A pathologist's take on Covid-19

[Nevilledog]

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Judy Melinek M.D.
@drjudymelinek
As a pathologist who certifies deaths I understand why: Excess deaths capture deaths from Covid + all the deaths that are Covid-related. e.g. If you get myocarditis from Covid but die of heart failure months or years earlier than you should, we wouldn’t know it was from Covid.

Micah Pollak
@MicahPollak
If you're going to trust anyone to know the real cost of #COVID19 in terms of deaths, trust life insurance companies. I was there for this online news conference and it was stunning. Deaths are up 40% *from pre-pandemic levels* among working-age people.

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11:04 AM · Jan 6, 2022

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As a pathologist who certifies deaths I understand why: Excess deaths capture deaths from Covid + all the deaths that are Covid-related. e.g. If you get myocarditis from Covid but die of heart failure months or years earlier than you should, we wouldn’t know it was from Covid.

I would just do an autopsy and sign it out as “probable cardiac arrhythmia due to myocardial intertstitial fibrosis” or maybe blame your concomitant atherosclerosis. The way Covid19 attacks endothelial cells, it causes long term damage in the heart and brain.

These two organs don’t do well long term with vascular damage. Brains develop strokes, aneurysms & hearts develop arrhythmias. I would not be surprised if Covid survivors have shortened lifespans from diseases like strokes, aneurysms or heart disease.

These organs also kill you suddenly & unexpectedly which means this will put more burden on our already understaffed sudden death investigation systems. You think we don’t have enough nurses & ICU docs, wait till you find out how few forensic pathologists there are.

But most of these deaths won’t even get autopsies. They will be written off as “natural” deaths due to heart disease and we won’t figure out that they were the long term effects of Covid19 until years later… when we look at the excess deaths in an entire generation.

Which is why I have, from the start of this pandemic, advocated for caution in approaching any pathogen we don’t know that much about. All the voices advocating for “reopening” because of economic or social collapse were not considering the long term effects.

Even now, @CDCgov guidelines of shortened isolation, PPE use & home testing appear influenced by social/economic demands for staffing and not on best public health practices.

Home testing, for instance, is not public health. It’s private health. In the US the testing burden shifts to you, the consumer, and this we lose important data in our public health system on actual numbers of new cases. Poor people can’t afford these tests.

Nearly two years into this pandemic and the U.S. still has no mask mandates, no way to get everyone free N95s, which is what we know works. Masks are cheaper & easier than lockdowns, than anti viral drugs. Contact tracing has been abandoned. Again, burden put on the individual.

If you get sick the burden is on you to figure out and tell who you may have exposed. This isn’t public health. This is a complete abrogation of responsibility & a public health system that has given up.

The U.S. will continue to fuel the fires of Covid19. The next challenge may be a variant that evades rapid tests & vaccines. I ask again, how many people need to die before they figure out that the open secret to handling this pandemic better is already being implemented?

Look to China, Taiwan, S Korea, New Zealand. Learn from what they already know: 😷 works , vaccines work, public health campaigns with good science communicators work, managed isolation & limits on freedom of travel/movement work. They don’t have to be draconian.

You can find a formula that works for your political system, but by all means *use them.* People trust government when it shows results. Public health is the cornerstone of good government and long term economic prosperity. /End rant.
• • •

[L. Coyote]

1. Best response to Texas GOP tweet

Sometimes, if not often, the best part of Twitter, and especially regarding the stupid tweets, is smart people reacting to tweets.

Link to tweet

[littlemissmartypants]

2. All of this...

This is a complete abrogation of responsibility & a public health system that has given up.

[SheltieLover]

7. This!👆

[PurgedVoter]

3. Thank you for posting this!

This has been my argument from the beginning. Early on when they were trying to lie and say this was nothing, the argument became, how many were tested and proven to have died of the disease. That is not how you measure a pandemic. That is how you reduce the numbers of an embarrassment.

[SheltieLover]

8. Same here

[orleans]

4. love the "keep trying" reply to this person who sounds like

a bit of an anti vaxer (why bother getting a vaccine if covid is just gonna kill 40 percent of you months down the road anyway bullshit)

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[Calculating]

5. What secret is there which doesn't require authoritarian power?

At this point there's little that can be done without China style government power where they can simply MAKE people get vaccinated. 1/4 of our population are conspiracy lunatics and total idiots, who think the vaccine will make them go infertile or something as a part of some kind of new world order depopulation scheme. We can't even stop people from going out and spreading blatantly false information on the subject because of the first Amendment. We basically just need to accept that a lot of idiots are gonna die from this, and in the end it will basically be a bit of a Darwinian thing. If you're smart enough to get the vaccine you'll probably be fine, if not....good luck.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

6. What cracks me up is the mental gymnastics involved in the 'vaccine is part of depopulation scheme'

It's like ... ummmm ... why wouldn't 'they' just, ya know ... create a disease that wipes out a huge part of the population and be done with it?

That could be done in some underground lab somewhere by a small group of nefarious experts.

UNLIKE letting DOZENS of for-profit companies worldwide develop vaccines that need to be peer-reviewed and have countless trials and basically involve 10's of 1000's of people who would need to be 'in the know' ... but then what? They just all collectively decide (or, wait, are 'influenced' by the all-powerful 'them!) to poison the whole world with sterilization drugs ... and then nobody spills the beans, ever?



I agree with your post, btw.

And for my part, I say let the stupid people die, I don't much GAF anymore.

[ProfessorGAC]

9. Been Reporting Same For Over A Year

As Nevilledog knows, I have a few friends who work as actuaries in big insurance.
They've been telling me for at least 18 months that the actual death count is higher than the official numbers.
One reply says "If you're going to trust anyone to know the real cost of #COVID19 in terms of deaths, trust life insurance companies." To that, I say; yep!

[Klaralven]

10. Not all increases in deaths are due to Covid

2020 Fatality Data Show Increased Traffic Fatalities During Pandemic

While Americans drove less in 2020 due to the pandemic, NHTSA’s early estimates show that an estimated 38,680 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes—the largest projected number of fatalities since 2007. This represents an increase of about 7.2 percent as compared to the 36,096 fatalities reported in 2019. Preliminary data from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) shows vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in 2020 decreased by about 430.2 billion miles, or about a 13.2-percent decrease. The fatality rate for 2020 was 1.37 fatalities per 100 million VMT, up from 1.11 fatalities per 100 million VMT in 2019. NHTSA’s analysis shows that the main behaviors that drove this increase include: impaired driving, speeding and failure to wear a seat belt.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show-increased-traffic-fatalities-during-pandemic

Can't find suicide data for '20 and '21, but I'd bet suicide is up.

[Scrivener7]

11. 2500 more traffic deaths is not really a big consideration in a 40% increase in the death rate.

[FakeNoose]

12. What's going to happen when the American insurance companies all go belly-up?

The Repukes won't have any more PACs paying them slush money to beat down the ACA.

[smirkymonkey]

13. Interesting and pretty scary.

I just learned of two deaths since Jan 1.

One was a healthy 58 year old woman in our company (looked much younger) who died of an aneurysm and the other was my 50 year old male cousin who died of heart failure in his sleep.

I don't know if either had previously had mild cases of Covid that might have made them vulnerable, but it now makes me wonder. They were just kind of sudden and shocking deaths that were not DIRECTLY caused by Covid.