By Samuel Strait – September 14, 2020 When I returned from vacation in early March 2020, I was greeted with the hysterical refrain from nearly every news outfit that the end of the world was upon us. At the end of that month, we were told that if we only followed the edicts of various state and local governments that in fifteen days we would flatten the curve and our medical facilities would not be over run. Before the edicts even took hold on the US population we were told by most media and our state and local governments that millions would die and the world as we knew it would change to a mask wearing, antisocial distancing, and hermit like existence for all. For months we were told to obey as hospitalizations and deaths declined in numbers as clear evidence that maybe the story we had been told was not what it really was. We spent much of the summer of 2020 in a quasi state of "we are following the science, and the numbers show us another wave is coming". Fall is here and the second wave never materialized. Now, we continue to be a mask wearing, antisocial distancing, hermit like society, because the second second wave is still coming and the deaths are to be in the millions once again. In all this time I have not once heard about the "science" that is driving all this fear mongering only "numbers". It is as if they somehow explain why we are staying at home when real science has disputed such behavior, maske wearing when multiple studies have shown this practice is actually detrimental to your health without proper training, and antisocial distancing which has no scientific basis what so ever. Perhaps it might just be time to take a hard look at "the numbers" rather than science that seem to guide every edict that governors, particularly those on the west coast, are using to justify our current state of dysfunction. As with most people in the US, it is quite easy to get caught up in the hysterical numbers about Covid-19 and fall into a lemming like state of subservience, ignoring the clear inconsistencies that crop up in the reporting of such numbers. A recent example of those inconsistencies is a report out of the ever reliable CDC now telling us they can only confirm about six percent of the reported 198,848(as of 9/14/2020) deaths as that of from Covid-19. A full 90% of those infected are at nearly zero risk of transmitting the virus to others from a New York Times article. And finally, only about 2% of the US population has been tested positive for the virus. Okay, it doesn't sound quite as bad as it has been made to seem by our ever reliable media. We in the US spend about one billion dollars per day on testing for Covid-19. Must be pretty nice for all those people with stock in "Testing Companies". There is clear evidence that testing has not been exactly all that reliable. If certain questions were posed based on an alarming number of reported infections, how certain would the "numbers" used by our current state dictators to enact policies such as we currently are experiencing fare? Questions like: "How many of the current tests are from people that have been tested positive multiple times?" "How many false positives continue to be listed as confirmed Covid-19 cases?" "How many people that have not been tested, yet are informed they have been tested are included in the confirmed cases numbers?" "How many people have been included as positive cases due to bureaucratic error?" I do not think that there is any question that a significant number of cases, particularly here in the US, that are represented in the CDC/John Hopkins numbers are not actual numbers that should be counted. When we subtract those numbers from the totals claimed, how much sense does it make for Governor Newsom to be basing his actions purely on compromised numbers of Covid-19 cases? Unfortunately for Governor Newsom the troubles for using Covid-19 infections based on testing do not end there. Indications are that most testing is based on discovery of corona antibodies in the subject's sample. It also has been revealed that the most common test used, manipulates the numbers of commonly found antibodies by up to 1000 times in order to get a positive result. And the hits keep coming. It seems, it also has been reported that Covid-19 antibodies cannot be distinguished from other corona antibodies such as the common cold, another corona virus. The CDC has confirmed that a record low in common cold infections since the CDC began keeping track of such infections occurred between October 2019 and March of 2020. Should that also be factored into the "numbers" being used to lockdown, face mask, and social distance us all? I don't know the answers to these questions, but it seems that there is a whole lot more going on than "health and safety". Perhaps it is past time for these and other questions to be asked? Maybe someone from the "end of the world" crowd might step up and enlighten us all. Just some thoughts on "real" numbers.