Nearly Half of ‘COVID Deaths’ Not Caused by the Virus, Researchers Find

Science & Health

6 hours ago

Originally posted by: Children's Health Defense

Hospitals in Athens, Greece, incorrectly attributed hundreds of deaths to COVID-19, according to a peer-reviewed study published Monday in Scientific Reports.

A team of 19 Greek doctors and researchers studying 530 deaths that occurred in seven Athens hospitals between January and August 2022, found nearly half of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were unrelated to the virus.

Researchers determined the virus was directly responsible for only a quarter — 133, or 25.1% — of the deaths.

In an additional 157 (29.6%) cases, COVID-19 “contributed to the chain of events leading to death” — for a total of 290 deaths “from” COVID-19.

Another 240 (45.3%) deaths occurred among people “with” COVID-19, but the deaths could not be directly attributed to the virus.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense, highlighted another key outcome of the study not mentioned in the text, but found in an accompanying table.

According to Jablonowski, among the 288 deaths of people whose vaccination status was known, and who died “from” COVID-19, more than half — 53.8%, or 155 — were vaccinated, either fully or boosted.

“Of the vaccinated who died ‘from’ COVID-19, 65.8% (102 of 155) were boosted,” he said.

The study also identified:

Inaccuracies on patients’ death certificates contributed to an overcount of COVID-19 deaths.
Misclassification of hospital-acquired infections, particularly among younger patients.
Significant differences in treatment among patients who died “from” or “with” COVID-19.

Public health physician and biotech consultant Dr. David Bell said the study reinforces what has been known since early 2020 and shown in other studies.

“The significance is that a Nature journal published it, indicating some return by this company to valuing truth over strictly business requirements,” Bell said.

Springer Nature, the publisher of Scientific Reports, is the world’s largest academic publisher.

“That the official reporting of death rates is that inflated, that far into the pandemic, strongly suggests the over-reporting was intentional,” said internal medicine physician Dr. Clayton J. Baker.

Other key findings of the study included:

Patients who died “with” COVID-19 were younger on average and were more likely to be immunosuppressed and suffering from serious conditions, such as end-stage liver disease or solid organ malignancy.
Patients who died “from” COVID-19 were more likely to be older, to have been admitted to an infectious disease ward, to have symptoms “compatible with COVID-19” such as hypoxia and shortness of breath, and to have received oxygen support or “COVID-19-specific treatment,” including administration of remdesivir.
Out of the 204 death certificates that listed COVID-19 as the patients’ direct cause of death, this was confirmed as true in only 132 (64.7%) of the cases following clinical review.
Of the 324 death certificates listing COVID-19 as a contributing factor in the patients’ deaths, this was confirmed in only 86 (26.5%) of cases after clinical review.
Patients who were infected with COVID-19 during their hospitalization had a 130% (odds ratio of 2.3) higher likelihood of being misclassified as having died “from” COVID-19.

‘Reasonable to conclude’ COVID death counts were ‘artificially inflated’

The researchers reviewed the chart files and the clinical and laboratory data, and conducted interviews with the physician who cared for the study subjects before they died.

Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher said he believes the study is methodologically sound.

“Unlike most studies relying on administrative coding, this investigation conducted a comprehensive clinical audit — combining full chart reviews, direct interviews with attending physicians and independent adjudication by expert reviewers,” Hulscher said.

The researchers said they chose to study deaths that occurred during the “Omicron wave” because the “higher infectivity and lower morbidity of the new variant, associated with lower risks of COVID-19-related hospitalization and death,” made it plausible that deaths “from” COVID-19 would be overcounted.

The authors also noted that, in Greece, any death occurring in a patient who tested positive for COVID-19 at the time of death was officially classified as a COVID-19-associated death.

Hulscher said this was common practice across many countries.

“Given that similar death coding practices were employed across Western nations, it is reasonable to conclude that COVID-19 death counts were artificially inflated to a comparable degree elsewhere,” Hulscher said.

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Bell attributed this practice to the financial and other incentives governments provided to hospitals.

“There was a financial desire to make a lot of money from rapidly developed mRNA vaccines and to set a precedent for this in the future,” Bell said. “As infections from SARS-CoV-2 virus were generally quite mild, it was necessary to scare people into thinking COVID-19 was far more severe, and far more prevalent, than it actually was.”

Jablonowski said the study’s results show that public health decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic were guided by fear instead of scientific or medical criteria.

“There was a fog that settled over mainstream media during the time … That fog invariably erred on the side of fear, leading to fear-based decisions being favored over rational decisions.”

According to Jablonowski, this fear led to a series of harms for society at large.

“Regardless of what the intention was behind the over-exaggeration of COVID-19 deaths, the consequences led us down the wrong path … We isolated with closed doors and mask coverings. We administered experimental drugs and experimental vaccines. Our hospitals became places of harm,” Jablonowski said.

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