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[Jamin Lynch]

There is no financial incentive for a hospital to report a death as caused by Covid-19, although Medicare has an enhanced *treatment* payment profile.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/

Fact Check LOL. Who checks Fact Check?

I believe the "confusion" is the reporting of people dying "from" the China virus vs. dying "with" the China virus. There is a difference but seem to get lumped into the same category. There's been documented proof in my county. Even after it was discovered they refused to alter the death count.

[David Sturzenbecher]

Fact Check LOL. Who checks Fact Check?

You are more then welcome to share evidence from a credible source to prove them wrong.

[Jamin Lynch]

You are more then welcome to share evidence from a credible source to prove them wrong.

Thought I just did

With a name like Fact Check, they couldn't ever be wrong ...now all you sheep fall in line

[Peter Morris]

Unless my math is wrong, the US mortality rate is 2.3%  (240,000 deaths/10,300,000 cases).  The most recent data I can find says about 40% if deaths are from long term care facilities, that translates to 144,000 deaths outside of those facilities which leaves a mortality rate of 1.4% for the rest of the population. 

I do wonder about the accuracy of those numbers-since there is some financial incentive for an institution to report a death as covid (not saying they are lying-but if it's a judgement call and you're the CFO which call would you make? it is a business after all), and on the flip side with cases-those are only diagnosed/tested cases.  I know people who have just self isolated and treated symptoms as they would the flu-which makes sense of you have a fairly mild case-in fact that's probably better than going and hanging at a doctors office for an hour getting to see a doc-so there may be more cases.  But, those are the only numbers we have to go on-the rest is conjecture.

Hi Stephen - your maths is wrong.  You can't calculate the mortality rate until the every one in the sample group as died or recovered. The US has had 10,708,630 cases so far, 6,896,076 of those have recovered and 247,397 died, the rest we don't know yet. That's why Worldometer calculates the static based on closed cases, cases which have had an outcome.  The other issue is the unreported cases that have recovered. This will skew the statistics.  That's why I referenced Australia, very few have escaped detection, they even continually monitor all the sewage for traces of COVID 19 
 
Australia has a total for 26,366 cases (the US had 142,808 just yesterday! [worldometer]) of that 25,459 have recovered, 907 died and 1328 still have mild conditions. There are no seriously or critical cases.  From this you can calculate a reasonably accurate mortality rate. Our contact tracing has also been extreme, so there are very few cases that have been missed.  I expect the statistics to be about right.  As I said above, when the take the high risk people such as those in a nursing home out of the equation, my guess is the mortality rate will drop from 3% to about 1%. 

While I don't believe there was any financial incentive for an institution to report a death as covid in the US, there was certainly no incentive in Australia.

We are learning how to treat this disease.   There are quite a few drugs that will assist.  The latest one being Melatonin https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7405774/  I suspect as we learn to treat this disease, we will begin to show a reduction in the mortality rate.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[Brian Jojade]

There is no financial incentive for a hospital to report a death as caused by Covid-19, although Medicare has an enhanced *treatment* payment profile.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/

Factcheck went vague on that one to prove the point they wanted to, not the big picture.  The thing is, with more COVID patients, hospitals open the doors to more funding in many ways.  It's not necessarily on a per patient basis, but could be things like emergency funding, supplies, etc.  It's stuff that's hidden enough that it's pretty hard to prove directly.

But, reality is, hospitals are big business, and yes, they go out of their way to classify things that increases the money coming in to them.  Not enough that it's outright fraud, but there are enough cases pre-covid where hospitals have found ways to pad numbers to scrape in more money, it's crazy to think that they wouldn't take advantage of the COVID stuff too.

[Tim McCulloch]

Factcheck went vague on that one to prove the point they wanted to, not the big picture.  The thing is, with more COVID patients, hospitals open the doors to more funding in many ways.  It's not necessarily on a per patient basis, but could be things like emergency funding, supplies, etc.  It's stuff that's hidden enough that it's pretty hard to prove directly.

But, reality is, hospitals are big business, and yes, they go out of their way to classify things that increases the money coming in to them.  Not enough that it's outright fraud, but there are enough cases pre-covid where hospitals have found ways to pad numbers to scrape in more money, it's crazy to think that they wouldn't take advantage of the COVID stuff too.

An old friend was also a doctor's officer nurse and she would sometimes help 'code' patient insurance claims to ensure that: patients would be covered by their insurance and that the doc would get paid.  Everything was medically justifiable - they did it because most of the insurers would challenge every claim.  I think most folks would be shocked at how many people are employed by both sides, to save/extract as much money as can be contractually justified.  Doc eventually joined a group practice mostly because it was easier than hiring and maintaining claims staff for a sole practitioner.

The point is that there isn't a "Covid bonus".  Slapping the label on something doesn't automatically generate more revenue, but treating sick people does and there's no shortage of Covid patients right now, so there is that...  I wonder if production of new ventilators was stopped prematurely?  In My Faire City, Spirit Aerosystems (formerly Boeing Commercial) geared up to produce them under the Defense Production Act, only to see the orders cancelled after they'd produced about half the contract.  We'll see what the next 60 days looks like...

[Peter Morris]

....  We'll see what the next 60 days looks like...

Its not looking good today, 160,000 + today ... I really hope you guys can get of top of this soon 

[Tim McCulloch]

Its not looking good today, 160,000 + today ... I really hope you guys can get of top of this soon 

I have little reason to be optimistic in this time frame.  There has been no central, respected voice telling the public "back to normal will be a NEW normal."  And people being what we are, blithely ignore any faint voices in order to 'Twist and Frug in an arrogant gesture of the best that the 20th century has to offer.'

A few weeks back I said that Covid response needed a PR firm... someone to "sell" the ideas that would lead to less transmission and therefore more opportunity to return to the New Normal.  The loss of revenue to arts/entertainment/live sports without TV contracts... and losses to the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries... are added to the amount of GDP being spent on health care, and loss of productivity... and it sums to an astounding amount of money.  I'd hope that more people would internalize that healthy people are much more helpful to an economy and that each person has the power to help control the spread of a pandemic illness, resulting in fewer sick people...  Anyway, we need someone to sell the patriotism of public health like it's War Bonds in WWII.  Maybe a fireside chat with Tom Hanks reprising his role as Mister Rogers... something to focus back on the virology and not the vitriol.

[David Sturzenbecher]

You can't calculate the mortality rate until the every one in the sample group as died or recovered. The US has had 10,708,630 cases so far, 6,896,076 of those have recovered and 247,397 died, the rest we don't know yet. That's why Worldometer calculates the static based on closed cases, cases which have had an outcome.  The other issue is the unreported cases that have recovered. This will skew the statistics.  That's why I referenced Australia, very few have escaped detection, they even continually monitor all the sewage for traces of COVID 19 
 
We are learning how to treat this disease.   There are quite a few drugs that will assist.  The latest one being Melatonin https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7405774/  I suspect as we learn to treat this disease, we will begin to show a reduction in the mortality rate.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

It's purely semantics (polarity vs phase?)  but "Mortality Rate" at least defined by the CDC is Deaths from the virus per the size of the population.   This is where you get the arguments that the mortality rate for this is low as the denominator in the equation is the entire populus (of typically a country). Deaths per infected is closer to a Case-Fatality-Rate..but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

BBC Link

[Peter Morris]

It's purely semantics (polarity vs phase?)  but "Mortality Rate" at least defined by the CDC is Deaths from the virus per the size of the population.   This is where you get the arguments that the mortality rate for this is low as the denominator in the equation is the entire populus (of typically a country). Deaths per infected is closer to a Case-Fatality-Rate..but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

BBC Link

When you calculate Mortality rate (as I call it) or Case Fatality Rate as WHO uses, you calculate it differently during an ongoing pandemic.  This does not seemed to be mentioned on the CDC site. Its - number of deaths / (number of deaths + number recovered) multiplied by 100 for %. This is how I have calculated it.  The logic is explained here    - https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/estimating-mortality-from-covid-19

If you just want to look death per population size, the US is in the top 10 ... as I said above, I do really hope you guys can get on top of this soon.

[ProSoundWeb Community]