The COVID Data Doesn't Match the Hype

For the last several weeks, we have heard nothing but doom and gloom from the media and the left when it comes to the spread of COVID-19’s latest threat, the Delta Variant. The variant, which began spreading in India late last year, has increased transmission rates over previous versions of the virus and has spread throughout the United States over the course of the last several months. The media, which has spun this as a red state spread (for the record, it is spreading equally as fast in blue states) has conveniently forgotten that of the top 5 states for COVID deaths per capita, 4 of them are deep blue states.

Early on in the pandemic, images of field hospitals and other mitigation efforts spread across the internet, only for us to find out later that many of them went completely unused. Cute little bite-sized narrative boosters like “14 days to flatten the curve” (presumably to help hospitals not get overwhelmed) suddenly morphed into “stay home until there’s a vaccine,” to “get the vaccine to get back to normal,” to what is suddenly some hodgepodge of everyone can get anyone sick regardless of vaccination status. There really isn’t any information that the CDC or NIH has released at any point, that hasn’t been contradicted by future directives, within sometimes as little as a few days.

This makes this less about “scientific” decisions and more about the appearance of action, rather than the quality of the actions themselves. In fact, if you think about the numerous directives issued by St. Fauci, most of them have been contradicted by directives of some previous version of St. Fauci. First, he was against masks, then he was for them, and then he justified being against them as that he was lying to us so there wasn’t a rush on masks. Emails Fauci sent in 2020 show that he didn’t believe that masks were effective, but then suggests the “science changed.” He later admitted he wore a mask for optics. None of those decisions sounds scientific at all, and there is nothing scientific about “optics.”

Which leaves us with a very difficult quandary: If Fauci openly admits that he made poor decisions with poor information (by stating he didn’t understand the virus when he made his original mask comments), what should inspire any confidence that he suddenly understands the virus now? When we have watched numerous elected officials speak of doom and gloom, only to then go violate their own directives, that certainly leaves people to question just how severe this really is.

Currently, there’s another media-driven narrative that our hospitals are reaching capacity (here, here, here) but again, the data just doesn’t support that. If you remember, last year we talked about hospital capacity issues, the pandemic’s levels were extremely high.

An examination of the Daily New Cases in the US shows that yes, we have had a significant increase in cases over the course of the last few weeks, however, those cases are already beginning to decrease. Additionally, those cases never made it to previously seen levels, which again, the left would want to attribute to the vaccine, however, 40% of new hospitalizations in the UK have been vaccinated. I would love to use US numbers on the issue but the US doesn’t even collect data for breakthrough cases. It is only empty rhetoric we are served and told to bow at the feet of people who can’t even collect the data to prove their points.

Daily Cases in the US as of 8/11/2021

The issue really becomes clear when we consider the data of new deaths in the US. Again, deaths already appear to be plateauing and declining, however, the number doesn’t even come close to previous spikes in COVID-19 numbers. Now, while I would like to review the breakthrough data for deaths, the US Government does not record that data. In late June 2021 and across the pond in the UK, 29% of all COVID-19 deaths had both shots.

In full disclosure, the AstraZeneca vaccine available in the UK is different than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines here in the United States.Daily Deaths in the US as of 8/11/2021

Yet, no one questions how poor government policy, compounded with media panic reporting, may be contributing to the problem. It is clear that the above numbers are nowhere near what they were just last year, yet the panic level has never been higher. How can both cases and deaths be lower than previous peaks, while hospitals are at capacity? I am sure it has nothing to do with hospitals lowering their benchmark for hospitalization as a result of being fully reimbursed by the government for treating COVID-19.

How can it simultaneously be possible that our government’s scientific advisors are developing “the best” policy suggestions with “scientific data” yet fail to collect the data that would give a more complete picture? Would vaccine effectiveness (beyond the reported statistics from the manufacturer) not be something they would want to independently verify, especially as they move towards full FDA approval?

I don’t present this info as means to discount the death and sickness that has occurred across this country, rather simply a means of questioning our government officials who claim to be working with “the best data.” It simply doesn’t match the hype.

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