Confirmed: COVID HOAX

[james03]

USA Annual flu cases:

2016/2017:  29 MIL.
17/18:  45 MIL.
18/19:  36 MIL.
19/20:  38 MIL.
20/21:  0.0015 MIL, that's 1,500 total.

COVID cases, 2020/2021:  32 MIL.

Don't get the darn vaccine.  This is a hoax.

[Prayerful]

100%.

[Miriam_M]

USA Annual flu cases:

20/21:  0.0015 MIL, that's 1,500 total.

COVID cases, 2020/2021:  32 MIL.

It sounds to me (has sounded to me) as if Covid is simply a variant of influenza:  fever, aches & pains, cough, fatigue.

So, no "conspiracy theory" citations, here:  This is from the Government of California's public health website:

It is hard to tell the difference between them [Covid and flu] without testing.

Cases of COVID-19 and flu can have anything from no symptoms (asymptomatic) to severe symptoms. Common symptoms that COVID-19 and flu share include:

• Fever or chills
• Cough
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Fatigue (tiredness)
• Sore throat
• Runny or stuffy nose
• Muscle pain or body aches
• Headache
• Vomiting and diarrhea (more common in children than adults)

https://covid19.ca.gov/symptoms-and-risks/

The site also claims that flu and Covid are caused by different viruses, but the government has been lying about so much that it's hard to believe that the Covid virus is not simply a new generation of the influenza virus, artificially experimented with and enhanced in a Wuhan lab.

And the same people at highest risk of complications/death from Covid are the same people at highest risk of complications/death from flu: weak immune systems -- often the elderly, but not always; some older people have far better immune systems than certain children, adolescents, and young adults--  and co-morbidities. 

IOW, this should have been treated with, and still should be treated with and regarded as a routine seasonal flu syndrome which is, every year, a global "pandemic."  Every year, many older people die from influenza.  Not news.  Not an emergency.  Not an excuse to destroy people's economic lives.

Has every government on the globe gone effeminate?

[TradGranny]

USA Annual flu cases:

2016/2017:  29 MIL.
17/18:  45 MIL.
18/19:  36 MIL.
19/20:  38 MIL.
20/21:  0.0015 MIL, that's 1,500 total.

COVID cases, 2020/2021:  32 MIL.

Don't get the darn vaccine.  This is a hoax.

I would love to have the original source for this, in order to be able to pass it on,

[Prayerful]

USA Annual flu cases:

2016/2017:  29 MIL.
17/18:  45 MIL.
18/19:  36 MIL.
19/20:  38 MIL.
20/21:  0.0015 MIL, that's 1,500 total.

COVID cases, 2020/2021:  32 MIL.

Don't get the darn vaccine.  This is a hoax.

I would love to have the original source for this, in order to be able to pass it on,

Yes, just those crisp numbers, although the actual numbers are a range, not a fixed number.

Wikipedia stats show that, and this CDC page that from Oct to April 2019-20 there were up to 56 million symptomatic cases (39,000,000 – 56,000,000
flu illnesses).

[Jayne]

A bunch of raw numbers like this does not confirm that Covid is a hoax or address the claims that are being made about it. 

The claim is that, even though the majority of people are fine, a small percentage need to be hospitalized and/or put in ICU.  And because there are asymptomatic carriers (the numbers we have only represent symptomatic cases and probably miss a lot of the mildly symptomatic ones) and because it is new, it is very highly contagious.  That means that the very small percentage is enough to overwhelm hospitals.  When that happens everybody who requires hospitalization receives inadequate care.

The stated rationale for public health measures is to stop/slow the chain of transmission in order to protect those who are vulnerable (the old, immune-compromised, diabetic, obese, etc) and to preserve hospital function.  Saying that it is a relatively mild disease in most people or that the absolute numbers are comparable to flu does not show that this reasoning is incorrect.

Straw man arguments do not prove anything. 

[james03]

Find the missing flu cases or the numbers prove everything.

And there is a balance.  Do we destroy peoples lives, i.e. the young poor, because of influenza?  Do we devalue the currency and drive up prices that hurt the poor the most due to influenza?  Do we scare little kids and force them to wear muzzles due to influenza?

[james03]

The source was a Vox Day article.  He didn't provide a cite, but I found the previous year numbers matched the Wikipedia "estimate" column.  I didn't find a listing for 20/21.

A USA Today article lists 136 total flu hospitalizations and 292 flu related deaths.  I'm guessing flu related deaths are a mix of hospital deaths and old people who didn't go to the hospital.

Anyhow, if you ratio 136 hospitalizations for 20/21, to a "typical" 500,000, and use that ratio for cases, you get around 12,000 for total cases.  Still a rounding error.  I'd do some more research, but basically every article says the same thing: the flu disappeared during 20/21.  So I'm not spending the effort. 

[james03]

[Jayne]

Find the missing flu cases or the numbers prove everything.

If Covid is more contagious than flu (which is what we expect since Covid is a new disease)  then, of course, when the viruses compete with each other to infect hosts, Covid wins.  People get Covid rather than flu. 

And there is a balance.  Do we destroy peoples lives, i.e. the young poor, because of influenza?  Do we devalue the currency and drive up prices that hurt the poor the most due to influenza?  Do we scare little kids and force them to wear muzzles due to influenza?

Call it flu if you like. It does not especially matter what one calls this disease, if it is, in fact, causing the medical system to collapse.  When the hospitals stop functioning that hurts the young, the poor, and everybody else.  Stopping the chain of transmission in order to prevent this is a perfectly reasonable goal. 

Politicians tend to do things more for the sake of looking like they're doing something, rather than figuring out and implementing the most effective strategies, so some measures are really dumb.  Where I am the government just closed the parks, a stupid move that gets the science backwards.  But there are any number of things that could reduce spread of Covid that do not harm the economy or make things worse.  Wearing masks is one of them and yet that is one of your favorite targets for criticism and mockery.

My grandchildren (whom I assume are typical) are not scared by masks.  They, as children usually do, adjusted to the change quickly and take masks for granted. 

[mikemac]

Clearly not a hoax when you consider the health system in Ontario is already compromised.

Ontario government asks other provinces, territories to send nurses as COVID-19 cases surge
https://globalnews.ca/news/7763405/ontario-coronavirus-covid-19-nurse-shortage/

[Prayerful]

Clearly not a hoax when you consider the health system in Ontario is already compromised.

Ontario government asks other provinces, territories to send nurses as COVID-19 cases surge
https://globalnews.ca/news/7763405/ontario-coronavirus-covid-19-nurse-shortage/

Doug Ford just wants to show he's an authoritarian good boy. I think little of these reports. There's a flu variant, maybe improved in a Wuhan lab. That's it.

[Heinrich]

Clearly not a hoax when you consider the health system in Ontario is already compromised.

Ontario government asks other provinces, territories to send nurses as COVID-19 cases surge
https://globalnews.ca/news/7763405/ontario-coronavirus-covid-19-nurse-shortage/

I don't know, Mike. It sounds similar 14 month running Chicken Little talk to me. If that is an MSM Canadian channel, then the story itself is more useless than the back end oil of a walrus.

[james03]

Did they check these "COVID" cases for influenza virus?   We know the answer.

USA numbers for COVID was 32 million.  And COVID + Flu was 32 million, or 32.012 million.  That is on the low side historically.

Basically the press is amping up the hype so people will dutifully get the vax passport and later the microchip in their hand or forehead.

If Covid is more contagious than flu (which is what we expect since Covid is a new disease)  then, of course, when the viruses compete with each other to infect hosts, Covid wins.  People get Covid rather than flu.

So now COVID innoculates you from flu?  Well in that case a regular flu vaccine will protect you, right?  But it doesn't work that way.  But I'm not convinced SARS-2 is more infectious than flu.  The US had a low flu+COVID number.

It's all hype, and may even convince someone with an auto-immune disease to experiment with a vaccine.   Even though fatality rates are absurdly low.

[Jayne]

Did they check these "COVID" cases for influenza virus?   We know the answer.

USA numbers for COVID was 32 million.  And COVID + Flu was 32 million, or 32.012 million.  That is on the low side historically.

Basically the press is amping up the hype so people will dutifully get the vax passport and later the microchip in their hand or forehead.

Your baseless speculation does not prove anything.  You have not confirmed a hoax and you are not even looking at the right things that might show a hoax if there were one.

If Covid is more contagious than flu (which is what we expect since Covid is a new disease)  then, of course, when the viruses compete with each other to infect hosts, Covid wins.  People get Covid rather than flu.

So now COVID innoculates you from flu?  Well in that case a regular flu vaccine will protect you, right?  But it doesn't work that way.  But I'm not convinced SARS-2 is more infectious than flu.  The US had a low flu+COVID number.

It is possible to get both, just rare.  It is not innoculation.  Once people get Covid, they isolate themselves which then protects them from flu.  It is not just the US which had this phenomenon.  Here is an article discussing the science involved: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3 Note that colds have gone down too.  Are you going to claim now that Covid is really the common cold?  Or maybe all three diseases are really just one thing?

It's all hype, and may even convince someone with an auto-immune disease to experiment with a vaccine.   Even though fatality rates are absurdly low.

If you are talking about me, I am not planning on getting the vaccine until there is a lot more research about how it interacts with auto-immune disorders. I don't base decisions on hype.  At any rate, the official policy around here does not even tell people in this situation to get the vaccine.  They say discuss with your doctor (obviously for an individualized risk-benefit calculation.)

But the fatality rates are not the issue and never have been.  It is all about chain of transmission and health care collapse.  If you keep going on about fatality rates, then you just lose credibility.