Guest Survey by Kip Hansen – 17 November 2020
When I am puzzled by something, I try to find out what’s really going on. Years ago, I wrote “What Are They Really Counting?”. The lessons in that essay are even more important today than they were when I penned it at the end of 2015. Many governments of the world have largely shut down their economies and issued edicts restricting the normal every-day activities of their citizens because of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the illness it causes – Covid-19. We are bombarded in the media with screaming headlines of “rising cases” like this:
The curious thing is that among all my family, friends, acquaintances and colleagues, I know of only two people who have been sick with/from (or even suspected) Covid-19 during the entire pandemic period. My wife has one extended family member who was sick, hospitalized for 24 hours out of extreme caution, in Spain. No one I ask knows anyone who is sick with/from Covid-19.
For those of you with little time or no patience:
[if that does not work, click here to take the survey]
There is one exception, we have a friend with a daughter who is a nurse in a dedicated Covid-ward in a local hospital. There have been some sick Covid-19 patients there. Some have even died:
This graph shows the daily Covid-19 deaths for my local county. There have been 87 deaths in the county with Covid-19 mentioned in any way on the death certificate. Since June 2020, there have been only 8 deaths from/with Covid. With a population of about 180,000. This gives my county an approximate generalized death rate of 48.3/100,000. Even if Covid-deaths continue at the current rate and rise to 105 by the end of the year – our annual country-wide Covid-death rate would be only 58/100,000. New York State as a whole has a Covid-death rate of 175/100,000. The death rate of NY State is over 3.6 times higher than in my county. For comparison, the annual death rate from cancers, nationally, is about 160/100,000.
Our local NPR station out of Albany, NY, which I will call “WDNC” for obvious reasons, read letters in today’s “Round Table” program from several readers, all of whom claimed that they didn’t know anyone who had been or was presently sick with Covid-19, however, they were sure that the apparent-President-elect would do the right thing by issuing orders for every citizen to “wear a mask”.
Previous to this, I thought it might be a quirk that among my friends and acquaintances, my family, my county that there weren’t any/many sick people. However, emailing a friend in Portugal revealed that she too didn’t know any sick people, but had heard that there were some in Texas. During a rather unpleasant visit to my dentist earlier today, neither the dentist or any or his staff knew anyone who had been or was sick with Covid-19.
My father was a doctor, I come from a medical family, I studied Pre-Med originally before switching majors, several times. I did humanitarian work in a third-world country where the threats of malaria, dengue and yellow fever were real everyday worries. I know there must be sick people – there are people dying, after all. A lot of people dying, seemingly, but . . . . Total Deaths in the U.S. are not higher than normal for this time of year, despite Covid 19 according to CDC mortality figures. (To see Total Deaths, you must download the .csv file from the GREEN LINK near the top of the page.) The CDC figures for New York State show the same thing – Total Deaths are running even with previous years – despite Covid-19. (Same link – select State instead of the default National. The .csv file is by week, so compare previous years by week numbers. Note: The most current weeks will be incorrect – too low — not fully reported yet – back at least three weeks.)
So, just to try to get a handle on the actuality of the Covid-19 pandemic, as experienced in the real world by readers here, I have created this little three-question survey – I will publish the results here once there are enough participants or in a week, which comes first.
[if that does not work, click here to take the survey]
The survey is only three questions, with dropdowns for your numerical answers. Very quick and easy. If you wish to contribute personal or local information, or anecdotes, use the comment section.
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Author’s Comment:
Covid-19 is not a hoax. It is not a fantasy. It is not simply made up.
However, the responses of our governments, in the United States, and in many other countries around the world have been far more harmful that the pandemic itself. History will replete with books recounting the horrors caused by the worldwide Covid Pandemic Panic.
One of the first to hit the stands is: “The Price of Panic : How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe” by Jay W. Richards, William M. Briggs and Douglas Axe. Available in hardback, e-book editions and in audible formats. I recommend it.
Keep following Watts Up With That to catch the survey results.
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Kip, I repeat the observation of one commenter that (IMO) the 1-5 category is too wide. Most of these 1-5s are likely to be one or two. A daughter’s family had 2 cases, her husband and her daughter, whom she isolated upstairs, serving them and caring for them. That is two and they are in the UK. I know of no one in our neighborhood in our city in Canada or elsewhere.
Our numbers are going down. I noticed that a resurgence in Quebec and Ontario (biggest cities) accounts for most of the new spike. A check into the John Hopkins U stats for Canada shows an upswing for Canada but almost flat death rate. This probably largely reflects more sanity in care and attention to elderly residents of assisted care homes.
Gary Pearse ==> You may be right — I would have preferred to have simple numerical answers but the survey app didn’t have that option. I tried to keep the survey as simple as possible.
Any news on this story?
Elon Musk Tests Positive For Covid-19 (And Negative)
With four similar tests, he claimed 2 each waay.
I’ve read the same from several different news sources. All tests done same day, same nurse, same equipment/method. Reassuring…… not.
I believe some celeb tested positive in one nostril…and negative in the other, same time.
0,0,0.
I must say, that within all my family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and anyone I interact with on the internet, there does now seem to be a general recognition that ‘something is not right’ in the actions of the government that transcends any notion that they are simply incompetent.
I’m mostly talking about the UK government here, but I guess it’s a similar story everywhere.
It’s certainly similar here in North Carolina, USA, Lurker Pete — excess deaths in the state caused by the alleged “pandemic” have been only slightly higher to lower throughout the whole episode, if I remember my graphs correctly, and yet there is talk of shutting things down again and limiting social activities.
Absolutely, insanely absurd! Things are so inexplicably crazy. What planet am I on?
Willis – Thanks for taking an interest in things and for thinking independently, and for giving us all food for thought. I downloaded the data as described in your post, and did a quick and dirty spreadsheet calc of excess deaths in the last 40 weeks with 100% data vs 52 weeks earlier. The total came to 284.047. Worldometer puts total USA coronavirus deaths at 254,255. So the total deaths data does not indicate that coronavirus deaths are way below what is being reported. It was a quick and dirty, and I might have got it wrong, so I would appreciate it if you could do the same calc and see how it comes out.
TIA.
Mike ==> Willis is not the author of this essay….
My brother wound up testing positive for Covid. He supposedly got it from some lady at his work. He had a couple symptoms but they were fairly mild. He stayed home the requisite 10 days or whatever then his county’s health department cleared him to go back to work. My dad (and mom) came down with regular colds after they visited my sister and her children up in Cleveland a while back. This is a fairly common occurrence as it has happened at least several times after they made a visit. The children are germ factories. One of my dad’s coworkers has a girlfriend/wife with health issues so he’s a bit more worried about Covid than others. As a precaution my dad went and got a Covid test. He didn’t get his results until about 13 days later! Real helpful… It came back negative as suspected. I guarantee he would have got his results a lot sooner if it was positive. Meanwhile he was at home twiddling his thumbs. At least his work paid him for his time off.
0,0,0 for me and everyone I know
My daughter spent the last 6 weeks of a twin pregnancy in hospital in isolation because you could not leave your room, 2 more weeks after the birth, then home with no visitors. I am really impressed at her still managing with 5 month old identical twin boys, still isolated from even the home visits of the social services normal after births. We are on the other side of Canada and have not yet met the babies. Needless to say she is scared silly about Covid and does not want us to break the rules and visit. Go figure.
Fran ==> Congrats to your sister and a hearty “Welcome Aboard” to the Twins! Thanks for sharing your story.
A family member is a supervising nurse in a hospice system, and reports no deaths from COVID-19 during the entire pandemic. Specializing in WW2 vets, so elderly. All with co-morbidities. Nursing home. Zero.
There was a round of flu-like symptoms taking some last December. Perhaps those were unidentified COVID-19.
Just one system that I know anything about. Take it with a grain of salt.
‘However, the responses of our governments, in the United States, and in many other countries around the world have been far more harmful that the pandemic itself. History will replete with books recounting the horrors caused by the worldwide Covid Pandemic Panic. ‘
This is shameful, utter nonsense…
Around 250,000 Americans dead so far and you hardly have it under control… compared to Europe you haven’t even tried lockdown.
Taiwan, s Korea and even china stopped it or massively reduced it – with far, far less control in the case of Taiwan.
If you’d have controlled it like Germany you’d have had only 38,000 deaths.
You haven’t seen it? I have: my neighbour off in an ambulance, gasping for breath even weeks later.
Get with the programme: stop being a snowflake, make a fll sacrifices for the public good
Griff,
The USA has less deaths per million than the UK while Peru, with the maybe tightest lock down anywhere, has had the highest deaths per million. It is also interesting that in Australia, it was the city of Melbourne in the state of Victoria, with the most draconian lock down as well as the most deaths.There does not seem to be much of a correlation between hard lock down and less deaths.
UK has apparently decided to have another taste of that bitter fruit. Good luck with that.
I found this presentation very interesting, maybe you will too.
“If you’d have controlled it like Germany you’d have had only 38,000 deaths.”
Germany operates according to a different paradigm regarding mechanical ventilation and apparently ignored Chinese consensus and the WHO recommendation to intubate covid patients aggressively. That may be a big reason for Germany’s lower mortality.
https://twitter.com/RS_Eng_Brain/status/1311652972397572102
Countries that followed WHO guidelines to intubate early to avoid aerosolization of virus routinely did so. For example, in the US:
https://twitter.com/signaturedoc/status/1250072724057264128
However in Germany that practice was considered to be unethical and avoided.
https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/214736
Taiwan is an island and they had plans in place from back when the SARS and MERS outbreaks occurred, and also bird flu.
it is obvious and has always been know that there is only one chance to stop an emerging disease outbreak, and that is before it has spread widely.
Once it had done so, efforts like contact tracing are an impossible task, even when the disease is something with a known pattern of progression, and clearly defined and obvious early symptoms.
The high number of asymptomatic cases, and the ease with which those who are asymptomatic can nonetheless spread the virus, made anything based on prior knowledge all but useless.
Our so called experts here in the US all promised us we had nothing to worry about, even as the virus was spreading widely without being detected.
By the time we had any idea what was going on, it was already far too late for the US.
Also, any discussion that looks at cases or deaths as a raw number ignores population size and is disingenuous.
The US has as many people as nearly the entire EU.
In that light, we are not faring any worse than most developed western countries.
On top of all of that, different standards of reporting cases and especially deaths make direct comparisons between countries problematic at best, and apples to salt shakers at worst.
what’s a “fll sacrifice” and how does one make one? Is it anything like sacrificing your brain, because going by your example of doing so, I’ll pass thank you very much.
John E. ==> Perhaps he meant “full sacrifice” or “flu sacrifice”…..
Grist says:
Around 250,000 Americans dead so far and you hardly have it under control… compared to Europe you haven’t even tried lockdown.
Fake numbers once again. The real numbers of deaths by CHIIINA virus ALONE in the US is prb’ly a fourth or even less of that number. Numbers are always the first thing the marxists manipulate for their evil purposes — don’t you know that by now?
I personally know one definite “case”, who unfortunately died, back in March and across the world in Canada.
Jon G ==> …and we all wish that no one had died from Covid — but that is life (and death).
I don’t know where all the sick people are, but I know where the dead ones are : in graveyards, lots of them.
Except during election season, then you can find them filling out their ballots – early and often.
François ==> And you are right, of course. DEAD PEOPLE are easy to count because it is easy to determine that they are, well, DEAD. TOTAL DEATHS for nations thus are the count one wants to look at. SARS-CoV-2 has caused a lot of deaths in the US and around the world, worse than some recent influenza annual pandemics, not as bad as some of the very worse.
Can Covid infections be stopped? Can they be eliminated? How? And at what cost?
Viral infections like SARS-CoV-2 (which causes Covid-19) are now endemic — existing widely and uncontrolled — throughout the world. There is no way to stop the unending transmission of the virus, probably for the rest of human history. Thus, every year from now on, it will continue to infect and kill he most vulnerable. Vaccination will protect some of those — but not all.
I have wondered about the COVID 19 situation in all the Homeless encampments, Los Angeles’s Skid Row, etc.
With the unsanitary living conditions, poor health, drug addictions, etc one would think they would be dying like flies, but I have yet to hear of an outbreak…
Dennis ==> I was born just a few blocks from there, in tvhe old California Hospital.
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75 yrs myself, some of my friends a bit below that, but still in the so called risk group
Already from the beginning of the lockdown policies around March or April, it became clear there were plenty reasons to doubt “official statistics”. Over at Jo Nova I suggested to start a “grassroots statistics” along the lines now started by Kip. Look around your family and friends and contacts and report what you see. It has been, and still is to this very day my observation the “corona devastation” is not visible in my own surrounding, and I hear the same from my family and friends.
For some strange reason Jo Nova was fervently in favor of lockdowns, nonchalantly brushing away it’s devastating side effects. In a short discussion with me about those, she responded like: “we all can live with a few weeks of holiday at home”. Sure Jo, a few weeks. Are you kidding me?
So no surprise my idea got no hold over there. There were, to be honest, one or two responses giving information about an incidental sick person in their surrounding. That was all. Someone suggested to start this “grass roots” data collecting on Facebook. I do have an account because of some friends, but I hardly use, and the smothering Facebook policy is the opposite of grass-roots to me.
I gave up there. It is not easy to organize something like that independently. You need some serious platform or a personal network and enough expertise and technicalities to give the data collection a basic robustness. That was beyond me. But I still think this is one of the best ways to go.
Jurgen ==> I am a fan of Jo Nova. It is simply false that “Great Minds Think Alike”.
Smart, well-meaning people can have differing opinions even on topics hat we ourselves think are “obvious”…..
In my opinion, we should have done everything we could to protect the elderly and sick — even locking down nursing homes and isolating our grandparents in a reasonable manner.
Sheltering nursing homes and the vulnerable and elderly was also for me the obvious priority. Of course it was. With Jo Nova I am talking about general lockdowns in social and economic public life, which is a completely different beast. Anybody not aware of this fundamental difference doesn’t know the fabric of society and lives in an ivory tower. For them somehow society is just a lot of people you can group in statistics. Or put in isolation. What is the difference?
From corona I learned a lot of “great minds” are in the latter category. Still great minds I guess, but I feel a bit more reserved about them now. In the end nobody is perfect of course and I am still visiting Jo. She does a great job.
As I offered you three zero’s, I feel I should tell you a little story that may or may not be relevant.
A few weeks back I went home late at night after visiting some friends. In the center of The Hague I was the second person to arrive at the sorrow scene of a young woman laying flat on the ground, face down, not moving at all, just hesitantly breathing once in a while. Another woman at the spot told me she noticed her falling down along her window. She didn’t dare touch her. I looked up and saw no balcony or something so I felt she jumped on purpose. She could easily have broken her spine or neck so all I felt I could do is not move her but talk to her that help would arrive soon. Which luckily happened. At that point I left, I was of no use there.
I never encountered something like this. Yes there were some suicides around me during my life from people I knew. But then, I heard from them later on. So although very shocking, it still happened at a certain distance. Not this time, if indeed it was a fatal suicide. Their number is predicted to increase anyhow, so I felt I should tell my story in this context. Maybe there are more recent experiences like this. Let us hope not.
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My dad is 92 and still drives, shops, gathers with his buddies at the airport where they work on their airplanes. No illness yet among all his older friends, fingers crossed in the SF bay area, USA.
I do not know anyone who has had it, and no one I have asked knows anyone who has had it.
My doctor told be several months back that he has not had a single positive test among all of his patients.
And his medical group is one of the largest in Sothern Florida, Millennium Physicians Group.
Nicholas McGinley ==> Weird huh?
Kip,
Yes it is.
It is hard to find anything about all of this that is not weird or in some way very unusual.
I spent some time a few weeks back looking into historical rates of deaths from infectious diseases, and how they have declined over time.
Most of the decline since 1900 took place prior to 1950, with a continued slow decrease into the 1960s
What is most notable, I thought, is that prior to about 1960 or so, the number of deaths per million from covid that have occurred would have been unremarkable.
In the US in 1900, there were about 8000 deaths, per million of population, per year, from infectious diseases.
There was a spike up to about 10,000 deaths per million during the Spanish Flu pandemic, and it took until the 1950s until the rate of deaths per year was below 1000 per million of population.
And at least one source I was looking at indicated that the lowest the rate has been is around 460 deaths per year per million.
That was in teh early 1980s.
By 1995 the rate was up to 630 or so.
Lower than we have so far from covid, but in the same ballpark.
IOW…we are not seeing anything that is objectively awful, on the basis of any rational historical perspective.
700-800 deaths per year per million of population would have been seen as miraculously low prior to the 1950s, and I think in those years after WWII, it was considered miraculous to not have large numbers of people dying every year from any of a large number of such ailments.
One source and a graph:
https://www.livescience.com/56968-infectious-disease-deaths-united-states-100-years.html
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b42fbf07d46b73121198298fc3c6a383
A better version of that graph:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Death-rate-from-infectious-diseases-in-the-US-1900-1996-The-death-rate-dropped-over-the_fig1_341510122
About 3 in 100 people have had it – since March. It would not be unusual if lots of you don’t know anyone now, and don’t know OF anyone. It would be a huge surprise if you ALL knew someone.
This question is no mystery, and not worthy of this much headscratching and naysaying. It’s simply not that common (yet). 3% – over 9 months. Until very recently – I knew OF a few people, including 1 death. But right now – I know several, and it’s a growing list. I hope that you continue to know “no one” – and that’s entirely plausible – but to downplay the severity because you don’t estimate “just” 3% to be very serious – is just really without basis. It’s quite serious.
3% (cases, deaths is a much smaller fraction) is serious to the fraction of the 3% that have a bad case (a large portion of that 3% are asymptomatic or had the mildest of symptoms) and very serious to the even smaller fraction who end up dying. But it’s still a very tiny fraction of the population that falls into those two categories, so not as “quite serious” as you’d like to make it out as.
As I pointed out in another post, I live in one of the hard hit states, in a county that is currently considered a hotspot. Despite that there are entire towns in this county and this state that have had no reported cases (Zero, none, nada, zip). And I don’t mean little rinky-dink rural towns with practically no population to speak of. I’m talking about good sized suburban towns that have larger populations than some of the towns that have reported cases . Those towns aren’t doing anything special to avoid it (heck they probably have several residents with COVID but no symptoms for all anyone knows). Its just that it really is such small portion of the population that is badly affected, despite all the big scary numbers that get tossed around.
10% of all deaths in my local paper right now are COVID. How much more serious were you hoping it would get?
Anyway, the question (at the top) implied that something was possibly askew with the narrative, as many folks didn’t know anyone who’s ill. And I was just pointing out – the data says that’s a likely situation. Most folks here – especially the author – should realize that already.
10% of all deaths in my local paper right now are COVID
Yeah, so? Even if I could take that unsupported assertion as true (confirmation bias and a poor/small sample size – there’s what, all of 10 deaths in the paper that day and 1 happened to be with COVID – I suspect, is making you see it that way, regardless of the reality), that doesn’t say anything more meaningful as the fact that right now, as I’m typing this, I see in my local paper ZERO, ZIP, NADA, NONE of the deaths listed were COVID. And, as stated, I live in a hard hit blue state in a county that is currently considered a hot spot for the state, in a town that is in the top ten of the county for cases. So, to use your own flawed rhetorical: how much less serious (than ZERO) were you hoping it could be?
Today’s paper also had no obits that mention COVID in relation to the persons death. So far, over the past few days, the only mention I’ve seen of COVID on the obit page is a reminder that COVID protocols are to be followed at a persons service (masks, distance, capacity restrictions, etc). So what was that you were saying about how serious it is based on mentioned of COVID as cause of death in the paper?
Also, terrinot, keep in mind, death notices in papers tend to skew older (most of the death notices on any given day tend to be for the 60+ crowd) which happens to be the group most vulnerable to dying from COVID as well as the group most vulnerable to dying from a host of other causes. So it wouldn’t be surprising to see COVID pop up in the notice as a cause of death, but it really doesn’t tell you much of anything about “how serious” it is to the population as a whole.
It reminds me of a younger generation brought up with modern car safety when you grew up without seat belts let alone bub capsules and child seats etc etc. Once they hit child rearing stage suddenly big cars are safer and ANCAP ratings are everything not to mention 24/7 CCTV for the cot. Furthermore you hear them having arguments that unless your precious is rearward facing for at least 2 years you’re verging on child abuse. With our nutrition they can easily hit a toddler seat at 12 months and be facing the same way as mum and dad with head-rests. Well that’s because the most common urban accident is a rear ender so you work it out with whiplash injury.
Now while city driving is relatively safer than country driving fatality wise the major 4 causes of fatalities is excessive speed, alcohol/drugs), fatigue and inattention. Basically the nut behind the wheel dwarfs all other car safety considerations but suddenly car tech safety is everything. So to get them to see the wood for the trees and see it all in perspective as a non seat belt era survivor I’ve resorted to the Covid test too. Who do you know among XYZ that have been killed (or seriously injured) in a car crash and if you do was it caused by anything other than those top 4 reasons.
I live in a “hard hit” blue state. in a town that is in the top ten for the county in regards to number of cases – and my country is currently considered one of the hotspots in the state. Despite that:
1) No one in my family nor among my friends have got it (though the daughter of a friend of my brother’s caught it from a friend at a birthday party. The friend had symptoms but thought it was a cold and went to the party anyway! No one else that was at the party tested positive, despite many of them interacting with the two girls at the party)
2) as far as I’m aware no one in my particular neighborhood has got it. And the few neighbors I’ve talked to about it also report not personally knowing anyone who has gotten or died from it.
3) No one I personally know at my work place has got it (though there have been all of about 3 positive test results, no deaths, among the hundreds of people who work there as far as I’m aware of, including one person from another shift who sits just a few desks away from me)
4) The only death related to it that I personally know of (a co-worker’s son) wasn’t someone dying from COVID, rather it was the COVID shutdown that contributed to their death (to reiterate they did not have COVID and COVID itself had nothing to do with their death. If it weren’t for the shutdown they’d likely still be alive today, barring accidents).
And judging by the posts in this thread I’m not alone in having such a lack of first hand personal contacts who have been infected (let alone died) from COVID.
That not to say it doesn’t exist/is a hoax or fantasy. The other week I’d taken a relative to the hospital (for a non-COVID related problem) and the hospital was pretty full up/not many beds available. So clearly there are patients out there, it’s just that as bad as the “number of cases” and “number of deaths” totals that the media bleat on about make it sound, it’s still a very, very tiny percentage of the population. So much so that if you were to take a random sample of people and ask them how many people they personally know who has gotten (or died from) COVID and I suspect the answer would be ZERO way more often than not.
~331 million people in the US, 254,000 deaths.
768 deaths per million.
One person out of every 1300.
35,000 cases per million people.
That number is getting high, but it is still only one person in 30 or so.
But there are a few small areas that account for the large percentage of the cases.
And most of the fatalities are people who are getting on in years.
I do not think I know a lot of people much older that myself, and I am 59.
Regarding all the new cases, I have had a hard time finding out how many of those are people who have tested positive on antibody tests, but are not sick, and so might have had the virus months ago and be long over it.
My impression is a lot of the testing is now antibody testing.
So those would count as “new” cases, but only newly revealed cases, not newly infected, necessarily.
It makes it hard to draw much in the way of conclusions when the news is so incomplete.
I think they should only be calling a positive test a “case” if it is someone who has an active infection going on, symptomatic or otherwise.
Otherwise we are hearing about people who are actually immune, mixed in with those who are ill.
Nicholas ==> You are right, they are calling Positive Tests “cases” incorrectly. And the RT=PCR tests re being run way to sensitive to tag only actual infections.
Indeed. And even if we assumed all the cases are “active infections” there’s a big difference between being actively infected with mild or even no symptoms and actively infected and having symptoms so bad that you need to be hospitalized. If the vast majority are the former, then there’s really nothing to get so worked up over as that’s pretty much SOP for the flu and we don’t lockdown countries and destroy economies every time the flu goes around. Whereas, obviously, if it’s the later that would be a big problem as it would quickly overwhelm the health care system. Fortunately, for the most part, our health care system hasn’t been overwhelmed, indicating that it’s not the later situation but rather somewhere in between.
Not sure about the US, but in the UK they are here, plenty of them:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/Covid-Publication-12-11-2020_v4-CB.xlsx
Found on this site:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
Incidence varies with region and regions vary by social class and ethnicity. If your UK responders are in a less affected area, they will not know any or many cases. Its not a demographically uniform pandemic.
Michel ==> As you know, those numbers show that 0.2% of your population is ill enough to report to hospital.
So yes, there are some sick people — as have stated.
Compare this to the last very bad flu season — when everyone knew many many people sick enough to stay home. In the 2014-2015 Influenza season, the UK had over 11,000 flu deaths per week for three months. 2016-2017 was nearly as bad.
In central IL, it appears to have made its presence fairly widely known as opposed to the initial wave. Death is uncommon, but sensationally received because “cases”. Hospitals are tense. Drive-up testing lines are overwhelmed. But if this were on the level of the Spanish Flu (650,000 dead out of just 100 million), we would be looking at 4 times the deaths and the echo chamber would have driven most of us insane by now. The Cootie factor is very, very much in play.
Also, essential businesses (hospitals and grocery stores included) are having staffing problems. That, to me, is the major concern for self-feeding hysteria.
The MSM is evil in their reporting and it would be naive to expect them to be honest about anything useful to report if it is against the desired narrative.
Look at who is pushing the lock down to see who the MSM are in league with.
I had a bout with bronchitis a few months ago, and I’m 68, so I went to the emergency room and told them I suspected that I had COVDI-19. They rolled their eyes, put one of those clip things on my finger that measures blood oxygen levels, found mine to be normal, and told me that no, I probably didn’t have COVID. Of course, the emergency room was almost empty, because the lockdown protocols here in western Canada at that time had resulted in the virtual shutdown of much of the hospital, so, because the ER staff had nothing to do, they gave me the full workout anyway. Blood sampling, chest x-rays, and an electrocardiogram. Also a fifteen minute interview with two doctors. They analysed the blood, read the x-rays and the electrocardiogram results, pronounced me in wonderful health, and told me that I had had an anxiety attack. And sent me home. It was actually kind of fun, and of course it had a happy ending.
But I’m the only person I know who has been to a hospital with a suspected case of COVID-19.
“and of course it had a happy ending. ”
Are you sure you were at a hospital?
Ian was at the corner bar drinking heavily, followed by a visit to “The Museum”
( a clever name for a strip club ) He told his wife he was at the hospital all day visiting a sick friend.
Funny, Tom. Okay, it was a brothel. Are you happy now?
Did I mention that I was 68?
Ian,
Sorry, nothing personal, it’s just that the line was too good to pass up.
That’s okay, Tom. I was joking myself.
Ian ==> And like many “cases” and deaths being reported, the key word is “suspected” .
Me, living in Madrid, Spain. Of the people with which I have or have had close contact (and I mean currently meeting or having met in the past more often than six times per year with such a person or the person being a first or second grade relative), I know of 14 people who got the COVID. Of these, 12 passed it like it was a flu or even less, and 2 had a bad time for longer although they didn’t require hospitalization.
Among the people that I know but who were not so close to me, I have no idea how many cases there have been precisely because I had no close contact with them. I only know about some of the ones that did have severe problems. These include only 2 deaths (one was more than 100 years old, the other more than 70 and with a respiratory deficiency after having defeated a lung cancer years before which still left some permanent damage in his lungs). Apart from the deaths, I know of another 2 cases which had to stay long at the hospital in Intensive Care and, despite having left the hospital already several months ago, they have not completely recovered. COVID seems to have left them some permanent damage. Both of them were old too.
Nylo ==> Thanks for the report from Spain. Old folks are taking a beating from this virus, for sure.
My wife has a cousin on Majorca who has Covid for 24 hours…..
Seen on RT today:
Also Germany will also get their Permanent Marshal Law (my interpretation of the “epidemic-law”).
In Berlin there was a massive demonstration against dictates regarding the epidemic-dictate being turned into law, just like in Denmark nearly got it.
In the government building (Bundestag) the fight was going on as well, with the AfD party (pang-dang to Trump adm.) arguing against the new measures as unconstitutional, inhuman and stupid. The rest of the government shouting back with name calling.
When will the Swedish parliament also sh!t on the constitution and overrule the Swedish health board?
Japan has much the same idea, I am told, that the government cannot issue Marshal Law unless a real war is imminent.
All this insane fight against a bad flu-like virus is now increasing worldwide hunger according to WHO. There is still a long way though before we are down to 500 million people as Prince Charles and others wish for.
Looking forward to what Kip Hansen get of results. Does SARS-CoV-2 create much more havoc than flu,less or the same.
My understanding of the CDC “total deaths” at the link given in the article is that this means total of pneumonia plus influenza, NOT total from all cause.
The article led me to believe that “total deaths” meant total ALL CAUSE deaths, which, again, as I’m reading it that page at the CDC does NOT provide.
Is this correct?
Can’t find the chart, but saw one that basically charted COVID with pneumonia VS. COVID without…and it was virtually the same line, FWIW.
Robert ==> To see the Total Deaths, one must download the file from the GREEN LINK near the top that says “downloads”. Open that file in Excel or an excel-clone, and see Total Deaths in Column K.
Okay, I figured out that “total deaths” means total deaths from all causes, and I opened the file in LibreOffice, and I don’t know whether that program just does not load the cells properly or whether I just don’t understand when the CDC starts “week 1” and ends “week 52”.
Both the way the data chart downloads and the way the graph actually appears on the website does not make sense. I’m expecting to see “week 1” and “week 52” as weeks in the same year range, but the way the data downloads and the way the chart appears, “week 1” appears to start in the next year after the year for which it is labeled verbally in the previous year.
It really seems impossible to find this data in a clear, well displayed, understandable format.
I want a simple chart with years, weeks, and total deaths per week. Why is that so hard to simply put up, and why is that so seemingly obscure? Is the CDC trying to be obscure and hide this data? Do they just not know what the heck they are doing? What?
I don’t understand why Season 2020-2021 starts at “week 40” in that data set I downloaded from the CDC website. Where are weeks 1 through 39? Either the program I used to open that data set is just not compatible, or I really do not understand how the CDC defines their weeks and tabulates their data.