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A new study – still awaiting peer review – picked up by The Atlantic, of all places, puts the recent fear campaign over the number of Americans hospitalized with the Wuhan coronavirus into perspective. In particular, the study conducted by a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, found that many of those “hospitalized with COVID” are not the dire situations publicized by the liberal media and the main democrats.
The top shocking takeaway researchers came up with: “About half of all hospital patients appearing on COVID data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for some other reason, or only had a mild presentation. of disease. “
A new study suggests that nearly half of people hospitalized with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic cases, @davidzweig reports. https://t.co/OOd1ddMFiU
– The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) September 13, 2021
Rather than the overwhelming horror stories of normally healthy individuals admitted with COVID who are soon intubated and put on ventilators before their bodies finally succumb to the virus, there are plenty of people out there – nearly half, in fact. – who are in hospitals * with * COVID, but not necessarily * due to * COVID or at risk of dying from the virus. Yes, these tragic situations always happen, but they happen less frequently than many seem to want Americans to think.
Instead of every “COVID hospitalization” reported as a life or death situation that requires a drastic response, the numbers can come from a number of scenarios. Maybe someone is getting treatment for cancer and once admitted is positive for COVID but remains asymptomatic, for example. Also included are psychiatric admissions unrelated to COVID.
Here’s how the researchers came to their conclusion after analyzing electronic hospital records for approximately 50,000 COVID hospital admissions at more than 100 VA hospitals nationwide:
They checked to see if each patient needed extra oxygen or if their blood oxygen level was below 94%. (This latter criterion is based on the National Institutes of Health definition of “Severe Covid.”) If any of these conditions were met, the authors classified this patient as having moderate to severe disease; otherwise, the case was considered mild or asymptomatic.
And for patients who have been vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus, the percentage of COVID hospitalizations for those with mild or asymptomatic cases has increased to 57%. But, another anti-panic finding from the study: “Unvaccinated patients also presented with less severe symptoms, on average, than at the start of the pandemic: the study found that 45% of their cases were mild or asymptomatic since January 21. This positive development, according to one of the co-authors of the study, is due to the fact that the patients are younger and more likely to have already had COVID.
The study has its limitations, such as the VA system biased in favor of adult male patients and the system-wide practice of COVID testing of all VA patients – something that is not universal in other health systems. But as even The Atlantic notes, “the study also shows that hospitalization rates for COVID, as cited by journalists and policymakers, can be misleading, if not taken carefully.”
So as liberal cable news echo chambers, Twitter and the political left tell us hospitalizations are on the rise (usually, they will argue, due to Republican governors who prefer to let their citizens choose for themselves how they wish to protect themselves and their families) and, therefore, we must cede all control and autonomy to the big government “G”, this is not necessarily the case if the results of these researchers are validated by peer reviews and similar studies in the future.
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