I think your claim about “exaggerating” counts might be more believable to some of us if you could provide us with actual examples of government entities or hospitals (those who actually produce the figures used in epidemiological predictions) exaggerating the true count. I’m not saying it never happened, I’m just inviting you to support that claim by citing actual examples of it happening.
There is no evidence to support that rumor. The rumor was spread on social media after Scott Jensen, a Minnesota state legislator, discussed medicare payments to hospitals for treating Covid-19 patients on Fox News. But during the interview Jensen explained that, while Medicare had begun paying hospitals for treating Covid-19 patients, there are no payments to hospitals at all simply for classifying a patient as having the virus. And there are no financial incentives for classifying a death as due to Covid-19, when it was not.
In addition, Jensen admitted during the interview that there is no evidence that any hospitals or doctors had submitted fraudulent billing to Medicare claiming that a patient had Covid-19 when in fact they did not, and no evidence that any hospitals or doctors had treated any patients for Covid-19 when they knew the patient was not infected with the virus. To this day, I have not seen any such evidence, either.
I find it difficult to understand why people get their kicks promoting totally unsupported conspiracy theories impugning the character of people working in dangerous conditions or in thankless government jobs during an emergency, trying to help people and earn a living like anyone else. Promoting false information about serious subjects can hurt people, and in this pandemic it already has.
OK you might be right, but don’t the hospitals during pandemic get paid by county or city? Or is it just a loan? I think they reopened hospitals that were already permanently closed for a while. Something like that takes some serious money.
Well, it’s like Lenin said, it’s not who votes that determines elections, it’s who counts the votes, and, well, you know…
Vladimir or John?
STFU, Donny! V. I. Lenin! Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov…
NorthernHarrior
You just need to take human nature into account. There are a few things going on. Are you saying there is No evidence of Medicare fraud? Have you been to the hospital lately? I can’t remember the last hospital bill I’ve seen that didn’t have any errors.
I see Lightbringer brings up a good point about how the tests are counted. It’s not that the individuals are being told they are + when they’re - or the other way around. It’s how the the count is taken. We’ve seen the reports of not counting/reporting negatives in Florida.
History really does repeat itself. Kinda sorta like today with the “the election is rigged, unless I win” rhetoric.
It looks like pennzy has complete faith in the system. We will see in November, assuming we know who wins by then.
Complete? Nah, enough though unless shown some facts to the contrary.
Pennzy
Forgive me, but I live in NJ. I just saw a news story about the ballots just found from the primary back in July. That comes on the heals of this story from an election back in may. New Local Election Ordered in N.J. After Mail-In Voter Fraud Charges - The New York Times
I also know of many other ballot/election injustices over the years. One involving a State mental institution in a small town.
My guess is that human nature is human nature in PA as well as in NJ.
Edited to add: What’s the difference between ballots and covid19 tests?
Any close election in this country is going to turn into a mess. Our system is not set up to get to the nitty gritty. As long as it is not close I feel the system is going to do fine. Get out and vote everyone.
I never said there is no Medicare fraud overall. I’m not going to entertain off-topic subjects and arguments that have nothing to do with what we have been discussing in this thread.
As for the counting of Covid-19 deaths, we have been over and over the issues about counting deaths in this thread. The overwhelming consensus of medical experts is that the deaths have been substantially under-counted overall, not over-counted. There are different methods of counting from state to state, and as we’ve discussed, political considerations and pushing to re-open states as soon as possible have also led to changes in how various states are counting deaths. But the overall excess death counts show that the nation is at about 200,000 in excess deaths for the past six months or so. That is consistent with the overall death count reported in the major media.
Here are a few articles on the subject of counting deaths, as I know you’ve been relying on others to provide evidence related to the issues you bring up:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/about-30-covid-deaths-may-not-be-classified-such
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries
NorthernHarrier
You could be right. Maybe we did we get that much better (15 times better suddenly 6 months ago) at counting since H1N1 H1N1 Swine Flu May Have Killed 15 Times More Than First Said - ABC News (It does seem strange that it took 3 years to figure that out.)
I hope we did. But, we have to ask what changed and why. Not to mention the way people use the numbers in political attacks, and I don’t necessarily blame the doctors for that.
> maybe we did get that much better ….
As the article points out, this is unsurprising:
This is exactly to type of thing I’ve been talking about: MSN
Just for the record, you can’t blame the doctors for this.
Wouldn’t you call covering up the truth, exaggerating? While this story wasn’t about total death numbers it does show how good numbers are hidden for political reasons. I’m sure this type of thing is being done with death numbers as well to make thing appear worse/higher than they actually are.
:zipper_mouth_face: I think these aliens are embedded, I see their vehicles at least every other day
I never finished watching the video about a lot of patents being forgeries, was it a hoax?
So the mass graves in NYC and Brasil, convoys of military trucks carrying bodies to cremation sites in Italy, scores of refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues all over the world were some kind of political stunt? Accuracy can always be debated and certainly there are distortions. When the death industry is overwhelmed all over the world deaths are certainly significantly higher than usual.
As for death numbers, given a few months to work things through, they are probably one of the most accurate numbers we can count on. Nothing certain like death and taxes. Cause of death is certainly not straight forward. Death is. Total mortality is significantly higher than normal. That is not a political statement. Those numbers are not politically manipulated but take time to completely record. Some may try to take advantage of that delay to distort the picture but we certainly have a clear picture from March, April, and May by now. Saying the numbers are distorted to inflate death is simply not accurate.