629,927. That’s how many people in the United States have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, as of this writing, according to Worldometers.com. The number of people who have died in America and around the world (4,254,171) is often used as a justification for Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI’s) such as business closures and lockdowns, as well as for mandates on masks, social distancing, and travel restrictions. “People are dying!” Is a sentiment oft uttered, or rather, stammered on social media sites like Twitter, in defense of political policies that are enforced on a populace that is very divided on how best to confront the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
But what if the numbers are wrong? Daily we hear about cases surging in this or that part of the country or the world, but rarely do see much analysis about how those numbers are derived. If someone takes two coronavirus tests in a week, and both are positive, does that show up in the data as two cases? Are the people getting tested suffering any symptoms, or were they given a routine test by an employer that just happened to come up positive? Are RT-PCR tests sensitive enough to pick up viral fragments that do not represent an actual infection, as was even stated by Dr. Anthony Fauci?
And what of the death tolls? How do we know that when someone gets counted as a COVID death, that COVID-19 is actually what killed them? The long and short of it, is that we don’t know. A recent paper by John P. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, tries to tackle the issue of over-counting and under-counting deaths from COVID-19. According to his paper, a lot of developed nations like The United States and many Western European countries initially under-counted deaths from COVID-19, purely due to a lack of testing. Some countries like Mexico and Russia have continued to substantially under-count. Ioannidis believes that currently, the United States and nations such as the UK, are likely over-counting deaths. He told me that the reasons for this current over-counting are multifaceted and complex:
“You need to consider how much testing is done. You need to consider how much clinicians may correct the positive results if they think the death is not really COVID-19 even though someone had a positive test, or conversely, say “well, that was COVID-19 even though no testing was done” or “even though testing was negative.” You also need to take into account how good the test is, how likely the test will pick up shedding of the virus, how likely the test might give you a false reading, and then you need also to consider when these deaths are happening, and how these deaths appear in the continuum of all deaths that happen in a country over the year. How big is the mortality rate in the country regardless of COVID-19? Is it a country where many people are dying, you have an elderly, debilitated population and very poor care, and you have a very high background mortality? Or, you have a young population, very healthy and very little mortality, and how that translates into the infection mortality rate if people get infected. All of these factors need to be taken into account to understand the attributed deaths and the true deaths. And then try to estimate the ratio of attributed deaths to the true deaths, and if you get that, you can say you have a country that over-counted overall, or a country that under-counted, or a country that did about right.”
When I asked Ioannidis what the percentage of over-counting was in The United States regarding how many people had died from COVID-19, he told me his belief was that it was likely that the official death count was between twenty and twenty-five percent too high.
“We have some preliminary evidence from some counties, for example, from Alameda County and Santa Clara County in California, who did an audit revisiting their death counts, and they decreased their death counts by about twenty-five percent. Twenty-two percent in one case and twenty-five percent in the other. I think that on average this may be the over-counting that has happened even across the country, and maybe even more than that, so if we have twenty-five percent over-counting, then the quote-unquote, true number, may be four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand. I think that four-hundred-thousand may actually be even more likely, but with quite substantial uncertainty.”
One of the factors that causes miscounts when it comes to trying to tally how many people have died as a result of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is that according to Ioannidis, even in the best of times, with no pandemic virus circulating, death certificates themselves are rife with error. This echoes a sentiment expressed by Dr. Malcom Kendrick from the UK who wrote:
“Did someone die with COVID19, of COVID19 – or did it have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with COVID19? Who knows? I certainly don’t, and I wrote some of the death certificates myself.
Have we overestimated deaths, or underestimated deaths? I do not know … and so it goes on.”
The problem with flawed data is of course, that numbers of deaths and cases and hospitalizations are all used to justify policy, and for over a year now, around the world governments have attempted to steer the course of viral transmission through legal mandate, with politicians, pundits, and every day people regularly forgetting (or outright ignoring) that these policies have all manner of unpredictable effects on the lives of individuals and on economies. It would be foolish to believe that the coming decade won’t see a menagerie of deleterious effects of state policies aimed at mitigating COVID-19 infection. Already it’s predicted that perhaps an extra 130 million people will suffer famine due to the pandemic response, and that cases of Malaria in Africa could increase by the tens of millions, with a large proportion of the victims being children, due to shutdowns of prevention programs. If a drought induced spike in grain prices could incite the Arab Spring of 2011, as is hypothesized, what long term effects will we face down the road from the millions of people made jobless or the billions of dollars in wealth transferred to the richest one percent?
I asked Ioannidis if there was a specific improvement that could be made, perhaps in reporting criteria or RT-PCR cycle thresholds that could improve overall accuracy in the death reporting data. Ultimately, he thought that for the US, first, before any suggestions for changes in how we count can be made, a thorough audit of a significant sample size of death certificates was in order, such as the aforementioned examinations that have happened in Santa Clara and Alameda Counties in California.
While researching death totals around the world, I looked at the numbers coming out of China, where the COVID-19 pandemic began, and had to laugh at the flat line representing FOUR deaths from COVID-19 since April of 2019.
It’s very hard to believe that the nation of over one billion people where the pandemic began, would have their deaths from the virus drop off a cliff right as the pandemic was growing exponentially around the northern hemisphere. Of course, China has been exceedingly dishonest about so much concerning the origins of the pandemic (as I cover in my podcast series Origins: Birth of a Pandemic…insert shameless plug here.) I asked Ioannidis what he thought about the death statistics coming out of China.
“China is a pretty non-transparent situation. I don’t want to use China as the data that I would be basing important decisions or trying to understand the epidemiology of the virus on, because my certainty about the accuracy of the data is not very high. Probably there’s other countries that also tend to manipulate to an extent their data. Now, manipulation sounds like a terrible word, but it’s something that has many ways it can be done that may be considered to still be acceptable. There are a number of countries in Eastern Europe like Serbia, Russia, Estonia and Belarus. They have very low numbers of reported deaths. [While visiting Serbia] People were telling me that deaths were clearly under-counted during the first wave, that if someone had some other reason to die, that would not be counted as COVID-19. Conversely in other countries, [like] in the US, if you had COVID, that death had a high bar…to say that is not a COVID death.”
Certainly, Ioinnidis has a point. There is manipulation, and then there is MANIPULATION. Accounting standards for COVID-19 deaths vary from country to country, and if everyone isn’t using the same criteria for how they generate their totals, we have to be very wary about comparing countries and using the differences in their death totals as the basis for political arguments. While some nations may be over-counting their deaths for a variety of reasons, others may be under-counting not in an effort to deceive the world, like it appears in my oh-so-humble opinion that China is doing, but just because as a general standard in their nation they have different reporting criteria. Beyond that, we must always remember the context differences that cause different outcomes before pointing at nations with very low death totals (I’m looking at you New Zealand…you isolated little island with a small population and closed borders, hanging out way down there by yourselves in the South Pacific!)
What Ioannidis left me with is that, at the end of the day, by his calculations the infection fatality rate for COVID-19 is about .15%, and that there is also a risk gradient we must remember that sees a tenfold greater amount of danger from SARS-CoV-2 in interred elderly when compared to children. We have known this now for over a year, and we now have vaccines that can be administered to the people who fall on the more at-risk end of that risk gradient; the obese, the old, the hypertensive, the diabetic, etc. The at risk groups have been determined and are clearly demarcated by what we see in the data. Let’s focus on those numbers when we craft policy, and take some of the other, more uncertain numbers with a few more handfuls of salt.
ENJOY THIS HILARIOUS PARODY,READ THIS CRY TEARS OF LAUGHTER AND SHARE, CHEERS,MARK,GOD BLESS Y'ALL IN A NON-HOLY ROLLER WAY !! :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChurchOfCOVID/comments/pc3kf7/welcome_updated_82621/
This is The Church of COVID, our members are The Covidians, our doctrine is The Science™. Our religion is still new and evolving, so i'll update this periodically as new revelations come down from on high. This is here so that everyone can stay on the same page.
Structure of the divine pantheon
Dr. Fauci (578 masks be upon him) is our prophet, his body is host to the spirit of public health they are one in the same, he is the most holy being in existence what he says goes.
One tiny step below him is a host of Arch Angels - divine figures of such influence that their pronouncements are used by the Arch Cardinals to create laws and edicts which we must all follow - they must also be praised.
Below the Arch Angels is the Arch Cardinals – divinely inspired humans that lead over some geographical area be it a city, state, province, or entire country, that has used the wisdom of Fauci or the Arch Angels (10K masks be upon them) to design holy policy that protects us all - we hold them in reverence but do not have to praise them when we speak their names.
Why do you say ‘mask(s) be upon him/her/them’ when speaking the names of Fauci (375K MBUH) or one of his Arch Angels?
The Church of COVID demands that divine figures be blessed when speaking their names, the mask is holy, the more masks you wish upon someone the stronger your blessing.
Why are some pictures of The Prophet/Arch Angels/Arch Cardinals unmasked not marked NSFW?
People of this level of esteem are always masked, if you can’t see that you simply do not have enough faith. Begin self-flagellating immediately.
What is The Church’s position on vaccination?
Vaccines are The Great Prophet Fauci’s (736 Vigintillion MBUH) holy sacrament. Everyone should be vaccinated. Get every COVID vaccine. Multiple times. In fact, just get an IV drip of vaccines and take them continuously.
Aren’t you worried about side effects?
There are no vaccine side effects. Every one of what the anti-vaxxers call “side effects” we call spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts are how you know that Fauci (9378 Billion MBUH) saw that you took the vaccine and has decided to bless you for doing so.
What is COVID in all this?
COVID is a fallen Arch Angel that possesses Anders Tegnell and is the evil that we fight against and structure our lives around, the coronavirus is the way that COVID takes control of your body, you must avoid this at all costs.
COVID has many Satans that do its bidding and spread evil, lies, and misinformation. Notably the Orange Satan, and Ron DeSatan. We will find others over time.
What happens when I die?
If you are found virtuous enough (no non-Covidians are) you will don your mask of eternal virtue and join Dr. Fauci (5.28 x 10^8 MBUH) in an everlasting Zoom call!
If you are not virtuous enough you will be placed on the ventilator of the damned and cursed to sail a hospital ship on and endless lake of fire and brimstone for eternity.
What is Faucidan?
Faucidan is like the Muslim month of Ramadan but better, it is our great celebration, a holiday of varying length and start date, where we have holy lockdowns, Zoom™ calls, and wear masks even at home to show everyone how virtuous we are.
What must I do to obtain virtue?
Members must follow all revelations and dictates from our prophet The Holy Dr. Anthony Fauci (2.6 Billion MBUH) and his Arch Angels.
The commandments are as follows:
Thou shalt not take the name of Fauci (11.41 Billion MBUH) or any other divine figures in vain. They must be praised either before or after you speak their names.
Thou shalt not be seen without your mask. Your mouth, henceforth known as face anus, and nose, henceforth known as face penis are vile and obscene, cover them up.
Thou shalt not touch anything without immediately using hand sanitizer before and after contact.
Thou shalt not question The Science™, you will know it is The Science™ because it will agree with The Holy Dr. Fauci (1.3 Trillion MBUH).
Thou shalt not come within 6' of another person without a barrier between you.
Thou shalt not attend a gathering of more than 10 people, unless it is a BLM rally, then the acceptable number is unlimited.
Thou shalt not study statistics for it is foolishness.
Thou shalt not study history for it is full of the unmasked.
You shall shame others who violate any of these commandments.
You shall show the people of the world your virtuousness through social media that they may join you. Talk about the church in other subs, and post about outrageous and holy things alike here.
Who are the Arch Angels?
We must figure that out. If you think you know who they are post here, if enough people demand it we can put it to a vote.
Here is the current list of confirmed Arch-Angels: Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC (5 MBUH), Xi Jinping, President of China (973 MBUH), Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria, Australia (297K MBUH), Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand (736 Million MBUH)
What is the ritual to join The Church?
First you must connect to one or more current members via Zoom™ call as all inductions require witnesses.
You will don at least 2 masks and apologize for your nakedness.
You will face toward the CDC, kneel, and pray to Fauci (500 Trillion MBUH) that he will forgive you of your sin and denial of The Science™.
You will baptize yourself in hand sanitizer to signify your cleansing.
And that’s it, you will be a Covidian and forever saved from the ventilator of the damned!
MARK,THE ULTIMATE ANTI-MASKER,917-***-*** OFFLINE NOW
I LOVE THE OUTDOOR TOWN POOL,, THE BANK SECURITY GUARD BUZZZED ME IN MASKLESS 4 MONTHS AGO, You need an electron microscope to see a virus. This is a bad Twilight zone episdoe,idiots driving cars wearing masks,I am Italian but was eating sitdown at a cozy restauenr when UGLY murphy had dinimg closed,Call Me , off line for 2 weeks@protonmail.com RESEARCH selenium immune system
MAJOR accomplishment BANK allows Me in WITHOUT the DEHUMANIZATION mask !! :) I LOVE THE OUT DOOR POOL AND OCEAN BEACH,OFFLINE NOW,MARK
These idiotic masks do not even allow You to smile at another human being or breathe normally,pure insanity this is,comprable to using c a chain link-fence for a window screen.
I walk in all smal stores and restaurnts,maskless,I casually affect a fait accopli and just walk right in,Enough said,Cheers,Mark
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2020/07/20/Selenium-deficiency-plays-key-role-in-COVID-19-severity-say-researchers
https://thecovidblog.com/truth-about-masks/ GUANTANAMO BAY DETAINEES WEARING MASKS PICTURE, this CULT OF CORONA BROUGHT A "taliban" to the USA :(
https://consentfactory.org/2021/04/21/the-covidian-cult-part-ii/
In view of the facts mentioned above it seems logical to assume that sodium selenite could represent a potential agent for the prevention of viral infections including coronavirus, according to the mechanism suggested for the Ebola virus [21]. In the paper presented by Jayawarden [22], the authors stated that selenium supplementation inhibited the development of polio and influenza virus. Which also agrees with our hypothesis that selenium strengthens the immune system. This element increases the proliferation of natural killer (NK) cells. Selenium also has a positive effect in combination with some vitamins (D, E) as presented in the work Delesderrier et al. [23]. The combination of phytoncides found in onions along with selenium increased T lymphocyte proliferation [24]. In addition, selenium reduces the formation of thrombosis in the blood vessels. According to Fogarty [25], blood coagulation disorders leading to the formation of micro-clots are a significant cause of death in patients with COVID-19. We believe that the use of sodium selenite in anticoagulation therapy may reduce the risk of blood clots forming (formation of high-molecular polymer - parafibrin) in patients with COVID-19 particularly at risk for its severe course. It should be mentioned that this chemical reagent is rather inexpensive and readily available. It is only unfortunately that physicians, having limited knowledge of this mineral, cannot understand that such a simple chemical substance can have such dramatic health effects.
Go to:
Funding source statement
Busta Rhymes FAMOUUS RAPPER is right, f*ck your mask - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8JbNv8Xjn8
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246001/
Mark from the outdoor pool ,anti-mask links,Cheers,OFFLINE FOR A FEW WEEKS,ENJOY THIS SUNNY DAY,Mark )
https://thecovidblog.com/truth-about-masks/
https://thecovidblog.com/ivermectin/ EFFECTIVELY TREATS coronavirus
https://thecovidblog.com/category/vaccine-deaths/
https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/masks-dont-work-covid-a-review-of-science-relevant-to-covide-19-social-policy (all the medical journal articles showing masks are useless as You need an electron microscope to see a virus.)TAKE NUTRIENTS,SELENIUM VITAMIN D,VITAMIN C INSTEAD, EFFECTIVE MEDICINE SUCH INVERMECTIN,ZITHROMAX ETC IF YOU GET SICK.
https://www.midlandscbd.com/articles/mindless-mask-mandates-likely-do-more-harm-than-good
https://nypost.com/2021/04/13/the-mindless-mask-regime-might-be-here-to-stay-unless-you-resist-it/
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2020/07/20/Selenium-deficiency-plays-key-role-in-COVID-19-severity-say-researchers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8JbNv8Xjn8
https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/05/25/massachusetts-parents-demand-end-to-mask-mandate-in-schools-shut-out-of-meeting/