The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently released a report stating that 94% of US coronavirus deaths were due to contributing, underlying conditions, while the remaining 6% of deaths were solely due to COVID-19.
There have been social media claims that the CDC backpedaled and adjusted the number of US coronavirus deaths, stating that the agency adjusted the figures from 153,500 to 9,200.
The term “Only 6%” trended on Twitter, with supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory promoting tweets that falsely suggested the CDC had updated that only 6% of deaths tied to coronavirus were legitimate.
Even President Donald Trump was among those who tweeted the information; however, it was later taken down by Twitter for violating platform rules. The posts were shared online by hundreds of thousands of people.
According to the CDC, 94% of the COVID-19 deaths in the United States were due to underlying conditions, such as high blood pressure, heart failure, diabetes, obesity, respiratory failure, and pneumonia.
The CDC added that only 6% of the deaths were exclusively due to COVID-19 infection.
As of August 26, the CDC said, there were 161,332 US deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
Over the weekend, social media users posted an older screenshot of the data that showed 153,504 deaths and the posts used the 6% figure to claim the US death toll was much lower – 9,210.
On Monday, a post shared on Facebook read, “CDC just backpedaled (quietly) and adjusted the U.S. COVID deaths from 153,504 to 9,210. Admitting that their numbers are so (expletive) that they are off by a whopping 94%.”
However, experts have said that the CDC did not backpedal on the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus.
Such claims misrepresent the data. A death is not excluded from the coronavirus tally just because the patient was obese or had diabetes or dementia. People with heart problems can still be killed by the new coronavirus, and their death certificates could mention both as contributing factors.
The experts said that it is not surprising that so few COVID-19-related deaths had no underlying conditions. They explained that it is rare for people not to have multiple medical conditions at death.
Chief of CDC Dr. Robert Anderson, who looks after the CDC’s death statistics work, said, “The underlying cause of death is the condition that began the chain of events that ultimately led to the person’s death. In 92% of all deaths that mention COVID-19, COVID-19 is listed as the underlying cause of death.”
Moreover, death certificates are supposed to mention any causes or conditions that contributed, but past research has shown that the documents are not perfect. Physicians might not know or specify all the reasons behind the death.
More importantly, the CDC data show what doctors have been saying since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that the virus may have a severe impact on people with preexisting medical conditions.
For instance, Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University said people died with diabetes, not because of it. “If it hadn’t been for the COVID virus infection, these people would be living today,” Dr. Schaffner said. “So yes, although they have contributing underlying chronic health factors, it’s still the COVID virus that killed them.”
