Comments by "Darlene" (@darlene2709) on "CBC News"
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@casual-og Who told you that? "In the waning days of the campaign, President Donald Trump complained repeatedly about how the United States tracks the number of people who have died from COVID-19, claiming, “This country and its reporting systems are just not doing it right.”
He went on to blame those reporting systems for inflating the number of deaths, pointing a finger at medical professionals, who he said benefit financially. All that feeds into the swirling political doubts that surround the pandemic, and raises questions about how deaths are reported and tallied. We asked experts to explain how it’s done and to discuss whether the current figure — an estimated 231,000 deaths since the pandemic began — is in the ballpark.
Trump’s recent assertions have fueled conspiracy theories on Facebook and elsewhere that doctors and hospitals are fudging numbers to get paid more. They’ve also triggered anger from the medical community. “The suggestion that doctors — in the midst of a public health crisis — are overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge,” Dr. Susan R. Bailey, American Medical Association president, said in a press release.
Hospitals are paid for COVID treatment the same as for any other care, though generally, the more serious the problem, the more hospitals are paid. So, treating a ventilator patient — with COVID-19 or any other illness — would mean higher payment to a hospital than treating one who didn’t require a ventilator, reflecting the extra cost.
Experts say there is simply no evidence that physicians or hospitals are labeling patients as having COVID-19 simply to collect that additional payment. Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, wrote an opinion piece in September addressing what he called the “myths” surrounding the add-on payments. While many hospitals are struggling financially, he wrote, they are not inflating the number of cases — and there are serious disincentives to do so. “The COVID-19 code for Medicare claims is reserved for confirmed cases,” he wrote, and using it inappropriately can result in criminal penalties or a hospital being kicked out of the Medicare program.
Public health officials and others also pushed back. Said Jeff Engel, senior adviser for COVID-19 at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists: “Public health is charged with the duty to collect accurate, timely and complete data. We’re not incentivized to overcount or undercount for any political or funding reason.” And what about medical examiners? Are they part of a concerted effort to overcount deaths to reap financial rewards?
“Medical examiners and coroners in the U.S. are not organized enough to have a conspiracy. There are 2,300 jurisdictions,” said Dr. Sally Aiken, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. “That’s not happening." The Conversation
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@ommk9650 No argument there. However, it's important to understand exactly why that was the case. "Swedes were not forced to take action against the spread of the virus, but they did so anyway. This voluntary approach might not have worked everywhere, but Sweden has a history of high trust in authorities, and people tend to comply with public health recommendations.
Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell was interviewed by Sverige Radio, and admitted there was “quite obviously a potential for improvement in what we have done.”
Yet in a separate interview with the Dagens Nyheter, he said he still believed the basic strategy had “worked well.” “I do not see what we would have done completely differently,” he said, “Based on the knowledge we had then, we feel we made the appropriate decisions.”
“Other countries started with a lot of measures all at once,” he told Sverige Radio, “The problem with that is that you don’t really know which of the measures you have taken is most effective.”
“If we were to encounter the same disease again, knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.” BMJ
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