Free Republic

In the saga of the virus and the lockdown, the wisdom of the crowds, that is the wisdom of each of us, was thwarted by bad data, perhaps intentionally bad. On the other hand, the ersatz wisdom of the collective bureaucracy in federal, state and local health agencies was based on crafted data. In the end data didn’t matter, as the bureaucracies were more concerned with their natural territorial imperative, which is to rule and control. The most frightening aspect of the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) epidemic in the US is that it brought about exaggeratedly heightened fear of death. That fear,...

Memorial Day stories in the Associated Press and the New York Times each claim that the U.S. death toll from the Wuhan COVID-19 virus is approaching 100,000. AP says it’s “nearly 100,000.” The Times, dramatically invoking language reminiscent of the Iraq War, says that “America is fast approaching a grim milestone … of 100,000 lives lost.” The AP directly cites Johns Hopkins’ COVID Dashboard as its data source. The Times also uses the Dashboard’s data, but rarely acknowledges it. Following these two outlets’ lead, hundreds, if not thousands, of establishment media outlets and leftist platforms act as if the JH...

New York state saw its coronavirus death toll drop below 100 on Saturday for the first time in months. Governor Andrew Cuomo and health officials announced Saturday that the hardest hit state in the country recorded 84 daily deaths tied to the coronavirus as of May 22, marking the first fall below 100 daily deaths since the pandemic began in March. The governor noted this number is "still a tragedy, no doubt," but said it showed massive improvement from the tens of thousands of total deaths recorded over the last two months. Cuomo also said hospitalizations and new cases are...

In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). On Jan. 22, 2019, the 46th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion on demand, the governors of both New York and Illinois signed laws to extend and promote abortion. As he signed the Reproductive Health Act into law, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described it as the “evolution” of humankind in America. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed an executive order to ensure taxpayer funding of abortions, saying that it would make his state “the most progressive … in terms of...

Italy’s coronavirus death toll in March and April could be nearly 19,000 higher than the official figure of 32,000, the national social security agency said Thursday. The Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale (INPS), the largest social security and welfare institute in Italy, said in a new study that the official death figures were not “reliable”, according to AFP. Its study showed that 156,42 total deaths were recorded in Italy in March and April, which is 46,909 higher than the average number of fatalities in those months recorded between 2015 and 2019. But only 27,938 deaths linked to coronavirus were reported...

Editor's Note: Timothy Craig Allen, MD, JD, contributed to this column.Over 86,500 people have reportedly died in the United States from the Coronavirus, and the fear generated by those deaths is driving the public policy debate. But that number is a dramatic overcount. Our metrics include deaths that have nothing to do with the virus. The problem is even worse as the Centers for Disease Control over counts even some of these cases and the government has created financial incentives for this misreporting. Relying on these flawed numbers is destroying businesses and jobs and costing lives. “The case definition is...

(Source: G. Girvan / FREOPP; Graphic: A. Roy / FREOPP)A new study by reveled that 39% of all US coronavirus deaths occurred in nursing homes. That comes out to 31,900 Deaths in Nursing Homes! That is a really shocking number!49,895 deaths were outside of nursing homes. Which is what you might expect from a typical flu season.Italy also saw 40% of their coronavirus deaths in nursing homes. Nursing Homes & Assisted Living Facilities Account for 39% of U.S. COVID-19 Deaths https://t.co/rD6nl7ppuq pic.twitter.com/FbZpCWby3m— Andrew Bostom (@andrewbostom) May 12, 2020 At least 4,900 seniors have died in New York State nursing...

Washington — One of the leading models for measuring the impact of the coronavirus is now projecting a total of 137,184 cumulative COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. through the beginning of August, an increase of roughly 2,700 deaths from its previous forecast May 4. Christopher Murray, the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, predicted the number of cases to particularly increase in areas where people become more mobile. "What's driving the change is, simply put, the rise in mobility, and that's the key driver," Murray said on "Face the Nation" on...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s delayed response to the coronavirus pandemic may turn out to be the most consequential failure in the country. Not only does the New York City area skew America’s overall numbers when it comes to coronavirus cases and deaths, but recent genetic studies suggest that New York also served as a hub for the spread of the virus across the United States. New research reported in The New York Times indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the United States before the city instituted social distancing requirements...

People on social media are again questioning numbers around coronavirus cases our country. There are claims the CDC inflated the number of coronavirus deaths, to make the virus appear worse than it seems. People have concerns about COVID-19 deaths because the numbers are staggering. Some argue, someone's death could be counted as COVID-19, when they actually died from something else. However, the CDC breaks down how deaths should be accounted for. Debates have been circulating on social media that COVID-19 deaths are being undercounted, while some—even our country’s top officials— argue COVID-19 deaths are being inflated to make the pandemic...

Most Americans say they doubt the U.S. death count — but whether they think it's actually higher or lower depends on whether they're Democrats or Republicans, according to the latest installment of the Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index.Why it matters: This may be the most jarring evidence to date about just how deeply partisanship has infected our collective ability to trust institutional sources and agree on science and facts. Trust in government is abstract, but death counts are real. People whose primary news source is the Fox News channel are most likely to say that U.S. deaths attributed to coronavirus are inflated....

In order to analyze the development and mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic, we naturally look back to the most prominent global pandemic of modern times: the Spanish flu of 1918. The virus wreaked havoc around the world a century ago, leaving tens of millions of dead bodies in its wake, including more than half a million Americans at a time when our population was less than a third of today’s level. While it is reasonable to acknowledge the broad fact that even more lives would have been lost had it not been for social distancing interventions in 1918, as we...

ATLANTA (Gray News) – America’s flu season continues to ebb even as COVID-19 cases increase, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lab-confirmed flu cases are now low, but the CDC believes that’s because fewer people are going to doctors because of the coronavirus outbreak. Overall flu-like activity is lower than a week ago but is still elevated. “The percent of deaths associated with pneumonia and influenza is above the epidemic threshold,” the agency said Friday. “The increase is due to an increase in pneumonia deaths rather than influenza deaths and likely reflects COVID-19 activity.” The severity of...

The mainstream media inundate the American public on a daily basis with the coronavirus's death toll in flashy headlines in an attempt to criticize the Trump administration' response.  While reporting on the increasing death toll daily, progressive and mainstream outlets make disingenuous comparisons to death tolls in past wars and catastrophes.  MSNBC'S Morning Joe reported that the virus will "kill more Americans than were killed in Iraq, Afghanistan."  Vox posted that "the coronavirus has now killed more people in the U.S. than the 9/11 terror attacks."  The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, and many other outlets gleefully reported that the U.S. coronavirus death toll...

Earlier this week President Trump was asked why the death toll from the coronavirus in the United States is so high relative to our percentage of the world population. Trump responded by casting doubt on the official numbers released by some other countries. “Does anybody really believe the numbers of some of these countries?” he said. It’s not the first time he has suggested China’s death toll is “a little bit on the light side.” Today, China revised the death toll in Wuhan upward by 50 percent. Officials in Wuhan, where the virus was first reported late last year,...

"It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes." It may have been Stalin and it may have been Napoleon. It may have been Boss Tweed. Regardless of the original source, this truism describes government corruption and manipulation to perfection. Even in the face of a global pandemic and an unprecedented government-ordered economic shutdown, politicians are using their power to corrupt vital needed data regarding the Chinese coronavirus and its deadly toll on Americans. The latest escapade comes from America's "ground zero" for COVID-19 infections, New York, where the death tally just surpassed 10,000....

Grassfire reports: "According to data obtained from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics Mortality Surveillance System website, total U.S. deaths for the first three weeks of March are DOWN 10% from the average of the prior four years for the same three week period. The average for weeks 9 through 11 for the four prior years was a total of 170,555 deaths. For weeks 9 through 11 this year, the total is 153,015, meaning 17,540 fewer people died in America during the first three weeks of March than could be reasonably expected. And the gap between historic deaths and...

Are we overreacting to Coronavirus? The answer is hell yeah! At this time, the United States is seeing what very well may be the peak in deaths from the latest human Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. The media reporting and governmental response to this viral outbreak are unprecedented. But what is more concerning than the virus itself is our American collective response to it. It is no less than tragic. If it is not seen for what it is, it very well may mean the end of the American experiment and will lead to new totalitarianism that will harm and...

Donald Trump's top advisors have expressed doubts about the accuracy of the White House's apocalyptic forecast that 240,000 Americans will die from the coronavirus pandemic, sources have said. As the US death reached 6,056 Thursday and the nation's healthcare system buckles under the crisis, administration officials said the stark forecasts could have been a tactic to warn the president he needs to act now. The White House made the shock prediction Tuesday that there will be between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths in the US if the nation continues on its trajectory and current social distancing guidelines are maintained. Trump said...

A few points, right off the top: First, the US response to coronavirus has been poor in some aspects, better in others, and is complicated by an uneven patchwork of state and local policies. Some of the failures can be laid at the feet of the federal government -- including within both the Trump administration and previous administrations -- while other levels of government also have mistakes to answer for. Second, whenever you see a graph purporting to demonstrate that America's reaction to the pandemic has been the worst in the world, proceed with extreme skepticism. Some of these graphics...