About that Quiet CDC Report of Deaths from COVID

Yesterday before his sermon, John MacArthur gained loud applause from his congregation when he announced the following news:

In truth, 6% of the deaths that have occurred can be directly attributable to COVID, 94% cannot. Of the 160,000 people that have died, 9,210 actually died from COVID.

There is no pandemic.

MacArthur may have gotten this news from his attorney Jenna Ellis, who in turn may have gotten it from Gateway Pundit.

I normally would not link to Gateway Pundit since he appears to have gone full QAnon but I will in this case because I want to demonstrate how misinformation works.  Joe Hoft cites a QAnon source who claims that the CDC “quietly updated the COVID number to admit that only 6% of all the 153,504 deaths recorded actually died from COVID. That’s 9,210 deaths.”

Hoft calls his post a “Shock Report” and says the CDC “silently updated their numbers this week” implying there was something to hide or that there was something new about this week’s report. Before MacArthur told his congregation that only 6% of deaths were due to COVID, he said: “A rather telling report came out this week and for the first time, we heard the truth.”

The First Time?

In fact, there was nothing new about the findings in this report.

Via the Wayback Machine, I went back to May and found that 7% of deaths had COVID alone listed as a cause of death.

Here is the CDC comorbidity report summary for June 20 showing COVID as the only cause mentioned for 7% of the deaths.

How about July?

By July 18, the percent had dipped down to 6%. That took place the week ending July 4.  That is the percent today and has been since July.

There was No Quiet CDC Admission but There is a Pandemic

Looking back over the CDC reports, these breathless QAnon reports look silly. There was no new revelation, change, or admission. Throughout the pandemic, people with underlying health vulnerabilities have died because they became infected with COVID-19.  Without COVID, those people would be alive or at least would have lived longer then they did.

So much of the conspiratorial thinking is focused on the U.S. What about the rest of the world? Have all other countries been taken in by our “deep state?” Is Dr. Fauci so powerful that he can manipulate every nation on Earth to shutdown?

There is a pandemic. It is irresponsible to say otherwise. When you read the next “shock report,” remember this one, check the sources and get a second and third opinion from people who have some knowledge in research.

Watch MacArthur’s announcement:

As of September 1, Youtube removed this video. I have a copy of it hosted here.

For a great summary of the death data, read this from Bob Anderson at the CDC.

I was quoted in this Religion News Service article on this topic.

For all of the posts on LA County v. Grace Community Church, click here.

For my ongoing tally of churches who are associated with COVID-19 outbreaks, click here.

41 thoughts on “About that Quiet CDC Report of Deaths from COVID”

    1. And…?

      Obesity and diabetes are underlying medical conditions, but when an obese person dies from a heart attack we don’t say they died of obesity, and when a diabetic dies from kidney failure, we don’t say they died from diabetes, even though these underlying conditions made them more susceptible to their ultimate cause of death.

    2. And…?

      Obesity and diabetes are underlying medical conditions, but when an obese person dies from a heart attack we don’t say they died of obesity, and when a diabetic dies from kidney failure, we don’t say they died from diabetes, even though these underlying conditions made them more susceptible to their ultimate cause of death.

    1. If the snippet was removed for “copyright violation”, that would be super-interesting, as there are a dozen different videos praising MacArthur and playing the same snippet up right now.

      1. Depends how long the “snippet” was in relation to the total length of the sermon. A short piece of the sermon (ex:. a couple of minutes out of an hour long sermon) would generally fall under the “fair use” doctrine.

  3. I don’t think the term “pandemic” applied to an infectious disease has anything to do with comorbidity. Can you check the meaning of the term first.

    1. Infectious Disease A that knocks off people that will otherwise also be knocked off by Infectious Disease B – if there are not significant differences in severity (e.g. infection rate; death rate) between the two – renders neither Infectious Disease A or B as a “pandemic”.
      In this case, Infectious Disease A was hyped beyond all realism right out of the gate, but in the end – even with dishonest and careless data collection – has not proven to be significantly more deadly (or infectious) than other seasonal infections. Conclusion: It’s not a pandemic.
      I dare say if we had media cameras trained on gurneys rolling out the hundreds of cancer victims every night, we’d be more scared of it and we’d collect even more funds for it…
      And for what it’s worth, I don’t know what to think of a college psychology professor who acts like any dissent on this point is coming from rabid backwoods religionists… there are plenty of perfectly scholarly people – statisticians, health professionals, college professors – who have called B.S. on this right from the start.

      1. Be let’s be clear about something: Infectious Disease B (seasonal flu; common cold), when it knocks off people with cormorbidities – those deaths typically aren’t “counted” to Infectious Disease B. If you have Stage 4 cancer, and you develop pneumonia due to a seasonal infection (which is not infrequent), the medical examiner is unlikely to mark your cause of death as “the flu”. You will be a cancer death. This year, almost all of those deaths are being classified to Infectious Disease A (covid).
        I’ve heard from the beginning that “the difference is that COVID is much more contagious”. That’s false. The CDC says (of the seasonal flu): “on average, about 8% of the U.S. population gets sick from flu each season, with a range of between 3% and 11%, depending on the season”. The numbers for US Covid infection are 1.87% (using the actual numbers – which are undoubtedly inflated). It’s not more contagious. And it’s not more deadly either (for reasons already cited). It doesn’t qualify as a “pandemic” and MacArthur is spot on correct. We’re being had, and some of us are willingly…

        1. From Merriam-Webster:

          “pandemic: an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population”

          thus the current outbreak of covid-19 is a pandemic. The flu doesn’t meet the criteria for a pandemic because it doesn’t spread around the world like covid-19 does.

        2. If you have Stage 4 cancer, and you develop pneumonia due to a seasonal infection (which is not infrequent), the medical examiner is unlikely to mark your cause of death as “the flu”. You will be a cancer death

          You are so wrong. Pneumonia would be the top line cause of death and influenza would be the UCOD. The cancer will likely be listed somewhere, depending on the certifier’s time schedule. This is all explained in a previous post.

          If you’re wondering about my credentials, I was an Assistant Registrar for the county Public Health Dept while in funeral service.

      2. Just define the term “pandemic” please? Go and check the dictionary. You don’t need to write that long because it has nothing to do with the term “pandemic”.

    1. Let’s hope the next step is turning off the utilities, like they did to those TikTok party boy Covidiots.

    2. Let’s hope the next step is turning off the utilities, like they did to those TikTok party boy Covidiots.

  5. Furthermore, saying “without COVID, these people [with comorbidities] would have lived longer than they did” has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. That ALSO does not qualify anything as a pandemic.
    Not unless you’re prepared to say that the common cold and the seasonal flu should also be “yearly pandemics”. ANY communicable disease could meet that standard…. “I’d probably live longer if it weren’t for these pesky communicable diseases that can kill me more quickly because I have multiple coinciding comorbities also present”.
    How many cancer victims over the years would say “dang…. if it weren’t for %$#@ pneumonia, I would’ve lived at least a little longer”… no shit Sherlock… but what? Pneumonia is now a pandemic?

      1. What’s so incoherent about it, post-deleter? Produce an argument instead of censoring…
        My original post said “you didn’t refute anything MacArthur said”. what’s so incoherent about that?
        It also said that the fact that 94% of COVID deaths had another comorbidity (on average 2.5 of them) is a statistically significant fact. What’s so incoherent about that?

        1. “Looking back over the CDC reports, these breathless QAnon reports look silly.”

          To a reasonable person, QAnon is ridiculously silly. But in these times (with this president and his sycophants like Ellis, MacArthur, and Derek), “silly” is dangerous.

        2. Your word salads don’t make sense. On a death certificate, doctors or medical examiners will report the immediate cause of death and underneath that are the underlying causes of death (UCOD). So in most cases, the UCOD is Covid-19 and the top line is acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or pneumonia or whatever. IOW, someone would not have died of ARDS if they hadn’t gotten COVID-19 first.

          Pneumonia can be the result of other causes, like inhalation of a chemical or other infectious diseases, so the UCOD is what distinguishes them. When COVID-19 is listed on a death certificate, it IS the cause of death.

          However, because it’s a disease, COVID-19 can also stand alone with no underlying conditions. And if someone has COPD or asthma, they would be listed in Part II.

  7. Excellent sluthing…very helpful to keep Evangelicals and others accurately informed.

      1. Unfortunately, they, and a good many other Evangelical types, have been trained to ignore scientists and experts, in favor of whatever the Man o’ God is preaching from the pulpit.

  8. “Without COVID, those people would be alive or at least would have lived longer then they did.”

    That’s an assumption ^^^ There is no way of knowing what would have been the outcome for people with 2-3 other serious underlying health conditions and what role Covid played in there death. Surely some died because they also got Covid but no way all of them did. Even the CDC says some of the deaths are presumed from Covid-19;

    1. Actually it is not an assumption if you paid attention to who “those people” are in Warren’s statement (emphasis added):

      “people with underlying health vulnerabilities have died because they became infected with COVID-19.”

      Warren is specifically referring to people who died because they contracted Covid-19. Not anyone who died while infected.

    2. Practically everybody over a certain age has underlying health concerns. Arthritis? Hepatitis C? Asthma? COPD? There are lots of such conditions that won’t kill you quickly by themselves, or even in combination–but add COVID-19 to those conditions, and your chances of dying in the near term are much greater than they would be if you did not also have COVID-19. If a person becomes ill with COVID-19 and dies of the complications that clearly belong to it, they died of COVID-19, not one of their other health conditions. All 185,000 + of them, so far..

      1. And one should not forget that many who contract Covid-19 could suffer long-term effects that could become an ‘underlying heath condition’. Those so affected will have shortened lifespans and/or need more healthcare as a result. This is one reason (and there are other reasons as well!) why any strategy based on the notion of ‘herd immunity’ is for the birds. Better by far for as few people as possible to contract this disease, until effective prophylaxis or vaccines become available.

        1. Amen to that! Also, we have no real idea, yet, how long any sort of immunity will last. And people don’t, for example, have herd immunity to the flu, because there are multiple strains. I believe there are also multiple strains of COVID-19. Does immunity to one give a person immunity to the others?

    3. There is, of course, a distinction between those who have died OF Covid-19 and those who have died WITH (or having had) Covid-19. I know one person who died ‘with’ Covid-19, although I think it is pretty certain that he would have lived longer had he not contracted it.

      It can be successfully argued that almost any ‘excess deaths’ (and it would appear that there have been around 200,000 – or nearly four Vietnam Wars’ worth – of those so far this year) are directly or indirectly attributable to this very real pandemic.

    4. No way? Testing positive for Covid-19 while exhibiting symptoms of Covid-19, like respiratory failure, clots in the vascular system, etc. could clue them in.

      There is no doubt that in some places, some deaths have been attributed to Covid-19 when they shouldn’t have been. For the first few months, England was counting at least some deaths of those who had recovered from Covid-19 weeks before in their numbers, but they removed them later after identifying the problem with their counting criteria.

      Ultimately, though, the final death toll will be based on the number of excess death during the epidemic as calculated by the epidemiologists, like they do to calculate the mortality figures for flu season, every year. That will take care of the “there’s no way of knowing the outcome” issue, since we know on average how many of those people would have died in a normal year, and they will not be included in the excess deaths caused by the pandemic.

      In the end, though, the CDC always has to raise the mortality figures for flu season by a considerable amount — i.e. in the order of 20% or more — to properly account for the excess deaths that occurred, so there is every reason to expect the final Covid-19 tally will be raised significantly once all the calculations have been done.

      No doubt Trump and his loyal deniers will whine about the deep state again when it happens. It’s funny how such a non-controversial process (estimating the deaths from infectious diseases) can suddenly turn into a left-wing deep state conspiracy theory when the numbers don’t back up their nonsense claims.

  9. Didn’t realize, although I should have, that this “information” was also coming from SMOTI.
    I’ve informed my children that when CKD kills me, they should let everyone know it really didn’t, because I also have COPD, high BP, and heart disease.
    MacArthur has persuaded me that my original and continuing opinion of him was and is, spot on.

  10. A typical example “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics”.

    I suspect MacArthur’s lawyer (Ellis) is just trying to “chum the waters” before the trial. It would be fun if MacArthur took the stand in that case, but I suspect Ellis is to smart for that. The reality is that Ellis is likely quite aware of how misleading these claims are and she doesn’t care if spreading it might hurt people, just if it helps her win her case.

    1. It would be a shame if MacArthur got COVID-19 and died like Herman Cain. Then there would be competition for the Darwin Awards…..

    2. Ellis isn’t MacArthur’s lawyer, but she is a senior legal advisor for the Trump campaign and allegedly one of his private attorneys. The harm she can cause goes way beyond MacArthur.

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