No, CDC data doesn't show 99% of reported COVID-19 deaths were from other causes | Fact check

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
·3 min read
263

The claim: CDC admits only 1% of reported COVID-19 deaths were actually caused by the disease

A Sept. 8 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a child lying in what appears to be a hospital bed, wearing a mask.

“The CDC has just quietly admitted that over 99% of reported ‘Covid deaths' were faked in order to scare the public into taking the experimental Covid jab,” the post reads. “Newly released data from the CDC reveals that most recorded fatalities that were blanket-blamed on Covid were caused by something else. According to the CDC's Covid dashboard, just 1.7% of the 324 'Covid deaths' registered in the week ending August 19 had Covid as the primary cause of death."

It goes on to claim most deaths attributed to COVID-19 were actually from cancer and heart disease.

The post was liked more than 100 times on Instagram in less than a week. A post making a similar claim had more than 20,000 likes before it was deleted.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

Our rating: False

The post misrepresents the data on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. The source actually said that COVID-19 deaths accounted for just 1.7% of all deaths from all causes in the U.S. that week. It has since been updated to 1.6%.

Data reflects all causes of death

The CDC did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but its COVID Data Tracker includes a footnote explaining the data. It says it compares deaths in the U.S. that are attributable to COVID-19 to all deaths from all causes in the country – not the percentage of deaths attributed to COVID-19 that were actually from the disease.

It includes a downloadable table showing there were 844 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. the week of Aug. 19, representing 1.6% of all deaths from all causes in the country. At the time the claim was made, the table showed 324 COVID-19 deaths, representing 1.7% of all reported deaths that week.

That actually represented a slight increase in the portion of deaths in the U.S. attributed to COVID-19. For the reporting periods ending May 13 through Aug. 12, COVID-19 was a cause of death in less than 1.5% of all deaths. The portion has since increased to 2.3% for the week ending Sept. 9. The highest percentage came the week ending Jan. 9, 2021, when COVID-19 was a cause of 29.9% of deaths in the U.S.

Fact check: COVID-19 is real, and new variant of the virus is spreading

Some versions of the claim point to an Aug. 28 article from the Daily Mail as proof the CDC admitted grossly exaggerating COVID-19 deaths. However, the outlet quickly appended a correction note to the story that reads:

“An earlier version of this article claimed 99 percent of Covid deaths in the past week were not primarily caused by the virus. In fact, a footnote at the bottom of the CDC's Covid data tracker explains the percentage of all reported deaths attributed as Covid-19 is calculated based on the number of deaths from all causes. We have amended the article to reflect this.”

The Instagram post also repeats a claim that the vaccines could have killed people by causing heart problems, cancer or other medical issues. USA TODAY has previously addressed baseless claims that the vaccines are unsafe, most recently debunking the idea that a study showed Pfizer’s vaccine causes “turbo cancer.”

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

The Associated Press previously debunked another version of the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CDC COVID-19 deaths correctly represented in data | Fact check