Since I pretty much avoid the supermarket and hang out with the local hunters here, most of whom seem to have a good "nose" for sniffing out BS and therefore shake hands and hug each other and generally don't care all that much, I have less "real world" annoyance right now. But the other day we watched the mainstream TV news, and I felt the anger boiling up again. The reason: they keep updating the nation about the latest numbers: the "case numbers", which they call "new infections", and the new and overall death numbers. What makes me furious is the obvious total stupidity in reporting "case numbers" without any context whatsoever - they don't say how many tests they did in which time frame, nor which groups were tested, nothing. Or if they even tested! It's just so ridiculous. And it is insulting. Germany likes to think of itself as a "country of science", yeah right. And it's not just the media's fault - the proud Robert Koch Institute, our official health body, does not print any of those numbers in their reports! They did so at the very beginning, but soon people figured out that this destroys their whole panic machine, so they just stopped reporting them. Incredible.
Also, we should rejoice about the "case numbers" anyway - the higher, the better! Because it shows just how harmless the thing is. The representative studies done in Germany, the US, UK etc. all show that the virus is very widespread in the population (around 30% I think) anyway. But of course, they simply pretend these don't exist! Even though these were done by high profile mainstream scientists! They just keep reporting their silly case numbers! So what freaks me out is the stupidity, and how people swallow it day in day out. What the hell happened to education - scientific and philosophical?
On another note, I'm thinking about writing a long post on facebook, drawing on everything I got to call out the BS I'm seeing. But somehow I can't bring myself to do it. I dread the inevitable fistfight in the replies, people from my life past and present freaking out, and even repercussions for my business. I'm still not sure whether I'm a coward, or just careful and prudent, or both. But at least I have written a couple of pages, have the stuff ready, and can shoot when the right time has come, both online and in conversations. Patient warrior and all that.
I agree that case numbers in isolation is a meaningless statistic. The really important numbers, IMO, are the number of those cases serious enough to be hospitalized and the number requiring ICU services. The reality is that most of the reported cases are so mild that people are sent home for self isolation.
In New Zealand we have a total of 1485 cases, 1286 recovered cases, 20 deaths. Over the entire crisis, there have been 70 people hospitalized. No data on ICU numbers, however there have never been more than 5 people in ICU at the same time, ever. Of the 20 deaths, 11 have come from a rest-home unit for dementia and palliative care. The youngest person to die was in his 60s and in palliative care. The others are in their 80s or 90s.
When you look at those numbers, the only conclusion you can draw is that there was never a crisis in New Zealand. To justify the lock-down, they promised tens of thousand would die if it was not done and that 2000 would die even if we did it. Instead 20 people died, all of whom would likely have died in the next 6 to 12 months in any case. I point this out on social media and most people say - oh gosh, didn't lock-down work really well. For people not hypnotized a fitting response would be - wow, those models were complete rubbish, lets make sure we never rely on them in the future. But unfortunately so many people are completely in thrall.