Fact Check: CDC counts deaths as COVID even if that was not the cause

[nett]

Yet plenty of us know second hand accounts of that happening. Mennonites are a small world, and when someone dies. Everyone talks about it. Often a volunteer firefighter from church is on the EMT squad.

and if that emt is talking about calls and such outside of the call, with someone who was not involved on that call, that can very easily become a violation of law.

What law?

[justme]

Happens all the time, with personal details removed. Most emt, doctor, nurse, etc. do this with their friends/family.

just because it happens all the time doesn't make it right.

Example: all the nurses putting up videos on Twitter/TikTok about “I have a patient who just had to be intubated and regrets not being vaccinated!” Is this a violation of the law?

is the patient identifiable?
i'm not going to say if it is or is not a violation of the law. i will say that i'm not a fan of those types of videos.

i was in ems for 25 years. 10 of those years as a paramedic.
i was also privacy officer for our company.
i've been out of ems for about 6 years now, and i know things have changed. but i can't imagine that privacy laws have relaxed.

[Josh]

Happens all the time, with personal details removed. Most emt, doctor, nurse, etc. do this with their friends/family.

just because it happens all the time doesn't make it right.

Example: all the nurses putting up videos on Twitter/TikTok about “I have a patient who just had to be intubated and regrets not being vaccinated!” Is this a violation of the law?

is the patient identifiable?
i'm not going to say if it is or is not a violation of the law. i will say that i'm not a fan of those types of videos.

i was in ems for 25 years. 10 of those years as a paramedic.
i was also privacy officer for our company.
i've been out of ems for about 6 years now, and i know things have changed. but i can't imagine that privacy laws have relaxed.

Not identifiable in either case. Thus, no HIPAA concern.

I used to deal with HIPAA compliance for populations in the hundreds of thousands (universities) so I’m well acquainted with how these laws works. Thanks for your concern anyway.

[Valerie]

If a dead body had a positive test they get marked as a covid death. So people who get killed in car accidents end up being listed in covid statistics.

False. See above. The CDC specifically tells people marking deaths not to do that.

In a car accident, Covid-19 did not cause or contribute to the death. The death certificate will not claim it did. I'm wondering if they would even bother testing someone who dies in a car accident for Covid-19.

Yet plenty of us know second hand accounts of that happening. Mennonites are a small world, and when someone dies. Everyone talks about it. Often a volunteer firefighter from church is on the EMT squad.

And this kind of death rate inflation happens.

Boot, almost every person in my church has had covid, out of 150 or so members. And we’re told the death rate is 1.8%. Nobody’s died. It seems statistically impossible.

I have heard from others too that this has happened to their lost loved one- & they were pretty upset!

[justme]

Happens all the time, with personal details removed. Most emt, doctor, nurse, etc. do this with their friends/family.

just because it happens all the time doesn't make it right.

Example: all the nurses putting up videos on Twitter/TikTok about “I have a patient who just had to be intubated and regrets not being vaccinated!” Is this a violation of the law?

is the patient identifiable?
i'm not going to say if it is or is not a violation of the law. i will say that i'm not a fan of those types of videos.

i was in ems for 25 years. 10 of those years as a paramedic.
i was also privacy officer for our company.
i've been out of ems for about 6 years now, and i know things have changed. but i can't imagine that privacy laws have relaxed.

Not identifiable in either case. Thus, no HIPAA concern.

I used to deal with HIPAA compliance for populations in the hundreds of thousands (universities) so I’m well acquainted with how these laws works. Thanks for your concern anyway.

is there ANYTHING that you are not an expert in?

and if there is no HIPAA concern, then why were you concerned about ken's posting?
because it was coming from ken, and not from you or your perfect church?

If a nurse chooses not to get vaccinated, and then carries a Covid infection into a hospital ward where vulnerable immuno-compromised patients are being treated. Or even just a retirement home with elderly patients that have weak immune systems. And people die as a result. Should that nurse be prosecuted for negligent manslaughter?

This is not a far-fetched scenario. Recently my wife who is a physician had a telemedicine consult with an unvaccinated nursing home nurse who was one of her patients. She was unvaccinated and claiming a religious exemption because my wife had previously refused to give her a medical exemption. The nurse was reporting vague mild symptoms that potentially could have been Covid but also could have been an ordinary cold or flu. My wife instructed her that under no circumstances should she go to to work. That she needed to get Covid tested and self-isolate until cleared of the disease. The nurse ignored her instructions and went to work anyway. Several days later her symptoms worsened and she tested positive for Covid. The outbreak she caused at the nursing home, which was contact-traced directly back to her, resulted in the deaths of 3 residents and the hospitalization of several more.

Afterwards this same nurse came to my wife in tears and remorse, begging her to edit her medical record to remove the note stating that my wife had advised her that she was to self-isolate and not return to work until cleared of Covid. My wife refused and the nurse was subsequently fired for failing to adhere to hospital Covid protocol.

If you are a rural hermit then your personal choice to vaccinate or not vaccinate affects no one else. If you are a health-care professional then it has potentially life-threatening consequences for others in your care.

Ken,

That's an awful lot of personally identifying information you've shared from your wife. Does she regularly violate HIPAA this much with you, and then look the other way when you go and share it on a public Internet forum?

You seem almost gleeful that someone who has a religious objection to vaccination ended up "killing 3 people" (which is pure speculation on your part - can you point us to any evidence so that we know your story is true?) along with describing her "tears and remorse" and then gleefully talking about her getting fired from her job.

I don't know any more details. There are literally dozens and dozens of nursing homes in this region that have had deadly outbreaks of Covid including a Menno-affiliated one that had 18 Covid deaths and is embroiled in lawsuits" https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/ ... laims.html

[Josh]

Yes, justme, there are lots of things I’m not an expert in. I tend not to offer much commentary when I have no idea what I’m talking about.

I pointed one what Ken was doing because it was far more personally identifiable: he shared details about a specific patient’s visit with his wife. There’s very different from me vaguely sharing a story an EMT has shared with no details like what state this was on.

An EMT who is an acquaintance treating a car wreck is not personally identifiable.

Your wife refusing a covid exemption to a specific patient in a specific state comes much closer to “personally identifiable”.

By the way, this is the stuff you learn at HIPAA training classes for people responsible for setting policy and for creating systems to ensure compliance.

[Soloist]

There are details of my patients that would be considered to violate the law despite not being related to medical... Expressing for example what movie choices they like can actually end up being identifying, mentioning type of food they eat...

To figure out if Ken's wife violated the law would have to determine if the patient was identifiable and generally these stories get by until they get posted to face book and the person in question sues. Regularly posting stories tends to be frowned on even though most people do it. I doubt his wife is in any legal threat unless a rabid antivaxxer stumbles in here and tries to chase her down. I could figure it out maybe... I don't see a point. It is a little edgy though.

[justme]

There’s very different from me vaguely sharing a story an EMT has shared with no details like what state this was on.

An EMT who is an acquaintance treating a car wreck is not personally identifiable.

it is identifiable at the time that EMT is telling the story.
by the time it gets around to josh telling the same story later on to someone not involved, it may not be identifiable. and it's not a HIPAA violation for josh to tell that story, because there is no treatment or payment relationship involved w josh and that pt.
but the EMT is in the wrong at the very beginning for even telling that story to someone who was not involved in that call.
that is my point.

Your wife refusing a covid exemption to a specific patient in a specific state comes much closer to “personally identifiable”.

you are correct. it is much easier to identify that pt. that was my concern when i saw those few posts.
even that being said, Ken is not in violation of HIPAA, his wife may be. Ken has no treatment or payment relationship w that pt.

this is the beginning of this exchange

Yet plenty of us know second hand accounts of that happening. Mennonites are a small world, and when someone dies. Everyone talks about it. Often a volunteer firefighter from church is on the EMT squad.

and if that emt is talking about calls and such outside of the call, with someone who was not involved on that call, that can very easily become a violation of law.

Happens all the time, with personal details removed. Most emt, doctor, nurse, etc. do this with their friends/family.

Example: all the nurses putting up videos on Twitter/TikTok about “I have a patient who just had to be intubated and regrets not being vaccinated!” Is this a violation of the law?

so in your world, it's ok for EMS and others to gossip about their patients and calls?

[Josh]

so in your world, it's ok for EMS and others to gossip about their patients and calls?

It depends on their motives, but I don't see a problem at all in discussing past events in a private community, particularly when the discussion involves death certificates with false causes of death. I don't see that as a problem at all. Why should an EMT having a conversation with me keep silent about that?

Laws or regulations like HIPAA, ERISA, and FISA mostly are useful tools in the corporate administrator's arsenal to have excuses to (a) avoid doing their job, and (b) create make-work jobs for even more administrators. (I should know, I've spent much of my career being one of those people.)

It's become obvious HIPAA is not about protecting patient privacy at all. We've heard over and over that HIPAA doesn't protect employees from being forced to disclose their vaccination status. And HIPAA doesn't protect patient privacy from government intrusion or overreach either.

So, justme, what exactly are you arguing for? Do you think falsified death certificates are something EMTs should keep quiet about because they should somehow comply with HIPAA regulations that don't even actually exist?

[Josh]

To figure out if Ken's wife violated the law would have to determine if the patient was identifiable and generally these stories get by until they get posted to face book and the person in question sues. Regularly posting stories tends to be frowned on even though most people do it. I doubt his wife is in any legal threat unless a rabid antivaxxer stumbles in here and tries to chase her down. I could figure it out maybe... I don't see a point. It is a little edgy though.

Telling your spouse stuff they then repeat on public social media (or public Internet forums) is actually one of the things that comes up in training, since it often means things that are quite personally identifiable (particularly if the incident is notable). So that's why I pointed out what Ken did. The story he told was very specific with a lot of details.

Sharing that an EMT has seen a pattern of falsified death certificates listing COVID as a cause of death for traffic accidents, on the other hand, is not remotely a HIPAA violation. It's laughable that anyone would even think it could be.