Critical Review of the Diagnostic and Statistical Support for COVID Epidemic in USA

Abstract

Jan Charles Biro*

Background: Two major flaws have been identified in collecting and interpreting the COVID epidemic data. 1) The United States ignored the International Guidelines for Certification and Classification (Coding) of COVID-19 as Cause of Death (20 April 2020– WHO). The Guidelines suggested the use of U07.1 code for virus identified (certain) and U07.2 code for virus not identified (suspected but not objectively confirmed) cases of deaths. The American statistic used exclusively the U07.1 code causing confusion and endless disputes about the accuracy of COVID mortality estimates in this country; 2) Large number of natural, age related, expected deaths have been reported as COVID related deaths even if the virus reasonably couldn’t play any causative role as the Underlying Cause of Death (UCOD).

Objective: A statistical method is suggested. 1) To estimate the realistic proportion of test-confirmed COVID mortality relative to the less well confirmed causes of COVID deaths there viral-test is missing; 2) to estimate the number of seniors who could have passed away ‘with’ COVID but not ‘because’ of COVID infection.

Methods: 1) The estimated maximal possible number of test-confirmed (true) cases of COVID deaths was based on the frequency of viral-test positivity in the population. It was possible because epidemiological studies indicated even distribution of infection in all categories of the persons in the entire population; 2) The age-normalized annual mortality (from actuarial tables) gives an idea how many persons could have died “normally” even without the COVID epidemic.

Results: 1) COVID as the Underlying Cause of Death (UCOD) haven’t been verified by specific laboratory viral test in ca. 40.3% of reported causes. These, exclusively HEARSAY information based cases violated the WHO guidelines for reporting COVID related deaths. (Use of U07.1 code); 2) Large number of natural, age related, expected deaths have been reported as COVID related deaths even if the virus reasonably couldn’t play any causative role as UCOD. These PSEUDO COVID deaths were ca 46% of all reported COVID deaths. The oldest persons in this group were 85+ years old and comprised as much as 28% to all allegedly COVID fatalities (the GERONTO COVID deaths). These errors significantly inflated the number of COVID deaths and the related mortality statistic.

Conclusion: The number of correctly identified COVID related deaths in our study is about 32% of the officially published number [171K instead of 533K, respectively]. The average FATALITY of COVID stays at ~0.54% and the MORTALITY 53/100K (On May 2021).