The controllers of the past
For the past few weeks, I start my days with looking at the latest news and statistics about the future of our confinement. Yesterday, the news was good. It appeared that we peaked with new infections and daily deaths. Then this. The daily death rate in the US more than tripled in two days. It went from 1,452 on the 14th to 4,928 on the 16th.
It is clearly not possible, unless there is a meteor strike, an earthquake or terrorists blowing up 15 hospitals at the same time. This was just an adjustment to the statistics. It is all coming from New York. This is how Politico reported it:
“Previously, the city had not counted people who died at home without getting tested for the coronavirus, or who died in nursing homes or at hospitals, but did not have a confirmed positive test result.”
Do not worry, Dr Cuomo, Dr de Blazio and the CDC can fix anything. If no testing was done, if there is no medical confirmation of the cause of death, we can just ‘presume’ that they were caused by the virus.
“Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted last week that the true number of deaths was far higher than the official tally, and said the city would start including presumed coronavirus cases in its data”
Note the term ‘admitted’. It proves that we are looking at investigative journalism at its best. The fearless Erin Durkin must have squeezed the truth out of him.
“Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said […] “As a city, it is part of the healing process to be able to grieve and mourn for all those that have passed because of COVID-19. While these data reflect the tragic impact that the virus has had on our city, they will also help us to determine the scale and scope of the epidemic and guide us in our decisions.”
But how could it? How can ‘presumed’ information be a good guide for decisions with very real consequences? On the same subject, Reuters reported the following:
“New York City’s Health Department said it will now also count any fatality deemed a “probable” coronavirus death, defined as a victim whose “death certificate lists as a cause of death ‘COVID-19’ or an equivalent.” The new approach in New York City could pave the way for similar policies elsewhere across the country, possibly leading to a surge in reported U.S. coronavirus mortality.”
How far can we go with this? How can we allow people to get away with it? How many will notice the most fundamental problems with it? The climate models have a long history of constantly manipulating the charts, changing the assumptions, adjusting the data, but they pale in comparison to these Covid-19 statistics. New York officials added more dead to the statistics in one day than the number that dies there in three weeks! Impressively presented in scary graphs just a day after President Trump announced that things are getting better. The climate change models at least tried a little harder hiding the facts by distributing the ‘presumed’ data points over time. This sort of manipulation should be condemned on the front pages of newspapers for creating this politically motivated unscientific garbage. Instead, the universal tone is more scaremongering. To prove with these numbers that situation is much worse than we thought! The New York Times have at least a bit of honesty in the attribution of the causes:
“The extent of damage from the virus may be greater than we anticipated, and the indirect effects of the virus may be greater than we anticipated,” said Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and professor at Yale Medical School, who is particularly concerned that patients with cardiac conditions are not seeking care because of the fear of being infected with coronavirus. “Meaning that the overall toll is much greater.”
But then it (the NYT) goes on doubling down on the fearmongering, saying that “The recent numbers are most likely an undercount.” The calculation is very simple: Any death during the outbreak that is above the average for the time period MUST be attributed to the virus. None should be attributed to the mismanagement of the response, to the exaggerated message to the public or to the devastating effects of the lock-down. As long as we can keep up the fear, we can justify the political power grabs, the controls and the surveillance. Never mind the harm to science, the credibility of epidemiology statistics. Looking at the graphs you may notice how easy it is to turn presumed deaths into confirmed ones. You just have to affirm that you presumed it to make it confirmed. Then these confirmed presumptions will become historic records. Two weeks from now nobody will care and a few months from now nobody will remember. But the fake news will stay and so will all the new government powers they helped to create. Welcome to 1984.