Fact Checking Claims About a Statement by Rochelle Walensky

A viral video of the CDC director discussing COVID deaths and comorbidities is missing context.

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On Monday, a video went viral in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said, “The overwhelming number of [COVID-19] death, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities.” 

The video came from an interview Walensky did on Good Morning America, and was cited as proof that coronavirus is a virus with limited risk for all but the already ill. But the presentation of Walensky’s comments removes important context: Walensky did not say 75 percent of COVID deaths have occurred among those with four comorbidities; she said that 75 percent of COVID deaths among the vaccinated members of a recent study have occurred among those with four comorbidities.

You can watch the full segment of the video here:

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  1. Avatar photo
    David M

    Context is that which is scarce.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    I wonder what the data looks like when one controls for age among the vaccinated?
    The overall CDC data through November showed that roughly 76% of deaths were geezers (65 and older). Fortunately I am both vaccinated and a non-geezer, except to my undergrads who think anyone over 30 is a geezer....

    But then again, if I may channel my inner Pink Floyd, getting older is "𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡!"

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  3. Harrison.Smith

    The CDC comorbidities website you link to states that "For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 4.0 additional conditions or causes per death." So while the CDC representative Conley would not say what percent of TOTAL US Covid deaths had four or more comorbidities, the fact that the average was 4.0 is pretty compelling. Basically, Covid kills very, very few otherwise healthy people. Isn't that more of a revelation than the wrong take people had on Wallensky's edited comments???

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    1. Will

      TLDR - the data sets are not equivalent. The study Ms. Walensky is referring to evaluated the presence of a selection of pre-existing comorbidities believed to be risk factors for COVID. The CDC table you're referring to is just talking about any comorbidity on the death certificate. For example, the CDC table lists both diabetes and respiratory failure in the "contributing conditions" table on the page you're referencing. Diabetes is a comorbidity assessed in the study. Respiratory failure, not being a pre-existing risk factor, was not. The CDC table is going to have a higher count of contributing factors than the study because the study was focused on a subset of pre-existing factors.

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      1. Harrison.Smith

        Even though the info is not exactly the same, it is hard to argue that it isn't suggesting that a very small fraction of Covid deaths occurred in otherwise healthy people. 95% of the deaths occurred in people with, on average, 4 other comorbidities. You don't need the categories to match up perfectly to know what that means...

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      2. Harrison.Smith

        Why has the CDC made it impossible to figure out how many otherwise healthy people have died from Covid? Why do we only get meaningful numbers from them when it suits their goals? Israel and the UK do a much better job collecting useful information about Covid and they do a much better job sharing it than the CDC does. For goodness sake, the CDC admits it stopped collecting information on vaccinated breakthrough cases altogether on 3/31/21!!!! They have never told us anything about children who have died with/from Covid. They have only started sharing WITH vs FROM information in the past few weeks. Why is that?

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    2. Avatar photo
      George.Skinner

      Very few healthy people who are vaccinated. Get vaccinated.

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      1. Harrison.Smith

        Very few healthy people PERIOD. Look at the statistics on the CDC website. I am vaccinated. Get educated.

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  4. Avatar photo
    A Blumer

    Thanks for this!

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  5. Suzanne

    Thank you for fact checking this.

    This study documents the amazing success of the shots. I liked that she discussed the low percentages. Wish she would have stated numbers instead of percentage. (36 people out of 1.2 million died and 28 of them had at least 4 underlying risk factors.) These are incredibly low numbers.

    This study demonstrates the reason to get vaccinated. Wish the Biden administration was better at marketing.

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  6. Jaybrown

    Is it too much to ask that you state explicitly exactly what the "comorbidities" are?

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      Adam Bridge

      Perhaps there was an edit by the time I read this but in the 3rd or 4th paragraph there's a definition of what comorbidities are. Should have been in the 1st paragraph.

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    George.Skinner

    This whole episode has been like somebody misreading a tide table and raging that King Canute has been scamming them the whole time. Meanwhile, the rising king tide is around their ankles, and they’re about to get cut off from the rest of the beach…

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  8. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    Solid work, as usual.

    “And why should the people listen to you?”

    “Because, unlike some other ‘fact checks,’ the Dispatch sticks to the facts.”

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  9. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Thanks for the nuance.

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  10. D B

    Thanks. Unfortunately, this one is getting a lot of traction.

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