CDC ADMITS THAT MOST COVID DEATHS OCCURRED IN ALREADY SERIOUSLY ILL PATIENTS: REPORT

Over this past weekend, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s remarks characterizing the health of vaccinated people who die from COVID-19, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities. This means that deaths attributed to COVID-19 were in people that were already seriously ill.

In fact, in last Friday’s interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said, “The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities. So, these people are people who were unwell to begin with.”

Her reference was to a recent CDC study of vaccinated people, but a clip of her interview that left out that qualification was regarded by many on social media as an admission that the vast majority of deaths from COVID-19 are among people who already were seriously ill.

In fact, critics of the federal government’s response to the pandemic pointed out more than one year ago that the data on the CDC website indicated that only 6% of all recorded COVID-19 deaths were from COVID alone, with 94% having an average of 2.5 comorbidities.

A CDC study published in July found 95% of those hospitalized for COVID-19 had at least one underlying medical condition. The most common conditions were essential hypertension (50.4%), disorders of lipid metabolism (49.4%) and obesity (33%). The data were drawn from hospitalized patients aged 18 years or older with COVID-19 from March 2020 through March 2021 in more than 800 hospitals.

The fact that age and underlying conditions are significant risk factor is the premise of the “focused-protection response advocated by many epidemiologists who have been shunned by the government and establishment media.

On Sunday, “Fox News Sunday” host Bret Baier asked Walensky how many “of the 836,000 deaths in the U.S. linked to COVID are from COVID or how many are with COVID but had other comorbidities, do you have that breakdown?”

Walensky dodged the question on how many total deaths were ‘with’ rather than ‘from’ virus, pivoting to omicron, which comprises a small fraction of the total COVID deaths to which Baier was referring.

Her answer was, “Yes, of course. With omicron, we are following that very carefully. Our death registry, of course, takes a few weeks to collect and, of course, omicron has just been with us for a few weeks. But those data will be forthcoming.”

Walensky’s comments were regarded by many Twitter users as disrespectful toward disabled or chronically ill people, with some using the hashtag #myDisabledLifeIsWorthy, Newsweek reported.

Disability rights activist Imani Barbarin wrote: “Contrary to popular belief, Ms. CDC Director, disabled people aren’t just data points. How callous to say you’re encouraged by the prospect of their deaths.”

Matthew Courtland, a lawyer who describes himself as “chronically ill” and “disabled,” wrote that it’s no wonder that @CDCgov has consistently refused to issue guidance protections the health & well-being of chronically ill Americans, our deaths clearly don’t count.”

Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health has actively opposed the general pandemic strategy of focusing protection on the vulnerable while allowing the healthy, who have very little risk, to go about their business.
Emails released last month, as WND News reported, showed then NIH Director Francis Collins asking White House Coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci to carry out a “quick and devastating published takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for focused protection of the vulnerable older population based on data showing they are more than a thousand times more likely to die from COVID infection than the young. Collins described the three Harvard, Standard and Oxford scientists who created the declaration as “fringe epidemiologists.”

Walensky reacted Sunday to the criticism from activists of her remarks with a tweet in which she emphasized the importance of protecting the vulnerable tweeting, “We must protect people with comorbidities from severe COVID-19. I went into medicine, HIV specifically, and public health to protect our most at-risk. CDC is taking steps to protect those at highest risk, including those with chronic health conditions, disabilities and older adults.”

In an interview with MSNBC, Walensky said the CDC is “recommending people be boosted if they are over the age of 65, if they live in long-term care facilities and if they have high risk of severe disease by virtue of the fact that they have other comorbidities.”

Walensky previously acknowledged that some 40% of the patients in hospitals who were recorded as COVID patients were there for other reasons, having tested positive for COVID after admission.

CNN’s Jake Tapper said Monday in an interview with network health contributor Dr. Sanjay Gupta said the inclusion of such people in hospitalizations figures is “misleading.”

“Yeah, I agree, Jake, it surprises me that they have not been able to parse out that data more carefully,” Gupta replied.

Last week, acknowledging that the number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 has been overstated, New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul announced hospitals now must clarify if patients with the novel coronavirus came to the hospital due to symptoms of COVID-19 or because of another health issue.

Previously, as WND reported, New York state’s acting health commissioner admitted at a news conference with Hochul that she misled parents about the magnitude of hospitalizations for COVID-19 among children, explaining she raised fears of a concerning trend to “motivate” them to get their children vaccinated.

CNN’s Brian Stelter on Monday, after playing a clip of a Walensky interview with the “Today” show’s Savannah Guthrie, said the CDC has a “huge credibility crisis” and has “turned into a punch line.”

We appreciate our friends at WND News Center for contents in this article.