Is it OK to go outside now?

OK, so we’ve all been cooped up for months. We’ve been bombarded with messages from seemingly well-intentioned health officials and government agencies to “stay home” or “stay safe”. We’ve been told there’s this dangerous invisible bug out there that’s hell-bent on killing everyone. And we’ve been warned to keep away from other people in case they, well you know, infect you with a disease capable of causing a slow, agonising death.

As nations across the world start to lift restrictions and allow more freedom of movement, you’d be excused for being a little cautious about going back “out there”.

So, is it really safe to go back out there? Well yes, it is. And the reason why is simple. It was never really that dangerous in the first place.

Really? Yes! And there’s a simple reason for that too. You see someone’s been playing a trick on you for a very long time. And you probably never realised who it was or what they were actually doing. But their tricks have been very dramatically exposed over the past few months.

That someone is the media. Now despite all the things said about the important role of the media in free democracies etc, there is only one thing that the news media, and increasingly social media today, produce. They only produce one outcome from all their efforts.

They simply make you believe the environment is more dangerous than it actually is. That’s it. They are the purveyors of doom no matter what they say in their own defence. And it doesn’t matter what type of media they are or what their political beliefs are, they simply all contribute to making you believe that the world is a far more dangerous place than it actually is.

The proof is simple. Just look at the way the media has covered the Coronavirus outbreak right from the start.

First off, let’s look at relative context. What has been going on in the world over the past few months? Despite what the media have been making you feel, it’s not been World War III. (Or World War II or World War I for that matter.) It’s not Ebola or the Spanish Flu or anything like that. It’s a really bad version of the Common Cold virus. That’s all it is.

Now, yes it has killed a lot of people. But the simple truth is that bad colds kill lots of people every year - that is people who are very old, very sick or both very old and very sick.

So many of the people who have sadly died during this outbreak simply have died earlier than they would have in normal circumstances. A bad cold, the flu or some other infection would have killed many of them probably sometime this year or next.

The key to understanding how the media has been infecting you is simply to look at what they report. And the reports are constantly about BIG numbers and death tolls and tallies of infections, etc. Without giving you any relative context to think with. (A very wise man once said that the relative worth of any data or information can only be properly evaluated by comparing to another datum or datums of comparable magnitude.)

So compared to some death tolls from history, the current death toll of over 340,000 (as of this writing) is tiny compared to many global outbreaks not just from the past, like the Spanish Flu or the Plague where tens and hundreds of millions of people died, but also from recent times, like the HIV epidemic which has killed over 35 million people to date and is still killing them. We haven’t seen the world shutdown over that disease.

Notice too, how the media always compare the current Coronavirus death toll to something that makes it look bigger and more dramatic, not smaller. “More Americans have died from Coronavirus than the X war, plus the Y War, plus the Z War combined!!” Oh shock, oh horror!

Also, the current death toll from Coronavirus, pales in comparison to the current annual global death toll from all sorts of causes. Every year over 8 million people die from heart disease, nearly 6 million from strokes, even road accidents claim nearly 2 million lives. (Source: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death)

But we don’t get daily death tolls from these causes every day in our evening news, like we are currently getting from the Coronavirus.

The other trick the media plays is they always report the worst possible figures they can possibly justify. Right now, as I write this, the media are trumpeting the tally of 5.4 million “cases” and 340,000+ deaths. Now they do mention “recoveries” in passing but the problem is the media LOVES big numbers, the more the better. So they stick with reporting the 5.4 million figure in their headlines, despite the fact that 2.1 million have recovered meaning they are no longer current active cases. They are back to full health. So, 5.4 million quickly drops to 3.3 million.

The problem is the initial figure sticks in people’s heads and they think that there are over 5 million people worldwide currently suffering from the disease and therefore this many people capable of spreading it.

I hate to point out the obvious but if you’re already dead from a disease, you are clearly NOT a current active case of it and you present no risk to anyone. So, take off another 340,000 and you are down below 3.0 million. Nearly HALF the headline figure.

But let’s look at the figures another way. 2.1 million have recovered and 340,000+ have died so you are 6 times more likely to recover than die. In Australia the ratio is much more dramatic.

Over 7000 total cases. 102 deaths. That means in Australia you are 70 times more likely to recover than die. Yes 70 times!

But no one in the media will ever report that because it’s a truth getting in the way of a good story. And trust me, Coronavirus is a GOOD story for the media. They LOVE it. Death, disease, dramatic pictures of people in hazmat suits every day. It’s like the media almost wet their pants with excitement about what’s going on and the possibility of reporting constantly rising death tolls every day.

But if you look closer at the death rates you find some other surprising facts.

Firstly, as previously stated, this disease is mostly killing people who are already sick. Healthy people, even well into their 70s are simply NOT dying from this disease in any significant numbers. (Of course the media always report the rare cases of a “perfectly healthy” 22 year old who died from Coronavirus just to make you believe that ANYONE can die from it, but that’s their stock in trade.)

According to World Health Organisation, the death rate from this disease for all age groups who do NOT have a pre-existing medical condition is less than 1%. Actually 0.9%.

But when you look closer at those under 50, the total death rate is as low as 0.3%. And even that figure includes people under 50 who do have pre-existing medical conditions. So the death rate for healthy people under 50 is probably tiny, if you could find it.

One particularly telling example shows just how true this point is. Healthy people of almost any age, DO NOT die from Coronavirus.

Take these figures from New York City for example, where the death rate has been really high. Even there, of the people aged over 75 who died from the disease in April, 5,236 had underlying medical conditions. The total number of people in New York over 75, with NO underlying medical conditions who died from coronavirus? Just 2. Yes, 2 people.

So, the fact of the matter is that if you are reasonably healthy, you have nothing to fear from this disease, no matter how old you are!

Again, it’s not comfortable for some people to say it because they fear it will suggest they are insensitive to the lives of older people, but Coronavirus is largely killing sick older people. The overwhelming majority of the population have nothing to fear from it. Literally 98-99% of the world’s population, would survive even if everyone caught it.

Speaking of fear.. what is coronavirus? Well as previously stated it’s the very same virus that causes the common cold. Now for some people that’s a very bad cold, but the symptoms are so mild for many people they don’t even know they have it. I’m sorry but how can you be afraid of a disease which can be so mild you don’t even know you have it?

Now I might point out that very sick old people die from the common cold all the time. That’s sometimes all it takes to push someone who’s on the edge of death already, over the edge.

So, when you analyse the type of virus, the mortality rate and strip away the media hype and hysteria, you get a disease that yes, is fatal for a very few people, but largely harmless to most.

Now when the majority of people who are dying already have pre-existing medical conditions like heart disease or cardio-vascular disease or cancer or even are just getting very, very old, in a very worn out body, there is even doubt as to whether you died from coronavirus or WITH coronavirus.

So, once this is all over, we may find many people who had been counted as deaths from this virus might not be so. (Medical experts almost always downgrade death rates from outbreaks when they have the time to examine the figures in more detail when it’s all over.)

Another way of looking at the current situation to get proper context, is to compare the current death toll with past death tolls for similar periods. This is called “excess deaths”, above what would normally be considered expected for this time of the year, say.

When you look at some countries and compare the number of people who would normally be expected to have died over the past few months compared to the total number of people who have actually died, INCLUDING those from Coronavirus, you get some surprising results.

Israel, Norway and South Africa for example reported NO excess death rate in April. They had Coronavirus deaths, yes, but at a rate that did not exceed their normal death rate. Germany reported a death rate only 3% higher than “normal”.

But "Worldwide pandemic causes death rate only 3% higher than normal" is not a very dramatic headline for the evening news is it? So it doesn't get reported.

Even the USA has only reported an excess death rate of 15%, because in such a populous country, around 60,000 people normally die every day.

Here in Australia we are coming into the flu season. Given all the social distancing, obsessive hand washing and so forth, the likelihood is that very few people will catch the flu and therefore die from it this year. Which means it is very highly likely that when you combine the Australian death toll from Coronavirus with the death toll from the flu for this year, it will most likely be below the normal flu death toll.

Which means rather than being worried about how many Australians might die from this disease we will probably be celebrating how many more are alive at the end of winter than would normally be expected!

Part of the problem is the whole thing of death. We don’t like to face it. We don’t like to talk about it. (You probably felt a bit queezy reading those figures. I certainly did writing them.)

Simple truth is this. Currently 150,000 people die EVERY DAY on a normal day on this planet. The Coronavirus average daily death toll is around 4,500. So, on any normal day, while we are going about our normal lives, 145,5000 people are regularly dying from other causes apart from Coronavirus. But we don't even notice.

Fact is, death is a part of life.

The difference is the media doesn’t normally report a daily death toll every night in our evening news. Which is basically what they’ve been doing since the start of this outbreak.

By constantly shoving bad news of death and inflated numbers of cases in front of us every day, they have convinced us to be afraid, really afraid, far more afraid than we need to be.

So, it’s time to throw off the shackles. Get out there. Live life. Don’t be afraid of other humans and don’t obsess about whether you MIGHT catch a virus that most likely has a less than 2% chance of killing you. The chances are probably much greater that you will get run over by a bus on your way to catching it.

Once this aberration is over, make a new healthy habit for your physical AND mental health. Don’t watch the news! Don’t listen to the news. Don’t read the news. You’ll live longer and be happier.

Because the environment will no longer appear as dangerous as it once was. It’s actually a beautiful and wonderful world. Go out and enjoy living in it.