COVID cases climb — yawn!

OPINION:

The number of positive test COVID-19 cases have spiked among attendees of the White House correspondents’ dinner, and headlines from newspapers the nation over have been sounding the alarms, raising a ruckus, blaring the warnings.

But here’s the thing: So what?

So freaking what?

It’s high time members of the media stopped their seemingly endless shrieking about test positives, case counts, COVID-19 positive test cases. The numbers are meaningless, absent context. The numbers only matter when put into a comparative analysis that shows how many catch the virus versus how many die versus how many recover — and even then, the deaths have to be further put to another comparative analysis of excess deaths. That is to say: How many more people died this year, this month, in this particular span of time versus the previous year, previous month, previous particular span of time?

The overage is the telling number.

And here’s the thing: We already know the coronavirus has about a 99% recovery rate.

So why the media hysteria?

“Virus Cases Grow After White House Correspondents Dinner,” The New York Times wrote.

“Yes, a lot of White House correspondents’ guests are testing positive,” The Washington Post wrote.

Well, so what. So freaking what.

Up until the coronavirus, people used to walk around with viruses in their systems all the time, but because they didn’t feel sick, they didn’t run to clinics and doctors’ offices and 24-7 emergency health facilities to test what they might be carrying, what they may or may not be infected with, what they possibly, potentially, perhaps could be carting in their systems. Only sick people went to medical professionals to find out why they were sick.

“Some people can be infected with a flu virus, but have no symptoms,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in August of 2018 — before COVID came on the scene.

“Certain individuals have immune systems that shed the [flu] virus and transmit the disease, but not at the same rate as patients who go on to develop symptoms,” Tufts Medical Center Community Care wrote.

And the medical center went on to write that while between 3% and 11% of the total U.S. population is sickened by flu every year, “one out of every three individuals with seasonal flu infections may be asymptomatic.”

A third of Americans carry the virus but don’t feel sick.

They don’t feel sick because their immune systems — you know, the stuff from God — keep them from getting sick.

What’s more — they don’t go get tested for flu each season because they don’t feel sick. So why should they get tested?

It’s only until this coronavirus came along that Americans began to go seek out sickness — they actually ran to the doctors to see if they were sick, even though they didn’t feel sick. That’s just stupid. And it’s a stupid that’s fed into a mass fear of the coronavirus that the left has in turn successfully exploited for political gain and to seize powers.

It’s a stupid that has changed a mindset of a nation of individualists to think more collectively.

“[Anthony] Fauci privately miffed about the message sent by the WHCA dinner,” Politico wrote in the aftermath of the White House correspondents’ dinner.

“Speaking on a call with public health experts,” Politico went on, “Fauci expressed frustration with the growing perception that the pandemic is effectively over. He said he feared people are losing sight of the need to continue protecting the nation’s most vulnerable.”

Why do healthy people have to live their lives in fear of infecting the nation’s most vulnerable — which truthful science has known and shown for some time are the obese, the frail and elderly and the diabetic?

That’s what’s led to school closings, business shutterings, church shutdowns and a nation in constant and face-masked fear. That’s what’s led to the strip of individual rights and the over-reliance on medical bureaucrats — unelected, unaccountable-to-the-people medical bureaucrats — to tell us when, if and for how long we can step aside, travel, shop, dine, etc. That’s what’s led to this unconstitutional state of existence most of America has experienced for two-plus years. Moreover, that’s what’s going to give the left the ongoing tools to continue the unconstitutional clamp-downs on liberties and unbridled power to control citizens’ lives for as long as they can, for as many years as they’re allowed.

The key to stopping the madness is to stop being mad.

Healthy people don’t go looking for sickness by running to doctors’ offices for tests. Hypochondriacs do that. So do sheep who’ve been fooled by the Faucis of the world who simply want to seize and keep control.

Case counts are meaningless. Meaningless and stupid. Meaningless, stupid and key tools for the left to exploit and continue to push for controls on citizens.

Sick people, and people who are afraid of getting sick, can stay home. Healthy people should live their lives, and stop seeking out sicknesses when they’re not even sick.

And America should move on from this coronavirus and treat it like flu — that is to say, live free.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE  or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.