Financial cost of Covid and who will pay the bill

In Ireland you wouldn't have been included in the death stats ... I thought it went from the death cert causes, which is why the lag in deaths were so pronounced. It's not automatic that a positive covid means it is included. A heart attack is a murky one because covid could be a contributing factor. But as we would expect a certain number of people to die from hearts attacks etc in the year, that is where the excess death figure comes in.
Fair enough. I was under the impression that a person who had Covid and died was a Covid death. It is certainly the case that plenty of people who were close to death (would have dies within weeks or months) were in the statistics.
 
This was investigated by The Journal in July 2020 in response to misleading social media posts.

Death certificates

The document adds that Covid-19 “should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents (deceased people) where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death”.

The guidelines also note that if the person who died was suffering from other conditions, these should also be included on the death certificate.

For example, in cases where Covid-19 caused pneumonia and fatal respiratory distress, both pneumonia and respiratory distress should be included on the certificate, along with the virus, to highlight the “chain of events” that led to the person’s death.”

“They added that where the treating doctor has “a strong clinical suspicion” the patient had Covid-19 “due to the circumstances” and “the nature of the illness” but where the person has tested negative for the virus, or not been tested at all, these deaths will be notified to the national surveillance system and reported by the HPSC as a death in a “probable/possible Covid-19 case”.

If it is later confirmed that the patient in question did not have the virus, their death is removed from the official figures.

When announcing the latest figures in its daily press release, the Department of Health sometimes includes the following line: “Validation of data at the HPSC has resulted in the denotification of x death(s).” This is generally a low number and indicates that a death previously listed as being caused or probably caused by Covid-19 was later found to be incorrectly categorised.

The HSE spokesperson said there are “different reasons as to why Covid-19 deaths would be denotified, for example, test results pending which are subsequently negative or validation of data which may identify duplicate entries”.”
 
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