How to peddle backwards:

Back in May of this year (2020), during an exchange on the "LinkedIn" social networking site, I asked a very simple question:?"If COVID-19 is such a deadly disease, then why aren't the crude mortality rates increasing?"?

I was pointing out emerging anomalies regarding the reporting of COVID-19 deaths and I pointed out that the deaths were not adding up (quite literally).?Based on the best information available at the time, it appeared that we were not seeing any actual increases in total deaths across the country when we look at the US crude mortality rates.

I pointed out that the "crude mortality rate" was not changing, and that indicated there was something very fishy about the COVID-19 deaths that were being reported.?The "crude mortality rate" (CMR) is the ratio of humans who have died of all causes, expressed as a ratio of the total population.

But unlike the "cause of death" numbers, which can be easily manipulated; for example when a man dies in a motorcycle accident, the cause of death becomes a reportable COVID-19 death.?The CMR is not open to manipulation because it merely counts bodies living and dead. And since one is either alive or dead, there is little room for debate or shenanigans.?As William Farr put it:[i]

The death-rate is a fact; anything beyond this is an inference.?

If the virus was killing more people, the CMR should be increasing.?It wasn't.?Why??In May I pointed out the reason necessarily had to be that people who were dying anyway from other causes, were dishonestly being reported as dying from COVID-19, when in fact, they were NOT dying from COVID-19.

I pointed out that if that trend turns out to be true, the fear mongering policy wonks were going to run into a problem starting in about 2021 when they would be forced to explain why the total number of deaths in the US was no different in 2020 than any other year, and certainly didn't increase in 2020 in spite of the horror stories about the world's most dangerous virus raging through the country killing everything it touched.

Well, here we are in December 2020, and as 2021 approaches, the question is still on the table, and now we are seeing a better picture because the death rate STILL has not shifted - that is, the number of deaths in the US remains stubbornly within the normal range as seen before COVID-19.

?Let's look at the CMR.?If a cause of death is significantly increasing deaths as its own independent event, then that increase in the number of deaths should be seen as an excess number of deaths.?For example, in the US, in 2018 there were a total of 2,839,205 Americans who died from all causes (approximately 54,600 people per week, or a CMR of 8.7).?Now imagine there was a novel virus that was so deadly, it swept through the US in 2018 killing an additional 284,000 Americans from January 1 to December 8, (as reported by the New York Times as of this morning (12/8/20) for COVID-19).?That means there would have been a total of 3,123,205 deaths; translated, the CMR would be about 9.5 which is statistically significantly larger than 8.7.?

Now, the operative word here is "additional" meaning the novel virus would be killing those normal healthy people who would not have otherwise died. However, if the virus is sweeping through killing people at random, then it will be killing those who may already be on death's door anyway, and so the "additional" (or excess deaths) would be slightly smaller - but we would still see a bump in the CMR.

So let's look at the CMR over the last couple years:

The source of the final value for 2020 is the US Central Intelligence Agency.?What we see from the data from 2008 to 2019 is a CMR of 8.34 and the predicted CMR for 2020 is below the mean value.?So, what about the CMR over a greater period of time??In the graphic below, we are looking at the CMR from 1950 forward (Source: World Population Prospects):

Why are we shutting down the economy, and running around like frightened children wearing useless masks to protect us against a virus that is literally not even creating a bump in the death rate?

I'm not the only one asking this prickly question.?Dr. Genevieve Briand from the John Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences was also asking this question, and in greater detail. On November 26, 2020, Dr. Briand described her findings in a webinar (the full webinar can be found here:?https://youtu.be/3TKJN61aflI ).

Like me, Dr. Briand found that the CMR wasn't budging, but she addressed the issue from a very different perspective, and she looked at the deaths broken down by categories.?Unlike me,?Dr. Briand was surprised by the results, since she was expecting the virus to be wreaking havoc and killing Americans at unprecedented numbers and those numbers should be showing up on the US Center for Disease Control site.?So she went to the CDC site and looked at the raw CDC data.?

Dr. Briand found that:

?Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.

Well, honest experts who have been following this issue did not expect an increase in deaths in the elderly, but the glory seeking experts may have.

On November 26, 2020 a student-run John Hopkins "News-Letter" reported:

Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths. These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.

HUH??But, but, but… People are dying in the streets! They're dropping like flies EVERYWHERE!?The hospital morgues are overflowing, and ….

The News-Letter thinks the news is "shocking" and asks how is it that the data lay so far from our perception???Well, part of the answer of course rests with the fact that the "perception" is generated by the falsehoods coming from people like Colorado's Governor Gerard Polis and his ilk, and the data are coming from scientists. Perceptions are not facts.

The News-Letter explains:

When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.

?Read that again folks.

?The News-Letter continued:

?This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years. Interestingly, as depicted in the table below, the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19. This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19.

(You may not be able to find the November 26 News-Letter since the cowardly editors of the publication crumbled under the pressure from the political Left and removed the article.?I saved a copy before the article was removed.)

No kidding.?It's called "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" and is the sleight-of-hand of the science world.?So, the data show that as COVID-19 cases go up, deaths from cancer, heart disease, flu, pneumonia and virtually all other causes of death goes down.?So, if the deaths are not being misclassified, then the alternative explanation is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus actually protects people against these illnesses (the Covidiots can't have it both ways).?As such, since we are seeing a dramatic drop in these diseases as a direct function of COVID-19, surely the argument should be made that, far from instituting lock-downs and masks, we should be encouraging the spread of the virus, and even inoculating people with the virus to save lives.?As the dishonesty in reporting increases, so too increases the wild machinations needed to support the lies.???Unfortunately, as so often happens in the realm of public policy, the science has been perverted in an effort to promote a political agenda.???A more detailed discussion of how science gets high-jacked can be found by clicking here.

The John Hopkins News-Letter continues:

The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease. … All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,” Briand concluded.

Briand also concluded:

If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some misclassification.

?We know the flu cycles through our population each year killing tens of thousands of people in the US every year:

In April 2020, I discussed the fact that we were in a serious flu season (see "The Epidemic of Ignorance") and I reproduced a chart from the CDC monitoring U.S. flu deaths at that time:

As indicated by the CDC data, I pointed out that we were in for a killer flu season - for some reason, people forget that flu is a killer.?Three years ago, the 2017-2018 flu season killed about 60,000 Americans.?Looking at the graph above, one can see we were in for an enormous spike over that amount this year.?So what happened, and what does the same chart look like now?

Well, because of the political shenanigans, the CDC has dramatically altered the chart, to make it look like COVID-19 is skyrocketing, but notice, it's at the expense of the flu. What happened to the flu epidemic of 2020? The flu deaths are no longer there - they are down, since they have been reclassified as COVID-19 and in fact, in spite of the chart in March of this year which clearly showed the flu deaths were higher this year than in 2017-2018, now, interestingly, the flu deaths are lower than in 2017-2018:

I have addressed how dishonest reclassification through comorbidities takes place here.?Ultimately, what the data are showing, when viewed honestly, is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is far less of an health threat than the seasonal flu; especially considering that we already have a flu vaccine, and still have upwards to 60,000 deaths in the US during the seasonal flu.?According to the CDC, of the 280,000 reported COVID-19 deaths only approximately 15,000 deaths were actually from the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a sole etiological pathology - the remaining were due to the flu, other pneumonia, heart attacks, etc.[1]

When I hear people saying "Well, I almost died from COVID-19" (or a variety of similar statements) - the appropriate response is "You have no evidence to support that."?The truth is that someone who presents with an high fever and respiratory distress, is automatically presumed to have COVID-19; such a person may be tested for the SARS-CoV-2 virus but will NOT be tested for any of the flu virus strains that are most likely also to be present as well and are probably the primary pathology.?

If we tested for the flu, like we are currently testing for SARS-CoV-2, we would have an unprecedented explosion of flu "cases" in this country unlike anything ever seen in the past (including the 1917 outbreak).?"Cases" do not equate to illnesses, "cases" do not even mean those people have an infection from the virus, "cases" do not mean those people have COVID-19, "cases" do not necessarily even mean the person has the SARS-CoV-2 virus.?Until we can reign in the willful misinformation being spread through the media by unethical politicians, we will not be able to get an handle on the social ramifications being shoved down the throats of Americans.

The virus is real. COVID-19, just like the flu or mononucleosis, is a real constellation of signs and symptoms.?As I've maintained from the beginning, from a pathogenic and epidemiological perspective, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is pretty mundane.?What makes the virus unique is the grossly inappropriate response to it, and the lies that are being told to justify that response.?

The anti-science policy wonks have done enough damage already.?Americans need to wake up and look at the science - Take off the stupid, useless, mask (for which, as of today, there is STILL no evidence that these devices do anything except help spread disease).?Roll up your sleeves, America, hug your grandkids, and get back to work.?If you have a respiratory illness, congratulations, you're human.?I've nearly died from two such infections in the last seven years, (and some 400,000 Americans did die from such infectious respiratory illnesses during that period BEFORE COVID-19 was a thing).?And yet nobody shut down the economy, nobody was running around telling people to wear worthless masks, and nobody would have done anything but laugh at the "social distancing."

The sky is NOT falling. Stop living in fear.

Other COVID-19 discussions by CP Connell:

Holding Science Hostage - How the fearful and powerful corrupt science for political gain.

How to Peddle Backward - What happened to the 2020 Flu Epidemic? A summary of the US Crude Mortality Rate's refusal to cooperate with the popular narrative.

?WHO thought this was a good idea... (Comments regarding the December 1, 2020, "Mask use in the context of COVID-19".)

?The Failing Mask Cure Aid a review of Bundgaard H, Bundgaard JS, Raaschou-Pedersen DET, et al, "Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers, A Randomized Controlled Trial" (Ann. Int. Med. Nov 18, 2020, https://doi dot org/10.7326/M20-6817).

?Don't be a Maskhole, Karen?A review of?Zeng N, Li Z, Ng S, Chen D, Zhou H,?Epidemiology reveals mask wearing by the public is crucial for COVID-19 control. (Medicine in Microecology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medmic.2020.100015):??

?Masks, and the new Doctor Schnabel von Rom: Review of Stadnytskyi V, Bax CE, Bax A, Anfinru P, The airborne lifetime of small speech droplets and their potential importance in SARS-CoV-2 transmission?(Approved by PNAS May 2020: https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2006874117)

Pathological Science - Zhang?et al?and the PNAS: Zhang R, Annie Y Zhang L, Wang Y, Molinae M: Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19 (fast-tracked through the PNAS on June 11, 2020)

Defacing Mask Science - Rossettie S, Perry C, Pourghaed M, Zumwalt M, "Effectiveness of manufactured surgical masks, respirators, and home-made masks in prevention of respiratory infection due to airborne microorganisms" The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles 2020;8(34):11–26

Masks - Don't look behind the curtain: Review of Vivek Kumar, Sravankumar Nallamothu, Sourabh Shrivastava, Harshrajsinh Jadeja, Pravin Nakod, Prem Andrade, Pankaj Doshi, Guruswamy Kumaraswamy "On the utility of cloth facemasks for controlling ejecta during respiratory events "

?Size matters! A Brief Description of filtering mechanisms and size.

Materials v. Masks: A review of Konda A, Prakash A, Moss GA, Schmoldt M, Grant GD, Guha S "Aerosol Filtration Efficiency of Common Fabrics Used in Respiratory Cloth Masks" (American Chemical Society, April 2020)

"Junk Science: In Favor of Community Face Masks - a return to Lysenkoism"?A review of: Jeremy Howard, Austin Huang,?Zhiyuan Li,?Zeynep Tufekci, Vladimir Zdimal,?Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen,?Arne von Delft,?Amy Price,?Lex Fridman, Lei-Han Tang, Viola Tang,?Gregory L. Watson,?Christina E. Bax,?Reshama Shaikh,?Frederik Questier, Danny Hernandez, Larry F. Chu, Christina M. Ramirez, Anne W. Rimoin Face Masks Against COVID-19: An Evidence Review NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 13 May 2020

Wishful Science - A review of Anna Davies, BSc, Katy-Anne Thompson, BSc, Karthika Giri, BSc, George Kafatos, MSc, Jimmy Walker, PhD, and Allan Bennett, MSc Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic? (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2013;7:413-418)

If Manikins Could Fly… A Review of Eikenberry SE, Mancuso M, Iboi E, Phan T, Eikenberry K, Kuang Y, Kostelich E, Gumel AB "To mask or not to mask: Modeling the potential for face mask use by the general public to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic" (Infectious Disease Modelling 5 (2020) pp. 293-308)

Review of Cheng VC, Wong S, Chuang V, So S,?et al?"The role of community-wide wearing of face mask for control of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic due to SARS-CoV-2" (Journal of Infection April 30, 2020;16:13)

Gassed Masks! Reactivation of viruses and deoxygenation during mask wearing.

Masking the Truth - A discussion of aerosols and droplets

We R0 New York City - A discussion of the basic reproduction number.

The epidemic of ignorance: Lessons from "Flattening the Curve" April 14, 2020

Think Tanks!?The Dangers of Group-Think April 13, 2020

REFERENCES:

[i] Humphreys NA "Vital Statistics: a memorial volume of selections from the reports and writing of William Farr," The Sanitary institute of Great Britain, 1885?

[1] From the CDC weekly index:?"Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.?Table 3. Conditions contributing to deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), by age group, United States. Week ending 2/1/2020 to 8/22/2020."