Thomas Lifson's 10/26/2020 informative post detailed how Europe is now experiencing a second wave of COVID deaths. The American mainstream media echoed the claim about the COVID spike in Europe and are also claiming that a similar one is happening in the USA based mostly on increased positive tests. However, that trend correlates closely with the increased testing.
Unbiased COVID-19 data for this analysis was found in an interactive chart from Our World in Data. Their COVID-19 data uses a seven-day moving average of daily deaths per million people to make it easier to compare trends for large and small countries. I selected data for the USA and several individual European countries that posted a significant second wave trend starting around September. The data in Chart 1 below clearly show that all these countries experienced a major spike in deaths from March to mid-April and confirm the second surge in Europe. However, evidence of a similar surge in the U.S. is not clear. The U.S. trend since the middle of June did not go as low and stayed relatively flat. I am not sure about the data from elsewhere, but I suspect that the U.S. numbers are inflated (+25%) due to the many deaths reported with COVID being counted the same as those confirmed to have died from COVID.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the initial hysteria focused on Italy because it got infected first due to hosting thousands of visitors from China for the latter's Belt and Road initiative. However, highest per capita deaths were actually in relatively small Belgium. From July through September, average daily deaths for most European countries remained under 1 per million, while the U.S. never got below 2. At the time, it looked as though the pandemic was over for Europe,
HERE IS A SECOND CHART
Some of the same data from Chart 1 in the above article has been consolidated in Chart 2 below. Sweden and India were added to make a totally different comparison. India is there because of an independent analysis titled "Early treatment with hydroxychloroquine: a country-based analysis." It identified India as an early and widespread user of HCQ. The referenced analysis reviewed "[m]any countries that adopted or declined early treatment with HCQ, effectively forming a large trial with 1.8 billion people in the treatment group and 663 million in the control group." Their analysis found that the countries using HCQ early and extensively had 70.7% lower total deaths. Although India is a relatively poor country and has a less robust medical infrastructure, and its lockdowns and mask mandates were minimal and likely undercounted COVID deaths, its low death trend was consistent with other heavily HCQ-using countries. Additionally, India's over–1 billion population provided a huge sample size.
Note: HCQ and other corticosteroids do not kill the virus. They work by preventing the body's autoimmune system from overreacting (AKA a cytokine storm) and attacking the body instead of the virus. Susceptibility to this type overreaction increases with age. It is the resulting inflammation that is the primary cause of COVID deaths. When the cytokine storm reaction is controlled, antibodies that kill the virus are produced normally. To be effective, HCQ must be administered early, well before severe symptoms develop.
Also included in Chart 2 is the trend for Sweden. Sweden is added because it broke with conventional wisdom and mostly avoided lockdowns and mask mandates. Its initial death counts were as bad as the other countries. However, only Sweden did not experience the second wave, and its average daily death rate as of October 28 reached zero!
“we could have given every American prophylactic HCQ”
AMEN
But Oh No, if Don Trump says it works, it can’t be true! We gotta DIE!