Politicians continue to lie about COVID-19 to generate fear
They just won’t stop lying: On June 26 there was a strange and unbelievable jump in the number of deaths from COVID-19. The graph to the right (source here), up-to-date through June 28, illustrates this. Compare it to the graph I posted on June 25 (in an essay that makes a nice bookmark with this essay). All of a sudden there were 2,500 deaths from the Wuhan flu the very next day, when we had seen no numbers like that since early May and the totals had been steadily and very consistently declining for weeks. In fact, the decline continued along the same exact trend, following this strange uptick in deaths.
Was it a sign of the coming second wave that so many Chicken Littles have been predicting with the partial reopening of the economy, allowing people to leave house arrest? Or was it a sign of some shenanigans by some government officials to manipulate the numbers because they didn’t like how consistently the death totals were dropping, thus giving Americans some hope and the ability to put aside their fears of a coming plague and go back to normal.
Which would you pick?
If you chose the latter you win, buckos! To the right is the graph of day-by-day deaths from the state of New Jersey. On June 26 state health officials decided to add almost 2,000 earlier deaths to their COVID-19 total, thus causing the jump in the nationwide totals. And where did these previously unknown COVID-19 deaths come from?
New Jersey’s official count of coronavirus-related deaths surged by nearly 2,000 overnight as the state began counting “probable” fatalities toward its overall tally. Health officials said the new data point will give a clearer picture of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the state by not simply counting deaths that were confirmed by a mainstream lab test.
…Department of Health Communicable Disease Service medical director Ed Lifshitz said health officials reached the number of probable deaths by counting those who died as part of known outbreaks and had symptoms of the virus but were never tested as well as those who may have had a less specific test for COVID-19. He added that investigators also reviewed death certificates to find other likely cases of coronavirus infection. [emphasis mine]
In other words, they combed the records to find any death that had even the slightest chance of being from COVID-19, and used this very unscientific method to inflate their totals unjustifiably.
This is very similar to the corrupt practices of health officials in neighboring New York, as shown by the updated graph to the right. New York did the same thing, adding in a large number of presumed COVID-19 deaths on May 7, none of which were truly proved to be caused by the disease at all.
Both states are largely or entirely controlled by the Democratic party. Both states have Democratic governors heavily invested in justifying their nullification of the Constitution and Bill of Rights by their imposition of lock downs which have bankrupted their economies, while squelching speech they don’t like.
Neither politician was benefiting from the drop in total deaths in their states. In New York the numbers have been tiny in the past eight days, averaging only about 16 deaths per day. In New Jersey the numbers have been slightly higher, averaging about 36 deaths per day for the past two weeks, if you exclude the extra deaths added in on June 26. You can’t instill fear and panic in your serfs over this disease if almost no one is dying from it.
The solution? Fudge the numbers! Make the epidemic seem far worse than it is, so that the public will remain fearful and cowed, and thus easy to manipulate.
The Wuhan flu however has not been anything like that. It really is nothing more than a slightly worse seasonal flu (as the early data had suggested it would be). To hide this fact, the politicians from these states have worked hard to tamper with the numbers to inflate them, while also making some egregious political decisions that actually caused more Wuhan flu deaths, such as requiring nursing homes to take in infected patients and thus make even more people sick, unnecessarily.
I doubt however that Americans will recognize these facts and let go of their fear. They have been successfully captured by that fear, and to accept data that defuses it is too difficult. It appears they would rather live wallowing in fear, wearing masks and afraid of their neighbors and friends, so that they are wholly in the power of such evil politicians as the governors of New York and New Jersey.
Woe to us all.
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The question of whether or not to include “probable” covid deaths is a worldwide issue, but as far as I know it’s only become politically charged in the US. Not including cases and deaths that have been diagnosed as covid by doctors but without a test to confirm certainly in many countries would lead to a massive under count of covid deaths. The jump in numbers in NJ would not have required any search through the records, the data would have already been recorded and tallied in the data as “probables”, we’ve seen similar cases of cases and deaths not previously included in other countries being included at a later date.
Including clinically diagnosed cases and deaths certainly gives a more accurate approximation of reality than excluding them.
If Mr. Zimmerman’s reasoning had been applied to the Spanish flu there wouldn’t have been a Spanish flu – because all of the diagnoses were done by doctors using clinical symptoms, in today’s terms all cases would have been “probables” and Mr. Zimmerman’s logic would require they be excluded from any official count.
Robert wrote: “I doubt however that Americans will recognize these facts and let go of their fear. They have been successfully captured by that fear, and to accept data that defuses it is too difficult. It appears they would rather live wallowing in fear, wearing masks and afraid of their neighbors and friends, so that they are wholly in the power of such evil politicians as the governors of New York and New Jersey.”
I’m seeing a different kind of fear. The people I see and talk to do not fear the Wuhan flu so much as they fear that the police will fine them or shutter their businesses for non compliance.
Almost every day, I talk to people who aren’t wearing masks. The shops seem to only require masks because the city can send the police to shut them down if they do business with anyone not wearing a mask. Die-hard Democrats that I know appear to wear their masks at all times, but they always toe the party line, so this does not surprise me. There is still a block party every Saturday at the end of my block, so no one is afraid to socialize. No one that I talk to, mask wearing or not, fears catching the flu, and I have never come across anyone, outside of shopkeepers, who asked me to wear a mask.
After the tyranny shown in May in various states, in which some companies were fined or shut down for opening without permission (is that even Constitutional?), it seems that fear of our own government is far greater than fear of some silly flu. This is not the country that I grew up in.
Welcome to Obama’s America, land of the formerly free.
The steady decrease in week-on-week COVID-19 related deaths continue with Sunday’s report of 273, down from the previous Sunday’s 297.
(Weekend numbers are, of course, suppressed due to reporting delays, thus the importance of week-on-week comparisons or seven-day running averages.)
Last night, Conservative talk show host Bill Cunningham had a great summary of the real virus numbers. Most reflect exactly what Robert has been posting.
If you’re interested (start at 3 min mark)
https://www.wjr.com/the-bill-cunningham-show/
The CDC has some updated information:
“For people 65 years and older, current cumulative COVID-19 hospitalization rates are within ranges of cumulative influenza hospitalization rates observed at comparable time points* during recent influenza seasons.”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html
I should add that if you assume that there are 10 Covid-19 positives for every one tested, the cumulative death rate in the US is about 0.5%, which is about 2 1/2 times that of a normal flu season.. I think. The one thing that isn’t factored into this is that we are getting better at caring for those admitted with Covid-19, so the mortality rate of those admitted is not what it was months ago.
Gary thanks for the link. I noticed that listed a few Key Points below the one you highlighted, that it mentions that the “the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 9.5% during week 24 to 6.9% during week 25. This is the ninth week during which a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC has been recorded; however, the percentage remains above the epidemic threshold.” Question, I wonder what that epidemic threshold percentage number is?
Andrew, there are so many respiratory illnesses and pathogens for same that it is by no means certain that there would be a “massive” undercount of CV19 if you relied on (admittedly inaccurate) tests. I was tested by the nasal swab method, and the ER doctor told me that it had a 25% false negative rate; and added that frankly, it wasn’t really reliable, “therefore, you should just act as if you have it anyway.”
Looking at the death rate from all illnesses doesn’t show a notable increase over the rate for these same months last year. Therefore, this new disease doesn’t seem to have added to the disease burden, which means it wasn’t the Andromeda Strain after all.
[I find it fascinating that people are so resistant to the good news.]
Beverly.
. .there are so many respiratory illnesses and pathogens for same that it is by no means certain that there would be a “massive” undercount of CV19 if you relied on (admittedly inaccurate) tests. I was tested by the nasal swab method, and the ER doctor told me that it had a 25% false negative rate . . .
Yes, there is a large false negative rate with the antigen tests, so yes, people will die from Covid both with negative test results and likely without being tested if the availability of tests is limited.
So the question is: Are doctors able to reliably identify deaths due to Covid through clinical means?
The answer I’ve seen from doctors from around the world that have addressed this question is “yes”, x-rays of the lungs of people heavily infected with Covid show obvious and clear differences to the lungs of people suffering from other respiratory ailments.
Looking at the death rate from all illnesses doesn’t show a notable increase over the rate for these same months last year.
Looking at the death rate from all illnesses from areas with high covid infection rates show a significant increase over the rate for these same months last year.
[I find it fascinating that people are so resistant to the good news.]
I’m totally unsurprised that people so often avoid objectively addressing the facts when those facts are inconvenient to their ideologically motivated beliefs. Because that’s how human nature works.
To add to my statement “I have never come across anyone, outside of shopkeepers, who asked me to wear a mask“: Before my county (or is it my state) required masks be worn any time we left our houses (about a week ago), the only business that asked me to wear a mask was my dentist, who insisted that I wear a mask at the front desk and in the waiting room. I suspect that my doctor would have done the same.
Beverly wrote: I find it fascinating that people are so resistant to the good news.
This is supposed to be the lesson of Chicken Little. Some people are worriers, desperate for bad news and become wedded to it to the point that they reject any news that does not support their view. Good news becomes too good to be true, and removes their excuse for worry. We saw this with global warming, when the temperatures stopped climbing despite continued increase in CO2. It became so bad that when they finally had to admit that the globe had stopped warming, they changed the problem to be changing climate, as though climates do not naturally change (and as though stable temperatures are climate change).
At the risk of looking like one of those worriers, here is more of my thoughts, continued from yesterday:
It isn’t just that we fear our own police forces, that we are being intimidated into compliance to central controllers, we now know that the police are not protecting and serving us — but are serving the government, and serving them against us, removing our Constitutionally protected freedoms. However, the police are doing a poor job of protecting the government, because in Minneapolis and in Seattle the police could not even protect themselves from antifa (Anti First Amendment) and (OS)BLM* rioters and looters.
Seattle is a very different case than most of the U.S. Seattle has enabled the insurgency that crated a separate regime within the region of a few blocks. Not only has Seattle not protected its citizens from the insurgent rulers but has abandoned them where health and safety are concerned.
So, what are the priorities of government? Protecting us from Wuhan flu? Clearly not. Protecting us from an insurgency in Seattle that cannot feed people, extorts from them, and can’t protect them from shootings? No, but then Chicago does not care that over any given weekend scores of its own citizens are victims. Government’s current priority is counteracting the voting decisions of We the People, and doing so either by undoing the democratically decided 2016 presidential election or else by influencing the 2020 election, at all levels. With the revelations of the actions of the IRS in 2010 and the (In)Justice Department as well as the intelligence agencies in 2016, we see that government has taken sides in our (once) democratic elections and now wants to determine who our leaders are. So much for democracy in America.
As part of this, American politicians continue to lie to us about Wuhan flu in order to make us fearful, to influence our votes, and to change our culture and society. Obama’s fundamental transformation of America is still underway, despite the results of the 2016 election and the clear desire of the American people. Year after year, people keep telling us that the upcoming election is the most important election of our lives, but the most important one was in 2008, and We the People lost.
To invoke another of Robert’s postings, we are losing truth, we are losing justice, and we are losing the American way. https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/truth-justice-and-the-american-way/
* We have long known that Black Lives Matter does not allow anyone to suggest that all lives matter, only black lives. More recently it has been pointed out that the lives of black police don’t matter, neither do the black lives lost in various cities, such as Chicago, otherwise (OS)BLM would protest their deaths, too, not just the selected lost lives that they do protest. It is obvious that only selected Black Lives Matter, so the group should really be called OSBLM. These days, (OS)BLM has required non-blacks to kneel before them, reinforcing their message that non-black lives don’t matter, and that black lives are superior to others.
Today’s daily COVID-19 death numbers are still quite low, but at +332 they are up week-on-week vs. last Monday’s +282.
Not much should be read into one day’s worth of data, and particularly not a Monday’s data since it is part of the suppressed weekend reporting, and the level of suppression varies.
“Cuomo and de Blasio Lockdown Regimes Smacked by Judge”
Tom Woods Show Ep. 1682 (audio)
June 29, 2020
https://youtu.be/GYyO-9E54c8
24:50
“The Thomas More Society’s Christopher Ferrara just won a major victory over the governor of New York and the mayor of New York City with a ruling by Federal District Judge Gary L. Sharpe that strikes down limitations on religious gatherings that are more onerous than restrictions on other gatherings. In so doing, he struck down all limitations on outdoor gatherings, and thus the ruling has a significant impact on religious and non-religious people alike.”
There are other ways to make the numbers seem higher than they should be.
‘How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?’
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/
The government’s disease-fighting agency is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics.
“The viral testing is to understand how many people are getting infected, while antibody testing is like looking in the rearview mirror. The two tests are totally different signals,” he told us. By combining the two types of results, the CDC has made them both “uninterpretable,”
The nose swab viral test tells them if you have the disease.
The blood test tells them if you’ve had it in the past, or a similar virus, or a flu shot. Although the problem has been verified, it has not been rectified.
Another way to increase the numbers. British snafu.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/22/thousands-coronavirus-tests-are-double-counted-officials-admit-12742017/
“Diagnostic tests which involve taking saliva and nasal samples from the same person are being recorded as two tests, not one, the Department of Health (DoH) and Public Health England (PHE) said.”
This had the benefit of increasing the numbers by 20%
All deaths not verified by an official coroner report are now labeled “suspected coronavirus”. (A new classification) All death certificates are being revised and added to the death count until the government has the numbers they need to maintain the lockdown.
The insurrection is continuing, constitutional liberties are suspended (illegally) by a perceived manufactured health crisis that doesn’t exist.
Soon, the mandatory cure will be distributed. Like the facemasks, you cannot shop or conduct business without verification of participation compliance. Whether you get the dangerous cure or placebo will be dependent upon your Google social score.
Productive conservatives will neel before those they have wronged, ask forgiveness, and enslave themselves with guilt for being born with privilege that we didn’t even know we had.
Chicken Little was crazy… But in the wrong hands, the perceived threat of the sky falling can be used in mass hysteria to control others, and seize their property. Force them not to work, not to open their businesses, make them all carry umbrellas, or in this case facemask…
And outward sign that you support the establishment, and the their power over you like everyone else that they pretend to dominate. When the power is enforced by law with fines/ imprisonment, then it’s no longer pretending but real!
Once you defund the police and give them new masters, with new objectives/ loyalties to an idea, and not the people… Completely removing the rule of law and the constitution, just as they remove all statues, paper money and familiar names from history that this generation was never taught in school… Then the zombie transformation will be complete. The new world order will be established, and will pretend like it’s always been there for hundreds of years and that this has always been the normal. like a body snatcher inhabiting what once was, but is no more. Along with the memory and history of what it thought it once was.
Resistance is futile.
In year 1000 A.D. The church and Crown made it well known with the media of the time that the eminent return of Christ was at hand. The thousand year waiting period had expired and the need for personal possessions was no longer necessary and was confiscated. No one planted their crops, or took any considerations for the future as the masses gathered at the churches to pray and wait for the rapture.
This was the beginning of the dark age.
Rev. Steven Soos v. Andrew Cuomo et al
Memorandum-decision and order
June 26, 2020
https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dist.-Ct.-Memo-and-Order-June-26-2020.pdf
Does anyone know what the epidemic threshold percentage number for deaths is?
@Brain, for week 25 of this year it appears to be just under 6%. (Specifically 5.94636% — as extracted from chart data.) See: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm under the “Pneumonia and Influenza (P&I) Mortality Surveillance” section.
That page gives a preliminary week 25 P&I percentage of 5.8%, but notes coding delays could increase it above the threshold. Perhaps that explains the 6.9% reported on the page Gary linked.
Stealing from Arnold Kling today (http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/predicting-the-virus-one-month-ahead/)
It is not that 2500 people died of the virus on the 25th. But that was the day that New Jersey included over 2000 previously unreported deaths from April and May. I am afraid that we have not seen the last of this “death harvesting.” I came across an article the other day, which I forgot to bookmark, that said that analysts are suspicious about the high rate of deaths reportedly caused by Alzheimer’s this year. So perhaps 10,000 more deaths will be re-stated as Covid deaths.
Tuesday’s COVID-19 reported deaths are down week-on-week from 703 last Tuesday to 575 today. If a surge is coming, it didn’t arrive over the weekend.
Rose: And if you look at the New York numbers, you will find that you have little to fear in upstate New York. In the last three days 5, 7, and 13 deaths. Hardly the plague.
And in Arizona, the weekend is over and the number of new cases ballooned from 625 to a new high of 4736. Yet, the deaths (44) and hospitalizations (102) were pretty much in line with last two weeks. The new cases might portend an increase, but based on the other numbers, it will hardly one that will swamp the healthcare system.
I only look at hospitalizations and deaths.
Looking at infection numbers is like finding shells on the beach. The more you look obviously the more you will find.
I was listening to a radio program this morning were a doctor, after completing his own research on the tests, concluded that none are valid. Any test with more than 5% error rate is considered junk. Under normal circumstances these virus test would not be certified. This product was rushed, without verification of proven results, because of the emergency. There is no baseline to compare to, this virus is new and has not been isolated for pure RNA.
Reviewing the medical journals on the isolation of the virus to verify RNA replication, he discovered that none of the 4 labs were able to isolate with the electron microscopic Analysis. In other words, the virus + residual RNA from contamination, host cellular material, bacteria, and other viruses may be present skewing the results.
Our testing methods are getting continuously better, but if there is contamination from an imperfect sample to baseline the test, then faults negatives and positives will result.
Without firm science backing the testing methods, then science gives way to faith or belief in your product ignoring the evidence of falsehood. Accusations and judgments are determined with assumptions and inaccuracies with no evidence. In short, a religious belief that dictates whether a person is quarantined/imprisoned with no constitutional rights can be determined by politics/staff or medical personnel. They have access to your complete medical history and identity associated with every test along with your personal DNA.
The database will be available to Police which do not need to go through your trash for DNA sample, for say a parental custody case, when everyone’s on file without a search warrant.
A few days ago, driving home from work, there was dozens of high school students jogging along the road, in a summer high school training program for athletes. I remember thinking it’s good to see kids out playing again. There are strict guidelines with daily temperatures taken and everyone wearing facemasks, especially the staff and coaches. One of the coaches antibody test came back positive and they suspended the program. Now all the children are being tested. No one was indoors, or close to each other. If this is the way things are going to be ran, I don’t give our society much hope. A generation of fear and helplessness.