The Economist Highlights Yet Another Scientific Paper Which Estimates COVID-19 Lethality in the US Is Just 0.1%
From John Hopkins University which has been one of the main mind virus hype drivers
One of the few things known for sure about covid-19 is that it has spread faster than official data imply. Most countries have tested sparingly, focusing on the sick. Just 0.1% of Americans and 0.2% of Italians have been tested and come up positive. In contrast, a study of the entire population of the Italian town of Vò found a rate of 3%.
The lack of testing has set off a hunt for proxies for covid-19 infection, from smart-thermometer readings to Google searches for “I can’t smell”. A new paper by Justin Silverman and Alex Washburne uses data on influenza-like illness (ILI) to show that sars-cov-2 is now widespread in America.
Every week, 2,600 American clinicians report the share of their patients who have ILI—a fever of at least 37.8°C (100°F) and a cough or sore throat, without a known non-flu reason. Unsurprisingly, ILI is often caused by flu. But many other ailments also produce ILI, such as common colds, strep throat and, now, covid-19. The authors assume that the share of these providers’ patients with ILI who do have the flu matches the rate of flu tests that are positive in the same state and week. This lets them estimate how many people have ILI seriously enough to call a doctor, but do not have the flu—and how many more people have had non-flu ILI in 2020 than in prior years.
They find that non-flu ILI has surged. Its rise has the same geographic pattern as covid-19 cases: modest in states with few positive tests, like Kentucky, and steep in ones with big outbreaks, such as New Jersey. In total, estimated non-flu ILI from March 8th to 28th exceeded a historical baseline by 23m cases—200 times the number of positive covid-19 tests in that period. This may overstate the spread of covid-19, since non-flu ILI has other causes. It could also be too low, because people with asymptomatic or mild covid-19 would not report non-flu ILI.
This sounds alarming, but should be reassuring. Covid-19 takes 20-25 days to kill victims. The paper reckons that 7m Americans were infected from March 8th to 14th, and official data show 7,000 deaths three weeks later. The resulting fatality rate is 0.1%, similar to that of flu.
That is amazingly low, just a tenth of some other estimates. Perhaps it is just wrong, possibly because the death toll has been under-reported. Perhaps, though, New York’s hospitals are overflowing [Are they??] because the virus is so contagious that it has crammed the equivalent of a year’s worth of flu cases into one week. ■7
Sources: “Using ILI surveillance to estimate state-specific case detection rates”, by J. Silverman & A. Washburne; Johns Hopkins CSSE
The numbers at the CDC show record lows for ‘flu positives’ for the last three weeks for comparable time of year. When I say record lows I am speaking of by a factor of 9. Week 14 for example has only 0.8% flu positives. The previous record low for Week 14 was 9.6% with virtually every other Week 14 rate at or above 12%. This covers a 20 year time span of record keeping on this. How is this possible? Where have all the flu cases gone? And this all in a year where weeks 6 and 7 (early Feb.) had near record high flu positives.
When you look over this data at the CDC it is staggering and obvious- they are cooking the books.
I think you will be interested in an article on For-russ.com: “Why the WHO Faked a Pandemic…https://www.fort-russ.com/2020/04/why-the-who-faked-a-pandemic-revealing-forbes-op-ed-2010/
Regarding Swine Flu, the money quote relative to your question: “Where have all the flu cases gone?”
“…in New Zealand and Australia …we’ll have considerably fewer flu deaths this season than normal. That’s because swine flu muscles aside seasonal flu, acting as a sort of inoculation against the far deadlier strain.”
Thanks for that Tom- I like the medical/technical language being used. No scientific reason just simply “muscled it aside”- is COVID now bullying the flu?
Brings new meaning to germ warfare eh?
We are being lied to on a colossal scale- that is not new- the level of draconian measures is and either this entire false narrative gets destroyed with those responsible held to account or this will be used regularly for social control.
Since cv-19 is being painted as “the enemy,” and since the press has made bullying very unpopular recently, I bet we can sue its ass or at least do some kind of regime-change op. *googles to see if it has oil fields*
It may be that the our A Type Covid-19 is less lethal than China’s B and Europe’s C Strain.
Or it could be a large segment of the population acquired “herd immunity” between August and February when the mysterious respiratory illnesses/deaths in Virginia and Florida were reported in August and September of 2019. Symptons were similar to covid19.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/respiratory-outbreak-investigated-retirement-community-54-residents-fall/story?id=64275865
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/25/tenth-patient-dies-from-vaping-related-illness.html
I hear crickets from the US…including the mass media, which seem totally uninterested in the topic.
Odd, don’t you think?
It’s an “PLAN-demic”. Mainstream media is a propaganda shouting and yelling match devoid of science, critical thinking and fact. If you are searching for “beneficial” news and information, visit:
https://www.unz.com
Thanks!!
This was precisely the death-rate surmised by Professor John Ioannidis early in March based on the cruise ship Diamond Princess. On the ship itself the death-rate was 1 percent. However, since the average age of the passengers was something like 65, this would translate into a death-rate for the general population of around 0.1 percent. Needless to say, Professor Ioannidis’ calculation didn’t get a mention in the fakestream media.
As shown in this article, to this point in time, there is only one accurate measure of how deadly the COVID-19 pandemic will eventually end up becoming:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-diamond-princess-estimating-covid.html
The data is suggesting that politicians are manufacturing numbers to maximize fear.
And in a week and a half the deaths have gone from 7,000 to 30,000. That means according to this article, some 30 million people in the US were already infected three weeks ago. Let’s hope the lock-downs and social distancing work or, using the logic, calculations and projections of this article, virtually everyone in the US will be infected by early May. I wonder what effect that would have on our economy.