Violence follows conspiracy because Conspiracy theories are implicit calls to violence.

He is now targeting physicians for attack. I already see this invective spreading all iver twitter. Instead of a crackpot shooting up a pizzeria, it’s going to be hospital next time. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1320180250920259584

Everything the idiot has said in this clip is untrue. I both fill out DCs and do research based on DC data.

Death certificates are perfectly capable of capturing complexity, and a single cause of death is almost never listed. This is a CDC example.

As you can see, the form is designed to list an immediate cause “resp failure” as well as underlying causes in Box 32. The lowest one listed becomes the “underying cause”. Then in part II other conditions that may contribute but *did not directly cause the death* may be listed.

If, for instance, you have coronary artery disease, and diabetes, you may have decades of life expectancy with good control and risk modification. Yet, if you die of COVID, they will absolutey be listed as contributing - but that doesn’t imply you were on your death bed already!

This is what the crackpots are misinterpreting to suggest the virus is being listed when other causes of death are present, or the 94% or “dry kindling” theories. But *every death certificate I’ve ever filled out* for a natural death has had comorbidities like this.

It is a bonkers conspiracy theory. People can be expected to live *decades* with comorbidities like this. I, as a 43 yo with hypertension would have this listed in Part II if I died, and most members if my family with the same comorbidity have lived to their 80s and 90s.

This is a willful misinterpretation of death certificate data that is obviously false to anyone who fills these out or does research with DC data (eg CDC wonder).

If you calculate the death toll in terms of life years lost, this pandemic is erasing decades of life expectancy.

Yes, older people are at exponentially higher risk, but old in this instance is > 65, and the risk for 50-65 is nothing to sneeze at either. For someone like me the risk of death would be about 1:500-1:1000, which seems low, but nothing else is as likely to kill me.

In aggregate this means many people can and will lose decades of life expectancy if this infection spreads uncontrolled.

Now, as far as the financial conspiracy theory, this is also just bonkers untrue. Hospitals are more than just intensivists and ICUs. COVID has forced many, including mine, to cancel elective surgeries as the need for beds surges.

That means surgical oncologists, general surgeons, and everyone else who generates revenue for hospitals by treating cancer, hernias, whatever, is forced to delay necessary, but non emergent care, while our building fills up with COVID.

And if you hadn’t gotten the memo about how our perverse medical reimbursement system works, loss of procedural revenue is *devastating* for hospitals and for doctors who aren’t, like me, intensivists or trauma/EGS. No one is making money on medical admits.

Whatever you think of our system aside, it is not structured to profit on taking care of diseases like COVID. The notion we would conspire to make up COVID diagnoses just makes no sense. It is accusing us of committing fraud in order to make *less* money.

So as usual, burning stupidity from 45, maligning the people trying to keep you alive with a conspiracy theory that will incite more threats and violence against doctors. Fauci now has a security detail. Conspiracy theorists, from the beginning, have been threatening us.

They talk about breaking into hospitals to “expose” the lie of COVID. They say we’re committing fraud, and their economic suffering is because of our lying for profit.

How long before someone breaks in with a gun? How long until this talk results in mass violence in a hospital?