Fox news medical contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier weighs in.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Over to you, Steve
Steve, all right Emily. Thank
you very much.
Well, you may have seen the
headlines this weekend
questioning reports about the
new centers for Disease Control
Data, revealing that ninety four percent of
people who have died from Covid
had something else going on with
them
here to set the record Straight
Fox NEWS, medical contributor and
author of Make America healthy
again, Dr Nicole Saphier,
Dr Saphier, good Monday morning
to you
good good morning, Steve
Steve. I saw this everywhere
this story about how of the
people who have died of covid
only six percent died of covid.
Ninety four percent died of the flu diabetes
heart stuff things like that,
so it makes it sound as if Covid
not that bad.
We called new to set the record
straight
well, thats, Right Steve.
Over over the weekend, you saw a
lot of reports going down that
the CDC has updated over the
one hundred and sixty thousand Americans who have died,
saying that only six percent of them had
covid only listed as death,
but the truth is Steve. A lot
of them had underlying
co, morbidities or just
contributing causes of their
death.
That doesnt necessarily mean
they are RON Nic illnesses.
Forty three percent of them were pneumonia.
Forty seven percent of them were listed as acute
respiratory failure,
not lung disease, but acute
respiratory failure.
Think of breast cancer. My
specialty
forty two percent of people who die from
breast cancer die from some sort
of organ failure.
Twenty four percent die from some form of
respiratory failure, but those
are directly caused by the
cancer or treatment themselves,
meaning they wouldnt have died
from those causes had they not
had the cancer
thats the same with a lot of
these listed deaths,
they wouldnt have died from
that acute respiratory failure
or sepsis, or some of the other
causes. If they didnt have
covid
covid. That virus is what is
actually causing those diseases
causing them to die. Yes,
they also listed obesity,
diabetes and alzheimers in
some of the patients,
but we know that we know people
who have chronic medical
conditions are not fairing as
well with this virus, just like
they dont farewell in general,
when theyre hospitalized with
anything
thats. Why we have to live our
healthiest lives,
but again, this report tells us
that there are a plethora causes
of people dying from Covid 19,
but the majority of them are
direct damage to the body from
the virus.
Remember we talked about that
storm. It
effects the lungs. It effects
the heart; it can effect the
kidneys and brain
thats why you are seeing these
other disease states listed on
causes of death,
that is responsible reporting of
causes of death,
Steve. Okay,
thank you very much for making
that very, very easy to
understand.
There was a story, meanwhile, from
the New York Times talking
about how your coronavirus test
is positive, and maybe it
shouldnt be, and essentially
what it said is because millions
of people are getting these
tests and they come back
positive. In some cases, the viral
load, the amount of covid in the
persons body is so
insignificant. They are likely
not as contagious
thats. The way I read it is that
about what the story was trying
to say
right,
well, Steve, so something that I
have been saying for a long time
is we keep seeing a lot of
positive cases,
whats the clinical significance
of those positive cases
right now. The stark for
detecting the virus is a nasal
swab PRC test that looks for
genetic material,
that genetic material in the
nose doesnt equate to someone
having enough virus to be
contagious or having the
infection themselves.
What we need to do is we dont
want to get away from test
people.
We need to change our mind, set
of you who we test, people
thats, why these rapid test are
going to be crucial moving
forward when it comes to testing
for Covid 19,
because, yes, we cannot treat
every person that is positive,
meaning that they are going to
be highly con teenage jus,
because the truth is most
people arent, infectious or
contagious for that full fourteen
days,
they may actually only be
contagious for three to seven of
those days
thats the time that we really
want to make sure they are
self isolating.
We need to get people back to
work.
We need to get people back to
school,
sometimes waiting for those long
PRC tests to go back to
negative may not be realistic
and may not be necessary,
so the Trump Administration just
vowed to secure one hundred and fifty million of
the Abbott Rapid test.
Those rapid tests are a better
chance at determining who is
going to be contagious and not
contagious,
but we want to make sure that we
are able to do those rapid tests
and not just the symptomatic
people, but also asymptomatic
people, but we have to remember
asymptomatic. I can people can
spread this viral infection
Steve there. You go
the story behind the headlines
once again,
Dr Saphier. We know so much
more now about this thing than
we did in March.
Its great to have you stop by
to try to explain what it all.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-31.