CDC Removes Tens of Thousands of Deaths ‘Accidentally’ Attributed to COVID

CDC Removes Tens of Thousands of Deaths ‘Accidentally’ Attributed to COVID



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 14 removed tens of thousands of deaths linked to COVID-19, including nearly a quarter of deaths it had attributed to children, blaming an algorithm for “accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.”


by Megan Redshaw, The Defender
March 21, 2022
 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on March 15 removed from its data tracker website tens of thousands of deaths linked to COVID-19, including nearly a quarter of the deaths the agency said had occurred among children.
In a statement to Reuters, the CDC said it made adjustments to the mortality data because the website’s algorithm was “accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.”
“Data on deaths were adjusted after resolving a coding logic error,” the CDC’s website states. “This resulted in decreased death counts across all demographic categories.”
The agency also acknowledged COVID death data is not complete.
Prior to the adjustment on March 15, the CDC attributed 851,000 deaths to COVID, including 1,755 pediatric deaths, according to Kelley Krohnert, a Georgia resident who tracks CDC updates. After the change, COVID-related deaths dropped to 780,000.
The change resulted in the removal of 72,277 deaths previously reported across 26 states, including 416 pediatric deaths — a reduction of 24% to 1,341, the agency said.
The CDC’s COVID statistics, used to justify which age groups should receive vaccines, were used by U.S. health agencies to support the authorization of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky referred to the tracker’s death total in November 2021, while pushing for an expert panel to advise her agency to recommend vaccination for all children 5 to 11 years old.
Children account for only 19% of all COVID cases, with .01% of childhood cases resulting in death, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
According to CNN, Moderna plans to report trial data in 2- to 5-year-olds in March and may seek authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “if the data is supportive and subject to regulatory consultation.”
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during a March 13 episode of CBS’ “Face the Nation” said he expects to have a vaccine ready for children aged 6 months to 4 years old “potentially in May if it works.”
Johnson & Johnson has a late-stage trial of its vaccine for 12- to 17-year-olds but nothing for the younger group.
It is unknown whether the pharmaceutical giants will use the CDC’s most recent COVID numbers in their risk-benefit analysis presented to U.S. health agencies to determine whether the risks of COVID outweigh the potential risks of vaccines in children.
CDC ‘cherry-picks’ COVID data for the public
Dr. Meryl Nass, physician and member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee on March 19 wrote that the CDC cherry-picks the data it presents to the public to push its “health policies.”
The agency hides most of what it has and then “blames its ‘outdated’ IT systems for the problems if it gets caught,” Nass said.
Nass explained:
“CDC is not a public health agency. It is a public propaganda agency that collects a massive amount of data. CDC marshals its huge data library to create presentations that support the current administration’s public health policies.  CDC also has state-of-the-art PR staff, as well as TV studios, and produces videos, radio spots and an enormous number of press releases that are distributed to the media. CDC hosts many journalists at its Atlanta headquarters. Free junkets successfully cultivate U.S. health reporters.”
Quoting a 2007 Senate oversight report on the CDC, Nass said the agency spends “millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.”
‘Fact-checker’ claims no evidence COVID deaths have been overcounted
Health Feedback, a fact-checking initiative under the umbrella of Science Feedback, on March 1 said there “is no evidence COVID deaths have been overcounted,” and labeled posts stating otherwise as factually inaccurate, false and misleading.
Heath Feedback focuses on “correcting misinformation about vaccine safety,” and said it “reviewed multiple false claims” that COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths were inflated when “many public health experts believe that COVID-19 numbers are undercounted.”
Health Feedback also addressed death certificates listing COVID along with other health conditions, saying health conditions weaken a person’s resistance to disease and in “many such cases, a person with underlying health conditions wouldn’t have died at that time if it wasn’t for COVID-19.”
“This means that the cause of death is still COVID-19,” the website states.
Health Feedback did not acknowledge that deaths occurring when COVID and other health conditions are listed could be caused by underlying health conditions.
Health Feedback was established as part of the Vaccine Safety Net — a “global network of websites, created by the World Health Organization, that provides reliable information on vaccine safety.”
It also belongs to the International Fact-Checking Network, founded by the Poynter Institute and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook, the Omidyar Network and George Soros-owned nongovernmental organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and Open Society Foundation.
To date, Health Feedback has not issued a correction to its fact-check reflecting the CDC’s new mortality data.