{"id":1466,"date":"2020-08-20T20:56:07","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T20:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2020-08-20T20:56:07","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T20:56:07","slug":"bait-switch-how-theyve-changed-the-covid-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/?p=1466","title":{"rendered":"Bait-&-Switch: How they\u2019ve changed the Covid conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

written by Kit Knightly<\/a><\/p>\n

It was supposed to be about life and death, but for weeks now we\u2019re only hearing about cases<\/i><\/b>\"bait_n_switch_covid.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Do you remember five months ago? Normally I wouldn\u2019t ask, but the world is moving incredibly fast these days.<\/p>\n

Do you remember that it was predicted that covid19 would kill literally millions of people<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Do you remember that hospitals were going to be over-run with patients and our struggling medical infrastructure was going to collapse under their weight?<\/p>\n

Do you remember that locking down global society was the only way to prevent this disaster? That we had to do it, regardless of how much damage it did to the livelihoods and security of countless millions of people?<\/p>\n

Final question \u2013 do you know how many people in the United Kingdom officially died with (not of) the coronavirus yesterday?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 12.<\/p>\n

Twelve people<\/a>. You probably didn\u2019t hear about that, because sometime in the last five weeks or so the media completely stopped using the word \u201cdeaths\u201d, and started talking only about \u201ccases\u201d.<\/p>\n

A \u201ccase\u201d is anyone who tests positive for Sars-Cov-2, using the notoriously unreliable PCR tests<\/a> which produce huge numbers of false positives.<\/p>\n

Even supposing the positive test is real, the vast majority of \u201ccases\u201d are asymptomatic. Between false positives, unreliable tests and asymptomatic infection, a \u201ccase\u201d count for sars-cov-2 is borderline meaningless.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say there are symptoms AND a positive test, and assume they\u2019re not just a false positive who has a cold or the flu. Well, even the vast majority of the \u201csymptomatic cases\u201d will only ever be mildly ill. In fact of the 6 million active cases in the world, only 1% are considered severely ill. The majority of them will survive.<\/p>\n

The CDC estimates the infection fatality ratio of Sars-Cov-2 to be about 0.26%. A number perfectly in line with severe flu seasons. Virtually every country in Europe is now reporting average, or even below average<\/a>, mortality.<\/p>\n

Broadly speaking, the vast majority of the world is, and will likely remain, absolutely fine.<\/p>\n

But things aren\u2019t going back to normal, are they? In fact, they are getting worse. The governments have got their foot in the door, and they have no intention of moving it.<\/p>\n

Masks are now mandatory in the UK, and Australia, and New Zealand, and Germany and France<\/a>. And many others. The Democrat\u2019s nominee for President, Joe Biden, has said they should be mandatory in the US as well.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s talk of \u201clocal lockdown\u201d in Birmingham, because of a \u201csudden increase in cases\u201d<\/a>, but we get no details on the numbers are, or if that\u2019s translating into any kind illness, let alone deaths.<\/p>\n

The same for Oldham, which is on the brink of a \u201ccatastrophic lockdown<\/a>\u201d thanks to its infection rate of 83 people per 100,000. (Oldham has a population of about 250,000, so that\u2019s about 200 cases.)<\/p>\n

Actually, over the last week the UK\u2019s covid death count has reduced by over 5000, thanks to a review which removed duplicates and mistakes<\/a> (which OffG predicted would happen months ago). The case count is bloated by at least 30,000 duplicates too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In New Zealand, the patron saint of coronavirus Jacinda Ardern has just postponed next months general election<\/a>. It\u2019s only a month, for now. But what if there\u2019s a \u201csecond wave\u201d in October and they have to postpone it again? Regardless, the precedent is set.<\/p>\n

New Zealand has had 1600 cases, total, in 5 months. They haven\u2019t had a reported death since May<\/a>. But their country is on lockdown and their democracy on hold.<\/p>\n

Oh, and they\u2019re shipping positive tests (and their families) off to \u201cquarantine centres<\/a>\u201d, where if you refuse to be tested, you will be detained indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Australia is locking down cities, even imposing curfews, based on 450 deaths.<\/p>\n

Every day there are more<\/a> and more<\/a> articles discussing the need for mandatory vaccination, or something even worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And everywhere the language is changing. \u201cThe New Normal\u201d was about beating Covid19, but now it\u2019s about<\/a> \u201ccovid19 and future pandemics\u201d, or the \u201cother colossal challenges facing humanity\u201d\u2026.which can mean literally anything they want it to mean.<\/p>\n

All this is based on the ever-increasing number of cases, without any reference to the fact deaths are falling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All the way through those of us calling for a measured, proportional response were abused or ignored. The numbers have shown we were right, but that doesn\u2019t matter now. They scared people into giving them the power, then they set the precedent for using that power, and there\u2019s no reason to think they will ever stop.<\/p>\n

It used to be about \u201cdeaths\u201d, now it\u2019s about \u201ccases\u201d. It used to be about coronavirus, next time it will be about something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

written by Kit Knightly It was supposed to be about life and death, but for weeks now we\u2019re only hearing about cases Do you remember five months ago? Normally I wouldn\u2019t ask, but the world is moving incredibly fast these days. Do you remember that it was predicted that covid19 would kill literally millions of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions\/1467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}