The COVID epidemic really IS ending
CDC graph
Though we all know that our fear-driven society and its power-hungry leaders will refuse to recognize this reality in order to permit life to return to a sane normality, the evidence now shows that the ’20-’21 winter season of COVID is now ending.
The big news is that there has been a drastic decline in reported infections since the beginning of the year.
According to the CDC COVID Data Tracker, there were 283,640 new cases on January 2, 2021. As of February 17, there were 69,165 cases. That represents a drop of 75.05 percent in six weeks — for all you fact-checkers out there.
First, we must recognize that the high numbers this season that seem to dwarf last year are caused largely by the increased effort to test everyone. The numbers also do not indicate COVID cases (where someone is sick from the disease) but include everyone who was tested and found positive, even if they were not sick at all. To call all positive detections as COVID cases is dishonest, and would have never been done in the past. Sadly, the idea of honest reporting has long disappeared.
Second, we must remember that these numbers are likely also inflated because it is financially advantageous for medical officials to report a coronavirus detection, even if it has not been clearly established. There has also been an effort to distort the numbers to make them seem worse than they are.
Finally, most news sources have been combining the statistics from last year’s COVID season with this year’s in order to inflate the numbers. This is bad reporting. The proper thing to do is to report them as separate seasons. If you did this you find that the numbers make the coronavirus not much different than the Hong Kong flu, when adjusted for population. It might be worse, but not unduly so.
For COVID, separating its annual seasons has been made more little difficult because the lockdowns and the insistence that everyone wear masks (almost all of which were worn improperly) I think caused a second unprecedented COVID summer season. That summer rise would likely not have happened if we had allowed people to behave normally in the summer weather, when such respiratory illnesses fade. Instead, everyone wore unsanitary masks that they touched constantly (increasing the changes they were exposed to the pathogen) while confining them indoors where such viruses prosper.
Regardless, the data strongly suggests this year’s coronavirus season is waning, as always happens with such respiratory diseases with the coming of spring. And certainly the arrival of vaccines against COVID is contributing to this decline as well.
All good news. Are you ready to cheer, or will you find ways to see only the half-filled part of the glass?
Nor is this news all. Two more stories in the past few weeks now give us a far better and hopeful sense of the disease’s scope and future.
First the somewhat bad news, that when looked at objectively really isn’t that bad at all. A new study has assessed what we have learned about the virus in the past year, and concluded that its mortality rate is about 3.5 times worse than the flu.
A new study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) found that the risk of death from COVID-19 was 3.5 times higher than from influenza. “We can now say definitively that COVID-19 is much more severe than seasonal influenza,” says Dr. Amol Verma, St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, and the University of Toronto. “Patients admitted to hospital in Ontario with COVID-19 had a 3.5 times greater risk of death, 1.5 times greater use of the ICU, and 1.5 times longer hospital stays than patients admitted with influenza.”
These findings are similar to study results recently reported in France and the United States.
COVID is now confirmed to be worse than the flu, and more deadly. However, these numbers also tell us that it is not the plague, that it kills only a tiny percentage of those who get it, and the bulk of those deaths are among the elderly sick. While it kills more healthy people than the flu, the difference is not really significant, and certainly has not justified the panic and insane reshaping of all society so that everyone now wears masks all the time and no large gathering are allowed.
Let me provide you with a simplification of these numbers. The flu kills about 1 in a thousand. COVID now appears to kill 3.5 in a thousand. In both cases almost all deaths are among the elderly sick, which means for the general population the threat is far lower. Looking at the numbers in this manner shows that there is little reason to cower in fear from COVID. It is not the plague which killed 40% of the population, regardless of age or health. Better to live your life fully while taking a few simple precautions (wash your hands, quarantine the sick, get treatment quickly if you feel sick), rather than panicking and taking extreme unnecessary and mostly counter-productive actions.
Next the real good news. According to one Johns Hopkins scientist, the decline in virus detections described above means we should reach herd immunity by April.
The United States will achieve herd immunity in its fight against COVID-19 by April, much sooner than most health officials want to admit, Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins University health policy expert and surgeon, argues in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal and in an interview Friday. “I think most scientists are well-intentioned,” Makary said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “I have had personal conversations who said don’t put this out there in public. People might not get the vaccine or might stop taking precautions.”
However, he added, “we have to be honest.”
“There is a 77% reduction in daily cases over the last six weeks,” said Makary. “You, as a scientist, have to ask why. We cannot explain that by vaccinated immunity. We can’t explain it by a sudden change in behavior. It is natural immunity and it’s now over 50% of the population.”
Once again, these are reasons to cheer and breath a sigh of relief. The epidemic is fading. Life should return to normal. Our fear should fade.
Sadly I do not think normality is coming. Nor do I think people will abandon their fear. Many have grown to love it, either because cowering in fear makes them feel safer, or because that fear has given them a tool for gaining power for ruling people arbitrarily.
In the former case feeling safer does not make you safer. The risk remains, but you have stopped living. What a tragedy.
In the latter case the acquisition of power merely for power’s sake is terrible, especially when that power is misused. This is happening, however, and it is happening because too many Americans have decided to join the former group and let the latter take power.
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In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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I contracted it 4 weeks ago, some symptoms lasted for a good 3 weeks. I still have a dry cough but the “brain fog” or feeling jet lagged finally faded last week. I know many others that have had it and all experienced this same jet lag feeling where its hard to concentrate and you get mentally fatigued easily. Never lost my sense of taste or smell but I did experience phantom scents. Did experience some severe back spasms which, at least among those I know that have had it, is a somewhat common symptom.
Nothing like the flu for sure, I would say the flu is worse but you get over it quicker.
“We cannot explain that by vaccinated immunity. We can’t explain it by a sudden change in behavior.”
Yet that is PRECISELY how National Propaganda Radio explained it to its audience this morning!
I plan to get the vaccine when my age group comes up (I’m 61). I take reasonable precautions but have not hid in my basement. Once I get the shots I will go back to my normal routine. I came to the same conclusions as the article by reading and using the brain in my head.
This trend is why you are now seeing the front men for the blue lockdown/closure response to WuFlu – Cuomo, Newsom, the teachers” unions – being thrown under the bus by even their political allies.
Said allies know that the American people are about to figure out that their arbitrary, rules-driven approach was unnecessary – and will be turning on all of them.
Especially when they figure out that the teachers’ unions reluctance to open the schools, was an attempt to keep the crisis going until their states got Federal bailouts that would prop up their pension funds.
I suspect the mortality rate for covid will decline with time and eventually land about equal to the flu. My logic is it can only be a novel virus once, where it can rapidly pick off the most vulnerable of the population infected, and we are now past that phase. Going forward it will only face a healthier population developing ever higher immunity due to previous exposure and immunization. Thus, as a distinct respiratory virus much like the flu, in the end it will be about as lethal on an on-going basis.
I also conjecture that the combined mortality of covid and the flu together in the future will be less than or equal to what the flu has been historically, because we have learned the benefit of hygiene and the social courtesy if masking WHEN SYMPTOMATIC, which will mitigate both long term compared to our previous behavior.
I am in agreement with you, MDN.
MDN, we will also be having an increasing number of therapeutics completing clinical trials and going through the approval process over the next 24 months. Twelve months ago we had no dedicated therapeutics for this virus. Treatment options will continue to improve for patients who become symptomatic. As you mentioned, this will be bolstered by positive effects of eventual herd immunity. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-therapeutics-tracker
NavyNuke-
excellent list!
— skimmed the first few pages– what struck me immediately was the large number of “old drugs,” that are being tested for efficacy.
The total upside for all those– the safety profiles are (extremely) well known and they are (predominately) off-patent.
(on the downside however, one can get a patent for a new formulation & dosage and/or fixed-combination entity, but the underlying molecule(s) remain off-patent.)
Joe Biden is the Punxsutawney Phil of Covid. He’s been out more recently. I guess he saw Trump’s shadow.
He needed to reinforce the “fear porn” with Fauci, or it will all unravel.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported only 40 positive flu cases for the week ending December 5 in the entire country.”
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/12/14/us-historical-record-low-flu-cases/
https://depopulation.news/2020-12-07-mrna-vaccines-may-cause-body-attack-placenta-cells.html
How much of the decline in “cases” is due to CDC redefining what a “case” is? Recall that they changed the definition as Biden was being sworn in. From Jan 20 forward a positive test is no longer a “case” unless it is accompanied by symptoms, such as fever, loss of smell & taste, etc. This raises a more questions. Does CDC now believe that asymptomatic transmission is no longer a thing? That all the worry about asymptomatic transmission was for naught? How much of the 2020 pandemic panic can be attributed to the number of cases that were merely positive tests without symptoms? Why such curious timing in changing the definition of a case?
Actually, if you just took the original advice of the NIH from April 2, hardly anyone would have gotten COVID or died from it. It is all pretty simple and demonstrates why flu epidemics occur in winter when people hardly get any sun.
On April 2, NIH posted a report recommending everyone start taking 10,000 IU of D3 to protect against COVID. Here is the important part. “Evidence that Vitamin D Supplementation Could Reduce Risk of Influenza and COVID-19 Infections and Deaths Key Take Away: To reduce the risk of infection, it is recommended that people at risk of influenza and/or COVID-19 consider taking 10,000 IU/d of vitamin D3 for a few weeks to rapidly raise 25(OH)D concentrations, followed by 5000 IU/d. The goal should be to raise 25(OH)D concentrations above 40–60 ng/mL (100–150 nmol/L). For treatment of people who become infected with COVID-19, higher vitamin D3 doses might be useful.”
There you have it. The sunshine vitamin works. I have been taking 10,000 IUs of D3 a day for over 10 years, have not gotten the flu, nor has anyone I know who does likewise. I got seriously exposed to COVID (the person did not know they were active) for over 6 hours but did not get it. So have numerous others taking the same D3.
A word to the wise…
So people, what is your thought on this thing going away, vs becoming an annual winter thing along with the flu?
I notice the article does not address that question directly.
Re- your statement that the 6th paragraph-” I think caused a second unprecedented COVID summer season”
The summer second wave was confined to the southern states Florida, GA, Tx, MS, AL. This summer surge is consistent with historical trends documented by Edgar Hopes-Simpson. in his studies from the 1980’s & 1990’s. The absence of a summer surges, and a strong winter surge in the northern states and all of Europe is likewise consistent with the hopes-simpson curve.
The second point which the author Zimmerman has articulated from time to time is that the mitigation protocols have little effect on the infection rates. There is very little statistical difference in infection rates between states / regions which have high compliance with mitigation protocols and areas / states that have low levels of compliance with mitigation protocols.
91-divoc dot com has very good graphs of the infection rates, death rates etc
“… I still have a dry cough but the “brain fog” or feeling jet lagged finally faded last week. I know many others that have had it and all experienced this same jet lag feeling where its hard to concentrate and you get mentally fatigued easily. ….”
“… Nothing like the flu for sure, I would say the flu is worse but you get over it quicker. …”
this does not make sense to me. I never suffered from brain fog from the flu. Especially where your mental state is affected for over a week??
What to make of the absence of the flu this season? Because of the travel restrictions from China? Or the lockdown and mask orders? I think it is due to the blocking of travel from and to China. Which makes for an interesting rational to continue limiting travel from China. Being that the flu kills 50,000 a year in the US, preventing travel from China, would save that number of lives.
D MacDougald – can you provide a link for the CDC Jan 20 redefinition? I can find their April 5 one, and the update from August 5, but nothing newer.
https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nndss/conditions/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/case-definition/2020/08/05/
IIRC, Jan 20 was about when CDC/FDA/WHO issued a heads-up to the lab techs that they were probably using too many cycles for the PCR test, but did not give them a newer lower limit; it has been known for ages that 35 or more cycles results in a very high error rate; 25 cycles or less is far more accurate.
But to try to answer your questions, at about that time so many people realized (finally) that the tests were junk, that the media tried to generate a new term “pre-symptomatic”, which didn’t last a whole week, because most folks realized “asymptomatic” probably meant a false positive test. Meanwhile several studies have shown that people who have just acquired the virus – label them how you will – are almost incapable of spreading it. So “asymptomatic spread” is pretty bogus. Not that the media has stopped saying this; otherwise no one feeling healthy would bother to wear a mask. Or two or three at a time.
I recall that Fauci was on The View a couple months back, saying how 40% of the people who caught the ‘rona never even knew they had it. There’s a possible false positive rate right there, as only mass public testing could generate such numbers. He then went on to say that another 48% got over it with no medical treatment at all, while 9% only got sick enough to need standard medical care, and around 3% wound up in the ICU. He neglected to say anything about how much of the population might have natural immunity to begin with, which the UK experts were saying at the same time is between 25 – 50%, or maybe higher.
Steve Richter…when I have had the flu, it came on like a hammer blow, quick and laid me low. Lying on the couch with fever and chills too weak to do much. That was never the case with COVID. I had a slight fever 101 for a day, same day I had the back spasms, but I was never weak and kept a decent appetite. Many people think they have the flu when it is actually a bad cold. True flu is not the same as a cold or COVID and maybe (my speculation, which is not worth a whole lot) COVID is more deadly than flu because it does drag on longer. The symptoms are milder so people are less likely to request assistance until when they do need help its already advanced..
reporting number of infections are low due to people like me. three of us caught it. one was tested positive. due to symptoms, we all knew we had it. this, I am sure, is not a unique situation. My guess, the numbers are going down due to approach of herd immunity. Myself, was in large room with others. always 6 ft. but inside for several hours. this thing is very infectious inside. not out as all the protests groups have proven (anecdotal of course)
Robert Zimmerman:
RZ–“The flu kills about 1 in a thousand. COVID now appears to kill 3.5 in a thousand.”
From Andrew_W–“Over the last decade flu deaths/season in the US average 35,900…”
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html
Since the US population is ~330 million, the”normal flu” lethality per capita is
36,000/330,000,000 = 1/9167 or nearly 1 in 10,000 … NOT 1 in 1000.
Are you off by a factor of 10? Am I?
I sincerely want to know why we differ on this so much.
Sincerely M. D. Mill
m d mill: As I understand it, the mortality rate is not determined by using the total population, but using only those who actually get the disease.
However, I could be wrong in this. Math is not my specialty. This doesn’t change my point. My example was meant mostly to illustrate why we should not be panicking over the coronavirus numbers. If your numbers are correct, my point is strengthened, by a lot.
Steve Richter asked:
“… I still have a dry cough but the “brain fog” or feeling jet lagged finally faded last week. I know many others that have had it and all experienced this same jet lag feeling where its hard to concentrate and you get mentally fatigued easily. ….”
“… Nothing like the flu for sure, I would say the flu is worse but you get over it quicker. …”
this does not make sense to me. I never suffered from brain fog from the flu. Especially where your mental state is affected for over a week??
I can’t speak for the person who posted this (Born01930) but many years ago I had a bad case of flu and a few months ago I had Covid.
The flu knocked me off my feet for 3 days (I literally crawled to and from the bathroom) and it took 2 weeks to recover. Covid made me tired and achy but didn’t knock me out like the flu.
I do have to add my Covid did not result in loss of smell, mind fog or any respiratory symptoms, I had a sore throat, minor nasal symptoms (I initially thought it was a cold), then fever, aches/muscle soreness, tiredness. Took about two weeks to clear.
And something else – I was on a Vitamin D3 supplement (5000 iu/day – sometimes every other day) for the past couple of years on my doctor’s recommendation. (See what William Meisheid wrote above). I’ve heard endless advice regarding masks, hygiene, etc in the media, from Fauci, on signs etc but only found out about vitamin D’s effectiveness regarding Covid when I stumbled on a YouTube vid by a doctor. While I am only a sample of one, I do wonder if the D resulted in me escaping many of the negative effects of Covid.
Why haven’t authorities recommended it? I wonder what disease impact would have been if a large percentage of the population brought up their D levels (bearing in mind that much of the research is preliminary).?
A new study has assessed what we have learned about the virus in the past year, and concluded that its mortality rate is about 3.5 times worse than the flu.
As usual, you’re reading into the numbers what you want them to be, not what they actually are. The report says that Covid’s mortality rate *of those hospitalized* is 3.5 times that of the flu. But Covid’s hospitalization rate is *much* higher than the flu’s.
Covid’s case mortality rate in the United States is about 2.7% (515,000 deaths out of 19.7 million closed cases). That’s about 30-50 times that of the flu. Just the fact that we’ve lost 515,000 Americans to Covid-19 in less than a year compared to the 15,560 lost during worst seasonal flu season on record when counted the same way as Covid-19 deaths should tell you that much.
Covid-19 is not the Black Death. No one here has ever said it was. But it’s not the flu either.
D. MacDougald and Drew458:
See also
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/one-hour-after-biden-inaugurated-who-changes-covid-testing-criteria
The WHO came out with this one hour after Biden was inaugurated.
These ghouls are not even trying to be subtle. They are brazenly rubbing our noses in it, because they want us to know who’s boss. It’s like the playground bully, sneering at his victim, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, whatcha gonna do about it?!”
Does anyone believe these death numbers for Covid on 2/24/21 in China?
https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn
24 new cases, 101, 750 infections, 4,842 deaths. Were their lockdowns and mask wearing that much more effective than in the U.S.A?
If these are not believable statistics from the Communist Chinse, why would anyone ever believe anything they ever had to say about anything?
And if these numbers are in fact true then I think it would have to be looked at that the virus has been either developed to be more virulent to people not of Chinese origin / DNA, or the Chinese had developed a solution for the virus but I have not heard of such.
Why would the United States incur over 500K deaths with a population of 330,000,000 people, and China with 1,500,000,000 people have only 4,842 deaths? How exactly is that possible?
Mitch S. wondered: “While I am only a sample of one, I do wonder if the D resulted in me escaping many of the negative effects of Covid. Why haven’t authorities recommended it?”
The authorities have recommended nothing but masks, lockdowns, shutdowns, smackdowns of those who do not comply, and Great Oppression. These are said to work, so who needs any pills or vitamins to prevent Wuhan flu or to reduce the effects? Masks (face diapers or asthma simulators) work so well that Fauci even recommends a second one to improve their effectiveness. (Wait. If they work so well, then why waste a second one?) If you contracted Wuhan, then you obviously did not wear enough layers of masks, so it is all your own fault. Or Trump’s fault.
Now that Trump is in exile, they are finally admitting that hydroxychloroquine is effective. How many lives could have been saved had they not banned its use in the worst-hit states?
mkent wrote: “As usual, you’re reading into the numbers what you want them to be, not what they actually are.”
That is a hilarious statement, coming from someone who takes bogus numbers (not factual numbers) and reads into them what he wants rather than what they actually are.
Hey Bob are there any statistics on the number of people who died from COVID who did not have an underlying condition?
Jay Nawrocki: As always Behind the Black is the source for all information. A search of the site for the words “elderly” and “sick” came up with two stories:
July 2020: Actual data: COVID-19 is only a threat to the old AND sick
September 2020: COVID-19 is simply not life-threatening
The first pointed to data that said that the average age of death was 78 years old, and that 75% of those who died had other health issues. The second pointed to this stunning CDC revelation:
In other words, COVID-19 by itself does not kill. Just like all other respiratory sicknesses like the flu and the cold, it makes you sick, but unless you are either very old and weak or already very sick, it won’t kill you. You will recover, just like we all do with the flu and the cold.
For this we destroyed our economy and nullified the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It boggles my mind.
I found this interesting related to what appears to an extreme negative reaction to the Moderna Covid vaccine:
https://nypost.com/2021/03/11/utah-mom-kassidi-kurill-dies-days-after-second-dose-of-covid-19-vaccine/
“They did a blood test and immediately came back and said she was very, very sick, and her liver was not functioning,” he told KUTV.
“Kurill was soon flown to Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, a trauma center, as her liver was failing and a transplant was believed to be her best chance at survival.”
I will add this to the story by a friend who has a friend who became totally paralyzed and is unable to speak after receiving a shot (I am not certain which one she received, I will find out and see if she was able to shake it off). On one hand if the virus gets ahold of you and does not particularly like your particular biological make up and or the co morbidities that you may be sporting it can take you out in short order.
And the same apparently goes for this particular vaccine? And the others? Ah statistics and the unknown and unknowable, and what of the long term potential effects of these experiments in human biology? It may be wise to allow others take the gold ring and accolades in taking the credit for these experiments in human biology. There is a wide gap in my thinking on this situation between the short term benefits and potential long term risks for a significant proportion of the population on the planet earth. And the many are lining up for it all.
Its all just a big experiment and a roll of the dice, like much of life is. We are usually behind the curve on these kinds of issues.