The official COVID-19 death toll for the United States is reported as “total COVID deaths”, a number that currently stands at 150,000. Many Americans, of course, assume that “COVID death” means that infection with the virus was the COD, the “cause of death” that normally appears on a death certificate. That is not true.
Most deceased persons died with the virus, but not necessarily because of it. At least three-quarters of these deaths occurred in patients who had one or more life-threatening pre-existing medical conditions, such as diabetes, chronic lung disease, heart or kidney failure, or immune deficiency. Very few had autopsies, or, if they did, many of the results have not yet been made public.
Without information from a post-mortem examination, it is quite difficult to determine the condition that was the primary cause of death. Was the actual cause of death diabetes, kidney failure, chronic lung disease, as the virus?
When autopsies were performed on so-called COVID-19 deaths in Italy, the pathologist found that only 12 percent had died due to the viral infection. In the other 88 percent of the same deaths counted, the pre-existing medical condition was the reason the person died.
Texas recently acknowledged this confusion and tried to resolve it. The Texas Department of State Health Services has made it clear that “a mortality rate is calculated as a result of COVID-19 when the medical certificate, usually a physician with immediate knowledge of the patient, determines that COVID-19 directly caused the death. “
This method does not cover the deaths of people who had COVID-19 but died of an unrelated cause such as the Florida man who died in a motorcycle accident. He was referred to as a “COVID death” because blood that was taken in the emergency room tested positive for COVID-19 during resuscitation attempts.
Why refining the ‘Fall Fatality Rate’ is important
An implied high risk of death for the general population has been the justification for imposing pseudo-martial law: restrictions on movement, mandatory face masks, and loss of the right to work. COVID-19 is more pictured than Ebola – with its death rate of 90 percent – than the seasonal flu with a CFR of about 0.2 percent.
The death toll from COVID-19 has been officially reported as 3.5 percent, implying that at least three out of every 100 Americans who become infected will die. Yet this is an exaggeration.
A percentage is a ratio – a counter divided by the name. The 3.5 percent is calculated as 145,982 “total deaths” divided by 4,163,892 “total cases.” As the name of each ratio increases, so does the percentage. The names of total cases, of those with confirmed infection, include only the tests.
Tests are generally only offered to those who are symptomatic. When this author, 76 years young, went to get a COVID-19 test, he was refused because he was not symptomatic. Asymptomatic infected individuals are not included in the denominator of total cases.
A population study in Santa Clara, California of healthy volunteers suggested that the actual case percentage could be 50 to 85 times greater than officially reported total cases due to unreported, asymptomatic infected individuals. Using 208,199,100 (50 times 4,163,892) as the name for the case rate, the death rate for the general population is 0.07 percent, that is, seven out of 10,000 healthy Americans who are infected with COVID-19 will die, equal to the flu.
Protection against COVID-19
A human body protects itself against viral infection by developing an immune defense: antibodies, attack cells, and often both. Those who do not become ill when infected with a virus, a virus, either have a rapid and highly effective immune response or are healthy individuals without a serious pre-existing medical condition that predisposes them to disease and death.
Reports have surfaced, including official statements, questioning whether COVID-19 infection will produce a sustained protective immune response. Some claim that antibodies decay quickly. It is reported that an Israeli doctor had COVID-19 infection twice and that there is no immunity after post-infection. Yet another report had to, “so long does immunity hope for herds?”
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control is testing convalescent serum, from patients recovering from COVID-19 infection, to treating those who are currently ill. They believe that infused antibodies will help sick individuals to fight the virus.
Humans develop immunity to a virus, both natural and artificial. Natural immunity occurs when the live virus infects someone and that person’s body does what nature commands: it builds an immune response. Artificial immunity is the result of vaccination, in which a synthetically produced medicine mimics the infection and essentially “tricks” the body into thinking that there is a living virus when there is none. As such, the body responds to vaccination with a similar response as if a live virus were present.
If enough people become immune, what is the result, what is often referred to as ‘herd immunity’. In such a scenario, a large enough number of immune systems can “surround” a non-immune person, so that the virus does not pass through the defensive herd to attack the nonimmune individual. Quarantine has the same effect: it isolates the individual so that the virus cannot reach the risk person to infect him or her and cause illness.
The United States has pinned its hopes on ending this pandemic in a COVID-19 vaccine currently in Phase III clinical trials. Washington has purchased 100 million doses of a yet-to-be-proven vaccine produced by a joint venture between Pfizer and BioNTech.
We need to resolve the confusion
The official story about COVID-19 has two fundamental contradictions. Americans deserve to decide these inconsistencies on the basis of well-controlled medical evidence, not made to fit any political ideology or agenda.
First, we must fully investigate and discover whether infection – naturally or artificially by vaccination – confers lasting immunity, or not? If it does, then social distance, personal protective equipment, and lockdown prevent the development of herd immunity and will extend the pandemic. If an infection does not grant lasting immunity, why is the United States spending $ 1.95 billion on a vaccine that will not protect us?
Second, the chance of dying from COVID infection is inflated to resemble Ebola as a bubonic plague when in fact the health risk to the general, healthy population may be closer to the seasonal flu. Should the US response to COVID be: (a) Social distancing, personal protective equipment, mandate masks, economic shutdown and hope that a fax machine will work; or (b) release the American population from all normal social and work activities, allow the development of herd immunity to end the pandemic, and in the short term offer strict quarantine to the small group at high risk who have serious pre-existing medical conditions?
However, the American public, and the world, need answers – real. Getting to the truth, however, means first getting rid of the mess of misinformation we have received.
