The political philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once observed that the surest obstacle preventing someone from seeing the “facts” in front of them is their particular theoretical vision of the world. In other words, if I am going to affirm that there is a real table in front of me, I can only do so because my worldview gives me such capacity of affirmation.
This connection between the facts and our theoretical account of the world is quite relevant to the current Covid-19 pandemic. SARS CoV-2 will, very soon, have been a part of our life for a full calendar year. Since so little was known in the early stages of the pandemic, there was not much to say other than what was being seen in hospitals. The initial worry, rightly so, was whether or not hospitals could withstand this mysterious virus. At the present time, it seems mostly clear that hospitals are, and will continue to be, more than capable of responding to the current public health crisis.
For many reasons, this truth still appears to be not only called into question, but even openly rejected. The prevailing narrative continues to be that systemic collapse of our hospitals is right beyond the horizon. Like most of the stories told about SARS CoV-2, the goal posts have once again moved.
A recent article on the condition of hospitals in the Cleveland, Ohio area is just one more example of what I am describing. What is telling about the news report is the particular narrative lens given at the beginning of the article: “Several hospitals in Cuyahoga County are almost at capacity due to surges in Covid-19 cases in the state of Ohio.” If the reader is unsure how to understand the data underneath the opening paragraph, it is clear how one is supposed to read it.
And yet, when one reads further down into the article, it becomes rather clear that just two of the hospitals are even inching towards capacity, namely, Hillcrest and Southwest General. The other individual hospitals, and the counties as a whole, are either at a relatively normal capacity level, or even well below capacity.
Along with this, there is another point to keep in mind. According to one source, the average reported hospital stay for admitted Covid patients in early March was 10.5 days. Compared with the data from the month of September, the average length of stay for an admitted Covid patient is just under 4.6 days. And this number, as of December, is likely to be around 3. Thus, with the strength of the therapeutics readily available (and lets not neglect the multi-faceted ways that food and supplements are a great protectant as well), the concern about hospitals being overrun is not merely a leftover worry from March and April. It seems no longer disputable that our hospitals are more than capable of handling the virus. Instead, the continual barrage surrounding hospital capacity squeeze is fundamentally about peddling a narrative centered upon fear.
At this point, the most common and immediate reaction will be something along the following lines: “Well, one only says such things because you believe that the virus is not real.” Such a position is a non-sequitur. The argument would run like so: “You believe our hospitals can sufficiently handle Covid-19 and our ICUs will not be overrun, therefore you do not think the virus is real.” There is nothing whatsoever in the premise that provides a grounding for such a conclusion.
And yet, is this not an all-too-common way of thinking and feeling? To question the hospital capacity narrative is to reveal oneself as pushing a conspiracy theory. Such a person is dangerous, likely voted for Trump, and should certainly be considered a threat to democracy, science, and “facts.”
To uphold the claim that our hospitals will endure through SARS CoV-2 is not equivalent to saying that the virus is not a real thing. Of course the virus is real. The more substantive matter is what we are actually doing to help those who really need to be protected as best as reasonably possible without destroying the rest of society. Consider that at least 40%, if not more, of the 300,000 deaths coded for Covid-19 in the U.S. are from those who were in long-term care facilities.
If the effort to vaccinate was truly about protecting people, then the first to get the vaccine would be those in the highest at-risk category (along with allowing healthcare workers the voluntary ability to take the vaccine or not). Unfortunately, this is not being done. Instead, what we are seeing is a theatrical production. Some individuals are displaying their virtuous actions by having public audiences observe them taking the vaccine. This is a rather strange tactic to facilitate public trust, unless the goals are more emotional than logical in nature.
The crisis we face is not whether our hospitals can adequately respond to the virus. The doctors, nurses, and hospital administrative personnel have once again demonstrated why they are so good. This is not in question. The larger problem actually centers around the appearance of reality and what is actually the case. The mainstream media, with few exceptions, wants the appearance of overrun hospitals to be the case. The narrative on display has been to close the gap between what appears real and what is real. Yet, further examination almost universally reveals that the gap between appearance and reality is much greater than we first see.
The health of our communities will depend upon citizens’ being willing to suspend judgment when looking at the varied images placed before our eyes. Be patient—and have the humility and courage to affirm that the truth is behind those images and first-level narratives.
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“The sky is falling; the sky is falling.”
It’s best to totally insulate oneself from the “news”, cancel your Facebook account, stop using Twitter, and never refer to Wikipedia for information. Stop buying from Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s- all you’re doing is lining the pockets of trillionaires and promoting slave labor in China. Stop “eat”ing out at fast-food joints and begin cooking at home and eating with your family. Shut off the TV completely. Better yet, move the TV to the garage. Live more frugally, quit your second-income job and spend more time home-schooling your children.
Live modestly, prayerfully and buy locally as much as possible.
Basically, that’s what I did back in March. I haven’t watched TV, listened to the radio, or read a newspaper since then, and I’m sure I’m not missing anything. I even just drove away from a gasoline pump because it was spewing GSTV. When no one is trustworthy, everything is being manipulated, and nothing can be believed, attempting to stay informed is a fool’s errand. On the positive side, I started my own Internet radio channel (that does NOT rely on YouTube or Facebook for distribution) as someone needs to put trustworthy information out there.
The question free citizens must ask about COVID is: “Compared to what?”
Genevieve Briand, a PhD in Economics at Johns Hopkins, is among the people raising this important question, and did so analyzing years of CDC data, and comparing COVID to the top 3 deadly diseases in US CDC data, going back several years. Briand is raising the possibility that COVID deaths are being overstated. An organization sharing her concerns posted this article introducing Briand’s questions, here:
https://www.aier.org/article/new-study-highlights-serious-accounting-error-regarding-covid-deaths/
Briand’s initial study (pulled down by Johns Hopkins, after a few days, but NOT because of errors) is preserved here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201126163323/https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19
COVID should NOT be treated as an absolute threat, rather than a relative risk. Free citizens must demand that COVID be compared to other risks, and this is NOT happening.
In follow-up to my post a few minutes ago, in the interest of understanding, here is a countervailing report asserting that there are excess deaths due to COVID:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute®ion=World
Articles like this always seem to forget (or ignore) the fact that hospitals are coping (in some areas barely) WITH the help of extraordinary precautions in the wider society like masking and lockdowns.
If hospitals are barely holding on with all of these public health measures, then imagine for a moment what things would be like without them.
You miss the fundamental point of the article here. Hospitals are not “barely holding on.” That’s part of the dishonest and manipulative narrative that most media outlets are pushing on all of us. Some hospitals are nearing capacity while many others are not. Some people get sick, have serious symptoms, and die; many others do not. California has some of the most draconian lockdown rules in the country, but Covid rates are rising, clear evidence that quarantines and masks do not work or help. And what’s a “case” or a “positive test result” anyway? How many people actually get sick who test positive?
Too many legitimate questions remain unanswered for all of us to be goose-stepping blindly behind the prevailing narrative.
What I keep wondering about, when they say “the percent of tests that are positive,” is how many tests are they giving, and to whom? If they’re testing only people who are sick and are getting (random number) say, 10% positive, that’s a different thing altogether from randomly testing a bunch of people and getting 10% positive.
They throw out an awful lot of numbers on the evening news, and it all sounds very scientific until you start analyzing all the information that isn’t included. “300 people tested positive” doesn’t tell you anything. “300 people tested positive; of those, 250 had no symptoms, 20 had mild symptoms, 10 felt really crummy and took to their beds, 15 were hospitalized with severe symptoms and 5 were put into the ICU” does. But they never tell you that.
Excellent point.
In the UK at least they’re more transparent about “Covid Deaths”. That data is always disclosed as “Deaths due to all causes within 28 days following a positive Covid test.”
Those may be attributed to Covid or not. It seem a more honest way of giving out statistics.
My sister told me that LA only has 1,000 ICU beds for its massive, in-the-millions population. Seems a bit low to me. I do not know where she got her information. It may not even be accurate.
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But the number of beds an area has, and the “types” of beds, is important. And that number is unknown to most of us. I certainly have no idea how many hospital beds an area “ought to have.” We seem to have excess capacity in mine. One hospital recently put up a billboard: “Your living room is not an ER. Do not let it become one.” What? Advertising during a pandemic is necessary? I thought people where dying by the tens of thousands. Why would a hospital need to advertise?
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The information we are getting is garbage, no context for any of it.
I agree…the “News media” is the very opposite of the garbage truck.
The garbage truck takes garbage away…the “news media” delivers garbage everywhere.
You may find this helpful: http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/dhs/1070348_DHSCOVID-19Dashboard.pdf
NOTE: MSM news reports who rely on LA County Health Services information should NOTE that their data include beds from ONLY FOUR Health Service hospitals. IOW, there are many privately owned hospitals with ICU beds, and these whether or not these beds are available or not available is not included in the dire picture painted in the LA County Health Service data. The biased presentation of data is a blatant bias against truth.
Do we have any data which suggest these public health measures are actually reducing the incidence of Covid? For masks, the epidemiological data is no; some engineering studies suggest maybe and it cant hurt. Contact tracing has been a complete failure because no one can know with any certainty where they contracted the disease. Testing doesn’t stop the disease; nor does it tell us the extent of the disease because those tested arent chosen at random. And given the seasonality of the data, its likely anti-social distancing and lockdowns dont work either. The virus is endemic, like the flu, and we will just have to live with it relying on our body’s natural defenses.
Appearances ARE reality when truth/reality is rejected. These appearances are designed to project another “state” reality with seemingly higher levels of virtue and love. Lies, fig leaves, disaster, and DEATH are the result. Ask the 100 million “workers” of such states where this monster has been unleashed. I am afraid we are about to see it here in America as well. God help our leaders fight.
Sadly, the media has created more social damage than the virus has.
To get the facts, my family largely discounted the media reports and relied mostly on the CDC and John Hopkins University websites. They were invaluable in getting a true description of the virus’s impacts.
Hysteria is never the best weapon with which to fight an enemy. Such is the case here. The media is full of reports on a daily basis about the number of “covid” deaths, locally and nationally. How is this helpful? By my observation, everyone is wearing a mask in public , and has been for many months. It has not stopped the spread of the disease. It is simply NOT realistic to lock down your entire population for months if not years, no matter the reason, destroy the economy and people’s ability to support themselves, and prevent the schooling of the younger generation. At some point, which I believe is coming very soon, people will stop cooperating with these measures totally. The death toll of approx 330,000 people is simply NOT that huge in a population of 400 MILLION,( cancer deaths this year will top 600,000—google it) and thus far we have NOT had people dying in the streets for lack of a hospital bed. The media needs to stop crying fire in a crowded theater. This is a disease from which more than 99% recover, and I have read 70% of deaths are from those well over 70 with underlying co-morbidities. We need to accept that immortality has NEVER been on this menu, and all we can control is the quality of life we live until the time of our death, from whatever cause. I am 66, not sickly, had covid in April. As you can see I am not dead. I never got close to needing a hospital room. Get the vaccine when the opportunity presents itself. That moment is on the way. But meanwhile stop giving up your constitutional rights so agreeably in return for living in a hole.
lj, probably the most common-sensible thing I’ve read about the Great Plague of 2020. Of the 330,000 deaths you cite, I wonder how many had chronic co-morbidities, were elderly and statistically would have died even without having the virus?
The other point I want to make is that the more onerous the laws imposed on a people, the more lawlessness there will be long term and, with that, comes an even greater erosion of the moral fabric of American culture (if that’s even possible).
Deacon Peitler,
We all die.
The “they would have died anyhow” argument is as weak as it is ghastly.
The point is that corona has hastened the death of hundreds of thousands of people who had many years of life left in them. You’re so glib with the death of people.
Remember that “all life is sacred from conception to natural death” we’re supposed to believe as Catholics?!
Cancer isn’t contagious.
No…it’s already built in.
Cancer may not be contagious per say, but viruses that can lead to cancer are quite contagious.
“Capacity” is not the availability of a bed, the access to PPE, or the availability of medications and plasma. “Capacity” has more to do with the capacity of the doctors and nurses to continue enduring death after death after death and a political environment that gives birth to belligerent patients who deny they are sick. “Capacity” isn’t numbers, it’s strength. Until one has walked the floors of the ER, the halls of the COVID floors and kept watch in ICU…day after day after day in exhaustion and despair…’capacity’ cannot be understood and certainly should not be referred to as hype and folly.
But that is not what the news is saying about capacity. They are talking about the number of beds.
The only one of your titles I recognize is “RN,” so if you are one of the nurses working in a hospital I thank you very much.
For information about LA county bed availability, capacity, cases of COVID in ICU beds and in non-ICU beds, see the site below. For instance, the site indicates that LA County hospitals have about 17,000 non-ICU beds (capacity) in LA County, but only about 10,000 of those are STAFFED (available). With a bit of time and study, you can learn a lot here:
file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/dhs/1070348_DHSCOVID-19Dashboard.pdf
BSN is a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, LMHC is a licensed mental health counselor, and NCC designates a nationally certified counselor.
With many thanks to the editor for deleting my earlier post.
Thank you for providing a link to statistics rather than telling us “‘capacity’ isn’t numbers, it’s strength.”
I remember when New York had the hospital ship Mercy (or was it Comfort that went to New York?) stationed there, and didn’t need it in the end. If California is truly as desperate as they are claiming, have they requested the presence of Mercy or Comfort?
The research actually indicates that capacity is, in fact, related to factors such as number of beds, the size of rooms and buildings, the presence and location development. In other words, quantifiable data. Your attempt to redefine capacity in emotionally-charged terms is manipulative and deeply dishonest.
“The prevailing narrative continues to be that systemic collapse of our hospitals is right beyond the horizon. Like most of the stories told about SARS CoV-2, the goal posts have once again moved.”
How exactly should a hospital be considered near collapse when it has many customers? Perhaps they aren’t being charged enough? Anyway, no human being on Earth can accurately predict the future in any, but the most simple of things (e.g. science experiments). When was this truth forgotten?
“The doctors, nurses, and hospital administrative personnel have once again demonstrated why they are so good. This is not in question. The larger problem actually centers around the appearance of reality and what is actually the case. The mainstream media, with few exceptions, wants the appearance of overrun hospitals to be the case. The narrative on display has been to close the gap between what appears real and what is real. Yet, further examination almost universally reveals that the gap between appearance and reality is much greater than we first see.”
Good in this context is subjective. If the therapeutics are very effective and people’s lives are mostly being saved, then one could safely call the medical personnel good. However, what if there are better alternatives? It is certain that there are. If such means aren’t being used then morally speaking the medical personnel are objectively although perhaps not culpably bad.
One thinks of the ability to lie with statistics when considering the evaluation of media headlines. The lack of precision combined with emotional anecdotes, and dire predictions (e.g. “It could happen to you, if you don’t …”), smacks of probable manipulative propaganda.
Take the featured headline: “Several hospitals in Cuyahoga County are almost at capacity due to surges in Covid-19 cases in the state of Ohio.” One doesn’t know given this headline exactly how many hospitals there are in Cuyahoga County, by what criteria they are put into the “almost at capacity” category, what the definition of “hospital” is for the purposes of the article, what the definition of “surge” is, exactly how many “several” is (It could be as little as 3.), whether people are coming and leaving quickly due to heightened concern or whether they are being admitted to the ICU, the extent to which the current condition is atypical since the alleged pandemic started (or even historically speaking), and perhaps many other factors that I don’t know about which may be relevant.
“Some individuals are displaying their virtuous actions by having public audiences observe them taking the vaccine. This is a rather strange tactic to facilitate public trust, unless the goals are more emotional than logical in nature.”
Would a person playing Russian Roulette on TV be considered virtuous? It is wrong to expose oneself to a risk of death for an insufficient reason. There is no doubt that vaccines carry some risk, so the question is whether it is justified. Largely, I suspect that it isn’t. This is because the benefits are uncertain, while a level of potentially long-term harm is certain.
“And yet, when one reads further down into the article, it becomes rather clear that just two of the hospitals are even inching towards capacity, namely, Hillcrest and Southwest General. The other individual hospitals, and the counties as a whole, are either at a relatively normal capacity level, or even well below capacity.”
This reveals the importance of not “judging a book by its cover” and not making unwarranted assumptions. It is probable that the media knows that many people are satisfied with the superficial (or don’t want to take the time to “dig”), and people probably have a certain amount of perhaps unwarranted trust in the media.
“It seems no longer disputable that our hospitals are more than capable of handling the virus. Instead, the continual barrage surrounding hospital capacity squeeze is fundamentally about pedaling a narrative centered upon fear.”
This certainly seems to be the case. Why aren’t the media being held to account?
“And yet, is this not an all-too-common way of thinking and feeling? To question the hospital capacity narrative is to reveal oneself as pushing a conspiracy theory. Such a person is dangerous, likely voted for Trump, and should certainly be considered a threat to democracy, science, and “facts.””
Questioning anything which can be questioned is a human quality. To not question is to be either willfully (and thus culpably) ignorant, rash/imprudent/blindly obedient (vices), or gullible.
Conspiracy is a crime, and further admits of something unique because it is – by nature – secretive. Any effective conspiracy relies on secrecy, so it is illogical to suppose that it will be well-known by many.
Someone posted COVID is endemic like the flu and so we have to simply live with it and I suppose leave off most or all of the efforts. But consider that every flu season sees witness to some public health efforts/measures, at least in the form of a vaccine drive.
The comparison of COVID to flu has been an ongoing theme of the times. Early on I wondered, “We will be able to test the value of these public health measures if we see flu drop drastically.” And this is what happened in the colder months of the southern and now northern hemisphere. The flu normally (with mild to moderate public health measures) causes thousands of U.S. deaths when everyone carries on as normal. With the more extreme COVID measures (which are not even being followed with exactnesss) the flu is not doing very much damage at all. And yet COVID is at least straining some hospitals in some places.
This is not to say COVID is long term going to be worse than flu if it becomes endemic. The true comparison between the two will be once there are comparable levels of natural and vaccine immunity to both kinds of
virus. And if we are ever in a position to make this judgment it should be kept in mind that what we call ‘flu’ is several viruses. And this may be the case eventually with COVID if there is a significant enough mutation.
For me the question should ever be: Given the reality of what most agree is a public health problem of a more or less serious nature, what is the most reasonable response.”
In my judgment there is no absolute and perfect way for anyone alive in these frail bodies to measure this because it involves so many considerations—not only in the rival goods which are being weighted against each other but also in the state of our knowledge and beliefs about the virus where there are many conflicts, discrepancies, agendas and idealogies involved. And the virus itself, seems to be situated on the range of pathology perfectly to cause such disruption. It is deadly enough if you want or would like it to be or if you are a bit of a germaphobe and it is not deadly enough for other types of people who have other kinds of motives.
Or so it seems to me.
Thank you for your consideration,
Timothy
If the Flu isn’t causing deaths, could it be because it is not being diagnosed with a flu test?
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Right now, EVERTHING is Covid. My friend got a bit of digestive trouble. No headache, no, breathing difficulty, no fever, no loose of taste, no coughing or sneezing. None of the usual respiratory illness symptoms. She just had a lower GI tract issue.
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They did a Covid test.
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The first thing they reach for is a Covid test. If it comes back positive, it’s Covid. It does not matter if one also has been infected with Flu Type A, etc
Your Excerpts: “At the present time, it seems mostly clear that hospitals are, and will continue to be, more than capable of responding to the current public health crisis.”
“The mainstream media, with few exceptions, wants the appearance of overrun hospitals to be the case. The narrative on display has been to close the gap between what appears real and what is real. Yet, further examination almost universally reveals that the gap between appearance and reality is much greater than we first see.”
It seems that two judgements are being made.
(1) Hospitals and their medical staff first responders are not overwhelmed. Abjectly false.
You should be tuning in to “True TV media”, not Fox “fake News”, to observe weeping nurses, beset doctors, and bewildered hospital administrators to get the REAL story.
(2) “further examination almost universally reveals that the gap between appearance and reality is much greater than we first see. National intelligence know the TRUTH of Russia’s war on our elections are REAL.
They aren’t overwhelmed BECAUSE of the wider societal health precautions (i.e. masking, lockdowns etc).
Your approach is not logical.
Morgan,
Good Morning!
You know, as Christians I don’t think we should assume things about others- as in what sort of media they watch, etc.
Covid is definitely spreading more easily right now & in the UK some hospitals are indeed filling up but the death rates are not increasing in proportion to the infection rates, thankfully. That’s key.( My brother lives over there so I check on their news.)
We should look at the critical illness & death rates, not just the infection rates. Back in the spring we were much less prepared for this virus & we’ve learned better treatments & know which populations are more at risk.
Locally, our hospitals here are doing ok. They typically see more flu & respiratory admissions this time of year. Blood donations are lower though.
I read this somewhere: “What do you get when you mix science with politics? Answer: Politics.
For goodness sakes let’s look at the science, not the politics. The election will be behind us & hopefully we can move on from the Covid wars.
For this article, and many of these comments to be true, you’d have to believe in a massive world wide conspiracy theory where the vast majority of scientists, physicians, nurses and other health professionals across the entire globe have conspired with government officials. Give your head a shake. Covid-19 is real, it’s highly contagious and it’s deadly nature has both the potential to kill and overrun our hospitals. All of you would be singing a different tune if you actually had to run things. It’s very easy to sit in the safety of your house, with no expertise and tell doctors and health officials how things should be.
That is exactly what the governments of the world did–tell doctors what to do. And everyone else. And, no,it isnt working.
There is a whole lot of Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on here both in the article and the comments section. When one has no actual responsibility on their shoulders for the life and death of those you have sworn to protect, then it’s easy to be critical. No one is going to hold you personally accountable. And if you’re a decent and honorable person, you take those duties even more personally. Do the progressives use situations like this to their advantage? For sure they do, just as Trump used it. Using the author’s technique of using words like “it seems” gives him an out if he is in error, which governors can’t do. If they get it wrong actual people WILL die. If they get the hospital capacity thing wrong needless deaths WILL occur. Well, “it seems” as though we are not out of the woods yet. Around the world “it seems” as though hospitals are starting to fill up. Is it the new strain? No one knows for sure. But the leaders don’t have the luxury of the author, nor the those in the comments section to sit back and Monday morning quarterback.
“When one has no actual responsibility on their shoulders for the life and death of those you have sworn to protect, then it’s easy to be critical. No one is going to hold you personally accountable.”
Who is responsible for disease? I suspect pretty much no one except perhaps pharmaceutical companies who can get away with creating and distributing toxic drugs and vaccines, and food manufacturers who can add harmful chemicals to our foods with almost no fear of government actions. Even IF viruses exist and are the infectious agents that they have been alleged to be and the germ theory of disease is true, then the most that can be done is that certain precautions can be taken. What CAN’T be morally done is to violate people’s natural rights.
I couldn’t find the oath for my state, but here is the one for California’s governor. “I (Governor) do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.”
I don’t see anything in this oath concerning protecting anyone’s life except for possibly foreign and domestic enemies of either constitution. I suspect that this is a rash oath because their is no guarantee that either constitution doesn’t at some point contradict the natural law. One must obey God, not men.
“Using the author’s technique of using words like “it seems” gives him an out if he is in error, which governors can’t do. If they get it wrong actual people WILL die. If they get the hospital capacity thing wrong needless deaths WILL occur.”
So governors now are expected to be infallible? When was that determined to be realistic or moral? How do you know that people WILL die? What about the possibility that the stress caused by fear caused partly by all of the governors’ unjust “orders” causes people’s immune systems to be weakened, and so that they are more likely to succumb to the disease? What about those who lose their jobs as a result of governors’ unprecedented and tyrannical actions? Isn’t it important that someone has money to purchase food, pay rent, etc.?
There is an interesting point that I have come across in reading St. Thomas Aquinas. He says that there are two ways that a person can give up their life for another. One is the traditional understanding of a heroic sacrifice, such as a soldier jumping on a live grenade. Another is a continued life of service, such as a religious dedicating his life to helping the poor.
Of course the point applies with regards to justice as well in a different manner. One typically must work to support oneself and any dependents. As such, to damage a person’s ability to work by causing them to become unjustly unemployed or preventing them from obtaining employment is one way of unjustly infringing on their life and NATURAL RIGHTS.
“If they get the hospital capacity thing wrong needless deaths WILL occur.”
And so? As long as people aren’t being denied treatment when they could be easily treated (or the treatment is knowingly not very helpful – or worse – is positively harmful) what is the alternative supposed to be? Disease – like death – is a part of life. It is impossible to prevent anyone from eventually dying, so disease prevention shouldn’t be the responsibility for anyone except for the individual person, or whoever is his superior (e.g. parent).
“Well, “it seems” as though we are not out of the woods yet. Around the world “it seems” as though hospitals are starting to fill up.”
When will we be “out of the woods”? After all disease has been banished from the earth? When do you think that will be? It was early on claimed that COVID-19 is here to stay. In official epidemic circles we would be considered “out of the woods” once herd immunity has been achieved. A related problem is that the definition of a pandemic is arbitrary, and that it was changed in 2009. An interesting article that refers to this fact is at: http://www.vaccinationdecisions.net/how-the-world-health-organisation-who-created-a-pandemic-of-a-disease/.
The relevant point raised by the article is that appearances can be deceiving. Exaggeration is probably a vice in (or out of) journalism. It is a form of dishonesty.
Hospitals may actually be less full than they would be otherwise. This is because people are concerned about the catching the alleged virus, so they don’t want to go to the hospital. Hence it may be that more people are dying from heart attacks, etc. than would otherwise normally be the case. Are governors responsible for these deaths as well? Given that infectious microbes exist, they aren’t human beings, and they can’t be told what to do or controlled in any easy manner.
There is – however – one line of defense that is outside of governors’ control: the immune system. One would almost believe with all of the rhetoric that human beings don’t have an immune system.
The author seems to have commented on some of the peripheries of the so called Cov 19. To begin with, it needs to be clearly stated that NOBODY has isolated such a virus. A scientific method exists in order to “isolate” viruses, following what are called Koch’s postulates established by a German scientist in the 19th century. There are other postulates named after a certain Rivers, that don’t fully coincide with Koch’s one. The fact is that Cov 19 has not been isolated, meaning that there is no scientific proof that it exists. This being so, and after the publication of several papers attempting to demonstrate that it does, they fail to do so. If nobody has been able to demonstrate that it exists despite a whole year of the world being turned upside down, then the logical conclusion is that it is not a virus. In fact, not a few prestigious scientists reject the germ theory and the existence of viruses. They seem to be the same thing as another particle produced by the cells and part of the immune system called exozomes.
There are other revelant factors, such as the unnreliability of the PCR tests and the one based on anti-bodies. The inventor of the test stated that it was never intended to be an instrument for diagnosis. This is a huge factor. The protocols handed down by the corrupt WHO based on unrealiable data from China had every country tyring to purchase respirators, but these only tended to kill the elderly who had weak lungs and the forced oxygen provoked the death of many elderly (in fact in the U.S. a third of all deaths are due to errors by medical staff, more than cancer). Then autopsies were forbidden. How could they know what Cov 19 is they were not allowed to do autopsies? When eventually some Italian doctors did autopsies, they realized that what was ordered by the WHO was killing people. There was also an order to certify the deaths of people as “with Cov 19), although they may have been victims of a traffic accident. As for the collapsing of hospitals, it never happened. I read several reports of journalists going to hospitals to find that they were empty. IN NY, doctors and nurses were laid off. There seem to have been practically no deaths due to seasonal flu this year when they normally cause 650,000 deaths and there are no lockdowns nor any other crazy measures nor destroying the economy this year, in which deaths have been fewer world wide.
Governments introduced Draconian and dictatorial measures with no justification. In the UK, after an government body declared that Cov did not justify any particular measures other than the normal one applied every year. A few days later, the government ordered a drastic lockdown, based on a name Ferguson who did computer modelling according to which 2 million would die. He was later causght breaking the quarantine together with his mistress. He had made a similar disastrous prediction at the time of the mad cow disease. Similarly in Germany, where a huge lawsuit is being prepared against the government for criminal negligence and economic damage. A supposed expert advised the government to lock down. The lawyers later found out that although he has himself called Dr., he doesn’t have a Ph.D. in anything.
The website of a medical center at Johns Hopkins University has already published the plan for the continuance of the Cov 19. for 2025 to 2027, which is going to be called SPARS, if my memory serves me right.
In a word, the remedy was far greater than the false cure. Many people with cancer, heart disease and other illness were left without any treatment. Where I live, the government abandoned the residents of the care homes and only gave them morphine and left them to die.Tens of thousands of them died due to negligence. Once the politicians could, they introduced and approved a law in favor of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
In my opinion, the problem is not medical. It is political and moral. There are plenty of natural and cheap medical remedies. The problem is the politicians who have wrecked the lives of most of the middle class, and it appears to have been a concerted effort in almost all countries. Several respected doctors and scientists have proposed the theory that the illness is caused by electromagnetic waves. More research is needed to prove this, but of course, governments are not going to finance it.
As for the vaccines, it is an extremely dangerous plan as the kind of vaccines are not properly tested and they can produce infertility, which is what eugenists like Bill Gates want. There obvously no study on the long term effects of this dangerous vaccine. Big Pharma is not making much money out of developing new medicactions as it takes about 13 years to get them approved. Not so with vaccines, and if they can cajole or force the whole world population, they will gains trillions of dollars. Bill Gates has declared that he has made a lot more money out of vaccines than from Microsoft.
Anyone with a minimum of prudence ought to avoid vaccines like the plague. I also think that the Church with the cooperation of lay catholic doctors and scientists ought to have promoted serious research on the matter and debunked the mountain of lies promoted by governments. Doesn’t the Church have numerous universities and hospitals? Isn’t the goal of Catholic Social Teachng the prormotion of the common good? Many bishops imposed even more draconian measures that the governments.
Excellent! There is no pandemic. There is a virus that is no more lethal than the flu, and it is being used as a cover to bring in a diabolical global tyranny the world has never seen, using fear and propaganda and citizen complicity. Take off the masks! Refuse to shutdown your businesses! They need to destroy all independent producers, that is, the middle class. We do not need to let them. The fines are a bluff,
Mr Jones in summing up, writes in the second last paragraph of his article, that the mainstream media wants the appearance of overrun hospitals to be the case. It is the main theme running through his article.
He does not explain why they would want to promote that idea. He states – and I agree with him on this – that a person’s viewpoint can prevent him seeing reality as it is. But he does not actually say what in fact is the viewpoint underlying and giving rise to the media approach in this particular case.
I would be interested to hear some specifics on this.
Andrew,
Medical experts are not qualified to make the hard decisions about what our civilization OUGHT to do– what risks we should or should not be taking as a society; what trade-offs we should make, how much destruction of our economy we should be willing to endure, etc. Medical experts are advisors but the responsibility for the future of our civilization is beyond the pay grade of epidemiologists or any other medical experts.
Excerpt from a math challenging article…
“Hillcrest and Southwest General. The other individual hospitals, and the counties as a whole, are either at a relatively normal capacity level, or even well below capacity.
The argument would run like so: “You believe our hospitals can sufficiently handle Covid-19 and our ICUs will not be overrun, therefore you do not think the virus is real.” There is nothing whatsoever in the premise that provides a grounding for such a conclusion.
The argument would run like so: “You believe our hospitals can sufficiently handle Covid-19 and our ICUs will not be overrun, therefore you do not think the virus is real.” There is nothing whatsoever in the premise that provides a grounding for such a conclusion.” WOW!!!
Your presence is demanded on earth… I think.
I want you to spend some time in any hospital ICU in California then restate your absurd statement. “Hospitals are normal and can handle the COVID patients”… and can you explain why 360,000 poor souls, and counting, lost their lives due to COVID infections? Not to mention that our “leadership” plays golf while the pandemic rages and refuses to take the helm.
Good luck on earning your Ph.d.