Submitted by Dan Schultz – April 7, 2020 Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned lies, and Statistics." “The numbers are almost meaningless,” (1) — Steve Goodman, MD, MHS, PhD. Stanford University Professor of Epidemiology “With a population of 1.5 billion people, China’s some 80,000 cases look like a rounding error” (1) –Nigam Shah, Stanford University Assistant Professor of Biomedical Statistics at Of course, we can’t trust any of the number we get from China, as they have proved to be consistently deceitful, but one could make the argument that, generally, our government, politicians and policymakers are, too. “99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says,” Bloomberg reports, (2) A recent study released (3) by Italy's national health authority found that nearly everyone who was pronounced dead from COVID-19 was already struggling with serious chronic disease(s). The average age of deaths, 78. “There does not seem to be anything special about this particular epidemic of influenza-like illness.” –Tom Jefferson Epidemiologist, based in Rome. Advisor to the Italian National Agency for Regional Health Services. “Report shows up to 88% of Italy’s alleged COVID 19 deaths could be misattributed. Only 12% of ‘COVID 19 deaths’ actually list COVID 19 as cause. “ (4) (5) How Do They Go About Counting? “The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.” (4) –Prof Walter Ricciardi, MD, PhD, Scientific Adviser to Italy’s Minister of Health (6) This paper, issued from the US National Vital Statistics System, has altered the way deaths are tabulated, with bias (7) “COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. … “However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause.” In other words, the numbers are based expectations and assumptions, not actual verification. This inappropriate method produces inaccurate results Testing No testing Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, M.D published in the New England Journal of Medicine (8) that reported case fatality rates of COVID-19 … are based on case definitions requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia. In other words, diagnosis is symptom based, and pneumonia cases are counted as COVID-19 now. It is a kind of statistical sleight of hand, written/admitted right in the report. Read it for yourself. If you take the time to read scientific papers about COVID-19, they say things like: "our study does not fulfill Koch's postulates" (9) (Koch’s Postulate is the definitive protocol used in science to verify causation.) and "we did not perform tests for detecting infectious virus in blood" (10) Inaccuracy of Tests Test kits are notoriously inaccurate. It is not a binary test and these tests are very subjective with many false positives and false negatives documented. For instance: (Jan 31) A woman returning to Canada from China tested negative while "mildly ill" after arriving in Canada, but later tested positive. (Feb 16) An 83-year old American woman was screened as disease free after leaving a cruise ship but tested positive twice after arrival in Malaysia. Ironically, her husband had pneumonia, but tested negative. Nobody on the ship was sick, nor had travelled to mainland China recently. (Mar 1) Newsweek reported an American man tested negative upon return from Wuhan, China, without any symptoms. But later he was "weakly positive" and was returned to quarantine. Look on the back of the test kits (for COVID-19). Hidden away in the supplementary material of reference [11], where few people will see it, it exposes some important issues with the test. It says: –The test is not binary (negative/positive) and has an arbitrary cutoff. –The quantity of RNA does not correlate with illness. –If negative means uninfected and positive means infected, then people went from infected to uninfected and back again, sometimes several times. Background mortality (12) is the most important statistic to measure the severity of pandemics and no one seems to be talking about it. How many people died in the US, a particular State or County the last few years and compare to how many died this year? I can’t find anyone gathering those numbers. I suspect that won’t make newspaper headlines. Did you keep track the numbers of colds or flu cases that happened in previous years? You didn’t. You didn’t because it would have been relatively meaningless and irrelevant. Just like this year. Counting deaths alone creates fear in people, but by being reminded daily of them we also become a spectator, captivated by the specter. If you just read headlines chances are you’ll know just enough to be mislead – and scared. References: 1. Confirmed Coronavirus Cases Is an ‘Almost Meaningless’ Metric. Bloomberg (LINK) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/confirmed-coronavirus-cases-almost-meaningless-123550415.html 2. Bloomberg News 99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says?fbclid=IwAR2PVA8lJJsduXllEmixWhz74DlQDgIbgDNDgQztBTHF0tt8Yorb93gVipM 3. Report Sulle Caratteristiche Dei Pazienti Deceduti Positivia COVID-19 InItalia Il Presente Report è Basato Sui Dati Aggiornati Al 17 Marzo 2020 https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_17_marzo-v2.pdf 4. Report shows up to 88% of Italy’s alleged COVID 19 deaths could be misattributed Italy: Only 12% of “Covid19 deaths” list Covid19 as cause. March 31, 2020 https://mctxonline.com/blog/2020/03/31/italy-only-12-of-covid19-deaths-list-covid19-as-cause/ 5. Characteristics of COVID-19 patients dying in Italy Report based on available data. March 20th, 2020 https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_20_marzo_eng.pdf 6. World Health Organization Professor Walter Ricciardi (Italy) http://www.euro.who.int/en/data-and-evidence/evidence-informed-policy-making/european-advisory-committee-on-health-research-eachr/committee-members/professor-walter-ricciardi-italy 7. National Vital Statistics System. COVID-19 Alert No. 2March 24, 2020 New ICD code introduced for COVID-19 deaths https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf 8. Anthony S. Fauci N Engl J Med 2020; 382:1268-1269 Covid-19 — Navigating the Uncharted, March 26, 2020 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387 9. Zhu N et al. A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019. N Engl J Med. 2020 Jan 14. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001017 10. Huang C et al. Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Lancet. 2020 Jan 24. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext 11. Young BE et al. Epidemiologic Features and Clinical Course of Patients Infected With SARS-CoV-2 in Singapore. JAMA. 2020 Mar 3. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762688 12. Background Mortality https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8096574 Regards, Dan Schultz Maitreya Mountain Village www.maitreyamountainvillage.com (707) 954-7743