Don's Tuesday Column

            THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   5/5/2020

      Manipulated, agenda-driven data

Start with data for the Chinese Communist Party Wuhan Flu—Wu-flu for short. “There have actually been at least five studies that found the ‘coronavirus fatality rate’ (CFR) is less than one percent…None of these studies were perfect. Some are large, some are small. (“The Coronavirus Death Rate Is Much Lower Than the Estimates Justifying the Lockdowns,” M. Margolis)

Cited are: 1) The Stanford University Study; 2) The Santa Clara Antibody Testing Study; 3) The New York Antibody Testing Study; 4) The Massachusetts Antibody Testing Study; 5) The Lancet Infectious Diseases Study. “As you’ll see, they came up with a range of fatality rates, but considering our country was shut down over the belief that the coronavirus had a CFR of 2% to 3.4% and all of these studies suggest the actual CFR is under 1 percent, it makes you wonder why the country was shut down.”

The “flu” has a fatality rate (FR) around 0.1%, the CFR is multiple times that of the seasonal flu FR, which kills between 30-80,000 each year. There have been deadlier flu outbreaks, up to 116,000 in the 1957 H2N2 Asian flu in a much smaller population. Schools, events, the economy et al were not shut down for that or any other flu. No one said that President Eisenhower “let more people die” than in the Korean War.

Quarantines and cancelled events accompanied the 1917 “Spanish flu”; it’s been wise to enact business shutdowns and “stay-at-home” orders—until we have “data” to show the vulnerable groups. The rational, scientific thing to do is to recognize the long-term harm to America’s economy and implement policies to protect the most vulnerable. Give advice, not orders.

Further data reveals why many on the right have healthy skepticism for shutdown decisions that are beyond question due to (unreliable) scientific models. The legal, constitutional requirement for laws enacted by those we elect has been literally overturned; those insisting that such executive authoritarianism is dangerous are decried as “far right” (AP 4/15: “Far-right US politicians label lockdowns anti-constitutional”). Funny, advocates for mandating “Green New Deal” or gun prohibitions via executive order are never labeled “far left.”

Do demands for ever-increasing Covid-19 tests have an ulterior motive? “Conspiracy theory” you say—but just follow the logic. Facts: 1) Most who test positive have few or no symptoms and would not otherwise be included in the “infected cases” total; 2) More tests, therefore, create an artificial sense of infections spreading in the general population—people who wouldn’t otherwise show up for treatment; 3) Wu-flu deaths, the number or rate (CFR) per 100,000, do not change simply because more testing inflates the number of “infections.”

None of the medical or political proponents of lockdown, “stay-at-home” orders have acknowledged those facts, even as they push for the panacea of massive testing. They will assuredly use the data showing more infections as justification for “caution,” meaning we must extend the “lockdown” just another week, or 2 weeks or 2 months. None of the politicians, officials, news media mavens, or their medical advisers and experts, are losing paychecks, living on the last of their savings, going to food banks, driving by their former places of employment or queuing up to file for unemployment.

“Funeral Directors Blow the Whistle on Deaths Falsely Attributed to Coronavirus” (Megan Fox); they question the massive increase in coronavirus as the cause of death for bodies sent for burial. We are finding that, upon testing, nursing home fatalities—listed as COVID-19-caused—are often found to have no evidence of the disease. Coroners are reporting pressure to assign coronavirus as the cause of death regardless of the underlying cause of morbidity. Pressure from whom? For budget benefits?

Models predicting coronavirus deaths in America and any given state were wildly inaccurate. The credibility of said models—and those who used them to mandate public policy—are forever debunked. Americans have never been told to close businesses, shelter at home, not go to schools, events, meetings, even house parties—arrests, citations and fines mean we’re in a “police state.”

Is it time for civil disobedience? Would eastern Democrat states accept a police state shutdown over a Wu-flu outbreak in Montana or Utah? Would LA, SF or Sacramento shut down for a NorCal influenza?

Only “data manipulation” can explain “Causes of Death in NY State mid-March through mid-April” (CDC NY mortality stats…): 2019 total deaths=apx. 13,000; 2020 total deaths=apx. 16,000. However, COVID-19 deaths=apx. 11,000.

That means that non-coronavirus deaths, for that March-April period, inexplicably dropped by 8,000 from 2019 to 2020. However, since 11,000 New Yorkers “died” from COVID-19, total deaths went up from 13,000 to 16,000. Combined with reports from funeral directors and local health officials, it is obvious that numbers are being manipulated—as I see it—to inflate the impression of a dire threat from COVID-19.

Sorry to be blunt but if you take the non-NY-area of America, and then remove nursing home deaths, the U.S. Wu-flu death toll is reportedly 20,000-30,000. Nursing homes accept Wu-flu patients, accounting for many deaths; Mayor DeBlasio should have seen the need for shutting down that city and its subways early in March. Look up: “Here’s how NYC’s Coronavirus death toll is being inflated,” by Beth Baumann.

Robert, please first tell me if you think it was literal, serious or both when: 1) Obama said there were 57 states, or that people would pay $2500 less and keep their doctors and health plans; 2) Joe Biden said “jobs” was a 3-letter word, j-o-b-s; or 3) Hillary said the Benghazi attacks were just some guys walking by, upset over an anti-Islam tape.