“That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of Covid didn’t die of Covid-19. They did,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the program. “So, the numbers you’ve been hearing -- there are 180,000-plus deaths -- are real deaths from Covid-19. Let (there) not be any confusion about that.” 

“It’s not 9,000 deaths from Covid-19, it’s 180-plus-thousand deaths,” Fauci said. 

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics told CNBC in a statement that death certificates list all possible causes or conditions that lead to a person’s death, and there may be more than one listed.

There were more than 161,300 death certificates that listed Covid-19 among the possible causes of death as of Aug. 22, according to NCHS. About 6% of the certificates that mention Covid-19 list it as the sole cause on the death certificate. The remaining 94% included other causes alongside Covid-19. 

Eoin Treacy's view

According to this table from the CDC’s website there have been 164,280 recorded deaths from COVID-19.

150,737 of those have been people over the age of 55.

That means 91.7% of deaths are from people over the age of 55. Of those, 94% had pre-existing conditions. There are 59 million over the age of 55 out of a total population of 281 million. 

The people most at risk are those who are already sick or have chronic conditions and who are over the age of 55. If you are younger than that and generally healthy, you have a lot less to worry about.

In fact, 1594 deaths have occurred in the under 30 age group. That’s from a population of 126.5 million. The mortality rate for young people is therefore 0.00126%.

That’s hard data there is no equivocation. The reality is young people have little to fear from the pandemic.

There are 281 million people in the USA. That means we have 220 million people for whom COVID-19 is likely to be nothing more than a bad flu. Even then, most would experience no symptoms at all. If solutions are to be based from science then it was necessary to lock everything down early this year because everyone was working with incomplete information.

Many governments were reluctant to take swift action at the time and now regret it. For exactly that reason they are now reluctant to take action on reopening. The easy solution would be to give early retirement to over 55s who have pre-existing conditions and at the same time to give greater responsibility to younger people. That would be particularly useful for schools.

With one child in middle school and another just starting high school I fully believe online schooling is little more than make believe learning. It bores them to death, their skills are declining and they are starving for contact with friends. It’s a heavy price to pay for a threat that poses little risk to young people.

Printing money has been the solution to every problem for the last thirty years and this series of events has seen the trend accelerate. Right now, the stock market is thriving because we are in the sweet spot between when liquidity is available and economic recovery prospects are improving. Sensitivity to interest rates increases exponentially lower yields are. Therefore, central banks have no choice but to hold rates down until inflation takes off.