The paper COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Retrospective provides an interesting analysis about data collection changes. The research paper finds this not only a significant change, but an illegal one.
By using a new, unapproved, and non-standard system specifically for collecting mortality statistics regarding COVID-19, the CDC knowingly broke multiple federal laws regarding data collection and ensuring the accuracy of data, according to a new research paper which has been peer reviewed and published in the journal ‘Science, Public Health Policy and the Law’, and released this week at publichealthpolicyjournal.com.
On March 24, 2020, the CDC published instructions and guidance on a change in the procedure for filing death certificates, specifically related to COVID-19. In this document titled “COVID-19 Alert No. 2”, officials at the CDC made dramatic changes to the certification guidelines, amounting to a complete departure from the existing system of mortality data collection which they themselves previously authored, and which had been in use, without problems, for 17 years. This was done with no appropriate review, approval or even discussion.
The CDC alert is an explanation of the new process for filling out death certificates where COVID-19 is a related factor. This new process included ensuring that COVID-19 was written on a specific line, which is reserved for underlying cause of death, and moved all listings of comorbidities and other conditions to another, later part of the certificate’s form, a part which is not used in such a way as to have any effect on the listings for “underlying cause of death”. They also created coding practices so that the results of testing, whether inconclusive or even unavailable, were not recorded in any way as to be reflected in statistics.
The research paper finds this not only a significant change, but an illegal one.
An abstract and the PDF text are available at: https://www.publichealthpolicyjournal.com/ethics-in-science-and-technololgy Click the PDF icon on that page for full text.