Are Covid 19 deaths properly recorded?
 

I was a county medical examiner for over 15 for a large county. All deaths went through me. Here's a hypothetical that has some grounding in reality:

I have a very good friend whose wife was found dead of a massive pulmonary hemorrhage in her bathroom. 18 mo prior she presented with a superior vena cava syndrome which is almost pathognomonic for lung cancer. Her cancer eroded into a major vessel and she bled out.

Question: How would the primary cause of her death have been recorded? This did not occur in my county but had it would have been recorded as due to lung cancer with the complication of a pulmonary hemorrhage.

Question: If she had contracted covid 19 and died of covid 19 pneumonia how would the death been recorded? I believe it would have been recorded as a covid 19 pneumonia. I am trying to find this out but it is difficult to find out specifics.

The cliché that you can prove anything you want to by stastics is quite true. We have no idea how many actual covid cases there are. Next I believe that literally anybody that contracts the virus and dies will be listed as a covid death. This would include hospice patients.

Therefore the mortality rate for covid 19 may be wildly inflated. This is my belief. Any thoughts?

Charles, I think Ivan is shutting down the COVID threads since they pretty much get political. Just FYI.

- Buck

Well I hope not. There's nothing political about this question. When you call public health you get no answer. Central to what is affecting our lives is precisely who is filling out the death certificates and how they are recording the cause of death.

I am not trying to be rude or discourteous. I'm really not. I grew up in a culture where everybody was thick skinned. I can tell that at least as far as I can discern there is very limited general medical knowledge on AA. Many physicians also don't think about death certificates. When I first started out as medical examiner I knew little about the job. But I quickly realized that it was my pen that determined the cause of death.

It is my opinion that literally anyone dying with covid 19 is recorded as a primary covid death. If this is so and I am afraid it is, my opinion is this a gross miss representation and wildly inflates deaths actually due to covid. I could give you many examples of this.

I hope that Ivan would let this stand as an exception.

Unfortunately there will be no exceptions to COVID-19 threads.