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How many countries will make "Defeat of the Covid Empire" coins in 2021?
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104 posts in this topic

1 hour ago, Hoghead515 said:

I know a lady really well who died of cancer. She had bad cancer for 3 years and was on her deathbed. They wrote it down as our counties first covid death in the news papers. She didn't even have covid. Her kids were really mad over it. Even the autopsy came back negative for covid. I've been wondering how many more deaths were reported falsely 

Similar story. Distant relative had terminal cancer. She got COVID and went in the hospital, but she fully recovered and went home. Few weeks later she died from cancer. What was her cause of death? COVID! Even though she was COVID-free for weeks before her death and she had terminal cancer, the government called it a COVID death. 

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Sooner or later, the TV ads will hit from some questionable outfit like the govmint

"Layered in genuine 24 karat gold". "We'll send a second coin for free, just pay a separate handling charge". " A proud heirloom to pass down for generations." Cue in to a scene of an old man  sitting with his grandchild looking at their new family treasure.

:tonofbricks:  :pullhair:

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5 hours ago, Alex in PA. said:

The Doctor Fauci should have just kept his mouth shut instead of jumping in front of a camera and/or microphone every time he saw one.  :slapfight:

He did the very best he could under the circumstances.:makepoint:

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On 7/8/2021 at 2:42 PM, gmarguli said:

Fact: People who have/had COVID, but died due other reason were still called "COVID deaths" because the government was reimbursing hospitals at a significantly higher rate for COVID victims. Therefore, the official number is likely greatly inflated.

Interesting statement.  I've got 20 years in workers' compensation program administration specific to medical cost containment for insurance carriers.  I think about half the states at this point have figured out it's easier to let somebody else do the work on fee guideline creation so the systems have been transitioned to be based on CMS policy & fees.  Anyhow, just to point out why I find it interesting.  It's not an untrue statement, but there's a lot of nuance to it and at face value I'd say it's very misleading.  Let's unpack some of this.

1. Any payments issued to healthcare facilities from the federal government is through the CMS (Medicare) system.  In 2020 there were 62 million beneficiaries on Medicare.  That's only about 18-20% of the population.

2. Facilities are paid for treatment, not deaths.  Death cause is reported elsewhere to another organization but is unrelated to the billing for admission & treatment.  Facility reimbursement comes down to 3 types essentially:  Outpatient treatment (less than 24 hour stay; OPPS system); Inpatient (IPPS); and Rehab/Long Term Acute Care (similar to inpatient reimbursement).  Outpatient treatment reimbursement isn't based on diagnosis so we can toss that out as unaffected.  An MRI for a broken leg is an MRI no matter how it was broken.  But for Inpatient stays & LTAC there's a Diagnosis Related Grouper method used for reimbursement that basically lumps many different treatment types into a master category.  "Pregnancy", "Burns", "Disorders of Kidney", etc...  So ventilated folks would've fallen under a DRG for "Diseases & Disorders of the Respiratory System DRG Code Range 163-208".  DRG codes were established by Medicare back in the '70s so the payment methodology is the same as it was before regardless of why somebody was ventilated.  *To a certain degree.*

3. DRG coding reimbursement can be impacted by a few items.  Principal Procedure Code, Severity,  & Complications mostly.  So coronavirus isn't taken into account here either.

4. I did find where the statement's nugget of truth is, though.  The CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) passed into law 3/27/2020.  The CARES Act created a 20% add-on to be paid for Medicare patients with COVID-19.  Is 20% significant?  Well, it's a nice enough net profit margin to run most companies so it's not insignificant.  I'm not sure how CMS administered that but there's a few ways.  They could've looked at diagnosis codes present and just added it on at the time of payment.  The ICD-10 code for coronavirus was created 3/18/2020 so that's possible.  Or they could have done it post-payment through a backend reconciliation process which I think is more likely.  Why bother investing dev time in catching it all on the fly when you could just run a report later and assign it to a specialized team of folks to handle.

Reporting it all has been a significant pain in the butt though.  While the disease was spreading we were all playing catchup to capture the data, identify the claims, and then later report the data.  Government moves slow so they've asked us in the "big bad insurance company" world to provide them with data calls routinely because they can't pull it out of their data warehouse effectively.  So yeah, there's overinflated numbers and underinflated numbers.  But that's the case with any of the big data out there when you expect thousands of entities to capture it all consistently and report to one organization.  Even with regulation & oversight, consistency across that many hospitals is never going to be 100% accurate.

anyhow....now I've bored you all to death.  I may even report it as coronavirus related.  ;)  But my takeaway is that facilities that received Medicare payments did receive more money for reporting an admission as coronavirus related. 

We could ask more questions like:  what's the breakdown in Medicare patients treated to non-CMS patients?  who was the organization collecting & reporting deaths?  how many facility administrators felt the risk of fraud charges and prison time was worth the cost of an extra 20%?

Also, thanks for giving me a nice little research activity on a slow Friday afternoon.  That was satisfying.

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On 7/8/2021 at 3:42 PM, gmarguli said:

OK, I'll provide facts.

Fact: Official COVID deaths is 6 million over the past 18 months. 3 million people die of hunger every month, so 54 million died of hunger since COVID. 

Fact: People who have/had COVID, but died due other reason were still called "COVID deaths" because the government was reimbursing hospitals at a significantly higher rate for COVID victims. Therefore, the official number is likely greatly inflated.

Fact: Dr. Fauci has flip-flopped more than a fish out of water. He is politically biased. He is completely untrustworthy. He is clueless. 

I have no bias against science, but if you bothered to do even the slightest bit of research on scientific topics, you'd be horrified. Scientific studies that are never replicated for more conclusive proof; money forces scientists to start with the outcome the money wants and work their way backwards; published studies that are completely wrong, but reported in the media as fact; political motives driving the sciences; etc. 

Fact you provide no reference for any of your Self Proclaimed facts ^1.

If this was in a Sophomore high school level research paper (when and where I was a sophomore in high school)^2 you would have just failed for presenting something as fact with no citation to prove your 'facts'.

1. NGC Coin forum "How many countries will make "Defeat of the Covid Empire" coins in 2021?"

2. Stevens High School Mr Grenier's Sophomore English class 1977

p.s. I would get no better than a 'D' for incomplete and / or incorrectly citation

 

So where did you find your 'facts'

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10 hours ago, thebeav said:

I've been working on a design......

The reverse is the skyline of Wuhan, the obverse shows virologist Shi Zhengli, with the motto "I'm your fathaah".....

That’s what Xi said. 

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10 hours ago, Quintus Arrius said:

[My personal opinion is coinage cannot be considered until eradication is acheived. And I am not sure a coin minted and circulated publicly would be an appropriate way to mark a milestone like that. If anything, an individual would be so honored perhaps with a Medal or re-naming of a school.]

Eradication will N-E-V-E-R be achieved. All we can get to is endemic status. 

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On 7/8/2021 at 1:46 PM, Quintus Arrius said:

Little-known fact: vaccinations are not "free" and cannot be obtained without ID.

Not true. In Alabama at NO POINT was I asked for either ID nor my medical cards. The shots were going unused and they were BEGGING ANYONE to come n git em. 

Edited by VKurtB
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7 hours ago, Alex in PA. said:

The Doctor Fauci should have just kept his mouth shut instead of jumping in front of a camera and/or microphone every time he saw one.  :slapfight:

He should have AT LEAST had the integrity to keep repeating, “We don’t know much right now. As we learn stuff, we’ll be sure to pass it along. Strap in. Gonna be ugly for too many.” But no, integrity had to be sacrificed. 

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2 hours ago, Crawtomatic said:

Facilities are paid for treatment, not deaths.  Death cause is reported elsewhere to another organization but is unrelated to the billing for admission & treatment. 

But the government needs the death total to be high. Look at what the government did:

  • Spent trillions of dollars fighting COVID.
  • Destroyed the livelihood of millions of Americans.
  • Caused the permanent closure of tens of thousands of businesses.
  • Created massive unemployment.
  • Allowed an unconstitutional taking of property from hundreds of thousands of landlords. 
  • Caused inflation that will end up harming the elderly the most.
  • Created a disincentive to work, so businesses are struggling to find workers.
  • Inadvertently caused a spike in housing prices that further puts homeownership out of reach of the people they say they want to help.
  • On and on and on...

They need to say they did this to benefit us. Look voters, it killed millions, but thank god we stopped it. It was all worth it. Vote for me for reelection. In reality, they massively overreacted. To save face they need to attribute a ton of deaths to COVID.

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1 hour ago, Moxie15 said:

Fact you provide no reference for any of your Self Proclaimed facts ^1.

If this was in a Sophomore high school level research paper (when and where I was a sophomore in high school)^2 you would have just failed for presenting something as fact with no citation to prove your 'facts'.

1. NGC Coin forum "How many countries will make "Defeat of the Covid Empire" coins in 2021?"

2. Stevens High School Mr Grenier's Sophomore English class 1977

p.s. I would get no better than a 'D' for incomplete and / or incorrectly citation

 

So where did you find your 'facts'

If this were a sophomore paper, I'd be forced to include how COVID was caused by whiteness and I'd be canceled for calling Mr. Grenier Mister, without first finding out their preferred gender pronoun. I'm sure he/his/they/them Grenier would want that. 

As for my facts, try a search engine.

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On 7/8/2021 at 3:42 PM, gmarguli said:

OK, I'll provide facts.

Fact: Official COVID deaths is 6 million over the past 18 months. 3 million people die of hunger every month, so 54 million died of hunger since COVID. 

Yesterday, at 3:00 PM, @RWB said, in part:  "Nice -- other than the absence of facts and the obvious bias against science."

Within the hour, as excerpted above, @gmarguli is happy to oblige rattling off what he distinctly refers to as "facts."

I will be the first to admit I did the unethical and unconscionable: I fact-checked what he wrote.

A figure, cited as a one Fact cites 6 million official COVID deaths over the past 18 months. Immediately, in my head, I heard the imaginary cry popular with drug dealers: RED LIGHT!!! and consulted Google replete with the latest "to date" figures indicating 34,707,293 CV cases for the U.S., 622,664 deaths and 29,221,947 recoveries.

There would be little point in going any further with this arguable vindication of @RWB and his stance on this issue but, as regarding the white ship painted with prominent Red Crosses I challenge anyone who is not a [N.Y.] City resident to state... the ship's specific eligibility for admissions criteria, precisely where it was docked, the role the Javits Center played in impacting admissions and why the vessel left so soon with no patients before unanimously deciding its presence played a role in the pandemic.

Edited by Quintus Arrius
Missing words.
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12 minutes ago, gmarguli said:

But the government needs the death total to be high. Look at what the government did:

Don't take it that I'm here defending governmental functions on this action.  But what I recall from the last year+ is that death tolls and active case rates were all first collected at the states' respective DSHS levels then funneled up to CDC for national reporting.  There were many cases where reporting lagged in months, at least here in Texas.

But I think this may be a different discussion.  You give me a spreadsheet with 50,000 lines of data and 20+ data points and I can tell you whatever story you want with it.  The various "governments" (local, state, & federal) didn't control the data capture of the original reports.  They only controlled the collection & dissemination to the public.

I'm probably 60/40 or better when it comes to trusting that the majority of people within a public service position (the government if you will) are actually working within the best interest of the public.  In which case, I would place blame not on the government for reporting the data they have showing high death rates.  If I wanted to question the accuracy of the death rates I'd first look at the hospitals, VA agencies, nursing homes, etc... and audit their collection methods as well as their best practices to assign correlation from a death to a cause.

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Number of Deaths for Leading Causes of Death, US, 2015-2020a

 

As for th

The Leading Causes of Death in the US for 2020

JAMA. 2021;325(18):1829-1830. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.5469

That stat by Covid - I'll believe that when Gerty brings her cows home.  

SOURCE:  Google.................

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@Alex in PA. (Hope you got leashes on those dogs)...  To begin with, what you've provided us with is a veritable alphabet soup of causes of death extending back five year.  We are already halfway past 2021 and the sole figure for COVID provided is 55 or 56% of the figure I cited and nowhere near the 6,000,000 which initiated this exchange.  For arguments sake I will assume that figure includes the favelas of Brazil, the slums of Mumbai, etc. (You may now unleash those fearsome creatures.)  🐓

  

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2 hours ago, VKurtB said:

Not true. In Alabama at NO POINT was I asked for either ID nor my medical cards. The shots were going unused and they were BEGGING ANYONE to come n git em. 

If Marine One were to land on your outside lawn, would you demand to see some ID?  Revel in your celebrity!  (Incidentally, no way is the administration of drugs, oral or intravenously, with or without your consent, in complete anonymity (as opposed to, with confidentiality) legal. Next thing, you'll be insisting census/population figures for coins are not to be trusted.)  doh!

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11 minutes ago, Quintus Arrius said:

what you've provided us with is a veritable alphabet soup of causes of death extending back five year.

Unintentionally, what he provided does illustrate excess deaths if you look at just the Totals line.  Basically, 2020 had 503,976 more deaths than 2019.  That's good for a 17.6% increase over 2019.

2017 had 2.5% more deaths than 2016.  But then 2018 & 2019 showed less than 0.1% growth in death rate.  I'd argue there's a good correlation that the additional deaths were related to the only thing new to the environment.

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23 minutes ago, Quintus Arrius said:

@Alex in PA. (Hope you got leashes on those dogs)...  To begin with, what you've provided us with is a veritable alphabet soup of causes of death extending back five year.  We are already halfway past 2021 and the sole figure for COVID provided is 55 or 56% of the figure I cited and nowhere near the 6,000,000 which initiated this exchange.  For arguments sake I will assume that figure includes the favelas of Brazil, the slums of Mumbai, etc. (You may now unleash those fearsome creatures.)  🐓

  

The GLOBAL death total is estimated at 6 million and not leveling very much. The third world is now being hit harder than the western democracies.

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I am NOT surprised that someone in NYC would have a different take on COVID. They have had a horrible experience. By contrast, a guy from central Pennsylvania who has lived on Interstate 81 and Northern Alabama during this pandemic really has to search around to make sure it’s not all a scam. The impact has been near nil. Alabama is OPEN OPEN. Schools were open for in person instruction the ENTIRE 2020-2021 school year. Businesses are open and masks are seldom seen. 

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COVID report at FUN show:

ANA employees (Colorado) - masked.

NGC employees (Florida) - not masked, no lucite screen

PCGS employees (Calif.) - masked behind lucite barriers

The Show Itself - need to be masked to get in, vast majority not masked inside

Political geography seems to be destiny. 

Edited by VKurtB
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3 minutes ago, VKurtB said:

I am NOT surprised that someone in NYC would have a different take on COVID. They have had a horrible experience. By contrast, a guy from central Pennsylvania who has lived on Interstate 81 and Northern Alabama during this pandemic really has to search around to make sure it’s not all a scam. The impact has been near nil. Alabama is OPEN OPEN. Schools were open for in person instruction the ENTIRE 2020-2021 school year. Businesses are open and masks are seldom seen. 

Completely agree. In Texas here, prisons & cities is where we saw the most impact & disruption.  So speaking to coworkers that lived in rural areas it was easy to see that they had a different perspective.  Then the virus is mild in most cases...  And talking heads on tv/radio have no problem exploiting innate tribalism...  The last year has been divisive when we could have been working on being cohesive.

I've still got friends that are ultra-safe in their approach and though I may initially think they're overreacting I then remind myself that I don't know the circumstances of their family's health and risk.  

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4 minutes ago, Crawtomatic said:

Completely agree. In Texas here, prisons & cities is where we saw the most impact & disruption.  So speaking to coworkers that lived in rural areas it was easy to see that they had a different perspective.  Then the virus is mild in most cases...  And talking heads on tv/radio have no problem exploiting innate tribalism...  The last year has been divisive when we could have been working on being cohesive.

I've still got friends that are ultra-safe in their approach and though I may initially think they're overreacting I then remind myself that I don't know the circumstances of their family's health and risk.  

China’s attempt to thin the herd of chronic smokers. LOL!

I need to keep reminding myself that the National talking heads are in or near major urban centers and they see their lives as normal. I really heavily disagree. I’d NEVER consent to living near a major megalopolis. The very thought is nauseating. 

Edited by VKurtB
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1 minute ago, VKurtB said:

China’s attempt to thin the herd of chronic smokers. LOL!

lol  Last I heard Philip Morris' biggest market for cowboy killers and the rest of their cigs was east Asia/China.

Let's file this under a convoluted conspiracy of the Chinese government to stop their citizens from sending to money to America via tobacco sales.

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1 hour ago, VKurtB said:

I am NOT surprised that someone in NYC would have a different take on COVID. They have had a horrible experience. By contrast, a guy from central Pennsylvania who has lived on Interstate 81 and Northern Alabama during this pandemic really has to search around to make sure it’s not all a scam. The impact has been near nil. Alabama is OPEN OPEN. Schools were open for in person instruction the ENTIRE 2020-2021 school year. Businesses are open and masks are seldom seen. 

Does that make up for Tornado Alley, the hurricanes 🌀 and absence of roadside coin stands?

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1 hour ago, VKurtB said:

China’s attempt to thin the herd of chronic smokers. LOL!

I need to keep reminding myself that the National talking heads are in or near major urban centers and they see their lives as normal. I really heavily disagree. I’d NEVER consent to living near a major megalopolis. The very thought is nauseating. 

I believe another Google tidbit was 90% of all deaths attributed, rightly or wrongly, as a contributing factor or not, involved unmasked people. 

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1 hour ago, VKurtB said:

COVID report at FUN show:

ANA employees (Colorado) - masked.

NGC employees (Florida) - not masked, no lucite screen

PCGS employees (Calif.) - masked behind lucite barriers

The Show Itself - need to be masked to get in, vast majority not masked inside

Political geography seems to be destiny. 

[I don't think being masked is going to change @MAULEMALL's feelings about New York or the people who live there. Plus, one of them reportedly collects 🐓. ]

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11 hours ago, Crawtomatic said:

Unintentionally,

You're spending the whole thread on the 'Unintentional'.  Try this for unintentional:  More people died in the city of Chicago from 'lead poisoning' in 2020 than died from Covid.   :facepalm:

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1 minute ago, Alex in PA. said:

You're spending the whole thread on the 'Unintentional'.  Try this for unintentional:  More people died in the city of Chicago from 'lead poisoning' in 2020 than died from Covid.   :facepalm:

Some copper jacketed, some not. 

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9 hours ago, Quintus Arrius said:

I believe another Google tidbit was 90% of all deaths attributed, rightly or wrongly, as a contributing factor or not, involved unmasked people. 

Virtually ALL deaths the last few months are among the unvaccinated, masks be damned. No mask is a substitute for antibodies, natural or artificial. 

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