{"id":2044,"date":"2020-03-19T19:10:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T23:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=2044"},"modified":"2020-05-02T10:43:50","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T14:43:50","slug":"an-antidote-to-coronavirus-panic-the-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2020\/03\/an-antidote-to-coronavirus-panic-the-facts.html","title":{"rendered":"An Antidote to Coronavirus Panic: The Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

These are interesting times in which we live.<\/p>\n

The mass hysteria over COVID-19, \u201cThe<\/em> Coronavirus,\u201d supplies the remotely thoughtful with much food for thought.<\/p>\n

In a following series of articles, I will unpack the many implications of the mass panic.<\/p>\n

Before doing so, though, we must first establish one fundamental fact:<\/p>\n

This is <\/em>indeed a mass panic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe<\/em> Coronavirus\u201d is, in reality, but the latest discovered variant of a family of corona viruses that are located in all <\/em>acute respiratory diseases.\u00a0 As Wolfgang Wodarg\u2014a German medical doctor who once ran his own health department with a system for monitoring flu diseases among people within an area of some 150,000 inhabitants\u2014informs<\/a> us, coronaviruses constitute anywhere up to 15% of respiratory diseases.\u00a0 \u201cHence,\u201d Dr. Wodarg says, \u201cit\u2019s just normal that a big part of viruses are coronaviruses.\u201d<\/p>\n

So as to gain the much needed context of which Big Government and Big Media are all too ready to deprive us, it is worth quoting the doctor at length:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo while looking for a specific virus, for example, the coronavirus, you can examine the total population.\u00a0 What you will find is that presumably around 8% or 10% of the population will have some kind of virus that makes them sick.\u00a0 But if you examine medical practices, do your tests there, to determine who is sick, then of course you would find a lot more positive cases. And if you examine hospitals and take samples there, then you would find even more corona-infected people.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Context, in other words, makes all of the difference as to the confirmed cases of a virus.<\/p>\n

Yet, \u201cdepending on which proportions of the population you examine\u2014whether it is the whole population, patients in the waiting room, people in a clinic, or when you examine very ill patients in the intensive care unit that are about to die\u2014you will expectedly find these 7%-15% coronaviruses every time you do a test.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever,\u201d Wudarg adds, whether these patients die of the coronavirus itself <\/em>or of other viruses <\/em>that are accompanied<\/em> by the coronavirus, this is not something that can be determined with surety (italics added).<\/p>\n

He ties it altogether:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when you look at the death rates in Italy, you want to know where the tests have been taken.\u00a0 Where and how have these few available tests been used? If they were used in a hospital on serious or terminally ill cases, then obviously the corona death rate rises.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Although this context is crucial, Big Media fails to provide it.<\/p>\n

John Ioannidis is a Stanford University faculty member. He is a professor of medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics. He is also a co-director of Stanford\u2019s Meta-Research Innovation Center. In a recent op-ed, he warns against<\/a> the \u201conce-in-a-century evidence fiasco\u201d that is the mass hysteria ensuing upon the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable,\u201d Professor Ioannidis remarks.\u00a0 Considering \u201cthe limited testing to date,\u201d it\u2019s unknown whether \u201cwe are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues:<\/p>\n

\u201cThree months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

What this in turn means is that the global fatality rate of 3.4% relayed by the World Health Organization (WHO), while it \u201ccause[s] horror,\u201d is utterly \u201cmeaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 The answer is that those who have tested for COVID-19 are \u201cdisproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Ioannidis adds: \u201cAs most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the future\u201d [for given the inherent scarcity of resources in the way of testing and, hence, the need to test selectively\u2014i.e. to test only those who are displaying symptoms of sickness and who seek treatment\u2014the numbers diagnosed may become that much more skewed].<\/p>\n

But there is another reason, one that Ioannidis does not mention, that accounts for why the WHO\u2019s reported fatality rate is not only meaningless, but even deceptive. \u00a0As Ben Swann astutely observes<\/a>, the WHO figure of 3.4% is a rough average between two other figures: the reported mortality rate of 2% of COVID-19 in the United States, and its 4% mortality rate throughout the world.\u00a0 Following its release of this number, the WHO announced that \u201cthe<\/em> Coronavirus\u201d is much deadlier than the seasonal flu, for the mortality rate of the latter is only .1%.<\/p>\n

The American media has proven all too eager to uncritically accept this declaration\u2014issued, after all, by the Experts at the World Health Organization\u2014and share it with the world.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just one little problem with it: It\u2019s not in the least bit accurate.<\/p>\n

The flu\u2019s mortality rate of .1% is accurate only if <\/em>it is based on the number of estimated <\/em>cases.\u00a0 Because the WHO calibrates the mortality rate for COVID-19 solely on the basis of confirmed <\/em>cases\u2014it doesn\u2019t even try to supply an estimated number of undiagnosed or suspected cases of this coronavirus\u2014it is significantly higher than that of the flu.<\/p>\n

Yet if the Experts at the WHO (and the sock puppets in the American media) were interested in just the most rudimentary analogical reasoning, they would have figured out this comparison is worthless because the two things being compared are incomparable. Now, when the mortality rate of the seasonal flu is grounded in confirmed <\/em>cases, then its .1% mortality rate jumps to 10%<\/em>!\u00a0 This makes it vastly more deadly than the thing that has brought the whole world to a grinding halt.<\/p>\n

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia, is an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is also the co-inventor of rotavirus vaccine which is recommended for universal use by the Centers for Disease and Prevention Control (CDC).<\/p>\n

Dr. Offit recently said<\/a>, what I\u2019ve been at pains to show here, that \u201cthe fear of the virus is a bigger problem than the virus itself.\u201d COVID-19 may be only marginally more dangerous than the Swine flu of 2009, if it\u2019s more dangerous at all.\u00a0 At any rate, it\u2019s not even close to being deadlier than the seasonal flu.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish that every week they put up the number of deaths from influenza and the number of deaths from COVID-19; we would realize that influenza is far worse.\u201d He elaborates:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, in the United States, there were between 300,000 and 500,000 hospitalizations from influenza. We had between 20,000 and 45,000 deaths.\u00a0 Of those, 154 occurred in children.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the last two months since COVID-19 has been in the United States, 20 children have died from influenza; no children have died from COVID-19.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Offit continues, noting that even though the flu is \u201cfar worse\u201d than COVID-19, \u201cwe do not quarantine and we do not cancel meetings for shut down schools, churches, and synagogues from influenza.\u201d The good doctor expresses his perplexity: \u201cI do not understand what the difference is.\u00a0 If these two viruses are likely to cause infection and disease, why are we treating one different from the other?\u201d<\/p>\n

Good question.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with coronavirus,\u201d Dr. Offit asserts, \u201cis that people think they are more likely to die if they get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Offit\u2019s verdict?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think all the evidence says that is not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of the time of this writing, March 18, 2020, the John Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE), which tracks the spread of this virus all over the globe, informs those who would consult it that there are 204,251 confirmed cases of the virus now. \u00a0Of these, 8,246 people have died, and 82,091 have recovered.<\/p>\n

None of this is a good thing, obviously, but it\u2019s critical to keep perspective: On a planet of 7 billion<\/em> human beings, a tiny fraction of a percent of people, .00291787%, have contracted this thing. And of that <\/em>number, officially<\/em>, about 4% have died.\u00a0 The real <\/em>mortality rate is lower, for many people ride out the disease and don\u2019t get tested, for in the vast majority of cases, symptoms are mild.\u00a0 There are unquestionably many unconfirmed cases.<\/p>\n

In case this isn\u2019t clear, to reiterate, the vast majority of people, particularly those who aren\u2019t already high-risk\u2014the elderly, those with preexisting pulmonary-related conditions and otherwise compromised immune systems\u2014who contract this coronavirus have mild symptoms and recover.<\/p>\n

In other words, especially if one is the inhabitant of an advanced Western country like the United States, even if <\/em>one contracts the virus\u2014and this is a big <\/em>if\u2014it is not an automatic death sentence<\/em>.\u00a0 Quite the contrary, in fact.\u00a0 It is overwhelmingly likely that, just as is the case when your average person gets the seasonal flu, one will make a full recovery.<\/p>\n

For the sake of perspective:<\/p>\n

Between October 2019 and the end of February 2020, approximately 45 million Americans contracted the flu.\u00a0 There were 560,000 hospitalizations.<\/p>\n

And 46,000 Americans died from it.<\/p>\n

In 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 49 million Americans contracted the flu.\u00a0 About 960,000 were hospitalized.<\/p>\n

More than 80,000 died.<\/em><\/p>\n

Consider, the number of Americans to have died from the flu in just one<\/em> flu season is about ten times<\/em> the number of all Earthlings to have died from the latest coronavirus.<\/p>\n

The number of Americans to have died from the flu since 2018 to the present is about 20 times greater than that of all human beings to have died from the latest coronavirus.<\/p>\n

When we compare the number of Americans <\/em>to have contracted and die from COVID-19 with the number of Americans to have contracted and die from the flu, the gap becomes that much starker.<\/p>\n

As of March 18, in the United States there were currently 6519 confirmed cases of coronavirus.\u00a0 Of those who have contracted it, 115 have died<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s break this down:<\/p>\n

In a country of about 330 million people, .0002% of the population has officially contracted COVID-19.\u00a0 And of this <\/em>number, less than 2% have died.<\/p>\n

The real mortality rate is surely appreciably lower than this.<\/p>\n

In China, from which the virus originated and where the majority of all of the world\u2019s cases remain, a study of 45,000 confirmed infections revealed that in a whopping 81% of instances, the virus \u201ccaused only minor illness,\u201d with 14% of patients displaying symptoms \u201cdescribed as \u2018severe,\u2019 and just 5%\u201d identified as \u201c\u2018critical.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Think about this: Because in the vast majority of instances carriers of the virus exhibit only mild symptoms that they ride out and from which they recover, there are many more undiagnosed cases.\u00a0 Thus, an even smaller percentage of patients than the official 1.66% who have officially died from COVID-19 actually<\/em> die from it.<\/p>\n

Considering that this world is and has always been disease-ridden, basic precautionary measures like washing one\u2019s hands, covering one\u2019s nose and mouth while sneezing and coughing, etc. are always sensible (even if we never heard of \u201cThe <\/em>Coronavirus\u201d).<\/p>\n

Yet given the facts concerning COVID-19, any set of responses over and above this amounts to hysteria.t<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These are interesting times in which we live. The mass hysteria over COVID-19, \u201cThe Coronavirus,\u201d supplies the remotely thoughtful with much food for thought. In a following series of articles, I will unpack the many implications of the mass panic. 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