Numbers don’t line up: Case for panicking over coronavirus is falling apart
Written by Christopher A. Ferrara, Monday, April 6, 2020In what has become a continuing series on the Great Coronavirus Panic of 2020, I would like to begin this much shorter article by thanking Remnant readers for their prayers for my father, Joseph, who is still locked down in a nursing facility in which the Wuhan virus is present. So far, he is doing well and shows no signs of the virus.
To sum up where we stand today, April 6: Based on the pretext that we must “limit the spread” of the Wuhan virus, the American economic boom of the past three years has been reversed in a matter of days, millions have lost their jobs, tens of thousands of small businesses have been shuttered and will probably never reopen, and three-quarters of the American population has been subjected to some form of house arrest by state, county and city governments.
All over the country people are being fined or arrested and jailed for violating suddenly imposed restrictions on their every movement and gathering, often with the aid of their neighbors, who turn them in to the police, following instructions on how to be a snitch. Attendance at religious services has been forbidden altogether or limited to ten people, even in vast cathedrals, while “permission” is granted to crowd supermarkets and convenience stores, buy booze, purchase cannabis and have pets groomed.
In New York State, the Bill Gates-subsidized Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE) “model” predicting doom in that state has been exposed as little short of a hoax, as its dire predictions are continually being slashed to match actual numbers and are still wildly off the mark. Yet, in New York City, hovering drones bark out commands to observe “social distancing” of “at least six feet” in a message that ends on a chillingly Orwellian note: “We are all in this together!”
America’s almost instantaneous transformation into a police state is based on “models” that “predicted” upwards of 2 million deaths from the Wuhan virus without “mitigation” in the form of a preposterous attempt to quarantine 330 million people. And the people have obsequiously bowed to every ridiculous command.
It is becoming clearer with each passing day that the death toll from the Wuhan virus is not rising exponentially as the “experts” predicted but only modestly in some places while levelling off or even declining almost everywhere else in the country—as well as the world. The incidence of infection borders on nil in the hot and humid countries, where the number of deaths remains in the double or very low triple digits four months after the virus emerged from the Wuhan province of China.
Common sense alone indicates that the number of deaths will ultimately be nowhere near the 2 million without “mitigation” or a best case 100,000 to 240,000 with “mitigation” as predicted by “Tony and Deborah” at the White House press briefings that have fueled nationwide panic. Tony and Deb have since revised their "models" downward to predict 40,000 to 178,000 deaths. And that prediction has already been lowered again as the IMHE model Tony and Deb have been touting during the briefings now “predicts” 81,766 deaths by August 4. That prediction would require some 18,000 people to die every month between now and then, even though at 10,000 deaths since February 29—a number consistent with a heavy flu season—we appear to have reached the peak and a decline is already evident.At some point, Tony and Deb will be “predicting” precisely what has already happened, as we saw with the “models” that first predicted Hillary Clinton was certain to win the Presidency. And when the final death toll fails even to approach what they first predicted in order to panic the whole country into a nationwide lockdown never before seen in human history, they will make the unprovable, non-falsifiable, junk science claim that “mitigation worked.”
But it is becoming increasingly clear that “mitigation” has done nothing but cause a pointless, catastrophic disruption of social and economic life. This seems to delight the lying media and their Democrat partners, who are striving to keep fear alive, avoid or minimize any good news about the numbers, overstate the burden on local hospitals (without any unedited video or other reliable evidence), argue against curative treatment by hydroxychloroquine or otherwise, get everybody into masks after months of “expert” advice that masks are ineffective, and generally prolong the economic damage and loss of civil liberties for months to come.
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As the actual numbers belie the pseudo-scientific prophecies of doom, however, the lockdown of America that began with Democrat governors and mayors now exhibits a curious and hardly coincidental fissure along party lines. As of today, nine states, all headed by Republican governors, refuse to join the lockdown regime and now provide embarrassing counterfactuals demonstrating that officially mandated lockdowns were never necessary and have probably made the situation worse by preventing the development of “herd immunity” to this virus, like all the others, from the normal interaction of large populations.
The following are the nine states that have refused to impose lockdowns. All of them have minimal death tolls from the Wuhan virus, including the populous South Carolina, and five of them have not enacted even local lockdowns:
Arkansas – 14 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
Iowa – 14 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
Nebraska – 8 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
North Dakota – 3 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
Oklahoma – 42 deaths.
South Carolina – 40 deaths.
South Dakota – 2 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
Utah – 8 deaths.
Wyoming – 0 deaths.
[Data as of this writing on April 6 at 9 p.m.]
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas told the Fake News New York Times what we have been saying on these pages since the stupid lockdowns began: “the typical stay-at-home order was a misleading ‘illusion’ because it includes so many exemptions allowing people to go out in public, such as for groceries or exercise… ordering people to stay at home would simply leave thousands jobless.”
The Times demands to know why these nine states have seceded from the United States of Mitigation: “Holdout States Resist Calls for Stay-at-Home Orders: ‘What Are You Waiting For?’ screams the indignant headline. Editorial desperation leaps from the page, for the Fake News combine as a whole knows that these nine Republican-led holdout states are all counterfactual to the panic narrative, and that what they are waiting for is the rest of the country to discover that they have been had by the cheerleaders of “mitigation,” who live in luxury and job security while the masses suffer. First and foremost, Deb and Tony, intimate associates of Bill Gates, whose “models” keep lowering predictions to catch up with the growing embarrassment of the real numbers.
Another embarrassing counterfactual is the Commonwealth of Virginia, now being suffocated by Democrat Governor Ralph (“Infanticide”) Northam’s absurd executive orders, which have ruined the state’s economy while attempting to place its entire population under a fake quarantine that does nothing but create instant unemployment and bankruptcy. The Northam lockdown will remain in effect until June 10 unless Northam calculates he cannot get away with prolonging his virus-themed dictatorship past Trump’s new control date of April 30. Yet, as of the week of March 28, the Virginia Department of Health “has received report of 1,352 pneumonia and influenza-associated deaths,” including five pediatric deaths, during the 2019-20 flu season, while purported deaths from the Wuhan virus and related pneumonia stand at 54 as of today at 9 p.m., with no pediatric deaths.
Based on the example of Virginia alone, which provides an all-but-irrefutable counterfactual, it is time to call this fiasco what it is: Coronagate. In my view, Coronagate will go down as the single biggest fraud in the fraud-ridden history of American politics—outside of the fraudulent inducement of America’s belated entry into World War I, which sacrificed 116,000 American lives to an epochal disaster that destroyed the last remnants of Christendom, guaranteed World War II, and led to the rise of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, the White House press briefings have devolved into a black comedy with the same script every day: Trump recites a litany of statistics on the number of COVID-19 tests performed, the mass production and distribution of ventilators and N95 respirators, surgical masks, surgical gowns and surgical gloves; praises the captains of industry for pitching in with massive contributions of product; and lauds the branches of the military for their massive logistical operations, including the building of entire hospitals that remain almost empty.
Pence then delivers another sermon on how to “slow the spread in 30 days.” Then Deb drones on about her ever-evolving models, followed by a very hoarse Tony, who croaks the same statements he made the day before about “the curve” and “mitigation, mitigation, mitigation” while assiduously avoiding any suggestion that the “pandemic” could be over any time soon or that there could be any proven effective treatment.
Then it’s the media jackals’ turn. Day after day these morons jabber at Trump with accusations disguised as questions: Why has governor so-and-so or such-and-such hospital not received enough test kits/ventilators/masks/gowns/gloves/breath mints?
What makes you so sure chloroquine is effective?
How many ventilators are in the federal stockpile?—as if to suggest that Trump is cruelly hoarding them and allowing thousands of people to die horrible, agonizing deaths. And (for the umpteenth time) why won’t Trump order those nine Republican governors to follow Tony’s advice to issue statewide stay-at-home orders?
And this gem: “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?” from reporters who aren’t wearing masks. The surgical mask has become a veritable sacramental sign and symbol of adherence to the cult of the virus that must be displayed by the ignorant masses, but not by the initiated, to signify their continued adherence to the credo of panic that is the only way to keep this whole scam going.
At today’s briefing, one reporter attempted to elicit from Fauci a declaration that, no matter what Trump might think, America cannot “return to normal” without a vaccine whose development is, conveniently enough for the media-DNC complex, at least a year away. Fauci’s meandering response was a dog whistle that, if he has anything to say about it, the country will remain under some level of lockdown until there is a largely ineffective or even harmful vaccine, like the one he advocated for the swine flu of 2009. The Fake News media are laboring to elevate Fauci, a star in the Leftist galaxy whose center is Bill Gates, to the status of Recovery Czar whose “medical opinion” will determine the fate of the nation.
Next up today was Dr. Debby, to whom I shall refer henceforth as Scarf Lady. Wearing her stylish scarf of the day, which changes in design, coloration and placement at each briefing—about the only thing that distinguishes her daily appearances—Scarf Lady dispensed her usual schoolmarm’s advice. In response to a reporter’s question clearly designed to elicit her opinion that no one should even be going to the grocery store for fear of the atmosphere teeming with deadly virus particles, Scarf Lady blithely amended the already draconian stay-at-home orders of the state governors by suggesting that families should send out grocery scouts “once every two weeks” to forage for food in the supermarkets instead of grocery shopping whenever convenient. She has seen the sufferings in the hospitals “on the television stations,” she added—meaning she has no direct experience whatsoever with the medical situation she has been prattling about every day for a month on national television.
“I want everyone to take this seriously,” said Scarf Lady in her best schoolmarm’s voice of authority. But her larder is doubtless well-stocked and her federal paycheck not threatened in the least by the economy-killing regime she wants to see fastened upon the rest of us until she and Tony agree it can be “relaxed” somewhat.
It turns out Scarf Lady has no active medical license in Pennsylvania, where she trained, in Maryland, where she lives, nor apparently in any other jurisdiction. Her license in Pennsylvania expired on December 31, 2014. Scarf Lady, a federal bureaucrat appointed by Obama, has since evidently had no need of a medical license for her position, yet she has effectively been practicing medicine without a license on national television with disastrous national results. But I am afraid that her and 79-year-old Dr. Fauci’s ruinous advice is probably cloaked in federal immunity from tort claims.
Faced with real numbers that belie all his predictions, Fauci followed Scarf Lady by preparing for the inevitable post hoc narrative that “mitigation” will explain why all the models were wrong (hour 2:49:13). But then, weren’t the models he and Scarf Lady have been touting supposed to presume mitigation in predicting 100,000 to 240,000 deaths? Perhaps they think we won’t notice this gaping discrepancy in their argument. Scarf Lady chimed in by saying the models involve, after all, changeable “predictions of predictions” (hour 2:49:22) and that we now see the potential to “go below the number of the models,” which will have a “dramatic impact” on the final number of deaths. The stealthy backpedaling is underway.
When a reporter tried yet again to prompt Tony to say that, of course, we can never have large gatherings again until a vaccine is ready—meaning that America must effectively be shut down until after the 2020 election—he finally had to depart from the Democrats’ blatant political strategy (hour 2:47:00): “I don’t think you’re going to have to say that the country cannot get back to a real degree of normalcy until you absolutely have a safe and effective vaccine.”
Tony also finally—finally!—admitted (hour 2:47:55) that herd immunity will develop for this virus as for all the others, but then declared nonsensically (hour 2:48:16): “I hope we don’t have so many people infected that we actually have that herd immunity.” Come again, Tony? You don’t want herd immunity so that the virus is largely neutralized as it has been with the flus that no one bothers to contain because containment is impossible? What sort of epidemiologist is this? I will tell you: one engaged in a massive con job.
Exposing all his previous dire predictions as a sham, Tony added that “as you get data in you modify your model. And I’ve always said: ‘Data always trumps models. Always.’” And then, further preparing the way for his unprovable post hoc “mitigation saved us from a gazillion deaths” argument, he added: “I don’t think anyone has ever mitigated the way I’m seeing people mitigate right now.”
You’ve got that right, Tony! And note the implicit admission that this ongoing National Quarantine Theatre of the Absurd, of which he is one of the principal directors, has no precedent in epidemiological history. And with good reason. This kind of “mitigation” was never deemed necessary or conceivable during even the worst pandemics of previous years. And it should not have been attempted in this case either, which will turn out to be no worse or not much worse than the swine flu pandemic of 2009, which infected tens of millions and killed 18,000, most of them not elderly.
Finally, Tony admitted (hour 2:51:05) that “I don’t accept every day that we’re gonna have two hundred to two hundred thousand deaths. I think we can really bring that down no matter what a model says. Because when the data comes [sic] in you’ll start to say maybe you are, essentially, overshooting the model.”
In other words, his and Scarf Lady’s original and revised predictions were misleading guesswork, junk science like that of “climate change,” which have contributed mightily to the worst mass panic and self-inflicted economic damage in American if not world history.
As the real data emerge and the vast contours of Coronagate come into view, I have a sense that this absolutely incredible farce will reach its climax within the next week to ten days. Then the question will be whether the denouement will be a triumph for Trump or a debacle that will usher in the terminal Democrat dystopia. The horrendous human cost of this farce and the immense stakes in Trump succeeding aside, the next two weeks will make for a fascinating study in the sociology of induced mass panic in a mass democracy.
Pray that the final outcome will somehow correspond to truth and justice.
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