Everybody dies of COVID.
When in doubt? Choose COVID.
This could only happen to us.
The American Medical Association (AMA) on Friday issued a scathing statement condemning President Trump’s claim that doctors are purposefully inflating coronavirus case numbers, calling the suggestion “malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided.”
Trump, while speaking at a rally in Waterford Township, Mich., on Friday, argued without evidence that doctors are improperly counting coronavirus deaths for monetary gain.
“Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but everybody dies of COVID,'” he said.
Trump argued that other countries put less of an emphasis on COVID-19 as a cause of death than the U.S. does, adding, “With us, when in doubt, choose COVID. It’s true.”
President Trump pushed a baseless conspiracy theory at one of his rallies in Michigan, claiming that "our doctors get more money if somebody dies from Covid." CNN's Jim Acosta reports. https://t.co/YlbgGo7qJT pic.twitter.com/oB7qnKUQ3x
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) October 30, 2020
Trump pushed a similar claim during a rally in Wisconsin last weekend, saying that “doctors get more money and hospitals get more money” if COVID-19 is listed as a cause of death.
Susan Bailey, the president of the AMA, pushed back on Trump’s claims, pointing to work physicians, nurses and frontline health care workers have done during the pandemic to treat their patients.
“They did it because duty called and because of the sacred oath they took. The suggestion that doctors—in the midst of a public health crisis—are overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge,” Bailey said in a statement Friday without directly naming the president.
This is lunacy.
Madam Birx said that anyone who dies from anything is a “Covid” death if they test positive for coronavirus or are suspected to have coronavirus.
That is the CDC rule. The doctors are just following the rules.
Related: CDC Has Already Instructed Hospitals to Hoax Coronavirus Death Numbers
None of this is even controversial.
Of course hospitals are going with it – they’re not going to turn against the CDC, especially when they’re getting money that they need to stay in business. They were told they had to close and only serve coronavirus patients, and there weren’t any coronavirus patients.
The government is offering them money and giving them guidelines to follow. I don’t blame the individual doctors. What are they supposed to do? Rise up against the CDC?