Former Covid Absolutist Now Says We Are Overcounting Covid Deaths & Hospitalizations
An Israeli study shows that “long-covid” symptoms disappear within first year.
The Washington Post columnist and CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen once demanded that rights and privileges enjoyed by Americans be explicitly tied to getting the covid vaccine during the mandate push to autumn 2021.
The last time we checked in with the former covid-absolutist, she expressed regrets after constant masking hindered her son’s language development. She then embraced the idea I have championed since February 2020: Personal risk assessment.
Wen wrote in The Washington Post that we are overcounting covid deaths and hospitalizations.
Two infectious-disease experts I spoke with believe that the number of deaths attributed to covid is far greater than the actual number of people dying from covid. Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with covid are actually in the hospital for some other illness.
“Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for covid, many are incidentally positive,” he said. A gunshot victim or someone who had a heart attack, for example, could test positive for the virus, but the infection has no bearing on why they sought medical care.
This opinion aligns with other infectious disease experts, medical professionals, and epidemiologists. Unfortunately, as demonstrated in the #TwitterFiles, voices that challenged the covid narrative were silenced at the behest of the White House, bureaucrats, and politicians.
Wen interviewed Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, who estimated that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with covid are in the hospital for some cause.
She also spoke with infectious disease physician Dr. Shira Doron. She and her colleagues have found that using the steroid dexamethasone, a standard treatment for covid patients with low oxygen levels, was a good proxy measure for hospitalizations due to the coronavirus when evaluating records.
The physicians are pressing for more accurate numbers, so a proper assessment can be made of the current level of risk.
Both Dretler and Doron have faced criticism from people who say they are minimizing covid. That is not at all their aim. They have taken care of covid patients throughout the pandemic and have seen the evolution of the disease. Earlier on, covid pneumonia often killed otherwise healthy people.
Today, most patients in their hospitals carrying the coronavirus are there for another reason. They want the public to see what they’re seeing, because, as Doron says, “overcounting covid deaths undermines people’s sense of security and the efficacy of vaccines.”
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Most importantly, knowing who exactly is dying from covid can help us identify who is truly vulnerable. These are the patients we need to protect through better vaccines and treatments.
In other news related to the covid studies and media attention, there is a push to make “long covid” the next scary thing, as many people have recovered from at least one bout with the disease.
There is some good news from an Israeli study, which found that most people who contracted a mild COVID-19 saw their long-term symptoms resolve within the first year.
Some of the common symptoms include brain fog, loss of smell and taste, breathing problems, dizziness and weakness, heart palpitations, and strep throat.
Researchers found most of those problems went away after 12 months, but some doctors said they’re still seeing long-term covid symptoms in their patients.
Hopefully, news of the Israeli study and others supporting a more reasoned assessment of covid risks will no longer be suppressed on social media or Twitter.
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She will flip right back as the leftist narrative demands
Inflating the death counts, along with social distance and mask enforcement, was crucial into scaring people to accept mail in voting. Now that voting by mail is law in many states, it is no big deal to admit the count was inflated. They got what they wanted.
How much did hospitals bilk from this?
“Earlier on, covid pneumonia often killed otherwise healthy people.”
perhaps what we’re looking at should read:
(Earlier on) the incorrect treatment applied by physicians at hospitals to (covid pneumonia often killed otherwise healthy people.)
It’s beginning to appear that what we’re looking at is gross mismanagement of the disease and gross medical malpractice.
Incorrect treatments, denied treatments, cargo cult mandates, planned parent/hood, vaxxxines, and forward-looking collateral damage through social prescriptions and proscriptions. The modern model of an “ethical” religion (i.e. behavioral protocol).
My father would have died from medical neglect during his covid pneumonia. His doctor refused to see patients except through a phone call and prescribed him an antibiotic that disallowed prednisone and sunlight. When my fathers O2 sat dropped into the 70s, the ambulance my mom called gave no aid and said he wasn’t bad enough for the hospital (thank God). I kept urging him and my mother to seek treatment, but I didn’t understand every medical person they contacted said there was no treatment.
Finally, I took off work and drove to my parents, grabbed my dad, and got him to see Dr. Ralph Abraham in LA who was the only person doing the infusion treatments in our area. It was like a switch got flipped and dad began his recovery. Also, the good Dr. made room for us in his schedule at 5am the morning after I called him. Respect.
How many people killed by covid dies because they were simply denied treatment? I don’t have data, but my/my father’s experience surely isn’t singular.
Every member of my family that has been diagnosed with COVID has been essententially told to go home, untreated. Early outpatient treatment is important, and most doctors STILL are not prescribing it.
AND each of them responded well to early outpatient treatment, once they started it.
That’s not an entirely accurate statement. While treatment did improve as more was learned, there was an early skew for the most vulnerable.
In a highly contagious disease, the most vulnerable of the population disproportionately skew the fatality to their cohort. By the time of delta, most of those people were selected against and not replaced by enough newly vulnerable. (And many that thought they were vulnerable learned that they actually weren’t)
Is our cancel culture no longer functional? Leana Wen deserves to get cancelled permanently, and never seen or heard from again.
She might get cancelled, but nobody knows Wen.
She makes my stomach turn…
I know this is flippant and I don’t embrace cancel culture.
However, poetic justice does seem to have a role here IMO (and IYO it sounds like).
Every public health official, researcher and practitioner who jumped, without adequate supporting evidence and in many cases despite contrary evidence, onto the lockdown/masking/social distancing/flawed treatment bandwagon should pay a severe professional price. States should be investigating and revoking licences and credentials.
No need to wait for the Feds or some BS future commission to issue anodyne findings that ‘mistakes were made’. No more grant money for those involved, no more funding, no more licence, no further State funding and certain no more State employment. Same for hospitals found to have padded the numbers for Covid dollars and especially for those which denied treatment.
I personally don’t believe in being punitive for ideological reasons. I think you should reserve such vitriol for those that actively participated in a suppression of your rights. To be clear, some of those credentialed professionals do fall in that category. However, many others did it so they couldn’t be sued (which is another fundamental flaw in our system….blame and sue)
Long COVID is interesting in its parallel to CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). Might encourage a little more research into that?
No need. A syndrome is a cluster of symptoms. COVID is an infection. They aren’t mutually exclusive and it’s quite possible for COVID to cause or contribute to CFS.
Here is a good place to put in a plug for the FLCCC, essentially a shadow public health/medical organization, that has been investigating and promoting alternative treatments for Covid since 2021. Founded by Dr. Pierre Kory and Dr. Paul Marik they had there first educational conference in Orlando within the past few months. For a group of honest physicians that are trying to do the best for their patients I can wholeheartedly recommend this organization and I am a family physician that have been at this since 1980 so I do have some experience in the healing arts.
Well, DUH! Normal Americans have always known the ruling caste was conflating people who died of flu, people who died with COVID, and people who died of COVID. All to bolster the Big Lie used to justify shut downs.
The CDC admitted as far back as November 2020 that only 6% of the people reported to have died from COVID-19 actually died from COVID alone, rather than just happened to test positive and actually died from other causes.
The mainstream media should all hang their heads in shame at the selective reporting of information they did during this fake manipulated pandemic.
Fear is a huge motivator and too many people succumbed to it simply because they chose the wrong sources to get their news. Hopefully, by the time they try this again, which I expect will be sometime in 2023 (smallpox maybe), more will have become aware of how they were misled.