Coronavirus Pandemic: Apocalypse Now! Or exaggerated scare story?

[Astrocyte]

So the reason why we have this lockdown is that people are not afraid, because there isn't anything to be afraid of, and so the state needs to apply force and propaganda. And the only reason why the state would do such a thing I can think of is a) to further the authoritarian agenda and/or b) to stop the virus for other reasons than the danger to the population.

Good analysis but one point is missing:

c) Imbecility have reached a critical point in human population.

 

[Ruth]

When I look at the title of this thread, my answer is.... Yes to both!

Del Bigtree makes comment on it. His main segment runs tomorrow, but his team often breaks the big one into smaller pieces, posted in the following days. This might be a good one to show people who are overcome with fear and terror and are locked in their homes.

I've sent a number of articles posted on this forum to people I know (who I thought might be interested). But I get rid of the 'embedded' extension on the link, because I want it to stand alone (and not be linked back to the forum?) I'm not sure if that's a valid concern. It also gives the impression that I was 'smart' enough to find it on my own, which obviously is not the case....

 

[Z...]

The scariest thing about this fake pandemic - the medics have become heroes and the medicine criterion for the entire social life, health of the nation something to talk about daily as an essential criterion for survival and existence of the community. All this, literally all of it was a fetish in Nazi Germany. Doctors were determining the level of civil liberties. They determined if someone is “sick” and how much their “sickness” is of a danger to society. The doctors spoke about health of the nation and together with Führer prescribed what to do to protect and improve it. The only difference being - Third Reich didn't have COVID19.
The C’s have been so right when they said Nazi Germany was just a rehearsal.

 

[Astrocyte]

What if they were going to starve anyway because of global cooling = famine? The Elites can only do something about one half of the "people need food to survive" equation, and it's not the food production side of it.....

From your link:

"The world is facing widespread famine “of biblical proportions” because of the coronavirus pandemic, the chief of the UN’s food relief agency has warned, with a short time to act before hundreds of millions starve."

It seem alway the same tune in the MSM, they tell it's because of the coronavirus pandemic but NEVER tell that the cause are the measures taken to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

 

[Gawan]

If there are no major additions or revisions by tomorrow morning, I'll set it up as a form in pdf format and upload it so everyone who wants to help can download and print copies for however many interviews you are willing to do.

Just remember, we WANT this information because we are NOT getting accurate information via the media. This is one way to really find out what people are thinking. We can't rely on social media to tell us that because it is loaded with trolls and sockpuppets. So if we can get out there and extract some real data, it will help a lot. At least we will know where we really stand.

And heck, it is certainly something positive to be doing for those who are stuck at home without a lot going on.

It could be translated into several languages as well if needed and that would be than a good random mix. Beside the poll could be done online as well, there are some platforms created for this. Though the data must be handled afterwards.

 

[Cosmos]

Ken Jebsen from KenFM is at his best now. If you are able to understand german I would really encourage you to listen and share the following as far and wide as possible. The guy was always a linguistic/verbal/cabaretistic/theatrical genius but now he is just off the hook in speaking the truth unfiltered. I can honestly say that I never encountered anyone out there who can so precisely put so much truth and needed societal critic into as short amount of a speech as he can. It is really a pity that not everyone can understand german since this one is by far the best summary of the situation out there I have seen so far. It is a big warning for any human being who can still think. Brilliant is an understatement:

Gesicht zeigen! - apolut.net

Gesicht zeigen! +++ KenFM jetzt auch als kostenlose App für Android- und iOS-Geräte verfügbar! Über unsere Homepage kommt Ihr zu den Stores von Apple und Google. Hier der Link: https://kenfm.de/kenfm-app/ +++ Jetzt KenFM unterstützen: https://www.patreon.com/KenFMde Dir gefällt unser Programm...

kenfm.de

 

[Joe]

Plus, that's comparing the total number of all deaths everywhere, whereas so far, only certain select cities and regions are particularly affected. It makes more sense to compare a single region to itself. Hypothetically, if a virus only strikes a single city, it doesn't make sense to compare those numbers to a virus that pops up in all cities. In the U.S., for example, rural areas have very few Covid-19 cases, but some big cities have a lot. So the best source of comparative data would be those very cities and/or regions. That's what I've tried to do so far in my posts on the numbers. It seems that in big cities/regions that are hard hit (e.g., Bergamo, London, NYC), whatever is going on is at least 2x, and up to 8x worse than any flu season in recent memory. For small towns and rural areas, it is much less than an average flu season.

For example, as I showed in a recent post, in the past 25 years, the worst month of mortality in NYC was in January 1999, which was the peak of the flu season for that year. An average of 218 people died in the city daily of all causes. Over the past three weeks in New York, at least 367 people have died every day, and that's just those attributed to Covid-19, so total mortality is probably something higher than that. (That's assuming that they haven't been ascribing EVERY death to Covid-19, which is unlikely. But even if they have, the current overall mortality rate is about twice what NYC experiences at the peak of an average flu season.)

True, although assessing the overall (global) mortality rate of a virus is the only metric that matters in the end. I mean, just because a virus may be particularly deadly in a major city, it can't (or shouldn't) reasonably be called a "pandemic" and used to terrify lock down 1/3 of the globe "just in case". By now, it is pretty clear that this virus, like other flu-like viruses, is really only dangerous to people with pre-existing conditions (mostly the elderly). In short, there is no good reason for the blanket lock down with all of it potentially disastrous knock-on effects.

 

[Persej]

It will be interesting to see how many Italian football players have antibodies for COVID-19. Romelu Lukaku said that his team already had symptoms in January.

Lukaku: '23 out of 25 Inter players were ill'

Romelu Lukaku made an astonishing revelation, claiming “23 out of 25 Inter players were ill with a cough and fever” in January, but they weren’t tested for COVID-19.

So far, the Nerazzurri have not had any confirmed positive cases, despite being in Lombardy, the epicentre of the pandemic in Italy.

Now Lukaku suggests there were some very suspicious situations going on behind the scenes during his Instagram Live conversation with Kat Kerkhofs, who is a Belgian TV presenter and wife of Napoli striker Dries Mertens.

“We had a week off in December, we returned to work and I swear that 23 out of 25 players were ill. I am not kidding. We played against Radja Nainggolan’s Cagliari and after about 25 minutes, one of our defenders had to leave the pitch. He could not continue and almost fainted.”

The player he is referring to is Milan Skriniar, who went off 17 minutes into that match on January 26, officially because he felt dizzy and hadn’t quite recovered from flu.

The first official case of coronavirus in Italy was not until February 21, so they were not tested.

“Everyone was coughing and had a fever. When I was warming up, I felt a lot hotter than usual. I hadn’t suffered from a fever in years,” continued Lukaku.

“After the game there was a planned dinner with guests from Puma, but I thanked them and went straight to bed. We never did the COVID-19 tests at that moment, so we’ll never know for sure.”

They probably can, because the protocol for Serie A players returning to training includes blood tests to check for antibodies.

If the antibodies are present, it means they had the virus at some point and made a full recovery.

Lukaku: '23 out of 25 Inter players were ill' | Football Italia

Romelu Lukaku made an astonishing revelation, claiming â23 out of 25 Inter players were ill with a cough and feverâ in January, but they werenât tested for COVID-19. So far, the Nerazzurri have not had any confirmed positive cases, despite being in Lombardy, the epicentre of the pandemic in Italy.

www.football-italia.net

 

[Ocean]

Just downloaded it.

I have also downloaded it.

 

[Joe]

“If the numbers prove accurate, the coronavirus may be much less deadly than originally expected, with a fatality rate more closely resembling that of a seasonal flu strain than a pandemic of profound lethality."

Coronavirus Infections May Not Be Uncommon, Tests Suggest (Published 2020)

Two preliminary efforts to survey citizens for antibodies to the virus have produced controversial results.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Ruth]

Here's my favorite (and also entertaining) lawyer turned YouTuber on a decision made by the courts (and then reversed) to restrict parental access to a child based on their risk of exposure to Covid 1984.

 

[hlat]

While the lying media is of course burying the lede on this, the takeaway is that the case fatality rate is on the order of 0.1-0.2%.

Coronavirus Infections May Not Be Uncommon, Tests Suggest

Edit: Joe saw the same line.

Piece of trash NY Times printing some truth? Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
"If the numbers prove accurate, the coronavirus may be much less deadly than originally expected, with a fatality rate more closely resembling that of a seasonal flu strain than a pandemic of profound lethality."

Coronavirus Infections May Not Be Uncommon, Tests Suggest (Published 2020)

Two preliminary efforts to survey citizens for antibodies to the virus have produced controversial results.

www.nytimes.com

Coronavirus Infections May Not Be Uncommon, Tests Suggest

Two preliminary efforts to survey citizens for antibodies to the virus have produced controversial results.

By Gina Kolata

April 21, 2020

Two new studies using antibody tests to assess how many people have been infected with the coronavirus have turned up numbers higher than some experts had expected.

Both studies were performed in California: one among residents of Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco, and the other among residents of Los Angeles County. In both cases, the estimates of the number of people infected in those counties were far higher than the number of confirmed cases.

The studies, conducted by public health officials and scientists at Stanford University and the University of Southern California, have earned the ire of critics who questioned both the recruitment methods and the analyses.

In the Santa Clara County study, researchers tested 3,330 volunteers for antibodies indicating exposure to the virus. Roughly 1.5 percent were positive.

After adjustments intended to account for differences between the sample and the population of the county as a whole, the researchers estimated that the prevalence of antibodies was between 2.5 percent and a bit more than 4 percent. The county’s population is 1.9 million.

That means that 48,000 to 81,000 people were infected with the coronavirus in Santa Clara County by early April, the investigators concluded.

In Los Angeles County, researchers conducted tests at drive-through sites and at participants’ homes and estimated that 2.8 percent to 5.6 percent of the county’s adult population carried antibodies to the coronavirus. There are 10.4 million people in Los Angeles County.

If accurate, that would mean that 220,000 to 442,000 residents had been exposed. By comparison, only 8,000 cases had been confirmed in the county by early April, when the testing was done.

While finding volunteers was not difficult, it’s not clear how representative they were of the populations at large.

To find participants in the Los Angeles County study, researchers used a random sample of email addresses and telephone numbers of residents to invite people to participate in what they said would be a Covid-19 survey.

The scientists set limits on participation, based on factors like ethnicity and age, in an effort to ensure the sample represented the county’s population. About 1,100 people signed up to be tested.

The study in Santa Clara County found participants by advertising on Facebook. Most of the first volunteers were in wealthy ZIP codes, so the investigators also recruited from poorer areas. As in the Los Angeles County study, the goal was to get a representative sample of the population.

“It’s not perfect, but it’s the best science can do,” said Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and an author of the Santa Clara County report.

Antibody studies in other countries have produced similar figures, he noted.

If the numbers prove accurate, the coronavirus may be much less deadly than originally expected, with a fatality rate more closely resembling that of a seasonal flu strain than a pandemic of profound lethality.

But there are questions about who was tested. Among them: Were people who had reason to think they had been infected overrepresented among the volunteers?

“We tried to look into the possibility of bias influencing the results,” Dr. Ioannidis said. “We asked for symptoms recently and in the last few months, and were very careful with our adjustments. We did a very lengthy set of analyses.”

That data will be published in a forthcoming appendix, he said. In any event, bias also can work to lower the numbers if the healthiest people were the ones inclined to be tested, a real possibility.

“Nobody knows the truth — let’s be honest,” Dr. Ioannidis said of the prevalence figures. “But if I had to guess, I would say it is probably higher than our estimate.”

 

[Windmill knight]

Over the last couple of days, I've been trying to reconcile two different things in my mind, namely the overwhelm of local hospitals and emergency systems (of NY/NJ area) versus the stories of underwhelm and even empty hospitals throughout elsewhere. If this was already addressed in this thread, forgive me but I haven't been able to keep up, but I wanted to add the observations that I've gathered from speaking to several nurses, emts, and paramedics that I know from the area.

One of my colleague took his kid to one central jersey hospital, he mentioned that MOST of the hospital is empty. It does looks like there are many variables.

Could it be bad - or even malicious - hospital management? For example, if you send all of COVID-19 suspected patients to just a couple of hospitals and forget about the rest, you will create 'war zones' in those hospitals and the others will remain quiet. Or perhaps only few hospitals have ventilators and they automatically send people with symptoms over there? But then why discourage patients with other issues from going to the non-ventilator hospitals?Well, because of panic of course. Or maybe there is a wing in certain hospitals reserved for it while the rest remains unused? A combination of all of the above?

 

[mkrnhr]

Could it be bad - or even malicious - hospital management? For example, if you send all of COVID-19 suspected patients to just a couple of hospitals and forget about the rest, you will create 'war zones' in those hospitals and the others will remain quiet. Or perhaps only few hospitals have ventilators and they automatically send people with symptoms over there? But then why discourage patients with other issues from going to the non-ventilator hospitals?Well, because of panic of course. Or maybe there is a wing in certain hospitals reserved for it while the rest remains unused? A combination of all of the above?

That's my thought as well. People suspected of having Covid1984 are crowded into a few hospitals, they receive poor treatment as a consequence of panic, and they get worse, some of whom die. Seeing that, people with other conditions don't go to non-crowded hospitals, these remain empty, and people get worse or die because they don't receive life-support treatment because of panic. In any case, irrational fear is the biggest killer.

 

[Abats]

It could be translated into several languages as well if needed and that would be than a good random mix. Beside the poll could be done online as well, there are some platforms created for this. Though the data must be handled afterwards.

Could we make it a google form ? (yes I know google is the devil) or another way to fill online easily and simply ? just an idea