Garfield County COVID Deaths Drop by Almost 17%

In a stunning reversal, Garfield County, Colorado has reduced its recorded coronavirus deaths by a whopping 16.67%.

First reported in the Post Independent on November 12th, the death of a Garfield County woman in her 80’s was revised to indicate it was actually the HKU1 coronavirus that was present in her system, not the novel virus that causes COVID-19. Calling it a “discrepancy,” the county reclassified the woman’s death to indicate that she was infected with a virus that according to Garfield County Public Health Specialist Carrie Godes was a common form of coronavirus that was not considered a threat.

This reclassification dropped the number of coronavirus deaths in the county from six to five.

Lost on the paper (and apparently on a large majority of Coloradoans), is that this sixth death was being used to create an impression of a deadly risk, when in reality the woman didn’t have COVID-19 and therefore had no COVID-19 symptoms. The county was perfectly happy to report this woman as a COVID-19 death when she clearly didn’t die from it, and even after they determined she actually had contracted a harmless common coronavirus, she still was listed as “dying” from this harmless bug.

Given the anxiousness of health professionals to report so-called COVID-19 deaths using people who clearly did not die as a result of contracting COVID-19, we should take every stat (and especially claims of death numbers) with a healthy dose of skepticism.