COVID-19 Was One of the Least Causes of Death for Mainers in November

COVID-19 Was One of the Least Causes of Death for Mainers in November

Bangor Daily News Presents Maine’s 67 COVID-19 Deaths out of Context

with Sensationalized Front Page Headline

By: David Deschesne

Fort Fairfield Journal

December 16, 2020

The Bangor Daily News, Maine’s statewide daily newspaper, published a front page story on December 2, 2020 extolling the [alleged] 67 deaths from COVID-19 in Maine during November as record-setting.

The article, written by Charles Eichacker focused entirely on deaths attributed to COVID-19 but was silent on Heart Disease, which killed around five times the number of Maine’s COVID-19 victims during the same time period.

The U.S. CDC reports that in Maine around 1,100 to 1,200 people die every month from all causes and have died at that rate historically for many years. According to their most recent statistics available, which are given to them by the Maine CDC, during the time period of November 1 thru 21, 234 Mainers died of Heart Disease; 197 died of Cancer; 115 died from Alzheimer’s Disease/Dementia while those who [allegedly] died from COVID-19 during that time period totaled 37. Therefore, of all the major diseases that caused death in Maine during November, 2020, COVID-19 was one of the least deadly.

In late November, the Maine CDC began to retroactively change their published COVID-19 death numbers by back-dating new “deaths” through the beginning of the month - this is the first time this writer, who has tracked the numbers daily since the outbreak began - noticed this clever numbers-skewing trick. What was shaping out to be around 40 COVID-19 deaths for Maine in November was arbitrarily increased to over 60 by November 30 with each day’s published numbers being covertly changed by increasing them one or two deaths per day from their originally published number for the entire month’s record.

In the first two weeks of November, there were only 16 excess deaths - that is 16 more deaths than was statistically expected - in Maine. Those excess deaths were not all COVID-19, but mostly were comprised of heart disease and cancer. Yet, COVID-19 - the least cause of death in Maine - gains all the headlines in the establishment press.