Writes Dionysus, Content writer, Headline Diplomat eMagazine
Despite 3 billion vaccines already given out according to data from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), more than a year after the first confinement, resuscitation services are again overwhelmed, businesses deemed non-essential closed, and movement restricted. Germany, despite having fully vaccinated over 35% of its total population, has this weekend, announced that Portugal and Russia are now a “virus-variant zone”. The country has now banned most arrivals by foreigners from the country.
Moscow, the capital of Russia, over the weekend had announced new 144 COVID-19 related deaths, a day after new cases exploded nationwide. The Guardian reports that just 11 percent of 146 million Russians are vaccinated, because of vaccine skepticism.
Meanwhile, in the North American country of Canada, restaurants are yet to be reopened since the first lockdown in 2020, making it one of the longest COVID-19 lockdowns around the world, according to the BBC.
Never has a virus sparked so many scientific publications in such a short time. It’s been a year and a half since the first cases were reported. What do we know about this virus, which the gratin of global epidemiologists has been studying for more than a year? And what do we still not know?
How the virus came to man remains mysterious
If its operation and structure are now well known, scientific experts still do not know, among other things, how it was passed to humans from animals, according to National Geographic.
“It typically takes years to trace a virus back to its roots—if it’s possible at all,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Centre for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Centre.
COVID deaths triple flu and pneumonia deaths
Life Site, an advocacy group, and a news publication has gathered evidence of how influenza and pneumonia deaths are grouped as COVID-19 related deaths.
According to Life Site’s Paul Adams, “The CDC lumped pneumonia, influenza, and COVID-19 into a new epidemic it called PIC, to inflate COVID-19 deaths.”
“The CDC stats for the week of July 3, 2020, confirm that pneumonia and influenza combine with COVID to inflate the death rate.”
From 2019 to 2020, death from influenza in the USA reached a record 9-year low at 22,000, compared to 95,000 influenza-related deaths recorded from 2017 to 2019, according to data retrieved from Statista.
Again, according to official figures from the National Organization for Statistics (ONS), deaths caused by COVID-19 triple the deaths caused by flu or pneumonia in England and Wales in 2020 between January to August in 2020.
Between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths from COVID-19, compared to 13,600 deaths from pneumonia and only 394 from flu.
“The death rate from COVID-19 is significantly higher than from influenza or pneumonia both for 2020 and on the average for the past five years,” said Sarah Caul of the ONS, as reported by the BBC.
The ONS has carried out an analysis of the annual causes of death where they show that deaths from influenza were particularly low earlier in 2020. The highest death figures from COVID-19 are between March and June. People who died from COVID-19 between January and August of this year constitute 12% of the total deaths in that period, which were a total of 389,835. In those same months, pneumonia was responsible for 3.5% of deaths and influenza for 0.1%. Are influenza and pneumonia deaths being grouped as COVID 19 related?
Lockdowns are not the solution
The quarantines of the entire population were not based on solid science; in most countries, they were applied after the peak of infection had passed and did not seem to have made any difference, new research published on medRxiv has shown. According to the research on the full lockdown policies in Western Europe, countries have no evidence lockdowns had positive effects on the pandemic. Also, according to the Risk-Monger, quarantines, were only a last resort option and only defer cases to the future, they do not prevent them entirely.
“As risk managers in China, South Korea, and Singapore were applying risk reduction measures to address their coronavirus outbreaks, as they were providing proper PPE for their front-line medical staff, as they were increasing detection and testing methods and isolating victims, European and American authorities did little more than reassure their populations they were safe. There were no risk reduction measures in the West except to monitor those who had traveled to the affected regions,” the opinion article reads.
“By the time Western European countries woke up, when Italian hospitals were suddenly overwhelmed, it was too late. The one remaining tool, a tool of last resort (the precautionary principle), was the only way the risk managers could respond: reduce the crisis by locking down entire populations.”
More than half of asymptomatic people who test positive may not have the virus
Since there is no gold standard, you cannot tell how accurate the test is. There is no perfect test. For diagnostic tests in medicine, the most common errors are false positive and false negative, according to Live Science.
A false positive is when you think something is true when it is not. In this case, the test tells you that you are infected with the virus when you are not. A false negative is when you think that something is not present. In this case, the test was negative, when the person does have the virus infection.
A study from China, published in PubMed, tried to determine by statistical methods, the percentage of false positives in asymptomatic people; who have been in contact with people with COVID-19. Surprisingly, according to the false-positive rate was 80.33%! This means that, out of every five positive tests, only one has the infection. Even under optimal conditions, it would have a false positive rate of 47%. That is, almost equal to the probability of flipping a coin and obtaining a head or tail.
You are more likely to die from a traffic accident than from COVID-19
In an analysis published on PubMed, conducted with COVID-19 data from eleven European countries, including Spain and Italy, in addition to Canada and twelve states of the United States, it was determined that the probability of dying from COVID-19 for a person under 65 is less than the risk of dying in a traffic accident on the way to school or work. Even in those with health conditions, the risk is negligible; except for those with severe manifestations of these diseases. If you have ridden in a vehicle, almost every day, why are you afraid of the virus, especially if prevention measures such as social distancing and use of nose masks are complied with?
The risk of death from COVID-19 is very low. Even in the elderly
Between 50 to 75% of all deaths from COVID-19 occur in those over 80 years of age, according to a study by the medRxiv. The average age of death tends to be similar or close to the life expectancy of each country. Even in those over the age of 80, the risk of dying is close to 1%. In most, it does not exceed 1 in 1000. The risk is extremely low.
“Lockdown is lunacy. It’s impossible to stop a virus by government decree.” Dr. Yoram Lass, former director-general of Israel’s health ministry, is quoted by the Jerusalem Post, in response to the policies of lockdowns used during the pandemic last year.
Conclusion
A substantial percentage of COVID 19 cases may actually not be related to the virus as data show the reduction of other coronavirus similar cases (such as influenza and pneumonia) between late 2019 towards the peak of the pandemic, which is why many experts think COVID-19 deaths may be misrepresented. What is happening around the world has nothing to do with science. Nor is it about saving lives. It has become a political issue, of abuse of power and third parties with personal agendas. In the beginning, the heartbreaking news from hospitals in countries like Italy worried governments and populations. The intentions were good, although the execution was hasty and little thought. But one must change strategy, as you have more information. You can’t keep the whole world permanently locked up.
Doctors are not magicians. No one can avoid death, it can only be delayed; it does not matter what one does or does not do. Living involves risk and this risk will never be zero. In 2013, 1,250,000 people died in traffic accidents around the world, according to the W.H.O. This equates to 3,425 deaths every day. So if we ban cars, we will “save” 3,425 lives a day. Also according to the W.H.O. in 2016, 320,000 people died from drowning in the world, which is equivalent to 877 deaths per day. It’s logical to say, if we prohibit the use of beaches, rivers, spas, and swimming pools, then we will greatly reduce the drownings that happen. But we can’t because we understand the repercussions it would have in our daily lives.
A virus causes disease, but not hunger. It is not the pandemic, but the response, which threatens the lives of millions of people. Some have already calculated that at a minimum, seven times more years of human life will be lost than the quarantines could “save”. It is not economics compared to lives, but lives compared to lives!
Featured photo by Bastian Riccardi, Pexels
