July 7, 2020 By Jess Jones, MD
We
have nearly won the fight against COVID. You wouldn't guess it from
watching the news, but the data from the past several weeks have shown
nothing less than a decisive victory over the pandemic. The media are
engaged in a highly intentional and fraudulent game of selective data
reporting to incite panic for political gain. If you watch the
mainstream press, pundits and academics breathlessly recite the rapidly
increasing COVID-positive tests and show graphics that display a hockey
stick of doom:
If
that doesn't sufficiently scare you back into your place of shelter,
they take the fear up a notch by showing the "increase in
hospitalizations with COVID" graph:
These
two rapidly rising statistics, they tell us, are "proof" that we are
losing the COVID race. For those who don’t do any more digging, the
trend looks grim.
However, just a small amount of research shows the opposite picture: COVID is in retreat. Look at what happens when you include the volume of testing data with the number of positives we are finding:
Suddenly,
what jumps out is how few positives we have been getting in light of
the rapidly increasing volume of testing that has been performed. The
data even include contact tracing campaigns instituted by each state
that should dramatically increase the positive rate by targeting
everyone whom positive cases came into close contact with. Still, the
positive volume remains relatively flat compared to the number of tests
performed.
That is not all of the good news, though. The most important questions of any pandemic are of how many people are being harmed or killed by the disease. The data on that front is even more exciting. This is a graph that shows the daily volume of hospitalizations, ICU patients, and ventilators used by COVID patients:
How
do you reconcile the decreasing usage of ventilators and ICU beds with
the increase in hospitalizations? The reason is that the hospitals,
after spending months nearly empty in anticipation of a COVID flood that
never happened, have reopened to business as usual. Everyone who comes
in for elective procedures, trauma, and anything else is tested and
incidentally found to have COVID. Studies have shown that even the
ones who do come in because of COVID stay shorter times and are less
likely to die than just a few months ago...which takes us to the most
important slide of all — COVID mortality:
The
COVID daily mortality graph shows the incredible success we have had in
beating the disease for the past two months despite widespread opening
of economies across the U.S. This should be a cause of celebration, not
reclosing of the economy.
Government critics who have long used insufficient testing as their rallying cry against Trump are finally getting the testing they asked for, only to use selective bits of it to stoke more fear. It is time for state and federal leaders to tell people the complete story and end the lockdowns. We can't let the cure be worse than the disease, especially when the disease is already nearly gone.
However, just a small amount of research shows the opposite picture: COVID is in retreat. Look at what happens when you include the volume of testing data with the number of positives we are finding:
That is not all of the good news, though. The most important questions of any pandemic are of how many people are being harmed or killed by the disease. The data on that front is even more exciting. This is a graph that shows the daily volume of hospitalizations, ICU patients, and ventilators used by COVID patients:
Government critics who have long used insufficient testing as their rallying cry against Trump are finally getting the testing they asked for, only to use selective bits of it to stoke more fear. It is time for state and federal leaders to tell people the complete story and end the lockdowns. We can't let the cure be worse than the disease, especially when the disease is already nearly gone.
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