DAN SCHINHOFEN: By the numbers: It just isn’t so scary

First thing to do is put aside all you have heard about COVID -19 (now SARS 2) and try to just look at the actual numbers. I have included links to data so you can check it yourself.

Let’s start with the number that is most often used to scare us into compliance. Up to the time I wrote this there have been 250K who have died “from” Covid. Where does that number come from? The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and if you look it up it clearly shows that number includes Pneumonia, Influenza and Covid (PIC). You do not have to have had a test to show you had Covid, and many had not, but if they “suspect” you had it because you showed symptoms then you are counted in the big number.

So, what are the symptoms of Covid and the flu? From the CDC site:

“Fever or feeling feverish/chills

Cough

Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

Fatigue (tiredness)

Sore throat

Runny or stuffy nose

Muscle pain or body aches

Headache

Some people may have vomiting and diarrhea, though this is more common in children than adults.”

Even accepting that all of these deaths are “from” COVID-19 rather than “with” COVID-19 the chance of even getting this virus is 0.02%. Early on, back in February the few known cases made this “novel virus” seem very deadly. The early numbers showed this could be as deadly as MERS or SARS. Those fatality rates were 30% and 10%. I understand why they reacted as they did and asked us all for two weeks to stay home so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed. Why they are still acting like this is a “deadly virus” is the question of the year.

If you do get Covid you have a 95% chance of having Mild symptoms. If you are under 18 you have a 99.998 percent chance of surviving. That number increases slightly until you get to over seventy where you have a 98% chance of surviving. (Better odds than hitting a royal flush on a strip slot machine.)

I saw a story where a Doctor told his patient, when she asked if it would be safe to have kids over for Thanksgiving, his reply was, ‘it’s not a question of whether you want them to come to Thanksgiving, but if you want them to live to see Christmas.” This kind of fear mongering is what has really kept us in this Covid limbo.

The numbers show that this virus is not the zombie apocalypse they promised us. For years we have watched movies like “Outbreak” and when this “novel virus” showed up the career virologist thought they finally had what they all worked for. Or rather, worked to be prepared for.

Fauci said back in late January that he did not think this would be a “big thing” but then by late February he began to change his tune. The CDC guidelines stated that we should all social distance and IF we could not and we are face to face with someone for 10 to 30 minutes THEN we should wear a mask. Fauci and the Surgeon General stated in March that masks should not be worn by the general public all the time. Of course, we all know now they disavow those comments and say that they have learned more so that is why the change of tune. Funny this study is still on the National Institute of Health site. A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers - PubMed (nih.gov) (This study shows cloth face coverings allow 97% of particulate matter through. Not much “protection”.)

The arbitrary and capricious rules put out by the CDC and local governors also has frustrated me to no end, but those numbers are for another column.

To recap; your chance of getting the ‘Rona is about 0.02% If you get it you have a 95% chance of having mild symptoms. So only 5% of those that get it MAY need to go to the hospital. Of those maybe 2% need to be hospitalized. But because the media continues to hype this as a “deadly virus” anyone with a cold or flu runs to the hospital to be checked out. (And so, the media tells us the hospitals are “overwhelmed”. A self-fulfilling prophesy if ever there was one.)

The old saying, “Figures don’t lie but liars figure,” is a glaring truth this past year. We have treatments we did not have earlier in the year. If hospitals do not have enough PPEs or ventilators that is their own fault after all the president had GM making ventilators and other American companies making PPEs. (By the way, no one has died from want of a ventilator even back in April.)

You know I really tried to just put up the numbers, but I still wonder why we are killing ourselves, literally and figuratively, for a virus that, in the end, is only as deadly as a bad flu.

If you have conditions that would make you high risk, then please take care when you’re in public. Let’s focus on the seniors and high-risk groups instead of causing more grief and pain with these “safety measures” to our entire society. The Great Barrington Declaration is the model we should be following. https://gbdeclaration.org

I am in that senior age group and at high risk, but I am sure there are many of my generation that would say, “Do not lockdown everyone and ruin the economy and more lives just to buy us a few more years.” The debt we are leaving our grandchildren and the terror and fear the reaction to this virus has caused needs to stop. Now. Today.

One last time:

0.02% chance of getting it. 95% chance of having mild symptoms and a survival rate, if you are under 70, from 99.998% to 99.6%. And for those odds Las Vegas shut down? Gamblers are not risk adverse and would love those numbers as a chance of winning.

COVIDView: A Weekly Surveillance Summary of U.S. COVID-19 Activity | CDC

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus