do it. (believe it was Ethiopia)

The numbers do go down. I haven’t done a study to see how
many times this takes place. It may not be much more than
this, but again, it has happened.

For several weeks now I have been suggesting folks should
take a look at the CDC Provisional work-up. In it they
check out the death certificates and adjust the numbers
downward.

When people were at their zenith of talking down Chinese
numbers, I mentioned that they weren’t going to be very
happy with our own numbers, take heed. Here we are and
folks are upset that the numbers are not rock solid.

These are clerical errors. A method hasn’t been devised
to make adjustments down. (evidently, maybe they do and
we don’t realize it.

I do know that when France was chopping off thousands
from it’s count, those declining numbers were washed out
by massive new cases.

The same sort of thing could be happening here. I honestly
don’t know.

Isn’t it interesting that when we compare today’s numbers
to the situation with SARs, we act as if those cases are
solid. I’m sure they were obtained by the same methods we
see now.

I do not think the numbers approaching 100,000 are accurate.
I just don’t know what to do about it. I can’t run all
over the internet trying to quantify batches of numbers all
day.

I get the impressing that folks are watching the talk of
accuracy and things like these case count reductions. I
think they are aware at least some cases were over counted
improperly.

The problem is, I read stories like these, yet I have no
idea how factual they are either.

The numbers I post are simply a number that has been
assigned. As we read of problems, we can base our grasp
of what is taking place by subtracting in our minds some
quantity from the numbers at JHU or WoM.

We’ll never have a 100% accurate number. I doubt we ever
have had one going back to other infections.

Humans screw up. Who knew?


9 posted on 05/26/2020 3:26:08 AM PDT by DoughtyOne (Some of the folks around these parts have been sniffing super flu.)
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