Visualized data absent context and stabilizing influence of time is powerful narrative voodoo. Don’t you miss the good old days when we were all gonna die from Climate Change?
Remember when the state and the “scientists” told us that the coronavirus would kill up to 2.2 million Americans? Then in late in March, it changed to between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths in the U.S. The estimates keep coming in lower and lower.
The government attempts to take credit for this by saying it is because of mitigation and distancing orders. But, the awful six-figure numbers included and factored in mitigation and social distancing orders. Social distancing was always part of their high predictions.
The same model used to predict 100,000 or more deaths now tells us to expect something closer to 60,000 deaths. Of course, now they are artificially inflating their numbers. New York City’s Health Department is now counting “probable” COVID-19 deaths. As Dr. Deborah Birx put it, unlike other countries, “We’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality . . . if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.”
Lockdowns don’t appear to be highly correlated with infection and death rates. California, our largest state by far, locked down only three days before New York. Per capita, California’s infection rate is 6% that of New York’s, and its death rate is 4%. Florida, also more populous than New York, locked down almost two weeks after New York. Per capita, Florida’s infection rate is 9% that of New York’s, and it has had 4% of its death rate.
Note: The rest of the country is not New York.
A recent Stanford University study reveals the virus is 50-85 times less deadly than initially thought. The infection/mortality rate of COVID-19 is not the 2% to 5% rate others have surmised, but more in the small hundredths-of-a-single-percent range.
We drastically transfigured over 55 million children’s educational and social lives to protect them from a virus that affects them less than the annual flu. As of this writing, a total of three children have died from the virus in New York City — each of whom had underlying health conditions.
Fewer than 10 children have died nationally from COVID-19, although about 80 have died from the flu.
What are we doing? 80,000 people have been hospitalized, however, the previous two flu seasons in America required nearly half a million hospitalizations.
As Dr. Jonathan Geach has written: “Our health care system is now underwhelmed and health care workers are being laid off and furloughed in droves as a result of health care centers having neglected patient care not related to COVID-19 in fear of a COVID-19 surge that failed to materialize on a nationwide basis. This means tens of millions of patients are failing to receive the medical care they need in a timely manner. Almost every hospital outside of the hot spots is empty.” At the Mayo Clinic, as one example, he reports “65% of the hospital beds are empty, as are 75% of the operating rooms.”
California Rep. Tom McClintock said this week: “How many of the 1.8 million new cancers each year in the United States will go undetected for months because routine screenings and appointments have been postponed? How many heart, kidney, liver, and pulmonary illnesses will fester while people’s lives are on hold? How many suicides or domestic homicides will occur as families watch their livelihoods evaporate before their eyes? How many drug and alcohol deaths can we expect as Americans stew in their homes under police-enforced indefinite home detention orders? How many new cases of obesity-related diabetes and heart disease will emerge as Americans are banished from outdoor recreation and instead spend their idle days within a few steps of the refrigerator?”
Also from the United Nations: “The economic hardship experienced by families as a result of the global economic downturn could result in hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths in 2020, reversing the last 2 to 3 years of progress in reducing infant mortality within a single year.”
About the Author
Is the infant mortality reduction mentioned a U.S. achievement ? That would certainly be good news .
Is there a credible source for that reduction ? What percentage ? Infant mortality is the most basic national health indicator and the USA has not done well there .
Please make this important correction to your article:
The 2.2 million estimate was a worst-case scenario WITHOUT mitigation efforts…
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-deaths-us-predictions-social-distancing-2020-3
Donald Trump:
“Think of the number — potentially 2.2 million people if we did nothing, if we didn’t do the distancing, if we didn’t do all of the things that we’re doing.”
It’s an important clarification for your readers.
Note: The worst-case Imperial College estimate of 2.2 million deaths if everyone does “nothing” did not simply mean no government lockdowns, as a March 31 White House graph with two curves implied. It meant nobody avoids crowded elevators, or wears face masks, washes their hands more often, or buys gloves or hand sanitizer. Everyone does literally nothing to avoid danger.The Ferguson team knew that was unrealistic, yet their phantasmal 2.2 million estimate depended on it. As they reticently acknowledged, “it is highly likely that there would be significant spontaneous change in population behavior even in the absence of government-mandated interventions.” Question authority.
Your explanation above directly contradicts what you said in the body of your article:
“…the awful six-figure numbers included and factored in mitigation and social distancing orders. Social distancing was always part of their high predictions.”
As you just said above, the 2.2 million figure assumed NO social distancing and zero mitigation.
Note: Read it again. Gov lock-downs, shuttering businesses (mitigation, social distancing) was part of the model. The Imperial Model assumed that some people would ignore it, which they did, and still do. The numbers are still being inflated as a way to keep up the panic. The notion that the government’s actions led to a flattening of the curve is quietly being debunked daily. I don’t think it helps convince people to stay at home when places like Austin, NYC, and San Fran treats the free-range bum population like an endangered species with an ecologically sensitive protected habitat.
I cut and pasted the UN quote into Google. The only item that it shows up in is Real Clear Politics. What was your UN source for this quote?
Note: The UN has been broadcasting this since April. Reuters, which we subscribe covered it here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-children-un/u-n-warns-economic-downturn-could-kill-hundreds-of-thousands-of-children-in-2020-idUSKBN21Y2X7. The AP also reported it in early April. You should also educate yourself on the locust crisis in Africa that is on track to kill many more than a germ.
Without looking to either the right or the left here, trying to find the source of this or that statistic, as if statistics meant anything at all, given the old adage of while figures don’t lie, liars figure, especially about this COVID, where everything you now hear in the main-stream media is suspect or false, if one looks instead at the tile of this thread, “COVID-19 Panic is based on stupidity,” that is absolutely spot-on, as well as being unarguable and incontrovertible – to be panicked by COVID, one has to be stupid, and when one is panicked, one is not capable of thinking straight, which is why our response to COVID as a nation is so utterly **** up – because it is based on panic and irrational fear.
As to how panic affects the mind and one’s ability to think straight, let us go to a Verywell Mind article entitled “Distorted Thinking With Panic Disorder” by Katharina Star, PhD, an expert on anxiety and panic disorder who is also a professional counselor, which is what tens or hundreds of panicked people in America, once the land of the brave, but not no more, are in serious need of now, which article was medically reviewed by Daniel B. Block, MD on March 09, 2020, where we have as follows on the subject of people scared to death of COVID, as follows:
People with panic disorder often experience negative thoughts with self-defeating beliefs.
end quotes
That is describing all the people in this country who are crapping in their pants because of COVID, weakening their immune systems in the process, so that their fear of COVID makes them more susceptible to catching it, which sounds like a definition of real stupid to me, anyway, and I am over 70.
Getting back to that article:
This is especially the case during a panic attack when your inner voice may amplify your fears and anxiety.
end quotes
That is precisely what is going on here in the case of COVID – people hear the voice of Democratic Socialist governor of New York Andy Cuomo telling them to be scared, be very scared, and that voice of Andy Cuomo inside their heads day after day after day, seemingly forever now, telling them to be scared becomes their inner voice amplifying their fears and anxieties, because those people never learned to think for themselves, never having had to do so before, as thinking for yourself is discouraged here in America, where it is far better to go along to get along in order to blend.
Getting back to the science:
For example, when panic takes hold, you may believe that you really are going to stop breathing or that you truly are going crazy.
end quotes
Today we have some 300 million or more people in America going crazy with fear because of COVID.
As to anxiety disorders coming to the fore here in America in this day and age of irrational COVID HYSTERIA, a common irrational thought among people with anxiety disorders is forecasting, which is when people begin predicting a future event that hasn’t happened, such as we’re all going to die of COVID.
As the science says, people with panic disorder typically forecast that the worst will happen, which is known as catastrophic thinking.
That is what is fueling our response to COVID – catastrophic thinking on the part of Democratic Socialist Andy Cuomo, and this Dr. Deborah Birx, who comes across on the radio news as a complete liberal airhead, with her silly blather about how we are all protecting each other by locking ourselves in our basements as if we were all prisoners in a SUPER-MAX.
The problem with this forecasting, however, and this I think is a part of a plan, is that it only feeds people’s anxiety, causing them to feel even more afraid, so that as their feelings of panic grow, their thought patterns only spirals further out of control.
And welcome to right now in America, as a result.
So, yes, as the title clearly and correctly states, COVID-19 Panic is based on stupidity.