Covid-19 Science and Reality
Enlarged November 11, 2020 (first published April 28, 2020)
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061
866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
Covid-19 was a new thing earlier this year and preliminary computer models predicted an unprecedented global disaster, which led to unprecedented global panic and shutdown. But the science and reality are becoming clear, and large numbers of medical personnel, including prominent epidemiologists, are seeing Covid-19 in a new light. A growing number of Covid-19 laboratories are providing information that is good news.
Following are some examples:
On September 25, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control announced the latest Covid-19 survival statistics and it is good news. For those younger than age 50, the death rate is .02%. For the healthy in all age groups, there is little risk of death from this coronavirus. Survival rates are as follows:
Ages 0-19: 99.997%
Ages 20-49: 99.98%
Ages 50-69: 99.5%
Ages 70+: 94.6%
Though there is a media frenzy every time a professional athlete is diagnosed with Covid, but as far as we have been able to determine, ZERO American athletes who are currently active in professional sports have died of Covid-19. Several retired professional athletes have died, but the average age is 78 years old (“Here is the list of sports stars who died of Covid,” Outlookindia.com, updated Sept. 12, 2020). These include Roy Lester, football, died age 96; Dick Lucas, football, age 86; and Steve Dalkowski, baseball, age 80.
With President Donald Trump’s policy of maintaining government as usual, the U.S. White House has been a coronavirus testing ground, and it is good news. President Trump and his wife Melania and ten officials have tested positive and none have had serious complications. The officials are Hope Hicks, presidential counselor; Kayleigh McEnany, White House Press Secretary; Bill Stepien, Trump campaign manager; Kellyanne Conway, White House adviser; Robert O’Brien, National Security Advisor; Tomas Phillipson, White House economist; Kimberly Guilfoyle, campaign advisor; Steven Miller, a top White House aid; Katie Miller, Mike Pence’s spokeswoman; and Nick Luna, White House aide. In addition, two military personnel serving the Trump Whitehouse tested positive without serious complications.
A World Health Organization official stated on October 2 that their best estimate is that 10% of the world’s population have been infected with Covid-19; that would put the fatality rate at 0.13 percent. “While we can all agree that the deaths caused by the Chinese virus are terrible, some simple math can put this number into perspective--something the media seems to be missing. Worldwide, the WHO estimates 1,040,000 (rounded) have died from COVID. So, let’s do the math: 1.04 million deaths / 750 million infections = 0.1386 percent infection fatality rate. According to the CDC, in the 2017-2018 flu season, the seasonal flu had a mortality rate ranging from 0.129 percent to 0.1355 percent. Back in March, the WHO estimated a 3.4 percent fatality rate for COVID-19. The health experts advising various governments worldwide used dire predictions of incredibly high death rates to justify unprecedented lockdowns. ... By early May, there were at least five separate studies estimating a COVID-19 fatality rate of less than 1 percent, ranging from 0.06 percent to 0.72 percent. So, while this isn’t exactly news we haven’t heard before, it’s a huge deal that the World Health Organization, by their own ‘best guess’ scenario, has essentially admitted that COVID-19 has a comparable mortality rate to the seasonal flu. And that’s before you even consider the possibility that COVID-19 deaths have been overcounted, or consider that the seasonal flu has a vaccine” (“Did a WHO Official Admit,” PJ Media, Oct. 6, 2020).
A comparison of coronavirus fatalities in five Upper Midwestern states finds that (1) the virus is not very deadly and (2) lockdowns don’t appear to be effective. “Several months ago, I wrote a series of posts about COVID in the five Upper Midwestern states. The comparisons seemed useful because the states are similar in many respects, but their responses to the Wuhan epidemic were very different. Now that more water has gone over the dam, it is a good time to revisit those comparisons. These are the currently reported rates of “COVID deaths” for the Upper Midwestern states–again, bearing in mind that a “COVID death” is, in most if not all jurisdictions, the death of someone who probably had COVID, regardless of what actually killed him or her.
Minnesota: 0.00036
Wisconsin: 0.00022
Iowa: 0.00040
North Dakota: 0.00025
South Dakota: 0.00023
A few observations come immediately to mind. The first is that a disease with a fatality rate that begins with 0.000 is quite minor. It is remarkable that we have twisted our entire society and economy out of shape, devastating the lives of tens if not hundreds of millions, over this flu bug. ... the data reveal the utter futility of ‘shutdown’ measures such as those that have been enforced in Minnesota and other states. In this sample, the correlation between severity of shutdown and fatality rate is actually negative. South Dakota never adopted a shutdown and has a much lower rate of purported COVID deaths than Minnesota, which had (and still has) one of the harshest shutdown regimes in the country. North Dakota, which had a shutdown but a relatively casual one, also does much better than Minnesota. ... Of these comparisons, the most interesting is that between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Both had shutdowns for a while, but Wisconsin’s was invalidated by that state’s Supreme Court. This event was greeted with schadenfreude by Minnesota’s liberals. ... To say that the Wisconsin disaster failed to materialize is an understatement, as the above numbers show. By any measure, Wisconsin has far outperformed Minnesota despite having no shutdown order in place, and despite being open for business” (John Hinderaker, “Covid-19 in Five States, Revisited,” PowerLine, Sept. 27, 2020).
Covid-19 tests are detecting virus fragments that aren’t infectious. The following is excerpted from “Coronavirus cases are mounting but deaths remain stable,” by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson of Oxford University, The Spectator, Sept. 1, 2020: “At the time of writing, the UK records 1750 new cases daily and one death in a population of 67 million. With a roughly similar population and an average of 602 cases a day, Italy has had just over four deaths a day over the last month. The ratio of cases to deaths is nowhere near what it was at the height of the pandemic. The other notable feature is a shift of cases to a younger population. There can be several explanations for this trend. ... A fourth possible and much more complex explanation is what we call the 'reality problem’. ... PCR [polymerase chain reaction] is a very sensitive test, which means that it detects the smallest fragments of the virus it is looking for by amplifying the sample millions of times. However, a fragment is not a whole virus, capable of replication and of infecting other human beings. It is a small part of the viral structure that the PCR primer is looking for, not the whole microorganism. Only whole viruses can infect us. ... You would expect all of this to be reported in a PCR results but it is not routinely done. There is worse news to come. A very sensitive test is vulnerable to contamination with extraneous genetic material (hence the need for suiting up operators). The rapid expansion of testing capacity may have degraded our capacity for sterility by increasing throughput and straining lab staff training. ... Evidence is mounting that a good proportion of 'new' mild cases and people re-testing positives after quarantine or discharge from hospital are not infectious, but are simply clearing harmless virus particles which their immune system has efficiently dealt with. ... So, we appear to have the reality of viral circulation, probably waning fast and the perceived reality of a misused and simply interpreted genial test.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/coronavirus-cases-are-mounting-but-deaths-remain-stable-why-
Potentially 90% of those who have tested positive for Covid-19 have such insignificant amounts of the virus that they “are not likely to be contagious, do not need to isolate and are not candidates for contact tracing (“Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive; Maybe It Shouldn’t Be,” The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2020).
New study finds very weak asymptomatic coronavirus transmission, which is very good news. “A recently published contact tracing study of 3,410 close contacts of 391 SARS-CoV-2 cases in a Chinese province near Wuhan during the peak months of the virus found that transmissibility seems to increase commensurately with the severity of symptoms presented by the infected individual. Of the 127 secondary infections that were traced to the original 3,410 cases, just eight were from individuals confirmed as asymptomatic. All asymptomatic individuals were followed up with 14 days later by study administrators to confirm that they had not presented symptoms. The study was published on August 13 in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal. The study’s authors conclude not only that asymptomatic transmitters compose only a tiny slice of the spread, but that the rate of transmission increases with the severity of the illness, further validating the strategy of focusing on the sick, not the healthy. ... Researchers also found, as other studies have already concluded, that most of the secondary infections occurred among household members. Thus, putting together the low rate of asymptomatic transmission with the fact that most cases (of all severity levels) are spread in the home, why should we destroy our civilization over the concern of asymptomatic spread? Where is the evidence that a non-symptomatic individual merely passing someone for a few seconds in a store will transmit the virus? ... A U.S.-based study from the University of Florida, Gainesville Department of Biostatistics, observed similar low rates of transmission among the asymptomatic. They found symptomatic individuals transmitted the virus at rate 28 times higher than asymptomatic individuals. Another Chinese study from May found very weak transmission capability among asymptomatic infections. ... It would be one thing if just 10% of people are asymptomatic and the other 90% of those infected get fatal cases. But given that some estimates show more than two-thirds of those infected are asymptomatic, and we know most of the remaining individuals are not at risk of dying unless they have certain conditions, the asymptomatic quirkiness of this virus is actually something to celebrate, not a pretext for fear and panic” (“New study,” Conservative Review, Aug. 19, 2020).
Multiple studies show evidence that people with a mild coronavirus infection have strong and lasting immunity. “The studies, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, uncovered that antibodies and immune cells capable of recognizing the virus were apparently present months after infections concluded. The findings could help to eliminate the previous concerns over whether the virus could trick the immune system into having a poor memory of prior infections. ‘This is exactly what you would hope for,’ Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington who authored one of the new studies told the New York Times. ‘All the pieces are there to have a totally protective immune response.’ ... ‘This is very promising,’ said Smita Iyer, an immunologist at the University of California. ‘This calls for some optimism about herd immunity, and potentially a vaccine’” (“Lasting immunity seen,” Fox News, Aug. 17, 2020).
In Massachusetts, the average age of Covid-19 decedents is 86. Only 146 people under the age of 50 have died, and none under the age of 20. When Howie Carr, host of the most popular talk show in New England, tweeted these facts based on the state’s own chart “Deaths an Death Rate by Age Group,” the Massachusetts Department of Health buried the chart. The state is down to one Covid-19 death per day (14 between Jul. 25 and Aug. 8, 12 of whom were over age 80), yet harsh restrictions remain in effect (“Baker Sinks to New Low,” howiecarrshow.com, Aug. 13, 2020).
In the U.S. military, which has continued to operate through the coronavirus pandemic, 28,700 have tested positive, while 495 have been hospitalized and four have died. That is a fatality rate of 0.01% (“Fourth U.S. service member dies from Covid-19,” The Washington Times, Aug. 5, 2020).
The August issue of Pediatrics, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), examines multiple studies worldwide that show that children have little danger from coronavirus and are not important drivers of the virus. “One surprising aspect of this pandemic is that children appear to be infected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, far less frequently than adults and, when infected, typically have mild symptoms ... Almost 6 months into the pandemic, accumulating evidence and collective experience argue that children, particularly school-aged children, are far less important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 transmission than adults. Therefore, serious consideration should be paid toward strategies that allow schools to remain open, even during periods of COVID-19 spread. In doing so, we could minimize the potentially profound adverse social, developmental, and health costs that our children will continue to suffer until an effective treatment or vaccine can be developed and distributed or, failing that, until we reach herd immunity.”
Dr. Scott Atlas, newest addition to President Donald Trump’s medical advisory team, says, “The risk of the disease is extremely low for children, even less than that of seasonal flu” (“New Trump medical adviser,” Just the News, Aug. 12, 2020). Atlas is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a member of the think tank's working group on health care policy.
In the Los Angeles Police Department, 449 personnel have tested positive for coronavirus, and two have died, a fatality rate of 0.4% (“First LAPD officer dies,” Fox News, July 24, 2020).
Meatpacking facilities in America provide a laboratory to study Covid-19, and it is good news. There are 140,000 meatpacking workers in the industry. As of July 20, 45,807 have tested positive, but only 188 have died. That is a fatality rate of 0.41% of known infections, and a fatality rate of only 0.13% of all workers (“Mapping Covid-19 outbraks in the food system,” Food and Environment Reporting Network, July 20, 2020).
In Minnesota, 79% of coronavirus fatalities have been in long-term care (LTC) facilities, and about 98% had significant pre-existing medical conditions. Though the number of discovered infection rates are up, hospitalizations and deaths are way down. On June 29, there were only 10 deaths (four outside of LTC facilities) attributed to coronavirus in a state with 5.6 million inhabitants (“Coronavirus in One State,” Powerlineblog.com, June 30, 2020). One would think that this is good news, proving yet again that the virus is not very deadly to the overall population, but it is presented as a cause for increasing alarm, somehow. There have been 1,435 deaths in Minnesota attributed to Covid-19, which is a fatality rate of 0.026%.
More than 80% of coronavirus fatalities in Canada are residents of long-term care facilities (“Study Finds Canada’s Proportion of LTC Deaths,” The Canadian Press, June 25, 2020). This means that the vast percentage of deaths are elderly people with pre-existing diseases, which has been true worldwide.
According to the latest statistics, in the United States, 92% of the 103,000 coronavirus deaths were age 55 and above; 80% age 65 and above; 60% age 75 and above (Alex Berezow, “Covid Deaths in U.S. by Age, Race,” American Council on Science and Health, June 23, 2020; Berezow is a Ph.D. microbiologist). Meanwhile, 1.16 million Americans have died since February 1, which means that 1,057,000 died of something other than coronavirus. Even in the 75 and over age category, 61,900 died of coronavirus, but 644,000 died of something else. In the age category of 45 and below, 7,606 have died of coronavirus, but 139,900 have died of other causes.
A large Colorado study shows a coronavirus fatality rate of 0.23%. “Now, Colorado has published the results of ongoing antibody tests with a massive sample size of 56,000. The study found, as of Thursday, that 7.75% of the entire state has been infected. That means that an estimated 489,500 Coloradoans have already had the virus. If you divide Colorado’s 1,135 deaths by the number of infections, you get a 0.23% IFR--almost exactly what the CDC pegged as the IFR nationwide! ... If you further divide the Colorado numbers by age group, you get a 0.03% IFR for everyone (sick and healthy together) under the age of 60. Even if you include all those under 70, the IFR comes out to 0.07%. ... What the Colorado data suggests is what we’ve been seeing everywhere all along--that this virus has been around longer than we thought, is more widespread than we thought, is therefore less fatal than we thought for all but the most vulnerable people, and that no degree of human intervention seems to work. When the virus is rampaging for those several weeks of the peak curve, no lockdowns work to tame it, and when the peak is over, a reopening doesn’t spike hospitalizations and deaths. Focusing on testing rates at this late stage is therefore ridiculous. It’s also very likely that because some people who get the infection don’t need antibodies to ward off the virus, we are missing a large number of people who were really infected but tested negative for antibodies. This would drive down the infection fatality rate even lower. Scientists at Rockefeller University conducted an immunological study of blood plasma samples from 149 people who have recovered from COVID-19. After attacking those cells with a sample of the virus, they found that in 33 percent of donor samples, ‘the neutralizing activity of plasma was below detectable levels.’ They concluded from this observation, ‘It’s possible that for many in this group, their immune system’s first line of defense had resolved the infection quickly, before the antibody-producing cells were called in.’ If this is true, the number of people who already have the virus could be up to one-third greater, thereby dropping the lethality of this virus even further. Furthermore, a large percent of the rest of the population might already have immunity from previous coronaviruses, as a recent study from Singapore suggests” (“Colorado antibody testing proves the CDC’s remarkably low fatality rate,” Conservative Review, June 1, 2020).
The vast majority of the 32,000 coronavirus deaths in Italy were elderly with serious underlying health problems. 86% of coronavirus fatalities were age 70 and over; 60% were over 80; the average age is 80! Only 3% were under 60 (“Covid-19 deaths in Italy as of May 20, 2020,” statista.com). 99% of Italy fatalities were people suffering from previous medical conditions, primarily high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease (“99% of Those Who Died from Virus,” Bloomberg, Mar. 18, 2020).
Covid-19 is fading away so quickly in England that the Oxford vaccine trial has slim chance of success! “An Oxford University vaccine trial has only a 50 per cent chance of success because coronavirus is fading so rapidly in Britain, a project co-leader has warned. ... Professor Adrian Hill said an upcoming Oxford vaccine trial, involving 10,000 volunteers, threatened to return ‘no result’ because of low transmission of COVID-19 in the community. ... ‘It is a race, yes. But it's not a race against the other guys. It's a race against the virus disappearing, and against time,’ he said. ‘At the moment, there's a 50 per cent chance that we get no result at all.’ Hill said that of 10,000 people recruited to test the vaccine in the coming weeks--some of whom will be given a placebo--he expected fewer than 50 people to catch the virus. If fewer than 20 test positive, then the results might be useless, he warned. ‘WE'RE IN THE BIZARRE POSITION OF WANTING COVID TO STAY, AT LEAST FOR A LITTLE WHILE. BUT CASES ARE DECLINING’” (“Low virus rate,” The Sydney Morning Herald, May 24, 2020).
43% of coronavirus deaths in America are from 0.6% of the population (nursing homes and assisted living facilities). “2.1 million Americans, representing 0.62% of the U.S. population, reside in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. ... According to an analysis that Gregg Girvan and I conducted for the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, as of May 22, in the 39 states that currently report such figures, an astounding 43% of all COVID-19 deaths have taken place in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Let that sink in: 43% of all COVID-19 deaths are taking place in facilities that house 0.62% of the U.S. population. And 43% could be an undercount. States like New York exclude from their nursing home death tallies those who die in a hospital, even if they were originally infected in an assisted living facility. Outside of New York, more than half of all deaths from COVID-19 are of residents in long-term care facilities. 70% of COVID-19 deaths in Ohio, 69% in Pennsylvania. In Minnesota, 81% of all COVID-19 deaths are of nursing home and residential care home residents. .... In New Jersey, nearly 10 percent of all long-term care facility residents--954 in 10,000--have died from the novel coronavirus. The tragedy is that it didn’t have to be this way. On March 17, as the pandemic was just beginning to accelerate, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis warned that ‘even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses have been known for decades [to] have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect people in nursing homes.’ Ioannidis was ignored. Instead, states like New York, New Jersey, and Michigan actually ordered nursing homes to accept patients with active COVID-19 infections who were being discharged from hospitals. ... Contrast the decisions by governors like Cuomo with those of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In Florida, all nursing home workers were required to be screened for COVID-19 symptoms before entering a facility. On March 15, before most states had locked down, DeSantis signed an executive order that banned nursing home visitations from friends and family, and also banned hospitals from discharging SARS-CoV-2-infected patients into long-term care facilities. ... The fact that nearly half of all COVID-19 deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities means that the 99.4 percent of the country that doesn’t live in those places is roughly half as likely to die of the disease. ... states have the opportunity to learn from their own mistakes and do the right thing: by protecting vulnerable seniors, and letting millions of Americans get back to work” (Avik Roy, “The Most Important Coronavirus Statistic,” Forbes, May 26, 2020).
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has published new statistics on coronavirus fatalities that is thirteen times lower than previous ones, and that is good news. “The CDC just came out with a report that should be earth-shattering to the narrative of the political class, yet it will go into the thick pile of vital data and information about the virus that is not getting out to the public. For the first time, the CDC has attempted to offer a real estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, and under its most likely scenario, the number is 0.26%. Officials estimate a 0.4% fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35% rate of asymptomatic cases among those infected, which drops the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) to just 0.26%--almost exactly where Stanford researchers pegged it a month ago. Until now, we have been ridiculed for thinking the death rate was that low, as opposed to the 3.4% estimate of the World Health Organization, which helped drive the panic and the lockdowns. Now the CDC is agreeing to the lower rate in plain ink. Plus, ultimately we might find out that the IFR is even lower because numerous studies and hard counts of confined populations have shown a much higher percentage of asymptomatic cases. Simply adjusting for a 50% asymptomatic rate would drop their fatality rate to 0.2%--exactly the rate of fatality Dr. John Ionnidis of Stanford University projected” (“Does this CDC study deliver the knockout blow in the Covid lockdown debate?’ Townhall, May 24, 2020).
Israel is a scientific laboratory for Covid-19, and it is good news. As of May 21, there have been 16,667 confirmed Covid-19 infections and 277 deaths. That is a 1.6% fatality rate. (Of course, the infection rate was actually much higher and the fatality rate, therefore much lower.) But the average age of the fatalities in Israel is 81.3, which means that most were older than 81! Only 10 have died who were under age 60. The vast majority of fatalities are people who already had multiple diseases. “[The] Health Ministry has provided age profiles for the first 237 fatalities. There were two people in their thirties, three in their forties, seven in their fifties, and 23 in their sixties. The rest were aged 70 or older, and the average age of the entire group was 81.3. The data did not include details of preexisting conditions” (“Most people we lost to Covid were already near death,” The Times of Israel, May 20, 2020). The directors of hospitals in Israel say that most patients were elderly and sick. “‘Coronavirus was the thing that tipped them over, but to be honest, for most of these patients who died here in Shaare Zedek [Medical Center], the chance is they had a year of life expectancy, not much more,’ said Ofer Merin [director general]. ... ‘Most of the patients who died would maybe be alive now, but coronavirus didn’t affect them in a different way than flu,’ he said, drawing a parallel between COVID-19 and common influenza as diseases whose fatalities are mostly elderly people with preexisting conditions. ‘We did not lose a single patient who was a healthy young person,’ he commented. ... At Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, chief medical officer Eyal Zimlichman also reported a high incidence of other illnesses in patients who have died from COVID-19. ‘The vast majority had preexisting conditions, more than 95%,’ he told The Times of Israel, adding that the average age of death in his hospital’s coronavirus wards has been 75 to 80. ... testing that shows that only 3% of the 4,500 staff members caught the virus” (“Most people we lost to Covid were already near death,” The Times of Israel, May 20, 2020).
The Netherlands has published a chart of the demographic risk of coronavirus, and it is good news. For those under 20, the chance of dying of coronavirus are zero. For those 20 to 39, the chance is about 0.006%. For those 40-49, the chance is 0.01%. For those 50-59, the chance is 0.1%. For those 60-69, the chance is 0.5%. For those 70-75, the chance is 1.6%. For those 75-80, the chance is about 4% and for those 80-85, the chance is 7.8%. So even if you are over 80 years old, your chance of surviving of Covid-19 is 92%. And this doesn’t take into consideration the large number of untested and unreported infections. “But even this chart doesn’t tell the full story. The virus lopsidedly targets people with particular underlying conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes” (“One chart exposes the lie behind the universal lockdowns,” Conservative Review, May 14, 2020).
A reported 626 people have died of coronavirus in North Carolina, a state with a population of 10 million. Thus, so far North Carolinians have a 0.006% chance of dying with coronavirus, one-third the number of those who die annually of the flu. Statistically, about 71,000 people will die in North Carolina this year, but the vast majority will not die of Covid-19. About 19,000 will die of cancer, 18,000 of heart disease, 6,000 of accidents, 5,500 of chronic lower respiratory diseases, 5,000 of stroke, 4,000 of Alzheimer’s, 3,000 of diabetes, 2,400 of drug overdose, 2,000 of flu/pneumonia, 2000 of kidney disease, 1,400 of firearms, 1,500 of suicide, 650 of homicide (probably a lot more because of the lockdown). (“Stats of the State of North Carolina,” CDC)
Computer modeling and the mainstream media have been completely wrong about Georgia, and the fact that they don’t broadcast their errors is a revelation of their true character. When Georgia announced that it was going to start lifting the lockdown in late April, the media was filled with chicken little warnings. One widely reported model warned that the number of deaths would double in Georgia by August and could be as many as 16,000 (“Georgia’s daily coronavirus deaths will nearly double by August,” CNN Health, Apr. 28, 2020). The Atlantic publications called the reopening “Georgia’s experiment in human sacrifice.” In reality, 1,500 have died in Georgia of Covid-19, and there has been no serious increase in deaths with the gradual lifting of the lockdown. In fact, the daily tally of cases and deaths have dropped markedly. “As of Wednesday, the seven-day moving average of new cases was 242, down from 773 on April 29. The seven-day moving average of deaths was 12, down sharply from 34 on April 29, according to the state health department” (“‘Experiment in human sacrifice’ fails to materialize,” The Washington Times, May 13, 2020).
The coronavirus computer models were wrong about the state of Florida. On March 24, the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper cited “A Stanford University-based group, COVID ACT NOW, model that projected the following: With limited action, Florida’s hospitals would reach an overload of over 465,000 patients by April 24; with three months of social distancing, Florida would still see 185,000 hospitalizations by May 14; with mandatory sheltering in place, the need is reduced to 18,000 hospitalizations by July.” On March 26, the Miami Herald cited experts from Stanford, Harvard, and Northeastern universities that predicted “anywhere from 450,000 to 700,000 people in Florida are likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19.” Gov. Ron DeSantis listened to his own medical advisors and refused to institute a draconian lockdown, even though the state has an inordinate number of elderly because of its status as a major retirement destination. The reality is that since the state begun easing up restrictions on May 4, ICU hospitalizations for Covid patients are down 21% and ventilator use by Covid patients is down 32%. The hospitals are not overrun with Covid cases. The number of deaths is decreasing (@GovRonDeSantis, May 16, 2020). Between May 10 and May 15, 200 deaths were attributed to Covid-19 out of a population of 21.4 million. The total deaths on May 15 was 1,917, which means that so far the people of Florida have a 0.009% chance of dying of that disease. Statistically, about 160,000 people will die this year in Florida. Of those, 46,000 will die of heart disease, 45,000 of cancer, 13,000 of accidents, 12,000 of chronic lower respiratory diseases, 12,000 of stroke, 7,000 of Alzheimer’s, 5,000 of drug overdose, 6,000 of diabetes, 3,200 of suicide, 3,100 of kidney disease, and 3,000 of chronic liver disease. (“Stats of the State of Florida,” CDC).
Georgia, with a population of about 10 million, has had about 1,500 Covid-19 deaths, so the chance of dying of the coronavirus in that state so far is about 0.01%. Statistically, about 62,000 people will die in Georgia this year. Of those, 18,000 will die of heart disease, 17,000 of cancer, 5,000 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 4,000 of accidents, 4,000 of stroke, 4,000 of Alzheimer’s 2,000 of diabetes, 2,000 of kidney disease, 1,600 of firearms, 1,500 of drug overdose, 1,500 of septicemia, 1,400 of suicide. (Stats of the State of Georgia,” CDC)
Wisconsin, with a population of about 5.8 million, has had 421 deaths for coronavirus. Thus, so far the people of that state have about a 0.007% chance of dying of Covid-19. Statistically, about 30,000 people will die this year in Wisconsin, but the vast majority will not die of Covid. Rather, 11,000 will die of heart disease, 11,000 of cancer, 4,000 of accidents, 3,000 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 2,500 of stroke, 2,500 of Alzheimer’s, 1,500 of diabetes, 1,100 of drug overdose, 1,000 of flu/pneumonia, 1,000 of suicide.
The U.S. military is a scientific laboratory for the Covid-19 fatality rate, and it shows a low fatality rate. As for April 28, 6,648 active duty troops, civilian service members, defense contractors and military family members have tested positive for Covid-19. Of those, 27 have died (“Pentagon rebuts Democratic senators’ complaints,” The Washington Times, Apr. 28, 2020). Those are the scientific facts. That is a fatality rate of 0.41%, but it does not take into account the millions of military personnel who have not been tested and doubtless have had asymptomatic Covid-19. This means that among U.S. military personnel worldwide, Covid-19 has a fatality rate so far of maximum 0.41%, but undoubtedly much lower than that, since it has been proven by multiple studies that a large number of Covid-19 infections are asymptomatic. On the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was 100% tested, about half of those infected were asymptomatic.
A reported 2,585 people have died of coronavirus in California, a state with a population of 39 million, therefore, so far, the chance of dying with the virus is 0.006%. Statistically, more than 2 million people will die this year in California, and the vast majority will not die of coronavirus. In 2017, 62,000 died of heart disease, 59,000 of cancer, 16,000 of stroke, 16,000 of Alzheimer’s, 13,000 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 13,000 of accidents, 9,500 of diabetes, 6,300 of influenza/pneumonia, 5,500 of hypertension, 5,300 of liver disease, and about 5,000 of drug overdoses. (“Stats of the State of California,” CDC).
According to the speaker of the House of Pennsylvania, the average age of coronavirus fatalities in that state is 79 years old, and two-thirds of fatalities were of occupants of long-term care facilities. 90% of those who died had “comorbidities” (multiple causes of death), mostly heart disease, diabetes, and chronic pulmonary disease. There was never any danger of the hospitals being overrun in Pennsylvania. Of the 37,000 hospital beds in Pennsylvania, 2,500 are occupied by Covid-19 patients (“This letter from Pennsylvania’s House speaker,” Conservative Review, May 8, 2020). About 3,700 people have died of coronavirus in Pennsylvania, a state with a population of 12.8 million, which means that the occupants of the state have a 0.02% chance of dying with that disease. Statistically, about 53,000 people will die in Pennsylvania this year. Of those, about 32,000 will die of heart disease, 28,000 of cancer, 9,500 of accidents, 6,700 of stroke, 6,600 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 5,300 of drug overdose, 4,200 of Alzheimer’s, and 3,700 of diabetes. (“Stats of the State of Pennsylvania,” CDC).
In Minnesota, 77% of the deaths from coronavirus were occupants of long-term care homes (“Minnesota has more Covid-19 deaths than non-lockdown neighbors,” Conservative Review, Apr. 29, 2020). So far people in Minnesota have a 0.01% chance of dying with the coronavirus (578 deaths in a population of 5.6 million). Statistically, we can expect about 32,000 people to die in Minnesota this year. In 2017, 9,800 died of cancer, 8,200 of heart disease, 2,700 of accidents, 2,400 of Alzheimer’s 2,400 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 2,200 of stroke, 1,300 of diabetes, 780 of suicide, 700 of flu/pneumonia, 730 of drug overdose, and 675 of Parkinson’s.
England’s chief medical officer says that the great majority of elderly survive the coronavirus. “Professor Chris Whitty, the country’s chief medical officer, sought to reassure the public that over-60s have a good chance of surviving Covid-19 if infected. ... Health chiefs have warned that older people and those with pre-existing medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes and heath disease are more likely to fall seriously ill from But Prof Witty said: ‘Even in the most vulnerable, oldest groups, in a very stressed health service--which Hubei was at the point when most of the data came out--the great majority of people who caught this virus--and not everybody will--survived it. The great majority, over 90 per cent. I think it’s easy to get a perception that if you are older and you get this virus then you’re a goner--absolutely not, the great majority of people will recover from this virus, even if they are in their 80s’” (“Coronavirus: Elderly people ‘not a goner’ and a great majority will recover,” Independent, Mar. 5, 2020).
A Missouri pork plant in St. Joseph, Missouri, is a laboratory for Covid-19 study, and it is good news. Triumph Foods has about 2,300 employees. After 100% testing by May 1, 373 tested positive (about 13%) and all are asymptomatic. None have been hospitalized; none have died (“Nearly 400 Asymptomatic Workers at Missouri Pork Plant,” International Business Times,Apr. 5, 2020).
In New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic, the death rate for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01%, for people over 75 it is 0.8%, and for children under 18 it is 0 (zero). (Joseph Curl, “Media’s Covid-19 Coverage Has Been Disastrous for America,” The Daily Wire, Apr. 30, 2020).
In statistics released on April 26 for the state of Massachusetts, there have been zero fatalities of K-12 aged youth from Covid-19, and only 31 under the age of 50. The average age of the roughly 3,000 fatalities is 82 years old (Guy Benson, “Massachusetts Data: Zero School-aged young people have died from coronavirus,” Townhall, Apr. 29, 2020).
The Diamond Princess cruise ship is a scientific laboratory for Covid-19 infection among an older population, and it is good news. It was stricken with Covid-19 in February and quarantined off the coast of Japan. Every passenger and crew member was subsequently tested. It was a closed environment, so that the virus spread freely, and it had many days to spread before any significant effort was made to stop it. Further, the population was largely elderly. So it was sort of a worse case scenario. Of 3,711 passengers and crew the average age was 58, with 1231 being over 70 and 236 over 80. As of April, 16, 712 tested positive, 331 had no symptoms, 13 died (“Coronavirus patients on Diamond Princess,” Statista Research, Apr. 17, 2020). OF THE OCCUPANTS OF THIS CRUISE SHIP WHICH WAS WIDELY INVADED BY COVID-19, 99.65% SURVIVED. OF THE 1,015 PASSENGERS AGES 70-79, ONLY 234 TESTED POSITIVE AND 139 OF THOSE WERE ASYMPTOMATIC, WHICH IS 59%. Of the 215 passengers ages 80-89, 52 tested positive and 25 were asymptomatic, which is 48%. SO EVEN AMONG THE 1,230 WHO WERE IN THE 70-89 AGE GROUP, THE VAST MAJORITY SURVIVED, AND MORE THAN 50% OF THIS GROUP WHO WERE INFECTED HAD NO SYMPTOMS WHILE OTHERS HAD ONLY MILD SYMPTOMS. (Figures are from “Field Briefing: Diamond Princess COVID-19,” National Institute of Infectious Diseases Japan, Feb. 20, 2020, niid.go.jp.)
The naval super carrier the USS Theodore Roosevelt is a laboratory for the study of coronavirus, and it shows that the virus is highly infectious but not highly fatal to healthy people. At the beginning of the infection, there were 4,860 sailors on the ship, a floating, self-contained city. On March 22, the first sailor tested positive to the virus. Subsequently, all of the sailors have been tested, 955 have tested positive (including the ship’s Captain, Brett Crozier). That is 19.6% of the sailors. Of the 955, 60% are asymptomatic and the majority of the rest showed mild symptoms. One sailor, 41-year-old Chief Petty Officer Charles Thacker, Jr., was admitted to ICU on April 9 and died on April 13. On April 17, seven of the 955 were in hospitalization and one was in ICU. As of April 24, none were in ICU. Thus, the coronavirus fatality rate on the USS Theodore Roosevelt has been 0.1%. (This information is based on the following reports: “955 U.S.S. Roosevelt crew members have tested positive,” The Washington Times, Apr. 27, 2020; “Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom free,” Reuters, Apr. 17, 2020; “Navy Sailor Assigned to USS Theodore Roosevelt Dies,” Apr. 13, 2020, www.navy.mil; “First Active-Duty Navy Sailor to Die,” Time magazine, Apr. 16, 2020; and “840 Sailors,” USA Today, Apr. 24, 2020).
Florida antibodies testing indicates that coronavirus not nearly as fatal as previously thought. Following on the heels of the same type of results in New York and California, University of Miami researchers have shown that the number of infections is 16 times higher than reported. “University of Miami researchers’ antibody testing out of Miami-Dade County in Florida showed that about 6% of the population has had the China-originated novel coronavirus, COVID-19, extrapolating to an estimated 165,000 infections countywide, about 16 times higher than reported. Since the recorded number of infections via the health department is well below that number, around 10,600 infections, this means the fatality rate is also far lower than reported” (“Florida Antibody Testing,” Daily Wire, Apr. 26, 2020).
Dr. Scott Atlas, former head of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, gives five reasons to stop panic and end total isolation. “Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function. Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown. Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19. ... Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding. ... Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem. ... Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections. ... Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures. ... The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place ... Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models” (Scott Atlas, “The data is in--stop the panic and end the total isolation,” The Hill, Apr. 22, 2020).
New York antibodies testing indicate that coronavirus not very deadly. “Nearly everything we’ve been told about models, rates of infection, deaths, and recoveries was inaccurate. ... [T]he one thing that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s stunning announcement made clear on Thursday is that there are some pretty shocking--and what should be--reassuring truths. Cuomo announced that antibody testing in New York state, which only began four days previous, was already demonstrating that at minimum 13.9% of New Yorkers, had COVID-19 late stage antibodies. The implication of this is a shockwave to the system. With a population of 19,540,500 the findings point out that over 2,500,000 New Yorkers had the virus and have recovered. Keep in mind that as of this writing that only 263,000 New Yorkers have currently confirmed cases. Also as of this writing New York has reported 19,543 fatalities. We’ve been told that the true death rate is 7.4% in New York. We were told there would be hundreds of thousands dead. We were told that this was worse than the flu, which has still recorded more deaths to date in this past flu season--even though the CDC instructed medical personnel to start counting influenza, heart disease, pulmonary, respiratory, drug overdose, and possibly even car crash deaths as COVID-19 deaths. ... We were told that we had to upend an economy, go into solitary confinement, and divorce ourselves from normal life because this would rage beyond any previous pandemic. ... But none of these ‘truths’ turned out to be so” (Kevin McCullough, “Antibody Testing: Proves We’ve Been Had!” Townhall.com, Apr. 23, 2020).
A new study shows coronavirus infections are dramatically higher and the death rate is much lower than reported. “Dr. Eran Bedavid, associate professor of medicine at Stanford University, led the study that tested 3,330 individuals for COVID-19 antibodies in California's Santa Clara County. Stanford researches found 2.5 to 4.16 percent of the subjects possessed antibodies to COVID-19. While the number of unreported infections is a far cry from herd immunity, the number surprised many in the medical community. In Santa Clara county, there have been approximately 1,833 reported cases of the coronavirus, but the study suggests somewhere between 48,000 and 81,000 people have had the virus in the county of nearly two million people. ‘Our findings suggest that there is somewhere between 50- and 80-fold more infections in our county than what’s known by the number of cases than are reported by our department of public health,’ Dr. Bendavid said in an interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer. With 50 to 80 times the number of reported cases, the corresponding death rate would be much lower” (Townhall, Apr. 17, 2020).
A large study by the University of California has found that 4.1 percent of Los Angeles county’s adult population have antibodies to the coronavirus, which means that far more people were infected than previously thought and thus the computer models are off by a large factor. There have been about 600 coronavirus deaths in Los Angeles county (with a population of 10 million). “We haven’t known the true extent of COVID-19 infections in our community because we have only tested people with symptoms, and the availability of tests has been limited,’ said lead investigator Neeraj Sood, professor of public policy at the USC Price School for Public Policy. ‘The estimates also suggest that we might have to recalibrate disease prediction models and rethink public health strategies.’ ... The estimated infection numbers are 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed COVID-19 cases L.A. County had reported at the time of the study in early April. ... Due to the greater infection numbers, it also means the fatality rate from the virus is much lower than originally thought” (“Testing shows hundreds of thousands in L.A. County,” Fox News, Apr. 21, 2020).
The Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio, 1,800 out of 2,500 inmates tested positive to coronavirus, but only 105 have symptoms and none have died. Commenting on this, Dr. Marc Siegel, physician and faculty member at NYU Langone Medical Center, concludes, “So we are talking about a virus that is in most cases dramatically mild; we are talking about a lower fatality rate than we thought” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News, Apr. 21, 2020).
Top Israel scientist shows that the coronavirus follows a fixed pattern, lock down or no lock down; calls the total closures “mass hysteria.” “Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel [chairman of the Israel Space Agency, chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, head of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Studies Center at Tel Aviv University, former head of Military R&D in the Israeli Defense Forces, founder of Israel’s National Cyber Headquarters], who also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, plotted the rates of new coronavirus infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain. The numbers told a shocking story: irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week. ‘Is the coronavirus expansion exponential? The answer by the numbers is simple: no. Expansion begins exponentially but fades quickly after about eight weeks,’ Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel concluded. The reason why coronavirus follows a fixed pattern is yet unknown. ‘I have no explanation,’ he told Mako, ‘There are is kinds of speculation: maybe it’s climate-related, maybe the virus has its own life cycle.’ ...Professor Ben Israel concludes in his analysis summary paper that the data from the past 50 days indicates that the closure policies of the quarantine countries can be replaced by more moderate social distancing policies. The numbers simply do not support quarantine or economic closure. On the reasonableness of Israel’s unprecedented quarantine and closure, he commented to the news agency, ‘I think it's mass hysteria. I have no other way to describe it. 4,500 people die each year from the flu in Israel because of complications, so close the country because of that? No. I don't see a reason to do it because of a lower-risk epidemic” (“Israeli Professor,” Townhall, Apr. 15, 2020).
Stanford professor says coronavirus death rate “likely orders of magnitude lower” than first thought and he is hoping “we’ll be able to quell the fear that’s out there.” “Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told Tucker Carlson Tonight Tuesday ... ‘Per case, I don't think it's as deadly as people thought.’ ... ‘The World Health Organization put an estimate out that was, I think, initially 3.4 percent. It's very unlikely it is anywhere near that. It's it's much likely, much closer to the death rate that you see from the flu per case.’ ‘The problem, of course, is that we don't have a vaccine,’ Bhattacharya added. "So in that sense, it's more deadly and more widespread than the flu, and it overwhelms hospital systems, the ways the flu doesn’t.’ The professor predicted that forthcoming research would give scientists and health officials a ‘much more accurate understanding of how widespread this is.’ ‘It really seems like there's many, many cases of the virus that we haven't identified with the testing regimens that we've got around the world,’ he said. ‘Many orders of magnitude more people have been infected with it, I think. I think that we realize that ... means that ... the death rate is actually lower than people realize, also by orders of magnitude.’ Bhattacharya told Carlson he was less afraid of the virus than when he began his research, adding that he hoped the improved numbers would help Americans deal with their fear of the virus. ‘I'm hoping to get numbers in place,’ Bhattacharya said. ‘We'll be able to really sort of quell the fear that's out there’” (“Stanford Professor, Fox News, Apr. 15, 2020).
According to The Lancelot Infectious Diseases medical journal, the estimates on the Covid-19 fatality rate in March 30 was 1.38% of confirmed cases, .66% overall, and 7.8% for those over 80 (“The Lancet Infectious Diseases: comprehensive Covid-19 hospitalization and death rate estimates,” EurekAlert, Mar. 30, 2020). This is less than half of the rate that was reported earlier. It means that MORE THAN 99% OF THOSE WHO ARE CONTRACTING COVID-19 RECOVER AND 92% OF THOSE OVER 80 ARE RECOVER. We wonder what percentage of those over 80 who contract influenza recover? We could only find statistics for 65 and over, and 65-80 is a significantly different group than 80 and over. We do know that 12,000 people over 65 died of influenza in America the 2017-18 season (“Flu Deaths Rising for Americans over 65,” AARP. Oct. 2, 2018). The sad reality is that when you are over 80, you are likely to die of anything, anytime! I don’t think anyone over 80 would argue with me about that. The interesting thing is that three thousand years ago, God’s Word spoke specifically about the ages 70 and 80. “For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Psalm 90:9-12). This is very good counsel. Our earthly lives are like like a passing shadow at best, and we need to apply our hearts to wisdom.
Stanford University professors Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya stated on March 24 that CURRENT ESTIMATES OF THE FATALITY RATE “MAY BE TOO HIGH BY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE.” They said, “If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high” (“Is the Coronavirus as deadly as they say?” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 24. 2020).
Following are some examples:
On September 25, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control announced the latest Covid-19 survival statistics and it is good news. For those younger than age 50, the death rate is .02%. For the healthy in all age groups, there is little risk of death from this coronavirus. Survival rates are as follows:
Ages 0-19: 99.997%
Ages 20-49: 99.98%
Ages 50-69: 99.5%
Ages 70+: 94.6%
Though there is a media frenzy every time a professional athlete is diagnosed with Covid, but as far as we have been able to determine, ZERO American athletes who are currently active in professional sports have died of Covid-19. Several retired professional athletes have died, but the average age is 78 years old (“Here is the list of sports stars who died of Covid,” Outlookindia.com, updated Sept. 12, 2020). These include Roy Lester, football, died age 96; Dick Lucas, football, age 86; and Steve Dalkowski, baseball, age 80.
With President Donald Trump’s policy of maintaining government as usual, the U.S. White House has been a coronavirus testing ground, and it is good news. President Trump and his wife Melania and ten officials have tested positive and none have had serious complications. The officials are Hope Hicks, presidential counselor; Kayleigh McEnany, White House Press Secretary; Bill Stepien, Trump campaign manager; Kellyanne Conway, White House adviser; Robert O’Brien, National Security Advisor; Tomas Phillipson, White House economist; Kimberly Guilfoyle, campaign advisor; Steven Miller, a top White House aid; Katie Miller, Mike Pence’s spokeswoman; and Nick Luna, White House aide. In addition, two military personnel serving the Trump Whitehouse tested positive without serious complications.
A World Health Organization official stated on October 2 that their best estimate is that 10% of the world’s population have been infected with Covid-19; that would put the fatality rate at 0.13 percent. “While we can all agree that the deaths caused by the Chinese virus are terrible, some simple math can put this number into perspective--something the media seems to be missing. Worldwide, the WHO estimates 1,040,000 (rounded) have died from COVID. So, let’s do the math: 1.04 million deaths / 750 million infections = 0.1386 percent infection fatality rate. According to the CDC, in the 2017-2018 flu season, the seasonal flu had a mortality rate ranging from 0.129 percent to 0.1355 percent. Back in March, the WHO estimated a 3.4 percent fatality rate for COVID-19. The health experts advising various governments worldwide used dire predictions of incredibly high death rates to justify unprecedented lockdowns. ... By early May, there were at least five separate studies estimating a COVID-19 fatality rate of less than 1 percent, ranging from 0.06 percent to 0.72 percent. So, while this isn’t exactly news we haven’t heard before, it’s a huge deal that the World Health Organization, by their own ‘best guess’ scenario, has essentially admitted that COVID-19 has a comparable mortality rate to the seasonal flu. And that’s before you even consider the possibility that COVID-19 deaths have been overcounted, or consider that the seasonal flu has a vaccine” (“Did a WHO Official Admit,” PJ Media, Oct. 6, 2020).
A comparison of coronavirus fatalities in five Upper Midwestern states finds that (1) the virus is not very deadly and (2) lockdowns don’t appear to be effective. “Several months ago, I wrote a series of posts about COVID in the five Upper Midwestern states. The comparisons seemed useful because the states are similar in many respects, but their responses to the Wuhan epidemic were very different. Now that more water has gone over the dam, it is a good time to revisit those comparisons. These are the currently reported rates of “COVID deaths” for the Upper Midwestern states–again, bearing in mind that a “COVID death” is, in most if not all jurisdictions, the death of someone who probably had COVID, regardless of what actually killed him or her.
Minnesota: 0.00036
Wisconsin: 0.00022
Iowa: 0.00040
North Dakota: 0.00025
South Dakota: 0.00023
A few observations come immediately to mind. The first is that a disease with a fatality rate that begins with 0.000 is quite minor. It is remarkable that we have twisted our entire society and economy out of shape, devastating the lives of tens if not hundreds of millions, over this flu bug. ... the data reveal the utter futility of ‘shutdown’ measures such as those that have been enforced in Minnesota and other states. In this sample, the correlation between severity of shutdown and fatality rate is actually negative. South Dakota never adopted a shutdown and has a much lower rate of purported COVID deaths than Minnesota, which had (and still has) one of the harshest shutdown regimes in the country. North Dakota, which had a shutdown but a relatively casual one, also does much better than Minnesota. ... Of these comparisons, the most interesting is that between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Both had shutdowns for a while, but Wisconsin’s was invalidated by that state’s Supreme Court. This event was greeted with schadenfreude by Minnesota’s liberals. ... To say that the Wisconsin disaster failed to materialize is an understatement, as the above numbers show. By any measure, Wisconsin has far outperformed Minnesota despite having no shutdown order in place, and despite being open for business” (John Hinderaker, “Covid-19 in Five States, Revisited,” PowerLine, Sept. 27, 2020).
Covid-19 tests are detecting virus fragments that aren’t infectious. The following is excerpted from “Coronavirus cases are mounting but deaths remain stable,” by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson of Oxford University, The Spectator, Sept. 1, 2020: “At the time of writing, the UK records 1750 new cases daily and one death in a population of 67 million. With a roughly similar population and an average of 602 cases a day, Italy has had just over four deaths a day over the last month. The ratio of cases to deaths is nowhere near what it was at the height of the pandemic. The other notable feature is a shift of cases to a younger population. There can be several explanations for this trend. ... A fourth possible and much more complex explanation is what we call the 'reality problem’. ... PCR [polymerase chain reaction] is a very sensitive test, which means that it detects the smallest fragments of the virus it is looking for by amplifying the sample millions of times. However, a fragment is not a whole virus, capable of replication and of infecting other human beings. It is a small part of the viral structure that the PCR primer is looking for, not the whole microorganism. Only whole viruses can infect us. ... You would expect all of this to be reported in a PCR results but it is not routinely done. There is worse news to come. A very sensitive test is vulnerable to contamination with extraneous genetic material (hence the need for suiting up operators). The rapid expansion of testing capacity may have degraded our capacity for sterility by increasing throughput and straining lab staff training. ... Evidence is mounting that a good proportion of 'new' mild cases and people re-testing positives after quarantine or discharge from hospital are not infectious, but are simply clearing harmless virus particles which their immune system has efficiently dealt with. ... So, we appear to have the reality of viral circulation, probably waning fast and the perceived reality of a misused and simply interpreted genial test.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/coronavirus-cases-are-mounting-but-deaths-remain-stable-why-
Potentially 90% of those who have tested positive for Covid-19 have such insignificant amounts of the virus that they “are not likely to be contagious, do not need to isolate and are not candidates for contact tracing (“Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive; Maybe It Shouldn’t Be,” The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2020).
New study finds very weak asymptomatic coronavirus transmission, which is very good news. “A recently published contact tracing study of 3,410 close contacts of 391 SARS-CoV-2 cases in a Chinese province near Wuhan during the peak months of the virus found that transmissibility seems to increase commensurately with the severity of symptoms presented by the infected individual. Of the 127 secondary infections that were traced to the original 3,410 cases, just eight were from individuals confirmed as asymptomatic. All asymptomatic individuals were followed up with 14 days later by study administrators to confirm that they had not presented symptoms. The study was published on August 13 in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal. The study’s authors conclude not only that asymptomatic transmitters compose only a tiny slice of the spread, but that the rate of transmission increases with the severity of the illness, further validating the strategy of focusing on the sick, not the healthy. ... Researchers also found, as other studies have already concluded, that most of the secondary infections occurred among household members. Thus, putting together the low rate of asymptomatic transmission with the fact that most cases (of all severity levels) are spread in the home, why should we destroy our civilization over the concern of asymptomatic spread? Where is the evidence that a non-symptomatic individual merely passing someone for a few seconds in a store will transmit the virus? ... A U.S.-based study from the University of Florida, Gainesville Department of Biostatistics, observed similar low rates of transmission among the asymptomatic. They found symptomatic individuals transmitted the virus at rate 28 times higher than asymptomatic individuals. Another Chinese study from May found very weak transmission capability among asymptomatic infections. ... It would be one thing if just 10% of people are asymptomatic and the other 90% of those infected get fatal cases. But given that some estimates show more than two-thirds of those infected are asymptomatic, and we know most of the remaining individuals are not at risk of dying unless they have certain conditions, the asymptomatic quirkiness of this virus is actually something to celebrate, not a pretext for fear and panic” (“New study,” Conservative Review, Aug. 19, 2020).
Multiple studies show evidence that people with a mild coronavirus infection have strong and lasting immunity. “The studies, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, uncovered that antibodies and immune cells capable of recognizing the virus were apparently present months after infections concluded. The findings could help to eliminate the previous concerns over whether the virus could trick the immune system into having a poor memory of prior infections. ‘This is exactly what you would hope for,’ Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington who authored one of the new studies told the New York Times. ‘All the pieces are there to have a totally protective immune response.’ ... ‘This is very promising,’ said Smita Iyer, an immunologist at the University of California. ‘This calls for some optimism about herd immunity, and potentially a vaccine’” (“Lasting immunity seen,” Fox News, Aug. 17, 2020).
In Massachusetts, the average age of Covid-19 decedents is 86. Only 146 people under the age of 50 have died, and none under the age of 20. When Howie Carr, host of the most popular talk show in New England, tweeted these facts based on the state’s own chart “Deaths an Death Rate by Age Group,” the Massachusetts Department of Health buried the chart. The state is down to one Covid-19 death per day (14 between Jul. 25 and Aug. 8, 12 of whom were over age 80), yet harsh restrictions remain in effect (“Baker Sinks to New Low,” howiecarrshow.com, Aug. 13, 2020).
In the U.S. military, which has continued to operate through the coronavirus pandemic, 28,700 have tested positive, while 495 have been hospitalized and four have died. That is a fatality rate of 0.01% (“Fourth U.S. service member dies from Covid-19,” The Washington Times, Aug. 5, 2020).
The August issue of Pediatrics, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), examines multiple studies worldwide that show that children have little danger from coronavirus and are not important drivers of the virus. “One surprising aspect of this pandemic is that children appear to be infected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, far less frequently than adults and, when infected, typically have mild symptoms ... Almost 6 months into the pandemic, accumulating evidence and collective experience argue that children, particularly school-aged children, are far less important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 transmission than adults. Therefore, serious consideration should be paid toward strategies that allow schools to remain open, even during periods of COVID-19 spread. In doing so, we could minimize the potentially profound adverse social, developmental, and health costs that our children will continue to suffer until an effective treatment or vaccine can be developed and distributed or, failing that, until we reach herd immunity.”
Dr. Scott Atlas, newest addition to President Donald Trump’s medical advisory team, says, “The risk of the disease is extremely low for children, even less than that of seasonal flu” (“New Trump medical adviser,” Just the News, Aug. 12, 2020). Atlas is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a member of the think tank's working group on health care policy.
In the Los Angeles Police Department, 449 personnel have tested positive for coronavirus, and two have died, a fatality rate of 0.4% (“First LAPD officer dies,” Fox News, July 24, 2020).
Meatpacking facilities in America provide a laboratory to study Covid-19, and it is good news. There are 140,000 meatpacking workers in the industry. As of July 20, 45,807 have tested positive, but only 188 have died. That is a fatality rate of 0.41% of known infections, and a fatality rate of only 0.13% of all workers (“Mapping Covid-19 outbraks in the food system,” Food and Environment Reporting Network, July 20, 2020).
In Minnesota, 79% of coronavirus fatalities have been in long-term care (LTC) facilities, and about 98% had significant pre-existing medical conditions. Though the number of discovered infection rates are up, hospitalizations and deaths are way down. On June 29, there were only 10 deaths (four outside of LTC facilities) attributed to coronavirus in a state with 5.6 million inhabitants (“Coronavirus in One State,” Powerlineblog.com, June 30, 2020). One would think that this is good news, proving yet again that the virus is not very deadly to the overall population, but it is presented as a cause for increasing alarm, somehow. There have been 1,435 deaths in Minnesota attributed to Covid-19, which is a fatality rate of 0.026%.
More than 80% of coronavirus fatalities in Canada are residents of long-term care facilities (“Study Finds Canada’s Proportion of LTC Deaths,” The Canadian Press, June 25, 2020). This means that the vast percentage of deaths are elderly people with pre-existing diseases, which has been true worldwide.
According to the latest statistics, in the United States, 92% of the 103,000 coronavirus deaths were age 55 and above; 80% age 65 and above; 60% age 75 and above (Alex Berezow, “Covid Deaths in U.S. by Age, Race,” American Council on Science and Health, June 23, 2020; Berezow is a Ph.D. microbiologist). Meanwhile, 1.16 million Americans have died since February 1, which means that 1,057,000 died of something other than coronavirus. Even in the 75 and over age category, 61,900 died of coronavirus, but 644,000 died of something else. In the age category of 45 and below, 7,606 have died of coronavirus, but 139,900 have died of other causes.
A large Colorado study shows a coronavirus fatality rate of 0.23%. “Now, Colorado has published the results of ongoing antibody tests with a massive sample size of 56,000. The study found, as of Thursday, that 7.75% of the entire state has been infected. That means that an estimated 489,500 Coloradoans have already had the virus. If you divide Colorado’s 1,135 deaths by the number of infections, you get a 0.23% IFR--almost exactly what the CDC pegged as the IFR nationwide! ... If you further divide the Colorado numbers by age group, you get a 0.03% IFR for everyone (sick and healthy together) under the age of 60. Even if you include all those under 70, the IFR comes out to 0.07%. ... What the Colorado data suggests is what we’ve been seeing everywhere all along--that this virus has been around longer than we thought, is more widespread than we thought, is therefore less fatal than we thought for all but the most vulnerable people, and that no degree of human intervention seems to work. When the virus is rampaging for those several weeks of the peak curve, no lockdowns work to tame it, and when the peak is over, a reopening doesn’t spike hospitalizations and deaths. Focusing on testing rates at this late stage is therefore ridiculous. It’s also very likely that because some people who get the infection don’t need antibodies to ward off the virus, we are missing a large number of people who were really infected but tested negative for antibodies. This would drive down the infection fatality rate even lower. Scientists at Rockefeller University conducted an immunological study of blood plasma samples from 149 people who have recovered from COVID-19. After attacking those cells with a sample of the virus, they found that in 33 percent of donor samples, ‘the neutralizing activity of plasma was below detectable levels.’ They concluded from this observation, ‘It’s possible that for many in this group, their immune system’s first line of defense had resolved the infection quickly, before the antibody-producing cells were called in.’ If this is true, the number of people who already have the virus could be up to one-third greater, thereby dropping the lethality of this virus even further. Furthermore, a large percent of the rest of the population might already have immunity from previous coronaviruses, as a recent study from Singapore suggests” (“Colorado antibody testing proves the CDC’s remarkably low fatality rate,” Conservative Review, June 1, 2020).
The vast majority of the 32,000 coronavirus deaths in Italy were elderly with serious underlying health problems. 86% of coronavirus fatalities were age 70 and over; 60% were over 80; the average age is 80! Only 3% were under 60 (“Covid-19 deaths in Italy as of May 20, 2020,” statista.com). 99% of Italy fatalities were people suffering from previous medical conditions, primarily high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease (“99% of Those Who Died from Virus,” Bloomberg, Mar. 18, 2020).
Covid-19 is fading away so quickly in England that the Oxford vaccine trial has slim chance of success! “An Oxford University vaccine trial has only a 50 per cent chance of success because coronavirus is fading so rapidly in Britain, a project co-leader has warned. ... Professor Adrian Hill said an upcoming Oxford vaccine trial, involving 10,000 volunteers, threatened to return ‘no result’ because of low transmission of COVID-19 in the community. ... ‘It is a race, yes. But it's not a race against the other guys. It's a race against the virus disappearing, and against time,’ he said. ‘At the moment, there's a 50 per cent chance that we get no result at all.’ Hill said that of 10,000 people recruited to test the vaccine in the coming weeks--some of whom will be given a placebo--he expected fewer than 50 people to catch the virus. If fewer than 20 test positive, then the results might be useless, he warned. ‘WE'RE IN THE BIZARRE POSITION OF WANTING COVID TO STAY, AT LEAST FOR A LITTLE WHILE. BUT CASES ARE DECLINING’” (“Low virus rate,” The Sydney Morning Herald, May 24, 2020).
43% of coronavirus deaths in America are from 0.6% of the population (nursing homes and assisted living facilities). “2.1 million Americans, representing 0.62% of the U.S. population, reside in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. ... According to an analysis that Gregg Girvan and I conducted for the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, as of May 22, in the 39 states that currently report such figures, an astounding 43% of all COVID-19 deaths have taken place in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Let that sink in: 43% of all COVID-19 deaths are taking place in facilities that house 0.62% of the U.S. population. And 43% could be an undercount. States like New York exclude from their nursing home death tallies those who die in a hospital, even if they were originally infected in an assisted living facility. Outside of New York, more than half of all deaths from COVID-19 are of residents in long-term care facilities. 70% of COVID-19 deaths in Ohio, 69% in Pennsylvania. In Minnesota, 81% of all COVID-19 deaths are of nursing home and residential care home residents. .... In New Jersey, nearly 10 percent of all long-term care facility residents--954 in 10,000--have died from the novel coronavirus. The tragedy is that it didn’t have to be this way. On March 17, as the pandemic was just beginning to accelerate, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis warned that ‘even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses have been known for decades [to] have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect people in nursing homes.’ Ioannidis was ignored. Instead, states like New York, New Jersey, and Michigan actually ordered nursing homes to accept patients with active COVID-19 infections who were being discharged from hospitals. ... Contrast the decisions by governors like Cuomo with those of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In Florida, all nursing home workers were required to be screened for COVID-19 symptoms before entering a facility. On March 15, before most states had locked down, DeSantis signed an executive order that banned nursing home visitations from friends and family, and also banned hospitals from discharging SARS-CoV-2-infected patients into long-term care facilities. ... The fact that nearly half of all COVID-19 deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities means that the 99.4 percent of the country that doesn’t live in those places is roughly half as likely to die of the disease. ... states have the opportunity to learn from their own mistakes and do the right thing: by protecting vulnerable seniors, and letting millions of Americans get back to work” (Avik Roy, “The Most Important Coronavirus Statistic,” Forbes, May 26, 2020).
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has published new statistics on coronavirus fatalities that is thirteen times lower than previous ones, and that is good news. “The CDC just came out with a report that should be earth-shattering to the narrative of the political class, yet it will go into the thick pile of vital data and information about the virus that is not getting out to the public. For the first time, the CDC has attempted to offer a real estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, and under its most likely scenario, the number is 0.26%. Officials estimate a 0.4% fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35% rate of asymptomatic cases among those infected, which drops the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) to just 0.26%--almost exactly where Stanford researchers pegged it a month ago. Until now, we have been ridiculed for thinking the death rate was that low, as opposed to the 3.4% estimate of the World Health Organization, which helped drive the panic and the lockdowns. Now the CDC is agreeing to the lower rate in plain ink. Plus, ultimately we might find out that the IFR is even lower because numerous studies and hard counts of confined populations have shown a much higher percentage of asymptomatic cases. Simply adjusting for a 50% asymptomatic rate would drop their fatality rate to 0.2%--exactly the rate of fatality Dr. John Ionnidis of Stanford University projected” (“Does this CDC study deliver the knockout blow in the Covid lockdown debate?’ Townhall, May 24, 2020).
Israel is a scientific laboratory for Covid-19, and it is good news. As of May 21, there have been 16,667 confirmed Covid-19 infections and 277 deaths. That is a 1.6% fatality rate. (Of course, the infection rate was actually much higher and the fatality rate, therefore much lower.) But the average age of the fatalities in Israel is 81.3, which means that most were older than 81! Only 10 have died who were under age 60. The vast majority of fatalities are people who already had multiple diseases. “[The] Health Ministry has provided age profiles for the first 237 fatalities. There were two people in their thirties, three in their forties, seven in their fifties, and 23 in their sixties. The rest were aged 70 or older, and the average age of the entire group was 81.3. The data did not include details of preexisting conditions” (“Most people we lost to Covid were already near death,” The Times of Israel, May 20, 2020). The directors of hospitals in Israel say that most patients were elderly and sick. “‘Coronavirus was the thing that tipped them over, but to be honest, for most of these patients who died here in Shaare Zedek [Medical Center], the chance is they had a year of life expectancy, not much more,’ said Ofer Merin [director general]. ... ‘Most of the patients who died would maybe be alive now, but coronavirus didn’t affect them in a different way than flu,’ he said, drawing a parallel between COVID-19 and common influenza as diseases whose fatalities are mostly elderly people with preexisting conditions. ‘We did not lose a single patient who was a healthy young person,’ he commented. ... At Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, chief medical officer Eyal Zimlichman also reported a high incidence of other illnesses in patients who have died from COVID-19. ‘The vast majority had preexisting conditions, more than 95%,’ he told The Times of Israel, adding that the average age of death in his hospital’s coronavirus wards has been 75 to 80. ... testing that shows that only 3% of the 4,500 staff members caught the virus” (“Most people we lost to Covid were already near death,” The Times of Israel, May 20, 2020).
The Netherlands has published a chart of the demographic risk of coronavirus, and it is good news. For those under 20, the chance of dying of coronavirus are zero. For those 20 to 39, the chance is about 0.006%. For those 40-49, the chance is 0.01%. For those 50-59, the chance is 0.1%. For those 60-69, the chance is 0.5%. For those 70-75, the chance is 1.6%. For those 75-80, the chance is about 4% and for those 80-85, the chance is 7.8%. So even if you are over 80 years old, your chance of surviving of Covid-19 is 92%. And this doesn’t take into consideration the large number of untested and unreported infections. “But even this chart doesn’t tell the full story. The virus lopsidedly targets people with particular underlying conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes” (“One chart exposes the lie behind the universal lockdowns,” Conservative Review, May 14, 2020).
A reported 626 people have died of coronavirus in North Carolina, a state with a population of 10 million. Thus, so far North Carolinians have a 0.006% chance of dying with coronavirus, one-third the number of those who die annually of the flu. Statistically, about 71,000 people will die in North Carolina this year, but the vast majority will not die of Covid-19. About 19,000 will die of cancer, 18,000 of heart disease, 6,000 of accidents, 5,500 of chronic lower respiratory diseases, 5,000 of stroke, 4,000 of Alzheimer’s, 3,000 of diabetes, 2,400 of drug overdose, 2,000 of flu/pneumonia, 2000 of kidney disease, 1,400 of firearms, 1,500 of suicide, 650 of homicide (probably a lot more because of the lockdown). (“Stats of the State of North Carolina,” CDC)
Computer modeling and the mainstream media have been completely wrong about Georgia, and the fact that they don’t broadcast their errors is a revelation of their true character. When Georgia announced that it was going to start lifting the lockdown in late April, the media was filled with chicken little warnings. One widely reported model warned that the number of deaths would double in Georgia by August and could be as many as 16,000 (“Georgia’s daily coronavirus deaths will nearly double by August,” CNN Health, Apr. 28, 2020). The Atlantic publications called the reopening “Georgia’s experiment in human sacrifice.” In reality, 1,500 have died in Georgia of Covid-19, and there has been no serious increase in deaths with the gradual lifting of the lockdown. In fact, the daily tally of cases and deaths have dropped markedly. “As of Wednesday, the seven-day moving average of new cases was 242, down from 773 on April 29. The seven-day moving average of deaths was 12, down sharply from 34 on April 29, according to the state health department” (“‘Experiment in human sacrifice’ fails to materialize,” The Washington Times, May 13, 2020).
The coronavirus computer models were wrong about the state of Florida. On March 24, the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper cited “A Stanford University-based group, COVID ACT NOW, model that projected the following: With limited action, Florida’s hospitals would reach an overload of over 465,000 patients by April 24; with three months of social distancing, Florida would still see 185,000 hospitalizations by May 14; with mandatory sheltering in place, the need is reduced to 18,000 hospitalizations by July.” On March 26, the Miami Herald cited experts from Stanford, Harvard, and Northeastern universities that predicted “anywhere from 450,000 to 700,000 people in Florida are likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19.” Gov. Ron DeSantis listened to his own medical advisors and refused to institute a draconian lockdown, even though the state has an inordinate number of elderly because of its status as a major retirement destination. The reality is that since the state begun easing up restrictions on May 4, ICU hospitalizations for Covid patients are down 21% and ventilator use by Covid patients is down 32%. The hospitals are not overrun with Covid cases. The number of deaths is decreasing (@GovRonDeSantis, May 16, 2020). Between May 10 and May 15, 200 deaths were attributed to Covid-19 out of a population of 21.4 million. The total deaths on May 15 was 1,917, which means that so far the people of Florida have a 0.009% chance of dying of that disease. Statistically, about 160,000 people will die this year in Florida. Of those, 46,000 will die of heart disease, 45,000 of cancer, 13,000 of accidents, 12,000 of chronic lower respiratory diseases, 12,000 of stroke, 7,000 of Alzheimer’s, 5,000 of drug overdose, 6,000 of diabetes, 3,200 of suicide, 3,100 of kidney disease, and 3,000 of chronic liver disease. (“Stats of the State of Florida,” CDC).
Georgia, with a population of about 10 million, has had about 1,500 Covid-19 deaths, so the chance of dying of the coronavirus in that state so far is about 0.01%. Statistically, about 62,000 people will die in Georgia this year. Of those, 18,000 will die of heart disease, 17,000 of cancer, 5,000 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 4,000 of accidents, 4,000 of stroke, 4,000 of Alzheimer’s 2,000 of diabetes, 2,000 of kidney disease, 1,600 of firearms, 1,500 of drug overdose, 1,500 of septicemia, 1,400 of suicide. (Stats of the State of Georgia,” CDC)
Wisconsin, with a population of about 5.8 million, has had 421 deaths for coronavirus. Thus, so far the people of that state have about a 0.007% chance of dying of Covid-19. Statistically, about 30,000 people will die this year in Wisconsin, but the vast majority will not die of Covid. Rather, 11,000 will die of heart disease, 11,000 of cancer, 4,000 of accidents, 3,000 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 2,500 of stroke, 2,500 of Alzheimer’s, 1,500 of diabetes, 1,100 of drug overdose, 1,000 of flu/pneumonia, 1,000 of suicide.
The U.S. military is a scientific laboratory for the Covid-19 fatality rate, and it shows a low fatality rate. As for April 28, 6,648 active duty troops, civilian service members, defense contractors and military family members have tested positive for Covid-19. Of those, 27 have died (“Pentagon rebuts Democratic senators’ complaints,” The Washington Times, Apr. 28, 2020). Those are the scientific facts. That is a fatality rate of 0.41%, but it does not take into account the millions of military personnel who have not been tested and doubtless have had asymptomatic Covid-19. This means that among U.S. military personnel worldwide, Covid-19 has a fatality rate so far of maximum 0.41%, but undoubtedly much lower than that, since it has been proven by multiple studies that a large number of Covid-19 infections are asymptomatic. On the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was 100% tested, about half of those infected were asymptomatic.
A reported 2,585 people have died of coronavirus in California, a state with a population of 39 million, therefore, so far, the chance of dying with the virus is 0.006%. Statistically, more than 2 million people will die this year in California, and the vast majority will not die of coronavirus. In 2017, 62,000 died of heart disease, 59,000 of cancer, 16,000 of stroke, 16,000 of Alzheimer’s, 13,000 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 13,000 of accidents, 9,500 of diabetes, 6,300 of influenza/pneumonia, 5,500 of hypertension, 5,300 of liver disease, and about 5,000 of drug overdoses. (“Stats of the State of California,” CDC).
According to the speaker of the House of Pennsylvania, the average age of coronavirus fatalities in that state is 79 years old, and two-thirds of fatalities were of occupants of long-term care facilities. 90% of those who died had “comorbidities” (multiple causes of death), mostly heart disease, diabetes, and chronic pulmonary disease. There was never any danger of the hospitals being overrun in Pennsylvania. Of the 37,000 hospital beds in Pennsylvania, 2,500 are occupied by Covid-19 patients (“This letter from Pennsylvania’s House speaker,” Conservative Review, May 8, 2020). About 3,700 people have died of coronavirus in Pennsylvania, a state with a population of 12.8 million, which means that the occupants of the state have a 0.02% chance of dying with that disease. Statistically, about 53,000 people will die in Pennsylvania this year. Of those, about 32,000 will die of heart disease, 28,000 of cancer, 9,500 of accidents, 6,700 of stroke, 6,600 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 5,300 of drug overdose, 4,200 of Alzheimer’s, and 3,700 of diabetes. (“Stats of the State of Pennsylvania,” CDC).
In Minnesota, 77% of the deaths from coronavirus were occupants of long-term care homes (“Minnesota has more Covid-19 deaths than non-lockdown neighbors,” Conservative Review, Apr. 29, 2020). So far people in Minnesota have a 0.01% chance of dying with the coronavirus (578 deaths in a population of 5.6 million). Statistically, we can expect about 32,000 people to die in Minnesota this year. In 2017, 9,800 died of cancer, 8,200 of heart disease, 2,700 of accidents, 2,400 of Alzheimer’s 2,400 of chronic lower respiratory disease, 2,200 of stroke, 1,300 of diabetes, 780 of suicide, 700 of flu/pneumonia, 730 of drug overdose, and 675 of Parkinson’s.
England’s chief medical officer says that the great majority of elderly survive the coronavirus. “Professor Chris Whitty, the country’s chief medical officer, sought to reassure the public that over-60s have a good chance of surviving Covid-19 if infected. ... Health chiefs have warned that older people and those with pre-existing medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes and heath disease are more likely to fall seriously ill from But Prof Witty said: ‘Even in the most vulnerable, oldest groups, in a very stressed health service--which Hubei was at the point when most of the data came out--the great majority of people who caught this virus--and not everybody will--survived it. The great majority, over 90 per cent. I think it’s easy to get a perception that if you are older and you get this virus then you’re a goner--absolutely not, the great majority of people will recover from this virus, even if they are in their 80s’” (“Coronavirus: Elderly people ‘not a goner’ and a great majority will recover,” Independent, Mar. 5, 2020).
A Missouri pork plant in St. Joseph, Missouri, is a laboratory for Covid-19 study, and it is good news. Triumph Foods has about 2,300 employees. After 100% testing by May 1, 373 tested positive (about 13%) and all are asymptomatic. None have been hospitalized; none have died (“Nearly 400 Asymptomatic Workers at Missouri Pork Plant,” International Business Times,Apr. 5, 2020).
In New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic, the death rate for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01%, for people over 75 it is 0.8%, and for children under 18 it is 0 (zero). (Joseph Curl, “Media’s Covid-19 Coverage Has Been Disastrous for America,” The Daily Wire, Apr. 30, 2020).
In statistics released on April 26 for the state of Massachusetts, there have been zero fatalities of K-12 aged youth from Covid-19, and only 31 under the age of 50. The average age of the roughly 3,000 fatalities is 82 years old (Guy Benson, “Massachusetts Data: Zero School-aged young people have died from coronavirus,” Townhall, Apr. 29, 2020).
The Diamond Princess cruise ship is a scientific laboratory for Covid-19 infection among an older population, and it is good news. It was stricken with Covid-19 in February and quarantined off the coast of Japan. Every passenger and crew member was subsequently tested. It was a closed environment, so that the virus spread freely, and it had many days to spread before any significant effort was made to stop it. Further, the population was largely elderly. So it was sort of a worse case scenario. Of 3,711 passengers and crew the average age was 58, with 1231 being over 70 and 236 over 80. As of April, 16, 712 tested positive, 331 had no symptoms, 13 died (“Coronavirus patients on Diamond Princess,” Statista Research, Apr. 17, 2020). OF THE OCCUPANTS OF THIS CRUISE SHIP WHICH WAS WIDELY INVADED BY COVID-19, 99.65% SURVIVED. OF THE 1,015 PASSENGERS AGES 70-79, ONLY 234 TESTED POSITIVE AND 139 OF THOSE WERE ASYMPTOMATIC, WHICH IS 59%. Of the 215 passengers ages 80-89, 52 tested positive and 25 were asymptomatic, which is 48%. SO EVEN AMONG THE 1,230 WHO WERE IN THE 70-89 AGE GROUP, THE VAST MAJORITY SURVIVED, AND MORE THAN 50% OF THIS GROUP WHO WERE INFECTED HAD NO SYMPTOMS WHILE OTHERS HAD ONLY MILD SYMPTOMS. (Figures are from “Field Briefing: Diamond Princess COVID-19,” National Institute of Infectious Diseases Japan, Feb. 20, 2020, niid.go.jp.)
The naval super carrier the USS Theodore Roosevelt is a laboratory for the study of coronavirus, and it shows that the virus is highly infectious but not highly fatal to healthy people. At the beginning of the infection, there were 4,860 sailors on the ship, a floating, self-contained city. On March 22, the first sailor tested positive to the virus. Subsequently, all of the sailors have been tested, 955 have tested positive (including the ship’s Captain, Brett Crozier). That is 19.6% of the sailors. Of the 955, 60% are asymptomatic and the majority of the rest showed mild symptoms. One sailor, 41-year-old Chief Petty Officer Charles Thacker, Jr., was admitted to ICU on April 9 and died on April 13. On April 17, seven of the 955 were in hospitalization and one was in ICU. As of April 24, none were in ICU. Thus, the coronavirus fatality rate on the USS Theodore Roosevelt has been 0.1%. (This information is based on the following reports: “955 U.S.S. Roosevelt crew members have tested positive,” The Washington Times, Apr. 27, 2020; “Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom free,” Reuters, Apr. 17, 2020; “Navy Sailor Assigned to USS Theodore Roosevelt Dies,” Apr. 13, 2020, www.navy.mil; “First Active-Duty Navy Sailor to Die,” Time magazine, Apr. 16, 2020; and “840 Sailors,” USA Today, Apr. 24, 2020).
Florida antibodies testing indicates that coronavirus not nearly as fatal as previously thought. Following on the heels of the same type of results in New York and California, University of Miami researchers have shown that the number of infections is 16 times higher than reported. “University of Miami researchers’ antibody testing out of Miami-Dade County in Florida showed that about 6% of the population has had the China-originated novel coronavirus, COVID-19, extrapolating to an estimated 165,000 infections countywide, about 16 times higher than reported. Since the recorded number of infections via the health department is well below that number, around 10,600 infections, this means the fatality rate is also far lower than reported” (“Florida Antibody Testing,” Daily Wire, Apr. 26, 2020).
Dr. Scott Atlas, former head of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, gives five reasons to stop panic and end total isolation. “Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function. Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown. Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19. ... Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding. ... Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem. ... Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections. ... Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures. ... The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place ... Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models” (Scott Atlas, “The data is in--stop the panic and end the total isolation,” The Hill, Apr. 22, 2020).
New York antibodies testing indicate that coronavirus not very deadly. “Nearly everything we’ve been told about models, rates of infection, deaths, and recoveries was inaccurate. ... [T]he one thing that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s stunning announcement made clear on Thursday is that there are some pretty shocking--and what should be--reassuring truths. Cuomo announced that antibody testing in New York state, which only began four days previous, was already demonstrating that at minimum 13.9% of New Yorkers, had COVID-19 late stage antibodies. The implication of this is a shockwave to the system. With a population of 19,540,500 the findings point out that over 2,500,000 New Yorkers had the virus and have recovered. Keep in mind that as of this writing that only 263,000 New Yorkers have currently confirmed cases. Also as of this writing New York has reported 19,543 fatalities. We’ve been told that the true death rate is 7.4% in New York. We were told there would be hundreds of thousands dead. We were told that this was worse than the flu, which has still recorded more deaths to date in this past flu season--even though the CDC instructed medical personnel to start counting influenza, heart disease, pulmonary, respiratory, drug overdose, and possibly even car crash deaths as COVID-19 deaths. ... We were told that we had to upend an economy, go into solitary confinement, and divorce ourselves from normal life because this would rage beyond any previous pandemic. ... But none of these ‘truths’ turned out to be so” (Kevin McCullough, “Antibody Testing: Proves We’ve Been Had!” Townhall.com, Apr. 23, 2020).
A new study shows coronavirus infections are dramatically higher and the death rate is much lower than reported. “Dr. Eran Bedavid, associate professor of medicine at Stanford University, led the study that tested 3,330 individuals for COVID-19 antibodies in California's Santa Clara County. Stanford researches found 2.5 to 4.16 percent of the subjects possessed antibodies to COVID-19. While the number of unreported infections is a far cry from herd immunity, the number surprised many in the medical community. In Santa Clara county, there have been approximately 1,833 reported cases of the coronavirus, but the study suggests somewhere between 48,000 and 81,000 people have had the virus in the county of nearly two million people. ‘Our findings suggest that there is somewhere between 50- and 80-fold more infections in our county than what’s known by the number of cases than are reported by our department of public health,’ Dr. Bendavid said in an interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer. With 50 to 80 times the number of reported cases, the corresponding death rate would be much lower” (Townhall, Apr. 17, 2020).
A large study by the University of California has found that 4.1 percent of Los Angeles county’s adult population have antibodies to the coronavirus, which means that far more people were infected than previously thought and thus the computer models are off by a large factor. There have been about 600 coronavirus deaths in Los Angeles county (with a population of 10 million). “We haven’t known the true extent of COVID-19 infections in our community because we have only tested people with symptoms, and the availability of tests has been limited,’ said lead investigator Neeraj Sood, professor of public policy at the USC Price School for Public Policy. ‘The estimates also suggest that we might have to recalibrate disease prediction models and rethink public health strategies.’ ... The estimated infection numbers are 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed COVID-19 cases L.A. County had reported at the time of the study in early April. ... Due to the greater infection numbers, it also means the fatality rate from the virus is much lower than originally thought” (“Testing shows hundreds of thousands in L.A. County,” Fox News, Apr. 21, 2020).
The Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio, 1,800 out of 2,500 inmates tested positive to coronavirus, but only 105 have symptoms and none have died. Commenting on this, Dr. Marc Siegel, physician and faculty member at NYU Langone Medical Center, concludes, “So we are talking about a virus that is in most cases dramatically mild; we are talking about a lower fatality rate than we thought” (“Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News, Apr. 21, 2020).
Top Israel scientist shows that the coronavirus follows a fixed pattern, lock down or no lock down; calls the total closures “mass hysteria.” “Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel [chairman of the Israel Space Agency, chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, head of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Studies Center at Tel Aviv University, former head of Military R&D in the Israeli Defense Forces, founder of Israel’s National Cyber Headquarters], who also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, plotted the rates of new coronavirus infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain. The numbers told a shocking story: irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week. ‘Is the coronavirus expansion exponential? The answer by the numbers is simple: no. Expansion begins exponentially but fades quickly after about eight weeks,’ Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel concluded. The reason why coronavirus follows a fixed pattern is yet unknown. ‘I have no explanation,’ he told Mako, ‘There are is kinds of speculation: maybe it’s climate-related, maybe the virus has its own life cycle.’ ...Professor Ben Israel concludes in his analysis summary paper that the data from the past 50 days indicates that the closure policies of the quarantine countries can be replaced by more moderate social distancing policies. The numbers simply do not support quarantine or economic closure. On the reasonableness of Israel’s unprecedented quarantine and closure, he commented to the news agency, ‘I think it's mass hysteria. I have no other way to describe it. 4,500 people die each year from the flu in Israel because of complications, so close the country because of that? No. I don't see a reason to do it because of a lower-risk epidemic” (“Israeli Professor,” Townhall, Apr. 15, 2020).
Stanford professor says coronavirus death rate “likely orders of magnitude lower” than first thought and he is hoping “we’ll be able to quell the fear that’s out there.” “Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told Tucker Carlson Tonight Tuesday ... ‘Per case, I don't think it's as deadly as people thought.’ ... ‘The World Health Organization put an estimate out that was, I think, initially 3.4 percent. It's very unlikely it is anywhere near that. It's it's much likely, much closer to the death rate that you see from the flu per case.’ ‘The problem, of course, is that we don't have a vaccine,’ Bhattacharya added. "So in that sense, it's more deadly and more widespread than the flu, and it overwhelms hospital systems, the ways the flu doesn’t.’ The professor predicted that forthcoming research would give scientists and health officials a ‘much more accurate understanding of how widespread this is.’ ‘It really seems like there's many, many cases of the virus that we haven't identified with the testing regimens that we've got around the world,’ he said. ‘Many orders of magnitude more people have been infected with it, I think. I think that we realize that ... means that ... the death rate is actually lower than people realize, also by orders of magnitude.’ Bhattacharya told Carlson he was less afraid of the virus than when he began his research, adding that he hoped the improved numbers would help Americans deal with their fear of the virus. ‘I'm hoping to get numbers in place,’ Bhattacharya said. ‘We'll be able to really sort of quell the fear that's out there’” (“Stanford Professor, Fox News, Apr. 15, 2020).
According to The Lancelot Infectious Diseases medical journal, the estimates on the Covid-19 fatality rate in March 30 was 1.38% of confirmed cases, .66% overall, and 7.8% for those over 80 (“The Lancet Infectious Diseases: comprehensive Covid-19 hospitalization and death rate estimates,” EurekAlert, Mar. 30, 2020). This is less than half of the rate that was reported earlier. It means that MORE THAN 99% OF THOSE WHO ARE CONTRACTING COVID-19 RECOVER AND 92% OF THOSE OVER 80 ARE RECOVER. We wonder what percentage of those over 80 who contract influenza recover? We could only find statistics for 65 and over, and 65-80 is a significantly different group than 80 and over. We do know that 12,000 people over 65 died of influenza in America the 2017-18 season (“Flu Deaths Rising for Americans over 65,” AARP. Oct. 2, 2018). The sad reality is that when you are over 80, you are likely to die of anything, anytime! I don’t think anyone over 80 would argue with me about that. The interesting thing is that three thousand years ago, God’s Word spoke specifically about the ages 70 and 80. “For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Psalm 90:9-12). This is very good counsel. Our earthly lives are like like a passing shadow at best, and we need to apply our hearts to wisdom.
Stanford University professors Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya stated on March 24 that CURRENT ESTIMATES OF THE FATALITY RATE “MAY BE TOO HIGH BY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE.” They said, “If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high” (“Is the Coronavirus as deadly as they say?” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 24. 2020).
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