Johns Hopkins Medical Centre - World Coronavirus infection Map by Country.

[Pigmy Pony]

It's amazing in this day and age that anyone believes what they read in the papers. I haven't bought a newspaper in decades, perhaps I never did.

When on a 'staycation' recently, part of the 'upgrade package' was free newspapers. I couldn't be arsed going to the office to collect them - my Kindle provided all the fiction I wanted

[Marco]

I think that is the most likely - imagine the field day our press would have if there were the slightest indication that the figures given were "hiding the true death toll", far better for government to play it safe and use every case where Covid may have been a contributory factor.

So how is not wanting to be accused of hiding the true death toll best served by this:

And if you die from any of that* [deaths from cancer and other diseases] within 28 days of testing positive for Covid then you count as a 'Covid death.' Even though you'd have died anyway.

*For the definition of 'that', see the preceding post from here from Gary: https://theartofsound.net/forum/show...31#post1293231

That's not hiding the true death toll is it, if Covid wasn't the catalyst or ACTUAL/true cause of death? It's inflating the death toll, by stating Covid as the cause of death when it wasn't an *indisputable fact*, and indeed on the contrary, highly likely that the cause was something else.

Poor old Billy was on his last legs, having been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and simply because he tested positive for Covid within 28 days of his death, it was Covid that killed him, not the cancer that eventually had destroyed his brain and stopped it from functioning!

Yeah, right, pull the other one...

Marco.

[Macca]

No, not at all. It's obvious that the government want as many people as possible vaccinated (to offer protection from the virus) - you can't deny that; various forms of 'encouragement' for such are all over the place.

Therefore, falsely inflating the figures, to make the situation appear more serious, is simply another way of 'encouraging' uptake.

Marco.

Yes that's a reasonable proposition.

[Stryder5]

I know this will make me seem thick, but I don't care - WHY does the government want us all vaccinated? Is it not simply that vaccines are cheaper than hospital stays? I'm assuming here that jabs actually do reduce the chances of serious infection.

I'm happy to learn what people think, as long as it doesn't involve trawling through endless numbers of links

I like to think I am a rational person, but I cannot rationalise any reasons for The worlds response to this alleged pandemic.
There are strange people and organisations in this world that I have no comprehension of their intentions or reasons!

I would question your assumption that Mass vaccination that has limited, and non proven efficacy is correct.

When in the past has anyone been told that they have a virus/disease that could be fatal and they are sent home to die with no treatment. Only to be hospitalised when you are effectively already dying!

The search for a vaccine was given precedence over treatments that, at an early stage, could have enhanced life expectancy and negate unnecessary hospital admission. I’m not going to give you the link that indicate positive trials for a cocktail of drugs that work at this important infection period. It’s in an earlier post.
Strangely as of this week a major drug company has announced a drug that trials suggest may be effective.

Sorry the real answer to your question is beyond any current understanding by me. Simple logic defies reasoning.

Gary

[Macca]

If no one is trying to detect a “thing” it will remain hidden!

Gary

That's the point though. There must have been by now billions of doses of the vaccines produced. And yet not one of those doses has found its way to one of the many active anti-vaxxers who has then had it independently analysed in an attempt to prove that it has some ulterior effect?

Either that really has not happened yet, which seems unlikely, or it has happened and they found nothing and so kept quiet about it.

Edit - or there's option 3 which is they have not even tried to get a sample for analysis because they know they'll find nothing and in any case they are making a load of money scaremongering on the internet - which is their real motive - so why bother?

[guy]

You have to draw the line somewhere; in the case of Covid deaths "the line" happens to be within 28 days of testing positive, it gives a standard reference point to work from.
Although I must admit that, for example, being a victim of a road traffic accident within 28 days of testing positive shouldn't add to the numbers.

In order to get closer to a "true" figure for Covid deaths, autopsies for every death would be required, but that's not going to happen (something about Brexit leading to a shortage of pathologists I suppose).

Back to the "hiding" of the death toll, surely (for the government) it is better to be accused of including every possible contributory factor rather than making the figures artificially low

[Macca]

So how is not wanting to be accused of hiding the true death toll best served by this:



*For the definition of 'that', see the preceding post from here from Gary: https://theartofsound.net/forum/show...31#post1293231

That's not hiding the true death toll is it, if Covid wasn't the catalyst or ACTUAL/true cause of death? It's inflating the death toll, by stating Covid as the cause of death when it wasn't an *indisputable fact*, and indeed on the contrary, highly likely that the cause was something else
.

Yes it's inflating the death toll so they can't be criticised for massaging the death toll numbers down. It's picking the worst case figures and using them. It makes it impossible for someone to claim that it's actually worse than they are portraying.


Although as I said it's only a guess as to why they use the counting method they do.

[Pigmy Pony]

So how is not wanting to be accused of hiding the true death toll best served by this:



*For the definition of 'that', see the preceding post from here from Gary: https://theartofsound.net/forum/show...31#post1293231

That's not hiding the true death toll is it, if Covid wasn't the catalyst or ACTUAL/true cause of death? It's inflating the death toll, by stating Covid as the cause of death when it wasn't an *indisputable fact*, and indeed on the contrary, highly likely that the cause was something else.

Poor old Billy was on his last legs, having been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and simply because he tested positive for Covid within 28 days of his death, it was Covid that killed him, not the cancer that eventually had destroyed his brain and stopped it from functioning!

Yeah, right, pull the other one...

Marco.

Has anyone had sight of one of these death certificates? Do they actually say that Covid was the cause? Or merely present? Or perhaps a "contributory factor"? That would be a difficult one to prove/disprove.

[Marco]

You have to draw the line somewhere; in the case of Covid deaths "the line" happens to be within 28 days of testing positive, it gives a standard reference point to work from.
Although I must admit that, for example, being a victim of a road traffic accident within 28 days of testing positive shouldn't add to the numbers.

In order to get closer to a "true" figure for Covid deaths, autopsies for every death would be required, but that's not going to happen (something about Brexit leading to a shortage of pathologists I suppose).

Yes, but you also have to draw a line in terms of what you believe is the truth, in terms of how accurate the death figures are for Covid, and also the motivation behind the government's methodology for calculating those figures.

In that respect, I stand by what I wrote in my last post. If someone's already on their last legs, dying from terminal brain cancer, but tests positive for Covid and dies within 28-days of that test, the strong likelihood is that the ACTUAL cause of death was cancer, not Covid!

However, as you say, without an autopsy, the real cause of death is not factually provable, but the lack of pathologists, for whatever reason, and subsequent autopsies, is not sufficient excuse to blame it on Covid.

In the case above, of which in reality there must've been tens of thousands, it should've gone down as cause of death 'not proven', and separate figures kept for those cases, from those where, on the other hand, Covid was almost certainly the *actual* cause of death, such as an otherwise healthy person contacting the virus and dying of its symptoms.

Then we'd have a more accurate idea of what the true death figures were for Covid.

Marco.

[Pigmy Pony]

Another thing to consider is that there are only so many pathologists in the country, and to perform sufficiently thorough post mortems on all of the cases when hundreds are dying every day would be a mammoth task. So what do you do? Not mention Covid, even though it's there, and let it's presence disappear from our records forever?