by Edwin Mora
April 13, 2020
from Breitbart Website

Italian version

 

DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS

AFP via Getty Images

The fatal and

highly contagious novel coronavirus

has spread faster

but is less deadly

than official data imply,

the Economist magazine

reported over the weekend,

citing a new study.


 

On Saturday, the Economist reported that the fact that the illness caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread across the United States could be "good news."

"If millions of people were infected weeks ago without dying, the virus must be less deadly than official data suggest," the magazine determined, using graphs to suggest the faster the disease spreads and hits its peak, the fewer people will die.

The Economist article cited a new study by Justin Silverman and Alex Washburne that used data on influenza-like illness (ILI) to show that the coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) is now widespread in America.

Silverman and Washburne found that the coronavirus mortality rate could be as low as 0.1 percent, "similar to that of flu."

The Economist further explained:

COVID-19 takes 20-25 days to kill victims.

 

The [Silverman and Washburne] paper reckons that 7m Americans were infected from March 8^th to 14^th, and official data show 7,000 deaths three weeks later.

 

The resulting fatality rate is 0.1%, similar to that of flu. That is amazingly low, just a tenth of some other estimates.

 

Perhaps it is just wrong, possibly because the death toll has been under-reported.

 

Perhaps, though, New York's hospitals are overflowing because the virus is so contagious that it has crammed the equivalent of a year's worth of flu cases into one week.

The death rate could be higher given that people with asymptomatic or mild coronavirus likely failed to report non-flu influenza-like illnesses to their doctors, the magazine acknowledged.

Silverman and Washburne reportedly gleaned their data from weekly reports by 2,600 American doctors on the number of their patients who have ILI, the Economist explained, adding:

The authors assume that the share of these providers' patients with ILI who do have the flu matches the rate of flu tests that are positive in the same state and week.

 

This lets them estimate how many people have ILI seriously enough to call a doctor, but do not have the flu - and how many more people have had non-flu ILI in 2020 than in prior years.

Of course, the flu is often the cause of ILI, but there many other ailments that produce influenza-like illness, including,

• common colds

• step throat

• and now coronavirus...

The new study's coronavirus death rate estimate is much lower than what Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, predicted in early March.

"If you look at the cases that have come to the attention of the medical authorities in China, and you just do the math, the math is about two percent," Fauci said.

A study from Britain published at the end of last month in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases also found that fewer people are dying from the novel coronavirus than previously estimated.

That study estimated the coronavirus death rate could be as low as 0.66 percent and as high as 1.38 percent. Fauci's estimate is higher than both figures.

The coronavirus has infected over 560,000 people and killed nearly 23,000,

across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands,

...the Johns Hopkins University tracker showed as of Monday afternoon.

COVID-19 turning out to be...

Huge Hoax perpetrated by Media
by Joseph Curl
April 28, 2020

from WashingtonTimes Website

Italian version

 

Media Virus Illustration

by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times



Media hyped the virus

and alarmed Americans to the point

of shutting down the economy...

When the postmortem is done on the media's coverage of COVID-19 (and it will be), it will be clear that the virus was no Black Plague it's not even the flu on a bad year.

SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, has killed 56,749 Americans as of Tuesday.

That's not good. But it's not as bad as the 2017-2018 flu season, when 80,000 plus perished.

And it's a long cry from what all the experts were warning about just a few weeks ago:

First, they predicted 1.7 million Americans dead.

 

Then they redid the models (this time apparently entering a few more "facts") and said 100,000-240,000 dead.

Now, a major model relied on by the White House Coronavirus Task Force predicts about 70,000 dead by the end of August.

And for that we shut down the U.S. economy?!

As the coronavirus swept across China, then Europe, then everywhere, the U.S. media breathlessly reported every terrifying number, almost gleefully.

Their ratings soared, of course, as they scared the hell out of every American, many of whom have stayed home for the last 40 days, emerging only to buy toilet paper, but even then clad in masks and tiptoeing in fear.

But here are some facts...

Fatality Rate

A recent Stanford University antibody study estimated the fatality rate from the virus is likely 0.1% to 0.2%.

The World Health Organization (WHO) had estimated that the death rate was 20 to 30 times higher and called for isolation policies.

On which version do you think the media focused?

In New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic, the death rate for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01%, or 10 per 100,000 in the population.

 

People aged 75 and older, though, have a death rate 80 times that.

 

For children under 18, the rate of death is zero per 100,000. That's zero...

Health and Age

More than half of the COVID-19 deaths in Europe occurred in long-term care or nursing-home facilities.

At least one-fifth of the deaths recorded in the U.S. so far have occurred there.

Nearly all the patients hospitalized for the coronavirus in New York City had underlying health conditions, according to a recent study.

"Health records from 5,700 patients hospitalized within the Northwell Health system which housed the most patients in the country throughout the pandemic showed that 94 percent of patients had more than one disease other than COVID-19, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association," Fox News reported.

The study found,

• 42% of the patients were overweight

• 53% had hypertension,

...and the others suffered from a variety of ailments.

 

Far More Widespread

Millions and millions of Americans have already been infected with the virus even though the U.S. media continues to report the low numbers provided by Johns Hopkins, which says that 998,000 Americans have contracted the virus as of Tuesday.

An antibody study was conducted last week in New York City and found that 1 in 5 (21.2%) of residents have already been infected with the coronavirus.

 

There are 8.5 million people in New York City, so that would mean 1.8 million New Yorkers have had the virus.

At the time of the study, there were 16,249 deaths in the city attributed to COVID-19, which means the death rate in the city was 0.89% at the time far lower than reports in the U.S. media.

Results of antibody survey last week in Los Angeles found as many as 442,000 Los Angeles County residents might have already been infected with the coronavirus by early April, a number far higher than the 8,000 cases confirmed at the time.

 

The survey suggested that the death rate from the virus could be as low as 0.18% of COVID-19 patients, which means the actual death rate in the city is far lower than reported.

The Daily Mail reported Monday that,

"coronavirus may kill 70 times fewer patients than official UK death figures suggest, studies have shown."

The Mail said a similar fatality rate 0.19% was found in a study of residents in Helsinki, Finland.

A study, this one by Dr. Justin Silverman, estimates that,

there were 8.7 million coronavirus infections in the U.S. between March 8 and March 28.

 

And as of April 17, 10% of Americans have been infected which is roughly 33 million Americans.

The media has been hyping COVID-19 since Day One, alarming Americans to the point where they voluntarily went along with shutting down the entire economy a mistake that will likely reverberate for a decade or more.

Even as U.S. states begin to re-open based on the data, which shows a far lower fatality rate than reported and a much wider spread of the virus, the media continue to report on what they deem 'frightening numbers' over the deadly virus...

They aren't, and it isn't.

COVID-19 is a bad flu at worst.

 

And the media should be held accountable for telling us otherwise before they knew the facts...