Complete Colorado: Dr. Leon Kelly, deputy medical director of El Paso County Public Health and El Paso County Coroner spoke with Complete Colorado Monday to address an internet-based rumor that death certificates are being falsified and seasonal flu and other respiratory deaths are being misclassified as COVID-19 deaths because hospitals get paid more when a patient dies of coronavirus.

“I know this is a growing controversy, although from our perspective it probably shouldn’t be. We’re doing everything the way we’ve always done it when it comes to certifying death.”

Kelly says that the idea that death records are being falsified is “well within the ballpark of ‘the earth is flat’ and ‘we never landed on the moon’ bottom-level government conspiracy-theory stuff.”

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