Originally Posted by FAX
That was a little vague, I suppose.
I have things going on here and multitasking isn't my strong suit. Please allow me to elaborate.
I'm not suggesting that COVID-19 is a bio-weapon unleashed upon us by the Yellow Man ... although I wouldn't put it past them. (I've long been concerned that we would be invaded by the Chinese using young girls with Machine Gun Bras to storm our beaches - but that's another story).
I'm also not suggesting that this is a globalist conspiracy promulgated by pedophiles and human traffickers in order to evade justice.
I'm saying that the numbers don't add up to justifying the panic response. There is a mountain of data available out there that spans decades regarding viruses (the dreaded "V" word). Due to time restrictions on my part, there is far too much raw data for me to post here, so I'll use a simple example;
The CDC relies on something called "weekly influenza surveillance data" in order to project how virulent and/or deadly certain flu viruses "might be". This data is then used as a baseline for their projections. The system is inherently flawed because it relies on lab results (which might be conducted in hospital or on an outpatient basis). The CDC knows that lab results are not ALWAYS accurate and they just live with the variance. Additionally, not all flu issues are reported, so there's that. Okay so far.
They also use something called the U.S. Influenza Surveillance System which is a kind of polling method that samples roughly 8% of the US population. They've done that for about 10 years or so. This "system" uses WHO data, data from the National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS), plus a bunch of public health and clinical labs. This data is compiled in order to estimate the effect of a virus on the human population and this is the data they use to make projections. It's how they track things like H1 and H2 by geography and demographics then prioritize vaccine efforts. That makes sense.
Then the problems begin to emerge.
Professional virologists know that viruses are constantly changing. Viruses do that to survive (just like us). Because labs are checking for "known" viruses (read Novel Influenza A, for example), there is no guarantee that COVID-19 or any other variant of the Coronavirus would ever be identified in past general lab analyses. In fact, it's extremely unlikely. There are a hundred+ viruses that want to (and regularly do) infect human beings. You can't and don't check for every possible mutation. The labs that report to the CDC's Flu Surveillance System couldn't even afford to try ... let alone technically accomplish that goal on a regular or reliable basis. And remember, these viruses are constantly evolving and mutating. It's a perpetually moving target.
The CDC currently estimates the (non-corona) "seasonal flu" will kill 22,000 people in the USA during the 2019/2020 season. It could be as many as 55,000. Who knows? They don't. It's a projection based on "best available" data that is inherently flawed. Okay. We can live with that and we do.
Now we have this ...
Potential COVID-19 mortality rates being widely reported by the American mass media don't seem to compute. They are commonly reporting that the global mortality rate of the flu is somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.1%. They then compare that to COVID-19 and claim the "death toll" can be as much as 10x higher. Well, the global mortality rate of the seasonal flu is not 0.1% ... not if you use "confirmed cases" (as reported by the CDC system) as the baseline. If you do that, the mortality rate of seasonal flu is closer to 10% ... if not higher based on unreported or poorly reported "cause of death" cases. Why would they use the 0.1% number in the comparisons to COVID-19 which are currently estimated by the WHO at 3.4% of "confirmed" cases? You tell me.
Finally, the virologists I've been resourcing are coming to the opinion that COVID-19 (or variants thereof) may have been around a long time. In other words, coronavirus itself is nothing particularly new and people have been walking around with some variant for years. Several of these specialists have raised my red flag by commenting on the "feedback loop" created between politicians and medical advisers (including those who have a vested, profit interest in policy changes or investment) that has led to the reaction we have seen in the US.
It's fair to say that the US has the best health care system in the world. Our system surpasses Italy's, Spain's, the UK's, Canada's, etc., etc. No reasonable person would argue that point. We are not Italy and we have not imported Wuhan workers to make soft leather vests. We are different.
In short, I'm unconvinced that we're not being sold a bunch of politically-motivated overkill and undue panic.
FAX
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