Coronavirus Hoax

[Gloominary]

Coronavirus is at worst, a bad flu, nothing more.

[Gloominary]

I don't trust government or media much, if at all, but for the sake of argument, let's take a look at their own numbers.

Take Spain, one of the countries hit hardest by coronavirus.
Spain has a population of about 47 million.
According to this:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/coronavirus-death-toll-in-spain-overtakes-china-as-lockdowns-extend-around-globe/ar-BB11GKo3?li=AAggNb9

the coronavirus death toll in Spain is a mere 3434.
For perspective, according to this:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/450171/number-of-deaths-in-spain/

about 400 000 people, or 1% of the Spain's population, die anually.
3437 vs 400 000.
Statistically 3437 is nothing by comparison.

The idea coronavirus will definitely spread and kill 5 or 10% of Spaniards if we don't decimate the Spanish economy and rob them of their civil liberties, is speculation, fear mongering, more on that in a bit.

[Gloominary]

Bear in mind, government and media, deliberately or indeliberately, exaggerated the threat posed by Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Ebola, SARS, Hantavirus, West Nile Virus and so on.
We don't let individuals off the hook when they fuck up, and wildly exaggerate shit, and neither should we let institutions and corporations off the hook.
When you consistently fuck up, again and again, we lose trust, as we should.
They have a habit of overestimating the threat viruses pose, not underestimating them, and we need to take that into account when reviewing what they're forecasting now.

[Urwrongx1000]

It's still too early to say, but it seems like that, just a bad flu.

The real fear is if it is-in-fact, a bad flu. Because this would then mean that the Western World has severely damaged society and the economy, based on fear, and fear-alone.


This would represent a severe spiritual and moral flaw, weakness, which maybe the underlying case.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Coronavirus is at worst, a bad flu, nothing more.

K: you are and I quote: an Idiot...

Kropotkin

[Tab]

If you want to cast aspersions, at the very worst you can say that the response has been to 'err on the safe side'.

Imagine the reverse position. New virus arises. The world says "meh, it's just a bad flu, business as usual" pandemic occurs, health systems get overrun, a whole bunch of people die, all institutional infrastructure is compromised by staff shortages - runs on banks, true panic shopping, looting, fires etc. etc.

Then you'd be saying "illuminati bioweapon culls poor."

[Gloominary]

Around the world, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has climbed to more than 423,000. The latest confirmed cases include Prince Charles, who was showing mild symptoms, according to a spokesperson for Clarence House.
The true number of Covid-19 cases around the globe is likely to be much higher. Officials in Spanish regions such as Madrid and Catalonia initially dealt with a shortage of testing resources by asking people with mild symptoms to simply self-isolate, while Italy’s top coronavirus response official, Angelo Borrelli, has suggested the real number of infections there is probably 10 times higher than the official count.
In Ireland, the national public health emergency team announced on Tuesday that coronavirus testing criteria had been changed to prioritise people showing at least two symptoms, in response to a backlog of 40,000 cases awaiting testing.
Around the world, coronavirus has claimed more than 18,000 lives and ushered in a spate of emergency measures.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/coronavirus-death-toll-in-spain-overtakes-china-as-lockdowns-extend-around-globe/ar-BB11GKo3?li=AAggNb9

So about 400 000 have been infected, on record, and about 20 000 have died, on record.
That's a death rate of 5%.
However, experts like Angelo Borelli say the number of infected is probably about 10 times higher, which would put it at 4 million, but do experts say the number of dead is probably about 10 times higher, which would put it at 200 thousand?
No.
Why is that?
Because all the dying went to the hospital where they could be tested, whereas the vast majority of infected who were asymptomatic or had mild-moderate symptoms didn't visit the hospital where they could be tested.
So the real number of infected is probably 4 million, but the real number of dead is only 20 thousand.
That's a death rate of 0.5%.

For comparison, the death rate of the ordinary flu (in the US) is about 0.1%.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

And the Spanish flu of 1918:

The influenza pandemic circled the globe. Most of humanity felt the effects of this strain of the influenza virus. It spread following the path of its human carriers, along trade routes and shipping lines. Outbreaks swept through North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific (Taubenberger). In India the mortality rate was extremely high at around 50 deaths from influenza per 1,000 people (Brown).

https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

I heard the death rate of the bubonic plague was 3:1.

Ordinary flu: 0.1%
Coronavirus: 0.5%
Spanish flu: 5%
Black death: 33%

So coronavirus is much closer to being an ordinary flu than it is to being the Spanish flu of 1918, and you can't even compare it to the bubonic plague.
The Spanish flu was 10 times deadlier than the coronavirus probably is, but we still call the Spanish flu, a flu.
Again, the coronavirus is, in all likelihood, a bad flu, nothing more.
It's nowhere near to being the worst sorts of flu.

Notice how not everyone gets infected with the flu every year (about a 6th of the population gets it), despite us not taking extra precautions to prevent it, just as not everyone will get infected with coronavirus, even if we don't take extra precautions to prevent it.
So if the death rate is 0.5%, the total number of deaths in the US won't be 0.5% of the population, but something like 0.05%.
Something like 1% of the population of the US dies every year from every kind of disease and accident, and this number varies quite a bit from year to year, some years it may be 1.5%, others it may be 0.5%, so an additional 0.05% of deaths is by no means an insurmountable amount of additional sickness and death.

[promethean75]

The gentlemen raise good points and I concur. Gloom and Tab are both right.

I'm gonna say the coronavirus is a rehearsal, like a beta test, to see what would happen in a real pandemic scenario. Then, several years later after the world has recovered, they'll drop the big one on us that they're now working on. The wealthy one percent will then move into space stations orbiting the Earth and turn the Earth into a materials depot to supply for construction and terraforming on the moon and Mars.

[Gloominary]

Coronavirus is at worst, a bad flu, nothing more.

K: you are and I quote: an Idiot...

Kropotkin

Who're you quoting?
Quit while you're ahead, Joe Biden.

[Zero_Sum]

The virus is real but whether it is being exaggerated for huge global power grabs is another thing entirely.

I would say there is a distinct possibility it is an intentional bioweapon unleashed on the planet for that same very purpose. One thing alone is certain,the consequences of this global viral pandemic are very real.

[Gloominary]

On top of all that, viruses aren't monolithic or uniform, just as species aren't.
Just as some individuals and population groups within humanity have stronger immune systems than others, some individuals and population groups within viruses are deadlier than others, and coronavirus is no exception.
Weaker variants of the coronavirus will spread faster than stronger variants, because they're more likely to go undetected, and contracting weaker variants, in whole or in part, immunizes you against stronger ones, so our collective susceptibility to coronavirus will in all likelihood only diminish with time, and the death rate decline.
I have no idea by how much, perhaps the death rate will be halved, from around 0.5 to around 0.25, but I can say that in all probably it'll only decrease in time after more and more people get exposed to faster spreading, but weaker variants.

I read somewhere that 80% of 90+ year olds (the median death is 80) recover from coronavirus, and that's just the ones on record, so it could be more like 96% of 90+ year olds, but even if it is just 80%, even 90+ year olds have a good chance of contracting weaker variants and getting immunized against stronger ones, let alone young people.

It's sad that thanks to our irresponsible, fear mongering media, there's millions of young people out there, kids, teenagers and young adults, thinking there's a good chance they'll contract coronavirus and die.
How much will all this stress shorten their life expectancy, everyone's life expectancy?
Not only stress from fear of the virus itself, but the stress of losing your job, your career, your small business, your very way of life?

If government and the media were being honest with us, the benefits (assuming there are any) of medical martial law (because that's what it is) would be openly weighed against the costs, discussed with the public, but they're not, because at the very least, even if there is no sinister agenda to further enslave and exterminate the people, government and the media, doesn't trust us enough to have an adult conversation with us, in a supposed democracy.
No our betters have decided what to do with our lives, liberty and economy for us, and our sole role is to unthinkingly obey and rat on our friends and neighbors who won't.
To cancel, censor and deplatform all dissent.
To dox, fine and imprison all dissidents.
This is not democracy in action.
This is yet another example of 21st century post-modern authoritarianism on display, one of countless.

Young people have next to no chance of dying from this flu, and even middle aged and most old people have little chance of dying from it (like 1 in thousands, hundreds and dozens respectively), unless they're already severely, chronically ill (particularly if it's a respiratory illness or an illnesss that leaves you vulnerable to respiratory illnesses).
But if you just read the headlines, you'd never know that, only people who read often, read carefully, read between the lines, who can connect dots, fill in the blanks, look at the big picture, make inferences, put things into perspective, who've been around the block more than once or twice, know that this is being massively overhyped.
Government and the media ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Absolutely appalling behavior on their behalf.
Fake news.

[Zero_Sum]

Gloomy baby, it's not a naturally occurring virus, it's an escaped engineered bioweapon that has gotten loose, why else do you think world governments everywhere are freaking the fuck out?

They know it's not a naturally occurring virus which is why they're trying to calm the sheople by publicly calling it novel.

[Gloominary]

But of course the government doesn't want a sober, rational, thinking, questioning public, it wants millions of headless farm animals running around the barn hysterically.

[Zero_Sum]

But of course the government doesn't want a sober, rational, thinking, questioning public, it wants millions of headless farm animals running around the barn hysterically.

Well, when you got a severe bioweapon with a long incubation period where for several weeks people show no symptoms until much later that's of course what you're going to get.

This thing was designed in a lab somewhere with the sole purpose of infecting and killing as much people as possible. It's a bioweapon of war my dude.

[Gloominary]

It's still too early to say, but it seems like that, just a bad flu.

The real fear is if it is-in-fact, a bad flu. Because this would then mean that the Western World has severely damaged society and the economy, based on fear, and fear-alone.


This would represent a severe spiritual and moral flaw, weakness, which maybe the underlying case.

Yup, this is something we can be much more sure of in hindsight than in forecast, but it looks that way to me too, like it's being wildly exaggerated, based on the data points I gave and how I interpreted them.
If I'm right, then either government/media is very incompetent, very tyrannical, or some combination of the two, and yes that level of incompetency and/or corruption is more frightening than even the most calamitous projections of corona.
Based on what I know about government/media, my moneys on corruption.
When their, mistakes, always benefit them at our expense, they're not mistakes at all.
It's always less liberty, wealth and power for us, and more for them.

[Ecmandu]

We’ll see. The flu deaths each year are under 100,000 in the US alone.

The prediction from corona = 2 million in the US.

[Urwrongx1000]

[Urwrongx1000]

Yup, this is something we can be much more sure of in hindsight than forecast, but it looks that way to me too, like it's being wildly exaggerated, based on the data points I gave and how I interpreted them.
If I'm right, then either government/media is very incompetent, very tyrannical, or some combination of the two, and yes that level of incompetency and/or corruption is more frightening than even the most calamitous projections of corona.
Based on what I know about government and media, my moneys on corruption.
When their, mistakes, always benefit them at our expense, they're not mistakes at all.
It's always less liberty and wealth for us, and more money for them.

My dispute though, is that this is bad for "the elites" and "top 1%". The hit to the economy hit the rich hardest, by devaluing assets and the dollar, especially with the $2 trillion bailout.

So the damage is very expensive. As you mention, I point to the Mass Media Mob and fake-news media as prime culprits. They have benefited, if none else.

[Gloominary]

Why isn't the MSM talking about boosting people's immune systems with nutrition, whole foods and supplements?
Even if hygiene, social distancing and vaccines when they become available are 10 times more affective (which, I don't believe they are, I believe it's the other way around, but for the sake of argument), you think at least 10, or 1, at the very least 1% of articles would be about how to boost your immune system, but I can't recall reading a single one.
There may be a few out there, but I haven't seen any, instead all I can recall is reading some articles debunking myths nutrients like vitamin C cure coronavirus.

Sure, vitamin C alone probably can't cure coronavirus, perhaps it can't cure any viruses at all (altho it can cure certain conditions like scurvy...which's neither here nor there)l, but it can at least boost your so called immune system, or rather, make your cells stronger and healthier so they can't be penetrated and preyed upon by viruses (and having weak cells from lack of nutrition and an abundance of toxicity is itself, with or without viruses, the primary cause of disease, from my experience and research), but no, not a single, solitary article, and finding a handful of exceptions doesn't disprove the rule.

Nothing, or next to nothing about nutrition, why is that?
Could big pharma, government and the media have a financial agenda?
Of course they bloody well do, and they have an authoritarian agenda, and I believe a population reduction agenda as well.
They want us sick and either dependent on their frankenfoods and the medications we need to cope with our adverse reactions to their frankenfoods rather than independent, healthy and eating whole foods, or dead.
Sick, helpless and dependent, or dead, that's their MO.

You can't patent a nutrient, but you sure as hell can patent a high-tech antibiotic, drug or vaccine.
That's where the real monopoly money is, in what you can patent.
That's the only reason why drugs like cocaine are illegal, because cocaine has loads of medicinal properties, as they refer to them, and loads of pharmaceutical drugs have loads of recreational properties and can just as, if not more easily make you dependent i.e. addicted, sick and kill you.

But then they make tons of money off the illegal drug trade too.
If a substance is illegal, government can easily monopolize it that way, by working together with some mobsters, and imprisoning their competitors.
What they sure as hell don't want is for you to be able to grow plants with strong medicinal and recreational properties in your own garden, that doesn't benefit them.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Gloomy baby, it's not a naturally occurring virus, it's an escaped engineered bioweapon that has gotten loose, why else do you think world governments everywhere are freaking the fuck out?

They know it's not a naturally occurring virus which is why they're trying to calm the sheople by publicly calling it novel.

It's a pretty damn weak virus if it's a bioweapon. IOW it's an utter failure as a bioweapon, and given it's long incubation period it would benefit no nation.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Coronavirus is at worst, a bad flu, nothing more.

I have most likely just recovered from it. They stopped testing where I am so I just treated it myself at home. It was a flu, in my case, not an especially bad one. Some of the symptoms were new for me, not worse, just different. I don't quite get the hysteria, it also seems like the economic effects are going to be enormous, which will lead to deaths and suffering also. It seems a cut off your nose to spite your face type of thing. I honestly cannot say where one should draw the line with the measures taken, but this seems an overreaction. We are trying to prevent problems by creating a sure thing problems perhaps for everyone. It also disturbs me how fast freedoms are being taken away. Now one could argue this is temporary and they will come back, but we should be very wary.

I did use a lot of alternative medicine on the thing, so pehaps I made it milder.

[Leyla]

The corona virus is not a new virus. As early as 2013, it has been proven that this virus makes up about 10-15 percent of influenza viruses. It has also been known for a long time in veterinary medicine. This means that anyone who has had influenza in recent years has antibodies against corona in their blood and would therefore be tested positive.
So much for the test results. I live in Germany, and alone during the flu wave 2017/18 more than 25000 people died here. This will never be reported now. Instead, every doctor who tells the above mentioned facts is publicly called a liar and their YouTube accounts are being removed.

[phyllo]

Coronavirus is at worst, a bad flu, nothing more.

I have most likely just recovered from it. They stopped testing where I am so I just treated it myself at home. It was a flu, in my case, not an especially bad one. Some of the symptoms were new for me, not worse, just different. I don't quite get the hysteria, it also seems like the economic effects are going to be enormous, which will lead to deaths and suffering also. It seems a cut off your nose to spite your face type of thing. I honestly cannot say where one should draw the line with the measures taken, but this seems an overreaction. We are trying to prevent problems by creating a sure thing problems perhaps for everyone. It also disturbs me how fast freedoms are being taken away. Now one could argue this is temporary and they will come back, but we should be very wary.

I did use a lot of alternative medicine on the thing, so pehaps I made it milder.

On the other hand :

Dr. Tanzib Hossain is working on the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City. He is seeing first-hand the devastating impact it's having on patients and the monumental challenges facing the health-care system.

Dr. Tanzib Hossain describes what doctors in New York are seeing in hospitals as the city becomes the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. 4:30

The first wave hit last week. The ER at NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn was flooded with people all showing the same symptoms: cough, fever, lungs filled with pus.

A week later came the second wave. Many of those same patients were getting worse, said Dr. Tanzib Hossain, a pulmonary and critical care physician dealing with the COVID-19 crisis at the hospital.

It's a heartbreaking situation that's playing out in hospitals across New York City, he said.

"This is ... the scary part for physicians in the emergency department. All of the patients that came in, a full five days in, they're all, to put it in the clearest way, they're dropping like flies," he said.

As of Wednesday night, he said, none of the patients who'd been put on a ventilator at the hospital had survived and recovered, though one was taken off Thursday morning and remains in care.

Many people who contract COVID-19 experience less severe symptoms and are able to recover at home.

However, in New York's hospitals, some patients are on ventilators for prolonged periods and most have not improved in any significant capacity, Hossain said.

And it's not just the elderly who are falling gravely ill. Hossain has seen first-hand that adults of any age can experience COVID-19's most severe effects.

"I think that's what was alarming," he said.

That is the reality on the front lines in New York, which has become the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. As of Thursday, the city alone accounted for a third of all cases in the country, while New York state as a whole made up almost half.

There were 385 deaths in the state as of Thursday. Over the previous 24-hour period, hospitalizations went up 40 per cent to 5,327 and ICU admissions went up 40 per cent from 888 to 1,290, according to city statistics.

"It literally is like a war zone and everyone is in it, in the trenches together, and we rely on each other," Hossain said, referring to his fellow health-care workers.
What weighs on him the most

He said the hospital began putting in place contingency plans in January, after news of the virus emerged in China. The hospital had three intensive care units, a surgical ICU, a neurosurgical ICU and a medical ICU. One by one, they are being transformed into COVID-19 units.

Right now, the hospital hasn't reached capacity and is still expanding its beds and staffing levels to accommodate more COVID-19 patients. But for all the numbers and curves and projections, Hossain says none of that matters when he's one on one with a patient who may never recover, telling that person this might be the last moment they're awake.

It's a conversation that takes place in isolation; patients aren't allowed visitors, so the doctor or nurse is the last person they'll see.

"Say a 30-, 35-year-old individual comes into the hospital, just had a cough for a week and now they can't breathe, and I have to go up and tell them, 'I probably have to intubate you right now. So talk to whoever you want to talk to because once we sedate you, once we put the tube in, there's no guarantee we can take the tube out,' because we haven't seen anyone so far come out from this."

That, he says, is what weighs on doctors and nurses on the front lines more than the numbers, more than the lack of personal protective equipment, it's seeing those patients in their final moments.

"People are not recovering at a rate that you would hope and you don't have adequate treatment yet," he said. "The hope is that's gonna come, but until we have that, patients are getting sicker, staying sick, and it's serious."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo stated bluntly that every possible scenario for the virus's spread sees hospital capacity overwhelmed, so getting more beds is a priority. That means increasing capacity from 53,000 beds to 140,000 beds statewide.

Hossain welcomes efforts to increase capacity and provide more supplies. He points out that woven into the monumental struggle facing health-care workers is the resignation that many will get sick with the very illness they're trying to treat.

"It just seems inevitable to us. But we're doing the job because this is what we signed up for."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/covid-19- ... -1.5511026

And an exponential rise in infections.

[felix dakat]

Ever since President Trump came into office, a record high turnover and unfilled jobs have emptied offices across wide sections of the federal bureaucracy. Now, current and former administration officials and disaster experts say the coronavirus has exposed those failings as never before and left parts of the federal government unprepared and ill equipped for what may be the largest public health crisis in a century.

Source: NYT

[Karpel Tunnel]

Coronavirus is at worst, a bad flu, nothing more.

I have most likely just recovered from it. They stopped testing where I am so I just treated it myself at home. It was a flu, in my case, not an especially bad one. Some of the symptoms were new for me, not worse, just different. I don't quite get the hysteria, it also seems like the economic effects are going to be enormous, which will lead to deaths and suffering also. It seems a cut off your nose to spite your face type of thing. I honestly cannot say where one should draw the line with the measures taken, but this seems an overreaction. We are trying to prevent problems by creating a sure thing problems perhaps for everyone. It also disturbs me how fast freedoms are being taken away. Now one could argue this is temporary and they will come back, but we should be very wary.

I did use a lot of alternative medicine on the thing, so pehaps I made it milder.

On the other hand :

Dr. Tanzib Hossain is working on the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City. He is seeing first-hand the devastating impact it's having on patients and the monumental challenges facing the health-care system.

Elided

I found what you quoted very unclear about what actually is happening at a statistical level. There's no question lots of people are getting sick. The issue is whether the measures being taken are effective in stopping the spread of the disease, whether the measures are warrented given the potential effects on the economy. Right now people freak out when they get sick and many of them rush to emergency rooms. The percentages, which Gloominary posted, are still fairly low for most people and even people over 80 stand something like an 83% chance of surviving. People can self-quarantine if they are in vulnerable categories. I don't see what you quoted as

on the other hand.

Nothing you wrote surprises me or contradicts my concerns, nor contradicts anything I wrote. As I specifically wrote, I do not know exactly what measures should be taken. My sense is that a hysteria has been created and more discussion of the cost of current measures should be considered and not considered taboo. I know from Italian friends the situation in Northern Italy which is much worse than in new york so far. I am not denying those effects. The 2012-2013 flu season killed 56,000 people in the US. This will likely be worse, but that was barely blinked over.

Governments are taking powers in a variety of ways, some extremely intrusive. In Germany I have friends, a married couple, who are not allowed to walk in the woods together. They have to keep a non-conversational distance from each other. The government has also set up ways to monitor people's movements there. There are similar types of measures being taken in other countries.

Governments very reluctantly give up powers once they have them. The Patriot act is pushing 20 years old. Government surveillance has survived both Snowdon and Wikileaks.

What will the economic effects of this be? Whatever they are, they will hit the poor much harder than anyone else. They will hit the Third World harder than another else. Those effects will also likely lead to new government powers.

I am skeptical about how those with power view measures and weigh them when those measures increase their power.

That doctors in NYC are seeing some unnamed amount of patients and that these patients are experiencing unreported levels of mortality don't change any of that for me.

I find it interesting that the distribution of masks was frowned upon in the US, for example. In Asia that was seen as an acceptable response. Get this: the reason given is that it is only helpful if you are sick for the protection of others. Well, gee. Given that nearly every virus is contagious before symptomatic - often it is only a day or two, but still - there is absolutely no reason to discourage this. Given the way the virus spreads right now it seems likely the the contagious period with Corona may be longer pre-symptom. Yet this measure was actually discouraged. For no reason.

I also occasional announcements about the lack of scienctific evidence for alternative medicine. Well, duh. There is no evidence for anything in relation to a new strain.

But things like garlic are proven to have anti-viral effects in general, but no, various agencies spent time arguing against the use of a very cheap known anti-viral.

Did they say anything about all the people emptying shelves of over the counter medications that drop fevers and reduce muscle aches.

No.

Silence.

Anyone know what a fever is for?

It's part of the body's way of fighting viruses.

Silence.

Millions of people buy these anti-immflamtories which will, I repeat, will reduce their bodies' immune response
and silence.

And lo, a study in Europe has shown that some younger people who take those over the counter medications suffered worse illnesses. Silence.


This isn't rocket science. People know what fevers are for, but the general public is often quite ignorant of such things.

Why no warnings to only use in cases of dangerously high fevers.

Why are responses that are not corporate/mainstream medicine attacked, when cheap alternatives would at least have done no harm and there is evidence that in general a number of alternative treatments can reduce viral symptoms and shorten illnesses.

These are the people who love the drug war and the war on terror.