Let's start here:
Wendy Bell says we're being played when it comes to #COVID19. #coronavirus #wendybell https://t.co/hXa4W2SZeJ
— Newsradio 1020 KDKA (@KDKARadio) September 1, 2020
According to KDKA Radio's website, KDKARadio's Angel of Death says this:
We are being played, ladies and gentlemen.
Today’s Proof?? Courtesy of the CDC.
I was thinking today, we're gonna go over some stuff that the CDC has kind of sneakily snuck in its Coronavirus database.
They do a nice job. So does the Pennsylvania Health Department. So do most health departments. It's a wealth of information.
But ever now and again, they sneak a little somthin' somethin' in there and they don't necessarily want you to see it or they just don't want to talk about it too much because it kind goes against what they've been trying to tell you to do, that's kind of ruined the country for eight months or whaetever.
This will completely change everything that we think we know about Coronavirus in the United States of America.
Why are we being played?
This is from the CDC.gov. Double check my numbers, you'll find I'm accurate.
According to the CDC, over the weekend, they said 94% of COVID-19 deaths in the United States of America - 94% of those people who passed had at least one other condition that led to their death.
Furthermore, the average number co-morbidities that each patient had was 2.6.
2.6 co-morbidities. I'm talking pnuemonia, respiratory failure, respiratory arrest, diabetes, heart disease, cardiac arrest, heart failure, sepsis, hypertension, obesity, Alzheimer's disease, renal failure, vasular disease, unintentional injury...
All of those people got listed as a COVID death if they just happened also to test in the morgue for COVID-19. [Emphasis added]
Of course, we double checked your numbers, Wendy. And you got it wrong. So completely wrong.
Point one: You see that "sneakily snuck" part? That's from QAnon (Congratulations, Wendy! Congratulations KDKA News! You're now trafficking some QAnon hard stuff!). How do we know this is from QAnon?
From CNN:
Twitter on Sunday took down a tweet containing a false claim about coronavirus death statistics that was made by a supporter of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory -- a post that President Donald Trump had retweeted earlier in the day.
The tweet -- which has been replaced with a message saying, "This Tweet is no longer available because it violated the Twitter Rules -- from "Mel Q," copied from someone else's Facebook post, claimed that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had "quietly" updated its numbers "to admit that only 6%" of people listed as coronavirus deaths "actually died from Covid," since "the other 94% had 2-3 other serious illnesses."
Point two: Let's establish that this was not "sneakily snuck" in to the CDC database, "quietly" or otherwise.
How do we know it's not new?
The same data set was also posted last month. (Just scroll down to Table 3 and you'll see it.) This information is nothing new. It was not "sneakily snuck" in there, Wendy.
Which leads us to Point three - her the meat of her information sin.
But what does Table 3 mean, anyway? Here's the description:
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.Heck the table is titled:
Conditions contributing to deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), by age group, United States.This is what Wendy Bell of KDKA Radio twists into:
All of those people got listed as a COVID death if they just happened also to test in the morgue for COVID-19.
Which is, of course, not true.
There's a fuller explanation from an actual epiemiologist, Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz:
So what’s happening here? Well, it’s pretty simple — in the U.S., deaths are recorded using standardized death certificates. On these certificates, completed by medical certifiers, there are several spaces to fill in — one for the immediate cause of death, and then several lines for the underlying causes of that. As an example, say someone has lung cancer, and dies in hospital of an infection after having a lung removed. The immediate cause of death is the infection, which occurred due to complications of the lung removal, which was ultimately caused by the underlying issue of lung cancer. In the same way, someone who gets COVID-19, which causes respiratory failure, and then dies of kidney failure due to being on a ventilator would have at least three things on their form — the immediate cause, kidney failure, the secondary cause, respiratory failure, and the underlying cause, COVID-19.
That's what's going on, Wendy. It's not what you said.
Doesn't anyone fact-check Wendy Bell over at KDKA News??
Considering how wrong she's getting the Covid-19 story (and how much she's putting the public at risk because of it) wouldn't it be a good idea to start fact-checking her before she goes on the air?
