The CDC now says that about 50,000 people died in the US from COVID proper. In a bad flu season, about 60,000 die. In one year. This is no longer “a conspiracy theory.” The CDC has now officially acknowledged all this.
Can we all just get back to our lives now?
I can hear the replies now: “Oh, but Clarissa, if we hadn’t all masked up and locked down, think how much WORSE it would have been!”
I want to work for these people, for real. If I were a hairdresser and these were my customers, it wouldn’t matter that I know nothing about hairdressing. I could leave their hair a patchy steaming greenish wreck, and they’d thank me, because of how much worse it would have been, if I had not done that cut-and-dye job.
If I were their lawn guy, I could set fire to their front yard, import gophers and fire ants, and install a life-sized fountain that looked like Joe Biden eternally peeing in the ligustrums, and I’d be like “Gosh, imagine how awful it would look if you hadn’t hired me?” and they’d be like “I know! It might’ve been a peeing Trump fountain!” and given me a bonus!
Pretty good gig, eh?
It’s not even close to over. They will regroup, conduct the after action review, figure out the gaps in their surveillance networks, how to improve the censorship and information suppression etc. Then they’ll be back with the next thing. At this stage it’s looking like “household carbon budgets” to, you know, go with your social credit score, I mean vax passport, I mean to save the world. Just ignore the fact that they fly around everywhere in private jets while you sip coffee at your daily zoom meeting.
Once you realise the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature is logarithmic, you begin to see the scale of the deception. Couple that with the controlled demolition of western society over the coof and you see how far down the hole we are
Where does the CDC say this? I’m not seeing it in the place where I’d expect to see a statement like that.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/podcasts/2022/20220107/20220107.htm
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Do you have a link to this? I believe you but I can’t find the data you’re referring to.
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Similarly, ~80% of people who die from the flu have comorbidities (and this is a conservative estimate based on a quick search of the literature – likely it is closer to 90%), so your comparison really should be that, in a bad flu year, 12,000 people die in the US from the flu proper.
An interesting way to look at the data is to look at the excess mortality – how many people have died over and above the usual number? Not only has the excess mortality rate been high in 2020 and 2021, but the peaks in excess mortality match the Covid infection peaks. Some of those deaths likely would have occurred in the next ~5 years anyway due to comorbidities: it will be interesting to see whether (and by how much) excess deaths are lower than expected in 2023-25. But allowing for this, there have been a high number of excess deaths in the past two years.
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How much excess mortality is driven by the exploding overdose deaths? Deaths from undiagnosed cancers? Deaths from undiagnosed cardiovascular problems? We can’t know for sure but I suggest looking at the excess deaths map of Europe. One country stands out for its strangely low excess mortality and it happens to be the country that did the most minimal COVID lockdowns.
That’s a good point, and illustrates just how difficult it is to calculate these things accurately. My own elderly father had his hernia surgery postponed for months and months in the UK last year (albeit partly because it was not life-threatening, but still frustrating and indicative of the strain and delays on the health system). But I still don’t think that accounts for the enormous number and timing of excess deaths. I’m middle of the road on all this. I think there has been some overcounting for sure, but willful undercounting is just as frustrating.
The lack of transparency in the numbers is disappointing: what I’m really interested in right now is hospitalizations with Covid as a primary cause (which I suspect will be low, despite the surge in simple case numbers, because of vaccinations and potentially weaker omicron). You’d think this would be important data to have out there! The “hospitalization with Covid” numbers are no use (and indeed misleading), since they test everyone on entry and many who are at the hospital for other reasons are testing positive with no or few symptoms.
Anyway, although I was in favor of earlier lockdowns (to temporarily reduce strain on healthcare systems, not to eliminate the virus, which has been a fool’s errand since almost the beginning), I am not in favor of any more. Vaccinations – which are not perfect but which appear to be successful at reducing disease severity at least – are available to most who want them, and people can choose the level of risk that they are comfortable with. I have been alarmed by a vocal minority here who wanted to close schools for a few weeks again here. Fortunately, the state, local health department, and the school board are all in favor of schools remaining open.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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