Are COVID Case Surges More Fake News?

October 12, 2020 By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D. @ American Thinker

 

COVID cases are on the rise, or so we are told daily by a hysterical media. Newspaper headlines scream panic as this recent USAToday article proclaimed, “COVID-19 cases rising in 39 states – 9 months into the pandemic: We are overwhelmed.”

It’s the American people that are overwhelmed. Nine months into masks and lockdowns, with a presidential election just weeks away, facing a daily barrage of doom and gloom from the media. Are cases really on the rise or are these simply positive tests?

The above article, one of many warns, “A startling nine states setting ominous, seven-day records for infections.” 39 states reported more cases in the last week than they had in the week before.

 

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What exactly is a “case”? The USAToday article doesn’t say. Neither do other articles or cable news doctors and other “experts.” Is a “case” simply a positive test?

The CDC answers this question with a “case definition.” A case is not just a positive test. Instead what is needed is, “Presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence.” Notice the AND, meaning not simply a positive test.

Yet what the media trumpets as “surging cases” are only positive tests. There is no discussion of whether or not any of the individuals with positive tests are showing symptoms or are actually sick with the Chinese flu. Or if they are contagious and needing to be quarantined.

As an analogy, suppose we routinely checked peoples’ blood sugar or blood pressure and called any single high reading as diabetes or hypertension. Imagine testing everyone’s blood sugar after lunch, when it naturally rises, and calling anyone with a reading over 140 a diabetic. We would have a surge in diabetes, yet the vast majority of these individuals are not actually diabetic.

The COVID PCR test is quite sensitive, amplifying any viral particles found in the nose, whether dead or alive, repeatedly until the test is positive. Most of these positive “cases” are neither contagious or symptomatic, as even the New York Times acknowledged.

The more people we test, the more positive tests will result. Nancy Pelosi called for “testing, testing, testing” and that is exactly what we now have. The U.S. is currently performing over a million tests per day, with just under 5 percent coming back positive.

The U.S. is performing 2.87 daily tests per thousand people, far more than most countries. For comparison, Canada is a third lower at 2.09 tests per thousand, France 1.9, Germany 1.87, Australia 1.21, and India 0.82.

More tests mean more positive results, but not necessarily cases of COVID. For example, the U.S. performing 2.87 tests per thousand people compared with Mexico performing 0.08 tests per thousand will yield dramatically different results, showing the U.S. “surging” in cases as the media describes.

This then fuels the false narrative that the U.S. has so many cases of COVID due to the orange man’s ineptitude rather than the orange man ramping up testing, as everyone called for, to a level unmatched by any major country.

Hospitalizations, a measure of disease severity, have been steadily declining since March........Fears of a surge early last spring lead to only the sickest patients being admitted to the hospital at that time. There are no such concerns now and those hospitalized presently are not as sick, receiving hospital care much earlier in their illness. President Trump’s recent hospitalization with only mild symptoms is an example.

Yet these so-called case surges, in actuality only positive tests, are driving societal policy decisions. New York City is shutting down nine neighborhoods based on a positive test rate of over 3 percent for seven straight days. Yet the country as a whole has a higher test positive rate of 4.9 percent currently.........

In my state of Colorado, Governor Jared Polis extended the mask mandate for another 30 days due to “a rise in hospitalizations” for the Chinese virus. This extension conveniently goes just past the election............

Death counts were the metric of choice last April, a constant ticker on cable news shows. Now it’s cases, with no context between positive tests and actual cases. Democrats then blame Trump for not having a “national plan” allowing the virus to remain “out of control.”

The only plan is to make Americans miserable ahead of the election, hoping that voters choose a new leader, one whose COVID plan is virtually identical to the existing president’s plan.

What’s shameful is that the media, ignorant or uninterested in the facts, deliberately presents a false equivalence between positive tests and cases, all to push a gloom and doom narrative to influence the upcoming election........To Read More......