# Cause Of Death: COVID Cause Of Death: COVID is a 2020 image macro and catchphrase template that mocks the idea of attributing any fatality, no matter how obvious the real cause, to the coronavirus. The joke grew out of a July 2020 Fox35 Orlando news report in which a motorcycle crash victim was reportedly counted as a COVID-19 death[1]. By late 2020, imgflip and Reddit users were turning the premise into American Chopper and Star Trek edits where impossible deaths got the same label[3][4]. ## Origin Catalyst (part one): On April 20, 2020, Minnesota state senator Scott Jensen posted a video to Twitter arguing that the CARES Act's reimbursement structure gave hospitals a financial reason to code more patient deaths as COVID-19[2]. Catalyst (part two): On July 16, 2020, Fox35 Orlando aired a segment reporting that a man killed in a motorcycle crash had been counted in local COVID-19 death figures, with a health official saying on tape that the virus could not yet be ruled out as a contributing factor[1]. KonaSilat reuploaded the broadcast to YouTube on July 17, 2020, where it drew more than 4,000 views in its first year[1]. Earliest known meme format: Riffing on the combined Jensen and Orlando stories, an imgflip user posted a Star Trek image macro in October 2020 showing a character crushed into a cube, with the caption attributing the death to COVID[3]. That post is cited by Know Your Meme as one of the first examples of the template[5]. - **Platform:** News report (catalyst) / imgflip and Reddit (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2020 ## Overview Cause Of Death: COVID, also known as Dies From Coronavirus, is a phrasal template built around attaching the label "COVID-19" to deaths whose actual cause is plainly something else, like a motorcycle crash, a sword, or being crushed into a cube[3]. Posts almost always pair a visibly non-medical fatality with a caption, chyron, or caption bubble that insists the real culprit was the virus[1]. The humor leans on the gap between the absurd visual and the deadpan medical attribution, and sometimes carries a pointed edge of skepticism toward pandemic death-toll counting[3]. Common formats include news-report screencaps, Star Trek stills, and the American Chopper argument panel, with the punchline landing when the viewer reads the attached cause[4]. ## How It Spread After the Fox35 Orlando segment went up on YouTube in July 2020, the clip got traction as proof-of-concept for the joke, and image macros riffing on it began appearing a few months later[1]. The October 2020 imgflip Star Trek post set an early template of pairing a clearly fatal non-medical event with a COVID caption[3]. By early 2021, the format jumped onto Reddit. On January 31, 2021, redditor Fine_Molasses_1354 posted an American Chopper Argument version to r/memes, staging the back-and-forth as a fight over whether a patient's cause of death should be listed as COVID-19[4]. Know Your Meme later indexed the template under both "Cause Of Death: COVID-19" and "Dies From Coronavirus"[5]. ## How to Use Posters typically take a screenshot, still, or illustration of a death that is obviously caused by something non-viral, trauma, decapitation, being flattened, and overlay a caption, news chyron, or caption-bubble that lists the cause of death as COVID-19. The American Chopper argument panel is a common convention for the longer-form version, where one figure insists the fatality really was coronavirus[4]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Cause Of Death: COVID? It's a 2020 image macro and phrasal template, also called Dies From Coronavirus, where a plainly non-medical fatality gets labeled a COVID-19 death for comedic effect[5]. ### Where did Cause Of Death: COVID come from? It grew out of a July 16, 2020 Fox35 Orlando report in which a motorcycle crash death was reportedly tallied as a COVID-19 fatality, paired with earlier claims by Minnesota senator Scott Jensen about CARES Act death-coding incentives[1][2]. ### What does Cause Of Death: COVID mean? The joke is that any death, no matter how obvious the real cause, can be filed as coronavirus, mocking what posters viewed as inflated or sloppy COVID-19 death counts[3]. ### How do you use Cause Of Death: COVID? A common convention is to take a still of a clearly fatal event, a sword strike, a motorcycle crash, a Star Trek compactor, and add a caption or chyron attributing the death to COVID-19[3][4]. ### Is Cause Of Death: COVID still popular? The format peaked during the pandemic years, with notable 2020 and 2021 posts on imgflip and r/memes, and it is treated now as a pandemic-era classic rather than an actively trending template[3][4]. ## References 1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvOdlE985vw]() 2. [https://twitter.com/drscottjensen/status/1252345930151456768]() 3. [https://imgflip.com/i/47qa84]() 4. [https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/l9oosn/find_the_damn_death_of_covid/]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cause-of-death-covid]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/cause-of-death-covid Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library