Dr. Ali Hassoun On The Coronavirus Death Numbers

>> dan shaffer: we are back now with dr. ali hassoun.

Dr. hassoun, right now, the alabama depart department of heh says there's more than 142,000 cases in alabama since the pandemic started.

Johns hopkins university says there have been more than 7.5 million cases across the u.s. and 211,000 deaths now.

Many people are questioning the accuracy of the numbers.

There's a database of coronavirus-positive cases.

Say a guy tests positive five months ago.

He dies of terminal cancer.

His name is matched in the coronavirus database and now he's a covid-19 death.

I mean, is that's what's happening, is this any way to run a pandemic?

>> dr. ali hassoun: i really don't think so.

The most important thing when patient have passed away is they look at multiple factors and cause of death.

So every physician, when they document on the death certificate, they're going to write specifically what's the most likely cause of death.

So you know, dan, i really doubt, even if they included covid in there, but they usually going to write the first likelihood of the cause of death on the death certificate.

So it shouldn't be that confusing or difficult to interpret.

>> dan shaffer: so if there's covid written on the deather is at this time cat, does that get into -- the death certificate, does that get into the total number of deaths?

>> dr. ali hassoun: it would not.

If they write heart attack, heart failure, that's counted as the cause of death rather than covid related death.

>> dan shaffer: there are about 330 million people in the u.s., 2 to 3% have tested positive so far.

Of those, less than 3% have died.

Is it worth all the issues that this pandemic shut down has caused on the economy, the mental health of the american people, our upcoming election?

>> dr. ali hassoun: you know, it's been definitely challenging and difficult to decide what is the best way of approaching and doing.

But i can tell you, i think there's several issues came up.

One is, we really didn't handle the way of the lockdown in a good way in the beginning.

Meaning we rushed to open early rather than do it the right way.

And i think that affected how we have been able to control the virus in a way.

People really didn't want to wear masks and do physical distancing on regular basis.

So we chose how to get through this and we chose to live with the virus rather than control it well and try to open up more.

It's been very difficult, you know, the lockdown is never easy to anyone.

But at the same time, one person died from this is devastating.

It really, you see these patients and we've seen it at the peak in july where it was very, very difficult to see these patients come in a day, get worse another day, and unfortunately, you cannot control it and they die.

I agree, there's always balance of looking how to do things.

But it depends on what stages we're going through.

So if we have low spread of the virus, absolutely.

We need to open up more.

But we need to be cautious.

But if we have widespread in the community or we're seeing increasing case, we're going to get back a little bit and better controlling it and following prevention guidelines.

It's each stage can be different.

Rather than we apply one thing to everything.

>> dan shaffer: dr. hassoun, we appreciate your candor and your insight.

Thank you for joining