CDC Admits Errors, Mortality Rate Lower than Advertised

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Since this Chinese Wuhan novel coronavirus COVID-19 thing began to get out of control I have been telling you that the news about the COVID-19 Chinese Wuhan coronavirus pandemic has been largely a part of an elaborate hoax designed to make you afraid, and use political policy to herd you into your homes, keep you there, and try to make their authoritarian rules the new normal while guiding the economy into collapse, which would then, hopefully (from their point of view) encourage people to demand help from the government and demand a more socialist approach to our markets.  I am not saying people didn't get sick, some people did.  I am not saying that the coronavirus does not exist, it does, and for a small percentage of people it can be a nasty little sucker.  The hoax is regarding the seriousness of it, the claim that if we don't obey the government's totalitarian dictates, millions of people will die.

The numbers have been clear.  A very high percentage of people are asymptomatic (I believe well over 96% of those under 65) when infected with COVID-19.  Anti-body studies have shown that the number of people who have had the disease is much larger than originally believed, making the mortality rate much much lower than originally believed.  Yes, there is a segment of the population that is at high risk, and they should be protected, but to shut down our economy and end life in general over something that is clearly milder than the seasonal flu is insane.

Whenever I talk about the numbers, the liberal left individuals I talk to accuse me of using unreliable sources, even though my sources include the New York Times (regarding misreporting of death numbers), ABC News (anti-body studies), Los Angeles Times (anti-body studies), The Atlantic (stay at home orders flawed strategy), Washington Post (high percentage of COVID-19 cases asymptomatic), The Hill (how coronavirus strategies are damaging the economy), NBC News (getting sick has become a criminal offense), and that real science is claiming that had we not shut down the coronavirus curve would have flattened and been gone within weeks.

But, a narrative for the authoritarians was milked, and the sheep believed it, to the point that they were willing to turn on their own friends and neighbors for not wearing a mask (could very well have been an arm band with a fascist symbol on it ... those people that chased a woman out of a New York store for not wearing a mask would have made great NAZIs), looked the other way when the politicians blamed ballot fraud, when caught, on the voters, and that the Democrats are dreading the idea of the economy rebounding out of this ridiculous scamdemic (you know, because they hate capitalism so much).

When I confront my counterparts of the left side of the political spectrum, they tell me I am full of hooey, I am some kind of conspiracy theorist, and that I am killing people by not wearing a face mask.

Fine.  Don't believe me, or all of the sources I provide, or the numbers which are staring us in the face.  How about believing the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

The CDC has been constantly correcting itself, but the mainstream media, and especially CNN and MSNBC (which never shows up as a source because they constantly lie or cover-up the facts) have not been reporting it.  The latest is that according to the CDC's new best estimate, the COVID-19 infection fatality rate is below 0.3% and as low as 0.05% for those under 50 years of age.  Granted, it is not as low as what I think it is after my calculations based on the new best guesses of the number of infected, but it sure is much lower than the numbers used in the horrifying projections that led the government authoritarians to strike out at us with policies that have us running and hiding as if this thing is Captain Trips (name of disease in Stephen King's "The Stand").

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current "best estimate" for the fatality rate among Americans with COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4 percent. The CDC also estimates that 35 percent of people infected by the COVID-19 virus never develop symptoms. Those numbers imply that the virus kills less than 0.3 percent of people infected by it—far lower than the infection fatality rates (IFRs) assumed by the alarming projections that drove the initial government response to the epidemic, including broad business closure and stay-at-home orders. 

The CDC offers the new estimates in its "COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios," which are meant to guide hospital administrators in "assessing resource needs" and help policy makers "evaluate the potential effects of different community mitigation strategies." It says "the planning scenarios are being used by mathematical modelers throughout the Federal government." 

The CDC's five scenarios include one based on "a current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States." That scenario assumes a "basic reproduction number" of 2.5, meaning the average carrier can be expected to infect that number of people in a population with no immunity. It assumes an overall symptomatic case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.4 percent, roughly four times the estimated CFR for the seasonal flu. The CDC estimates that the CFR for COVID-19 falls to 0.05 percent among people younger than 50 and rises to 1.3 percent among people 65 and older. For people in the middle (ages 50–64), the estimated CFR is 0.2 percent.

That "best estimate" scenario also assumes that 35 percent of infections are asymptomatic, meaning the total number of infections is more than 50 percent larger than the number of symptomatic cases. It therefore implies that the IFR is between 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent. By contrast, the projections that the CDC made in March, which predicted that as many as 1.7 million Americans could die from COVID-19 without intervention, assumed an IFR of 0.8 percent. Around the same time, researchers at Imperial College produced a worst-case scenario in which 2.2 million Americans died, based on an IFR of 0.9 percent. 

Such projections had a profound impact on policy makers in the United States and around the world. At the end of March, President Donald Trump, who has alternated between minimizing and exaggerating the threat posed by COVID-19, warned that the United States could see "up to 2.2 million deaths and maybe even beyond that" without aggressive control measures, including lockdowns.

The thing is, even if the numbers were worse, and as bad as originally thought by these whackos, stealing our liberty is not the answer.  The problem is that the ruling class thinks you are too stupid, you wouldn't listen, and people would just carry on as usual in the face of the pandemic.  Even with them saying as many as 2.2 million deaths in the United States, as was cited by the White House, was possible if you took no precautions, they figured you would not obey their "recommendations" so they had to use the force of government to coerce you into staying home, wearing a mask, and shutting down your life.

While they may have been partially correct, many people would not have taken them as seriously as others, and people would potentially die as a result, wouldn't that be on them?  If they died based on their own stupidity, is that not better than people dying because they are locked up under government orders, going stir crazy, getting depressed and committing suicide?

The CDC's new estimates look much better than their original horror story estimates.  Especially when compared to the results of antibody studies in Miami-Dade County, Santa Clara County, Los Angeles County, and Boise, Idaho—places that so far have had markedly different experiences with COVID-19.  The fact is, the CDC bungled test results, bungled the numbers they gave us, and the authoritarian nut-jobs who are in government for the power jumped all over it as the mainstream media provided cover to keep the totalitarian game going as long as possible.

And, now they are sad that the short experiment with communism is coming to an end, and it is scaring them that the free market is going to rebound big.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary