Thread on right-wing twisting of CDC #COVID19 data:

Over the weekend, right-wing skeptics have jumped on CDC data exploring deaths from the virus. Specifically, they’ve started arguing just 10k deaths have come from covid.

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How the does this happen? Simple, people are using data on co-morbidities to twist the data. What is a co-morbidity? Think of it like an underlying health risk factor. So, a 50 year old man with a heart condition who dies from Covid has a co-morbidity around that condition.

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However, absent the pandemic, this man wouldn’t have died. He continues to live with the condition. Eventually, he may die from it. But, not now. In the exact same report being used to twist this data, the CDC also releases something called “excess deaths.” What are those?

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Excess deaths are deaths above and beyond what their models expected based on long running data on mortality rates in America and life expectancy. Guess what? The CDC excess death estimate right now is between 185k and 245k. Link here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
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In other words, not only is the CDC saying that at least 185k people have died from #COVID19, in fact they believe the number is almost certainly an undercount already and we’re well over 200k actual deaths caused by Covid.

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Note: should be spelled comorbidity not co-morbidity.