Adventures in Death Coding: 19 Comically Absurd Minnesota UCoD "Covid" Deaths [Unsurprisingly] Accepted by the CDC

The Great Covid UCoD Laundering Scheme, Part 3

Background:

UCoD (Underlying Cause of Death) refers to “the disease or injury that initiated the train of events leading directly to death, or the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury”

MCoD (Multiple Causes of Death) refers to “the immediate cause of death and all other intermediate and contributory conditions listed on the death certificate” (everything else)

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Since we are duly informed by the venerable CDC that they scrutinize, interrogate, and invalidate conditions documented by coroners as a CoD, we can presume that of course the CDC is merely following their own rigorous and objectively applied standards.

Well. . . .

Hmmmmm. . . .

Yeah, they’re not. Duh.

I am sorting through the conditions listed on death certificates as the UCoD that mention covid in some way that the CDC assigned the U07.1 ICD code [for covid] as the UCoD.

Since it is necessary to highlight these on an individual level to appreciate the. . . ‘shortcomings’ (we’re being nice) of the CDC’s adjudicative processes here, we’re going to have to break this up into a number of presentations, as there are hundreds of death certificates from each state to waddle through.

The categories I am sorting the questionable assignments of U07.1 as the UCoD where the death certificate UCoD references covid into are:

• Wackadoodle

• Covid AND _____

• Covid in Setting of ______

• _____ in Setting of Covid

• "Suspected" / “Presumed” covid

• “History of”

• Misc

For today, we will look at the 19 death certificates in the category the elegantly christened ‘wackadoodle’ category, where the CDC’s application of U07.1 for the UCoD seems unduly egregious.

Remember, the UCoD isn’t just “one of” the CoD’s, it’s THE CoD identified as the primary catalyst or cause of the death.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #1☣️

If the coroner writes “unclear how much covid-19 contributed”, that should tip you off that maybe covid wasn’t “the disease or injury that initiated the train of events leading directly to death”. Especially when the patient was 91 with advanced dementia, hypertensive, and suffering from heart and kidney disease. Oh, and there wasn’t even any record of actual covid *symptoms*.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #2☣️

Here we have an 85yo decedent suffering from dementia, congestive heart failure (“CHF”), stage 4 chronic kidney disease (CKD), and diabetes mellitus (DM). This fellow also had a “probable positive test” 6 days before he departed this world.

Confounding us further is that the language here is a tad unclear. It sounds like the coroner is trying to articulate that he suspects the existence of a covid infection because of a positive covid test 6 days prior to death. But there’s no documentation of any covid disease or symptoms.

And even if we grant the positive test was 100% conclusive of covid disease, heck even if he had 100 positive tests, how did the CDC adjudicate which of the myriad conditions mentioned in Cause A would get the coveted UCoD designation?? Yes, the doc completely botched this death certificate big time - there is only supposed to be ONE condition per line in Part 1 of a death certificate (Causes A-D). That still doesn’t really explain how the CDC arrived at the conclusion that the ‘probable’ covid test represented the condition most likely to have “initiated the train of events leading directly to death”.

That must’ve been one whopper of an asymptomatic covid. . .

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #3☣️

Here we literally have a case of death by ASYMPTOMATIC covid. The obvious clinical incoherence of death by something without any clinical manifestation is of no concern to the CDC. The CDC also seems unperturbed by the logical impossibility of the “asymptomatic covid” which started *DAYS* prior to death CAUSING some nasty cirrhosis/hep C to manifest YEARS before covid jumped from bat to bat to civet to rodent to dog to human in the Wuhan wet market.

(Unless those pesky aliens the government caught taught the CDC how to time travel? Or maybe the CDC knows something we don’t about the home planet of the decedent that we don’t?)

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #4☣️

Generally, a patient moves into hospice *after* the patient is diagnosed with their terminal illness. Which makes it rather odd to assign the UCoD here as covid. How can a covid infection in a hospice patient could cause the condition which landed the patient in hospice in the first place? Seems like a unsolvable mystery. Or is this another time-warping reversed cause-and-effect conundrum?

Man, those aliens really are something. . .

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #5☣️

This death offers an illustration of just how much latitude the CDC had in mind when it instructs coroners to use their “best medical judgement” (maybe ‘best’ is a bit of an exaggeration?).

Even a layman would probably be right to presume that an 85 yo man with “advanced Parkinson’s disease” who tested negative for covid was probably killed by his Parkinson’s or related pathology. Yet, our expert coroner decided in his profound wisdom that not only was the test wrong, but that the sneaky covid was actually the real primary cause of death!! Or maybe it’s just the overwhelming covid juggernaut that steamrolls over trivial annoyances like negative tests.

Points for honesty though?

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #6☣️

If we read this death certificate literally, the decedent suffered heart failure which led to respiratory and circulatory cessation which was instigated by testing positive when he died. That’s a mind-bender all right. Being (slightly) more serious, this looks like a textbook example of incidental testing of patients who are on their way ‘out’ where there is no reason to suspect covid has any clinical relevance.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #7☣️

Loony death #7 is a comedy-tragedy.

The comedy is that the CDC ‘somehow’ ‘missed’ the minor detail that the death certificate clearly does not mean to convey that the decedent suffered from a clinical covid infection. “Covid visitation and interaction restriction related depressed mode” describes, however unartfully formulated, that the patient was DEPRESSED BECAUSE OF THE COVID **POLICIES**, not that the patient had covid herself!! ChatGPT could probably due a superior job to the super-secret CDC algorithm that assigns ICD codes.

The tragedy is that this patient was killed by the loneliness imposed by the barbaric, demented covid policies in nursing homes that utterly ravaged the poor seniors and treated them like disposable garbage.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #8☣️

Can covid cause a death if it was ‘inactive’ at the time of death? I have no idea. Even if it was active, does it seem likely that the “unclear” covid was the primary CoD over the other six listed conditions (we’ll grant the pneumonia as a sequelae of covid)?

I thought that CDC averred the whole notion that its ICD adjudication was basically a crapshoot. Silly me.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #9☣️

Another case of hospice covid. Yawn.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #10☣️

This time, the coroner was open that the patient was killed by ‘incidental covid’. Well, “likely” incidental. If you’re not sure whether the covid is incidental, doesn’t that by definition mean that there weren’t any symptoms of covid???

Yet the CDC ruled that here the “likely incidental” covid infection caused the acute stroke which caused the acute encephalopathy and so on.

But remember, the CDC insists “vaccinated 10 hours before death” obviously is intended to convey that the vaccine had NO side effects and played NO role in the death whatsoever.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #11☣️

This ME has even more gumption than the previous ME who overrode a negative test result - here he overrode not one but TWO negative tests. And in the face of vascular dementia and a prior stroke too.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #12☣️

This death certificate is a bit hard to parse. But we shall try nonetheless.

As we are all well aware, elective surgeries were mostly canceled in 2020 because of COVID MANIA™️. There is less than a snowman’s chance of survival jumping into an active volcano that an elective surgery was performed on a covid positive patient in 2020. Which is of course stipulated in Part 2 - “covid infection months prior to elective surgery”.

So it would seem that there are two competing interpretations of the chain of events leading to the patient’s death here:

1. Ancient resolved covid infection caused a ‘massive’ pulmonary embolism months after the fact

2. The PE was a complication of the much more recent surgery (and which is a known potential complication of many surgeries)

This is practically not even a choice at all. Option #1, DUH.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #13☣️

52-yo women without *any* known comorbidities or other medical conditions are typically mobile and active. So the fact that this lovely lady was *diagnosed* with covid suggests that the covid wasn’t an acutely severe disease. Which should indicate that her sudden death was caused by something else? (I think her vaccination status might be germane here. . .)

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #14☣️

This case of death-by-incidental-covid is confirmed 100% incidental. And in a patient who was receiving palliative care. In other words, she was already saying her goodbyes (over a hospital iPad probably).

So of course, the incidental covid “initiated the train of events leading directly to death”. DUH DUH DUH.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #15☣️

“Natural death. Possible covid.”

CDC: Definitely covid.

Me: What’s her vaccination status?????

Even if you want to put a U07.1 for the “possible” covid, what is the basis for assigning it as the UCoD??? Shouldn’t the definitive diagnosis take precedence?

(This feels like “possible covid” was used to cover for another possibility that was considered less appealing. . .)

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #16☣️

I honestly have no idea what a “presumptive positive covid-19” is supposed to mean. I get a presumptive covid. But what does it mean to presume a test result that you don’t have?? If the standard for attributing a 90 yo dementia death to covid is merely that one ‘presumes’ a test would come back positive if you bothered to get the result, then pretty much every death in every nursing home is a covid death??

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #17☣️

Another case of ME vs. negative covid test. At least they have the decency to describe the covid as “probable”.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #18☣️

So the covid caused the failure to thrive afterwards. Never mind the diabetes, heart disease, atherosclerosis, and kidney disease. It was obviously the recent covid infection that didn’t produce any identifiable clinical sequelae.

☣️MINNESOTA LOONY COVID UCoD DEATH #19☣️

“Suspicious for covid despite negative test result.” This sentence is so churlish that it refutes itself. Cuz there’s nothing else out there that could possibly cause sepsis in a 79 yo Long Term Care resident with dementia.