The COVID-19 Numbers No One Talks About
We are more than a year in the COVID crisis. A crisis caused by the reaction to a virus that has an infection fatality rate of 0.23%. (Ioannidis , 2021) There are so many aspects of this man-made crisis that deserve deep analysis, and a lot has already been written about this, but there is one number that is overlooked and used in the wrong way, and it is in plain sight.
Epidemiologic Numbers
To describe a disease in epidemiology, doctors use different numbers. One of those is the already mentioned IFR, or infection fatality rate; this is the number of people for whom the infection will be fatal. So in the case of COVID-19, the chance that someone dies of COVID-19 is 0.23%. For comparison, for Ebola it is between 50% and 90%. (MDhealth.com, 2021)
Incidence is another important number, it is about the number of new cases; it is a measure of the probability of occurrence of a given medical condition in a population within a specified period of time. For lung cancer in the USA, the expected number of new cases in 2021 is about 235,760; this makes the incidence about 0.07% per year. (American Cancer Society, 2021)
Prevalence is another one, it is about existing cases; it is the proportion of a particular population found to be affected by a medical condition (typically a disease or a risk factor such as smoking or seat-belt use) at a specific time. For example, for diabetes, in 2020, 34.2 million people in the USA had diabetes, or 10.2%. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2020, 2020)
It is important to have exact definitions of the data we use in epidemiology because this makes it possible to compare data over time, between diseases, and between countries or regions. This is a valuable base for research. As you can see, in each definition of epidemiologic data, there is a reference to the time span, usually a year.
The number I will talk about in this article is mortality rate, or death rate; it is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. For lung cancer in the USA, there were 145,849 reported deaths in 2017. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & National Cancer Institute, United States Cancer Statistics: Data Visualizations, 2020) This leads to a mortality rate for lung cancer of 0.04% per year in the USA.
What Is Different For COVID-19?
As mentioned above, we use standardized epidemiologic numbers to be able to compare numbers. For seasonal diseases like the flu, we restart counting every season or year. This makes it possible to compare different years to see if we had a `good` flu season or a `bad` flu season. Also, imagine if we continued adding the flu numbers, we would end up with very, very big numbers, and the numbers would not have any real meaning anymore. Considering the fear-mongering we are experiencing about COVID-19, it was not a big surprise to me, and indeed, after a year of COVID-19, what DIDN`T happen is a reset of the numbers to zero to start a new year of counting. Governments, mainstream media, etc., etc., they all keep counting up the numbers since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Why Is This Bad?
This is bad because we can no longer use our standardized epidemiologic numbers; we cannot easily compare the yearly flu mortality rate with the COVID-19 numbers. Or compare any other COVID-19 related numbers to the numbers of other diseases.
According to Worldometer, 3,182,093 people have died so far from the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as of April 30, 2021, 11:26 GMT. (Worldometer, 2021) If we divide this number by the world population, this is 0.04 % (1 per 2500), but per what? Not per year, because we have this epidemic going on for more than a year. So it is less than 0.04% per year, but we cannot deduct from these numbers the yearly death rate.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Sir Charles Dilke
The other aspect is that this is fear-mongering, the numbers will get bigger and bigger, and people do not have any reference to compare these numbers. 3,182,093 sure sounds like a lot, but considering a world population of 7,800,000,000, then it suddenly is not such an overwhelming number. Compared with a yearly mortality of 10.0 million cancer deaths, this number is still not shocking. (Sung, et al., 2021) Or to put it in another way, for every COVID-19 death, there are more than three cancer deaths.
Literally, one of the headlines in mainstream media was that the number of deaths because of COVID-19 is rising. Well, it would be a wonderful miracle if the number of deaths would go down!
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.
Jim Morrison
Why Is This Happening?
It is obvious that we, as a global society, have reacted in a very unique way on COVID-19. Aspects of this look like mass psychosis, cult behavior, and even brainwashing. Not using the correct numbers and just continue with counting up the COVID-19 numbers without a restart after a year, as we do with all other diseases, fits this picture. It makes the numbers bigger and it distorts the way we can interpret the numbers. Doctors, epidemiologists, virologists, etc., etc. all get training in epidemiology. They all should know how to use correct numbers. There is no excuse for not using the right numbers, and professionals cannot say they didn´t know because it is fundamental knowledge for them. Next time if you see numbers connected with COVID-19, remember this, and try to put the numbers you see in perspective.
Interesting links:
COVID-19, It Is Not the Virus That Is Killing Us
Main Stream Media is Making Us Feel Bad
COVID-19 is the New Cult
How To Recognize That You Are Being Brainwashed
References
American Cancer Society. (2021, January 12). Key Statistics for Lung Cancer. Retrieved from https://www.cancer.org/cancer/lung-cancer/about/key-statistics.html
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, February 11). National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/library/features/diabetes-stat-report.html
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, & National Cancer Institute. (2020, June). United States Cancer Statistics: Data Visualizations. Retrieved from https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/DataViz.html?ref=dGFiPXRhYlRyZW5kJnFzPTUwMDEsODIyLDE4MQ==
Ioannidis , J. (2021). Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 99, 19–33F. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.20.265892
MDhealth.com. (2021, May 1). MDhealth.com. Retrieved from What Is the Death Rate of Ebola?: https://www.md-health.com/Ebola-Death-Rate.html
Sung, H., Ferlay, J., Siegel, R., Laversanne, M., Soerjomataram, I., Jemal, A., & Bray, F. (2021, February 4). Global cancer statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. doi:https://doi.org/10.3322/caac.21660
Worldometer. (2021, April 30). COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS / DEATH TOLL. Retrieved from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/
You think this is a worthy blog and you want to read more?