I & I Editorial BoardI&I Editorial
For those who feel as if the coronavirus crisis is never going away, we offer some optimism. Get it here, because lockdown Democrats and their pandemic-cheerleading media allies want to keep the pessimism running high.
On two separate occasions in recent weeks, we’ve presented data that indicate the crisis is winding down. No, this doesn’t mean that infections and deaths will drop to zero. The virus isn’t going away. What it does mean is that the virus isn’t the threat it was when deaths spiked in the middle of April.
This is primarily based on deaths in excess of the expected numbers of fatalities. The Centers for Disease Control chart below shows that total deaths, the blue bars, have fallen below the threshold for excess deaths. Stanford biophysics professor and 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry Michael Levitt called it “a huge milestone.”
There’s no better method for gauging the severity of an outbreak of disease than counting excess deaths. Our World in Data says “excess mortality is a more comprehensive measure of the total impact of the pandemic on deaths than the confirmed COVID-19 death count alone.” According to an opinion piece in STAT, “measuring excess mortality gives a clearer picture of the pandemic’s true burden.”
Unfortunately, the most recent data available is from the week of Sept. 5. The Centers for Disease Control promises to update its data by 5 p.m. Eastern every Wednesday. But the page has not been updated since Sept. 9, so we’re missing the week of Sept. 12. Given the trend, though, we’d expect the total number of deaths to fall yet again below the threshold. If this continues to happen over the next several weeks, what does it mean?
Before we move on, we feel its important to reiterate that COVID-19 is not fully responsible for the death total that surged past the expected threshold. The lockdown response has been deadly.
“Federal data show deaths in 2020 have exceeded those of previous years in numerous categories,” the Wall Street Journal reported last week. “Doctors and health researchers say the fatalities reflect the ways the pandemic has amplified stress and financial strain while causing many people to avoid hospitals for fear of infections.”
The Journal continues:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked thousands of deaths this year beyond expected levels for conditions that also include hypertension, strokes and diabetes. Physicians say the surge was especially notable in the spring, when the pandemic hit New York and other parts of the Northeast hard.
Other facts that the Democrats and press would rather stay out of the news include:
- Researchers applied to Sweden the model used by Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College epidemiologist who earned the label “professor lockdown” for his wild forecasts of coronavirus deaths that caused world leaders to panic. The resulting forecast was between 52,000 to 183,000 deaths, with a median of 96,000, by the end of June. That prompted the academics to insist that Sweden would have to hide under the covers to avoid a catastrophe. Sweden remained largely open and its actual death toll was fewer than 6,000 by the middle of September.
- When compared to Europe, South America, its closest neighbors, other developed nations, and the world, the U.S.’ case fatality rate is among the lowest.
- The rolling seven-day average of deaths per million has been falling steadily in the U.S. since August, which a brief interruption in early September, and is far below its April 22 peak.
- Hospitalizations are in sharp decline.
We expect the Democrats to avoid and ignore facts and numbers that contradict their coronavirus narrative. One, they want to voters to live in fear and take it out on the Trump White House and Republican senators in November. Two, Democratic governors and mayors have had a taste of expanded authority over an ostensibly free people and don’t want to let go of that raw power – it’s exactly what they live for.
Even though we wish we didn’t, we expect the media to do the same. A once-independent press corps has become the Democratic Party’s communications and propaganda office.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Armando Simón
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
This is great information, some of which I have not seen anywhere before. That said, there is another important truth that cannot be printed, broadcast, or shouted from the rooftops enough: the 200,000 deaths number is a lie!!!
No other disease is treated on medical records like COVID19 – standard medical procedures is for a doctor to make a clear decision on what was the cause of death versus a contributing factor. Only COVID19 is treated like some sort of bizarre death trump card – overruling all other causes. We know that only 12,000 have died of this disease without comorbidity and that tells us that it is not as deadly as many other illnesses. We also know that the average person who is listed as a COVID death had an average of 2.6 comorbidities.
All things being equal, this means that COVID is likely to be the cause of death in less than a third of the 200,000 we are including in the mortality figures. But all things are not equal – most of the common comorbidities are far more lethal than COVID. We are most likely looking at an actual death toll from COVID (versus “with” it) that is less than a bad flu season.
Counter that amount with the number killed by the lockdowns – there is a great possibility that we killed more with our response than by the disease.
Deceptive analysis. Yes our death rate to total cases is lower than most but the true indicator is to cases..5 percent of world population 20 some per cent of world cases. Shame shame on you
J. Kiernan, you must be kidding. “Cases” is a completely useless number without massive random sampling. I suspect that the fever, sweats and two-day debilitating illness I suffered back in February might have been Covid-19 but no statistician noted it; how would they know? The article is a welcome ray of light revealing what everyone’s “lyin’ eyes” tells us, that we have been hoaxed by TUGI (The Usual Gang of Idiots).
We don’t know him many cases are in the world, that a function of testing since we are the most tested population yes we will have most of the cases. You are talking numerlogy which has no barring on anything. Shame on you, it even worst you don’t know that.
The CDC correctly uses deaths as an indication of pandemic or epidemic status. If cases were the true indicator, then between H1N1, coronaviruses, rhinoviruses, roto viruses and noroviruses the world would ALWAYS be experiencing a viral pandemic.
It is one thing to misrepresent the facts regarding not so imminently important subjects as Social Security, pre-existing conditions, etc., but quite another when addressing COVID-19. This virus and the responses to it by our so-called Democrat leaders have resulted in catastrophical impact upon our country and its citizens, personally, family-wise and business-wise. To keep ongoing the intentional misrepresentation for pure power and partisan political reasons is not only immoral and unethical, but quite simply wrong. For all intents and purposes, the COVID-19 epidemic is over and has been over for quite some time. Does it remain a threat? Sure, just as the flu remains a threat. But should our lives continue to be totally and completely disrupted, the answer is a loud and emphatic No!
It’s sad that no one would care that I died if I got Covid19 just because I also have high blood pressure!
Florida Atlantic University’s business school is keeping a data page for Florida which I find interesting. In particular, are the graphs for Case Hospitalization and Case Fatality Rates by month. These, obviously, are tracking the most-ill people with covid. Yet, each month shows the rate declining from the previous.
In March, the hospitalization rate for the oldest and most at-risk group, the 86-99 year olds, was 67.5%, now, September to date has it at 18.5%. The fatality rate in that group also dropped from a horrific 40.9% to 4.3%. Such drops can be seen across each of the age groups tracked. Either we have gotten very, very good at treating covid, or…shhhhhhhh…the virus is diminishing in potency.
https://business.fau.edu/covidtracker/data/florida-data/
So this means we now have a shortage of deaths, correct? It seems logical, if Covid has killed off mostly people who are close to death (dry tinder hypothesis), then we should see fewer than normal people die after the virus recedes beyond a certain point. this would also predict that the next 2 or 3 influenza seasons will be particularly mild.
200,000 Americans are dead. Loved ones, friends, neighbors. This is not a partisan problem. This is a cold, tragic, sad reality. I am so sorry for those that have lost a loved one.
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was a unique human pathogen just months ago. No one knew its particulars, namely, how it spreads, how infectious it is and how lethal. Our medical experts and our epidemiologists worked overtime to gather data, construct models of various aspects of the contagion, and educate a frightened public and political leaders. We know much more now than we did in the early stages of the pandemic and that knowledge has become essential to reopening our economy in a manner more cogent than the fits-and-starts of the early days when we were grasping for a handhold.
Our public can assess risks when facts are obtained. Americans listen to experts more than to our political leaders and they are well aware that this idiosyncratic infectious event has now fallen prey to hyper-partisanship, to the corrosive politics of a national election. Questions of right and wrong are now issues of Right and Left. Political rifts are unnecessarily complicating the next chapter of this deadly story, the one where we continue to bury the dead as we come back to life.
I note that the article fails to show “Covid-19 deaths per million, 7-day rolling average” for other countries. If it had, the argument that the US is doing well compared to other countries would appear considerably weaker. Currently, the US rate of Covid-19 deaths per million is higher than almost every industrialized country in the world. In many cases, the US death rate is multiples higher. The US rate as of 9/22 was 2.31 deaths per million compared to 0.16 in Canada and 0.24 in Italy. Put another way, Americans are currently dying from Covid-19 at a rate 14.4x higher than Canadians and 9.6x higher that Italians.
Quickly a point that I have not seen hit on in response to the propagandizing that Trump killed 200,000 people. Initial estimates 4 potential coronavirus deaths were approximately 1.7 million we are at 200,000 currently. I would argue that is a 80 to 90% mitigation rate attributable to the trump administration’s actions.
The first topic in the first Presidential debate will set the tone for the rest of the Presidential campaign. That first topic is the pandemic. The first debate will be moderated by Chris Wallace, who is no fan of President Trump. I am sure that Mr. Wallace chose this topic because it is one of the most critical topics, and because he probably believes it will be a difficult one for President Trump. On the other hand, I believe the ball has been dropped by those running President Trump’s campaign. President Trump’s campaign has done a poor job of explaining how President Trump will cover preexisting conditions, how getting rid of Obamacare will be a benefit to the citizens, and how president Trump has handled Coronavirus. This is President Trump’s opportunity to turn it around and create a positive image. If he doesn’t handle this clearly and superbly, it will be a bigger climb for President Trump to win re-election. Vice President Biden will have won the first debate and dispelled any belief that he is not up to the job. A great opportunity will have been squandered.
You are assuming, of course, that Biden will actually show up for the debate. I, for one, do not believe he will.