OPINION:
First of two parts
The COVID-19 pandemic has often seemed tailor-made for the information age, generating a flurry of daily statistics for people to perpetually gnaw on like cud. That data was supposed to at once inform the public and justify wide-ranging government intervention.
Thanks to political, media and corporate agendas, what the public has received is a mere patina of transparency. The numbers we’ve relied upon are incomplete, manipulated or outright misinformation.
Despite the real reputational risks, Americans must embrace our proud legacy of questioning authority even though there are some questions we may never be able to answer. Here are just a few of them. More to come next week.
What is the true mortality rate?
Misrepresentation of the cause of death in hospital records makes it nearly impossible to determine a valid mortality rate, though it is likely much lower than the government has indicated. Because hospitals receive greater reimbursements from insurance companies for COVID-19 patients, any patient who dies in the hospital, whether COVID-19 was the cause of death or not, is reported as a COVID-19 death. For instance, a COVID-19 positive patient who dies in the emergency room from injuries suffered in a car accident is often reported to the government as a COVID-19 death.
How many people have actually had COVID-19 and recovered?
As of this writing, the official data from the CDC says there have been just over 47 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. In April 2021, the CDC finally admitted that their confirmed case number was not truly representative of the infected-recovered population, estimating 114 million Americans had been infected. There’s no way of knowing for sure, but by now, that number could be over 150 million. Perhaps one-third of the population may have had COVID-19, and most will never know unless they get a blood test. That means the mortality rate is much lower than the CDC reports and that far more Americans have some form of natural immunity, making extreme vaccine mandates unnecessary.
How many people were really hospitalized for COVID-19?
Throughout the pandemic, hospitals have included in their reporting – and presumably, the government has known this – that any patient admitted to the hospital for any reason who has COVID-19, even if they are asymptomatic, is considered a COVID-19 patient. That may make sense from a biosecurity standpoint regarding how the patient is handled, but it warps the hospitalization numbers to make them look higher than they are.
How many lives could have been saved by preventive treatment protocols?
Perhaps the biggest of all the COVID-19 scandals has been the government and medical bureaucracy’s repeated effort to destroy the credibility of existing preventive or prophylactic treatments. Any physician or scientist who has had the temerity to suggest ways to reduce susceptibility and increase resistance through treatments like Ivermectin or other protocols has been denigrated. They’ve been censored and threatened by state medical boards and medical associations. Based on the data from dozens of international studies and outcomes when used by brave physicians in this country, hospitalization and death rates could have been reduced dramatically with the use of Ivermectin alone. To the government, these options were not even worth exploring or debating. Only masking, lockdowns, social distancing and vaccination would work. It’s the first time in history the medical and scientific community has inexplicably taken this approach. It was deadly.
How many people died from COVID-19 who did not have co-morbidities?
Death rate reporting is fiction not only for the reasons explained above but because there has been a concerted effort to downplay deaths connected to co-morbidities. Here’s what we do know. The vast majority of deaths caused by COVID-19 have consistently been seniors, the overweight, those with diabetes and heart disease or those whose lungs are compromised due to smoking.
According to statistics buried on the CDC’s website, in 2020, a mere 6 percent of the COVID-19 deaths were attributable only to COVID-19. For all others, there were on average 2.9 additional conditions or causes per death. Keep in mind, that’s 6 percent of roughly 0.3 percent mortality overall.
Why do this? Simple - It would cut against the vaccine mandate fascination of the Biden administration and Democrat governors. COVID-19 is not deadly – even left untreated - for nearly all healthy people. Period. Yet, the government and the press have taken great pains to scare the entire population into acquiescence to mask, vaccine, lockdown and other mandates.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” and “Wake Up America Weekend” on Newsmax Television, author and former Bush Administration official.
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