IPFS News Link • Hoax?
Turning a Threat into a Hoax
• Paul Craig RobertsHowever, the reported deaths are real and even prior condition deaths are provoked by virus infection.
Regardless whether reported cases reflect viral penetrance, a death rate of confirmed cases remains very meaningful for public health authorities. Confirmed cases tend to be the ones serious enough to be treated. The death rate of such cases is a good indicator of the challenge to public health.
Much about the virus remains unknown. It is not known why some who become infected get mildly ill, some deadly ill, and some not ill at all. Little doubt that part of the answer is the state of a person's immune system. All of the deadly ill are not people with preconditions. Healthy doctors and nurses have died, as have young people and babies. There are reports that some infected children experience serious vascular problems. The reports might be wrong. There is evidence that people who have the virus without symptoms are contagious and evidence that they are not. There are studies claiming that there are no excessive deaths attributable to coronavirus and studies showing significant excessive deaths in the UK. The differing results seem to depend on what the investigators use as data or believe the data to be. Alone among countries Sweden bet on "herd immunity." Based on current evidence herd immunity is more hope than fact. There are reports of reinfections. Herd immuniy advocates say the reports are misreports. There are reports that some of the cured have insufficient antibodies to prevent reinfections. More misreports? The antibodies produced by vaccines currently undergoing testing are insufficient to prevent infection by the virus according to the tests themselves. Some experts doubt that there can be immunity to coronaviruses. The presence of disagreement among experts about herd immunity implies that the case for herd immunity is not established. So, it does seem reasonable that if we are going to bet on a hope we should accompany the bet with caution.
Nevertheless, many false claims have entered the debate and despite their falsity are taken as true by those whose arguments they serve. If you fear the police state more than the virus, you may be inclined to believe that Sweden with an open economy had less infections and deaths than any other country and no adverse economic effects from closedowns. But this belief is contradicted by the Swedish Riksbank, which reported major shutdown of the Swedish economy by the voluntary non-participation of the Swedish people in the economy. For example, restaurant and bar traffic fell by 70%. I know of no incentive for the Riksbank to talk down the Swedish economy. One assumes that Sweden and Norway, being so similar in character and reporting, are a good test case. The data indicate that Sweden has much higher infections and deaths per one million population than Norway. http://web.archive.org/web/20200529002214/https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/