Death Rates Remain Low

More Cases Needed for Herd Immunity

Ginger R. Breggin and Peter R. Breggin M.D

Americans are being frightened by the media and experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci into believing that we are in a crisis of skyrocketing COVID-19 cases due to the reopenings of communities in the US. States that had survived the first explosive wave of COVID-19, such as Florida, Texas, and other Southern and Southwestern states, were literally beginning to save America as they stimulated their economies, providing a vital lift to our national economic, social and emotional well-being. When these states became more open the numbers of deaths from COVID-19 remained reassuringly low.

In the past couple of weeks the nation is being loudly informed by experts and media that there has been an explosion of new COVID-19 cases in exactly those states that had done so well before, including Florida and Texas, two of the nation’s biggest contributors to the national economy.

A Fake Explosion of Coronavirus Cases?

We were shocked to discover that the “explosion” may have more to do with the loosening of CDC standards for reporting COVID 19 cases than with any real resurgence. Included in the new CDC standards are such criteria as this: If you have spent 10 minutes near a probable case and are found on contact tracing to have any number of symptoms that could be caused by asthma, allergy or the common cold, you are counted as a COVID-19 case, even without any laboratory testing result.

The CDC revised criteria for health departments on April 5, 2020. The revisions have been slowly working their way through the state health departments including Texas which, on May 11, 2020, issued its own new standards based on CDC’s, loosening criteria for diagnosing COVID-19 cases. Texas’s state health department standards for defining COVID-19 cases was then sent to all Texas counties where the basic collection of COVID-19 cases begins. 

Deaths Are Not Escalating

It is well known that the numbers of COVID-19 deaths have already been padded. Yet there has been no frightening uptick in deaths in the United States despite the combined forces of the urban riots, defiant gatherings on beaches and elsewhere, and the official openings of many states. This good news about the relatively few new deaths has been ignored by Fauci and the media; but you can follow it on the daily updated chart at the top of our Coronavirus Resource Center.

So there is no threatening increase in deaths from COVID-19 in the United States! Great news. But we hear little of this welcome information. Where we used to see headlines every day about deaths, now our attention is being drawn to the “exploding” new cases.

Further, it appears that because Fauci, the media and the Deep State cannot demonstrate a threatening increase in deaths, the CDC has now decided they have to pad the numbers of new COVID-19 cases. Dr. Fauci, who had been mostly missing from the public limelight for weeks, is once again making media rounds to tell us how to live our lives, while bringing us dire warnings about supposedly staggering numbers of cases and possible deaths on the horizon.

Ignoring Reality

Throughout all of this, three basic facts have been ignored. First, the only reason for the shutdown was to prevent such a rapid escalation in COVID-19 cases that the health system would “collapse.” Second, most of the country, especially those up to about age forty, will inevitably get SARS-CoV-2 without a high risk of severe or fatal illness and third, by becoming exposed people will create the herd immunity that will ultimately protect us older and more vulnerable people.

Instead, this is what we heard on June 30th from Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: “The United States may soon record as many as 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day if the current trajectory of the outbreak is not changed.” 

We ask, “So what?” Was there ever any doubt that tens of millions—not a mere hundred thousand a day—would contract this highly infectious disease that mercifully rarely does serious harm to anyone but the elderly and immune compromised? This is clearly a case of the Deep State against America and our nation’s vigorous attempts to quickly recover from the draconian COVID-19 lockdown of the spring of 2020.

A House Built on the Sand of Uncertain Testing

Since the beginning of the pandemic in the United States, the CDC has failed to provide statistical clarity. According to ABC News, the initial COVID-19 test kits created by the CDC failed because of a “contaminated component.” Those kits were pulled back after giving a large number of false positives.

Then on May 21st The Atlantic reported that the CDC was requiring that positive tests for antibodies (indications that a patient has had COVID-19 at some earlier time) were to be included in the daily count of new COVID-19 cases. As The Atlantic asked, “How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?” Not only was the logic off—antibodies do not indicate a new case, but an old one. The antibody tests, conducted by many different companies with their own concoctions, remained highly suspect.

Now for the Ridiculous Details

The CDC has been loosening its standards for defining a COVID-19 death case. On June 3, 2020, the CDC declared that COVID-19 cases should include not only deaths that were “confirmed,” but also “probable” death cases of COVID-19. A COVID-19 confirmed case is the result of a positive lab test. A death certificate that lists COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 as cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death is counted as a new case as well even without testing.

Beyond cases associated with death, nonlethal COVID-19 cases are also required to be counted as confirmed cases if they are in fact listed as “probable”. A probable case can be identified if clinical criteria are met for at least two symptoms: fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, or new nose and taste disorders. Or if a person has at least one symptom of cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing. Or if a person has a severe respiratory illness and no alternative more likely diagnosis is found.

In addition, the person suspected of being positive of COVID-19 has to have been in contact with a confirmed or probable case of COVID 19, or someone who had a clinically compatible illness and linkage to a confirmed case of COVID-19. In other words, you are counted as a COVID-19 case if you had any contact with a probable or confirmed case, plus a few symptoms that could be caused by an infinite number of different causes such as asthma, seasonal allergy, exposure to an irritant, a cold, heart trouble or stress.

On the County Level

Collin County in Texas is a good example of how these changing standards affect the numbers of COVID-19 cases counted. During the May 18, 2020 Collin County Commissioners Court, Administrative Services gave a Power Point presentation on the new case definition for COVID-19. She referred to the Texas Department of State Health Services guidelines that had been distributed May 11, 2020. Prior to the changes, the case definition for a confirmed case of COVID-19 was a positive PCR (swab test for present infection) lab result for COVID-19.

The new case definitions expand the total count of COVID19 cases to many times the original confirmed cases. The numbers of death cases expand also as positive lab results are no longer required for the counting of a COVID-19 death. In each category the counted cases will be many times higher. According to the CDC FAQ: COVID-19 Data and Surveillance, “A COVID-19 case includes confirmed and probable cases and deaths.”

So At Least the new CDC Standards are Being Standardized?

No, as it turns out, some states and counties are implementing the new CDC standards of lumping together confirmed COVID-19 cases and probable COVID-19 cases, and some are not. Over half of the US states are not reporting probable cases along with confirmed cases as of June 9th, 2020. The result is that states that are reporting probable and confirmed cases as confirmed cases, are showing a much higher rate of infection spread.

In Illinois, probable cases were not being reported as of June 8, 2020. Spokesperson for the state’s health department explained probable cases were withheld “because there is concern from the public that the number of deaths is being inflated. . . . We need the public to have confidence in the data and therefore are reporting only those deaths that are laboratory confirmed.” Many other specifics of incomplete or missing data from various states have been uncovered by media investigations, including The Washington Post.

But as can be seen by the Collin County, Texas example earlier in this piece, as counties and states begin to add probable cases into their statistics, the COVID-19 cases will skyrocket. Graphs will shoot up. Fake higher rates of the spread of COVID-19 manipulates governors into prematurely reclosing economies, dragging down the recovery.

The Take-Away

Dr. Fauci keeps talking about science but as we describe in reports and videos on our Coronavirus Resource Center, Fauci is not science-based. He is politically motivated, and so ignores the worthlessness of most data emerging from the CDC. Science is based on facts while the data on COVID-19 cases is a jumbled mess and useless for informing how we should deal with opening as a nation.

America, we cannot be too skeptical of bad news coming out from Anthony Fauci, the CDC, pundits, the major media, Deep State, and politicians committed to ruining America’s economy to ensure their own political power. For now, it is reasonable to assume that COVID-19 cases must continue to rise in numbers, probably into the tens of millions, in order to reach herd immunity. Those of us who are older or immune compromised must remain in relative isolation to protect ourselves until herd immunity is achieved, while those of you who are younger go about your business of living, knowing that you have less chance of dying from COVID-19 than from the flu.

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