Positive COVID-19 News Goes Unreported
Democrats and their media surrogates are burying a lot of positive COVID-19 pandemic news.
Breathless reports of “exploding” infections dominate coverage. Because the vast majority of new infections are mild or asymptomatic, the only way anyone can know infections are “exploding” is because testing is.
From almost “none” in January when President Donald Trump shut down travel from China, until today, nearly 40 million Americans have been tested, and testing continues at extraordinary levels.
Ironically, infections have been over-counted, because some states double counted and/or counted “probable,” but unconfirmed cases. Some added positive antibody test numbers to their active infection counts.
Shutdown coverage is also misleading.
Shutdowns were imposed to “flatten the curve” – to delay, not prevent hospitalizations.
It’s been largely unreported that, in New York City, the ineptly-managed epicenter of the COVID outbreak, the hospitalization rate was only 2 percent, that current overall COVID hospitalizations are below the March 21st level, of shorter duration, and dropping – as are case severities – and that shutdown-delayed non-COVID-related procedures account for most recent hospitalization increases. Despite wide-spread early anxieties, America hasn’t faced hospital capacity crises.
Furthermore, media are not reporting the steady two-month-plus downward trend in daily COVID-related deaths – good news, certainly relative to March’s and early April’s.
Fortunately, “The Atlantic” magazine offers an excellent online “COVID-19 Tracking Project” showing that deaths began dropping in mid-April, and, by end-June, were down by nearly two-thirds – 12 percent in June’s final two weeks alone.
A late June data update from the Center for Disease Control practically admits that COVID deaths, too, are over-reported, possibly substantially: “For 7% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.5 additional conditions or causes per death.”
Got that? Only 7 percent of “COVID” deaths were attributable solely to the virus. Although infections may have exacerbated vulnerable victims’ heart diseases, hypertension, respiratory disorders, cancers, obesity, diabetes and/or other pre-existing comorbidities, in many (most?) cases counted as “COVID-19” deaths, people died with the virus rather than from it.
Reporting irregularities were widespread. As examples, after misreporting actual causes, Pennsylvania removed hundreds of deaths from its mortality count; Washington State admitted that at least five of its first 800 COVID-19 deaths were actually shooting victims; and, when New York reached 10,000 COVID “fatalities,” the New York Times revealed, “3,700…people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus…never tested positive.”
In fact, COVID-19 largely affected a handful of geographic hotspots, and it poses a far greater threat to specific at-risk groups than to the general population.
Total infections are largely irrelevant compared to “who” is infected. Healthy school- and working-age populations’ odds of dying from COVID-19 are substantially less than an average seasonal flu, nearly zero among people under 45, but the virus is deadly to sick, already frail seniors.
Unimaginably, certain governors, notably New York’s and Pennsylvania’s, caused tens of thousands of premature deaths by directing unprepared long term care facilities to admit or readmit infected elderly residents, thereby exposing and infecting large at-risk populations and killing many already-ailing seniors who needed, and still need the most protection.
After factoring out gubernatorial policy blunders and totaling in new mild/asymptomatic infections, America’s COVID-19 mortality flattens to a rate similar to nasty flu seasons that never shutter schools and businesses.
While general shutdowns did little to prevent COVID-19’s spread, they devastated America’s economy.
Now, COVID-19 infections are increasing, primarily where youngsters congregate and, especially, where disorderly left-liberal mass “events” were staged, nonetheless, overall deaths are dropping. Democrats and media hype the “disease burden” of infections and soft-pedal or ignore death statistics, because they know that, as deaths drop, their rationale for shutdowns disappears.
Already spooked by May/June reports totaling 7.5 million regained jobs, Democrats and left-liberal media also know that the sooner shutdowns end completely, the sooner economic activity and national prosperity will improve, possibly to levels approaching America’s pre-COVID boom.
In the current political environment, reasonable people might logically conclude that a positive COVID-19 news blackout is calculated to keep the public frightened and America shut down – a cynical tactic to prevent reelecting a Republican president devised by unfeeling, arguably sociopathic partisans whose hunger for power permits them to view the devastating economic, social, medical and mental health damage shutdowns do to millions of Americans as acceptable – even necessary – collateral damage.
In reality, new, positive COVID-19 data largely discredit individual states’ management of the original general shutdowns, and provide no rationale for new ones.
