On Viral Videos

It seems that there was a youtube video making the rounds, called "Plandemic".  which was full of conspiracy theories and false information. Youtube took the video down, but not before it got widely shared. Because sharing nonsense apparently is like a "little hamster pellet of dopamine" to some people. I have to credit my sister with that phrase.  Anyway, my nephew, Dr. Tony Macdissi, wrote a good post on Facebook addressing some of the issues, including mortality statistics and what appears on death certificates.  His article is after the break:

"As a physician, I’m frequently asked my opinions about COVID-19. I’m a hospitalist, which means I treat patients who are sick enough to be admitted to the hospital - including COVID-19 patients. One of the main questions I’m asked is: is this virus as bad as the news makes it seem? Is it worse? My answer is that COVID-19 has a huge spectrum of how mild to severe it can be. In this way, it can be compared to a bruise. When someone gets hit, they don’t bruise right away; it takes a little time before you see it. The bruise can be small, unseen, and a little sore. Or that bruise can feel like you were hit by a truck. This is COVID-19, it can be silent and asymptomatic or cause severe symptoms including death.

This virus is deadly, something I’m hoping we have all realized by now as we continue to see the death count rise on a daily basis. One of the biggest questions we are having trouble answering is “how deadly?” RIght now, we don’t know. This is why you keep hearing the experts place an emphasis on testing. The more we test, the more we see. There are many people who may have had (or currently have) the virus with minimal to no symptoms. Doomsayers will say that this shows the virus is even more contagious than we thought. Others will say this shows it’s less deadly than we thought because people have been walking around, contagious, without knowing it. Neither side is completely wrong.

Recently, there’s been various claims circulating regarding COVID-19, ranging from the origins of the virus and whether it was genetically modified in a lab, to how deadly it is (deaths being falsely attributed to COVID-19 as well as deaths from COVID-19 being under-reported), with conspiracy theories running rampant about some of these issues - particularly the documentary “Plandemic”. I haven’t had the time or energy to respond to everyone (sorry), but I did want to take a little time to try and respond to some of the misinformation out there right now.

1. COVID-19 mortality. The point about people dying "of" COVID-19 vs "from" COVID-19 is more semantics than anything else. If I wanted, I could put “cardiopulmonary arrest” (heart and lung stopped) for cause of death in every death certificate I write, because ultimately, that’s how all people die. But I don’t. We've seen a variety of presentations from the COVID-19 infection itself, reported in journals across countries and health systems. We know that the virus can cause blood clots in the body, including the lungs (pulmonary embolism), in the heart (heart attack), and brain (strokes). We've also seen the virus cause renal failure and liver failure. So it's not medically inaccurate to call these deaths COVID-19-related deaths. Physicians tend to agree; the virus caused the other problems, leading to death. It is correct that Medicare reimburses the hospital more for COVID-19 cases, and they should- it requires a lot more resources to take care of these patients. But we as doctors don’t see that money and have zero incentive to inappropriately attribute deaths to COVID-19. Also, it would be fraud to do so. From what I've seen here in Omaha, there has not been any inappropriate pushes to call unrelated illnesses and deaths COVID-19 related. When testing was less readily available in other areas of the country (specifically New York), my understanding is that physicians were allowed to designate a death as a probable COVID-19 related death because the patient could not be tested. Is there a chance that some deaths were inaccurately attributed to COVID-19? Probably. However, it’s also very likely that we missed deaths that were COVID-19 related and did not accurately attribute deaths to the virus. If you look at the CDC data through April, the U.S had more than 66,000 excess deaths since January 1st. “Excess” means 66,000 more total deaths than we’ve averaged in past years. Only about 33,000 were attributed to COVID-19 directly, so the estimates for the under-reporting are likely a lot higher than the few that may have been over-reported.

2. Origins of COVID-19. From a scientific standpoint, it’s very likely this virus occurred naturally and was not created in a lab. The vast majority of scientists across the world have come to the same conclusion that this was a natural transformation of a previously existing coronavirus. I will save the biochemistry talk for some other time (if I have time.)

3. “Plandemic”. This so-called documentary is full of half-truths and outright lies. It preys on people looking for a good conspiracy theory. YouTube’s deletion of the video seems to be adding fuel to the fire, but YouTube is not the government, and therefore, as my lawyer wife tells me, this is not unlawful censorship. The maker of Plandemic is obviously free to post on its own website. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for YouTube as a private company to try to limit misinformation on their platform. As lenient as YouTube has been in the past, this should indicate how questionable this “documentary” is.

But, I digress. As far as the video itself goes, there’s already some good discussion out there of how inaccurate it is. I will try to share some discussion threads separately. Suffice it to say, when the filmmaker can’t spell “filmmaker” correctly in the opening video, everyone should be skeptical.

Please, continue to ask questions about COVID-19, but also question the quality of content you see on social media before sharing videos that do more harm than good. And please, listen to the experts. "

There is a Forbes article by Tara Haelle, which is also worth reading, explaining why conspiracy theories attract so many people.