Wednesday, May 26, 2021

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics": accounting for COVID-19 cases

 

No-one knows for sure who first used the phrase "Lies, damned lies, and statistics", but it's become a truism in our society.  It certainly looks as if it applies to official US government statistics for COVID-19 infections, which appear to be about as (un)trustworthy as its statistics on inflation.

Off-Guardian reports that the CDC is changing its measurement criteria.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.


The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and testing for “Covid19” in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy “vaccines” are effective at preventing the alleged disease.

. . .

Essentially, Covid19 has long been shown – to those willing to pay attention – to be an entirely created pandemic narrative built on two key factors:

  1. False-postive tests. The unreliable PCR test can be manipulated into reporting a high number of false-positives by altering the cycle threshold (CT value)
  2. Inflated Case-count. The incredibly broad definition of “Covid case”, used all over the world, lists anyone who receives a positive test as a “Covid19 case”, even if they never experienced any symptoms.

Without these two policies, there would never have been an appreciable pandemic at all, and now the CDC has enacted two policy changes which means they no longer apply to vaccinated people.

Firstly, they are lowering their CT value when testing samples from suspected “breakthrough infections” ... Secondly, asymptomatic or mild infections will no longer be recorded as “covid cases”.

. . .

The CDC is demonstrating the beauty of having a “disease” that can appear or disappear depending on how you measure it.

To be clear: If these new policies had been the global approach to “Covid” since December 2019, there would never have been a pandemic at all.

If you apply them only to the vaccinated, but keep the old rules for the unvaccinated, the only possible result can be that the official records show “Covid” is much more prevalent among the latter than the former.

This is a policy designed to continuously inflate one number, and systematically minimise the other.

What is that if not an obvious and deliberate act of deception?


There's more at the link.

What gets me is how the CDC is being so blatant about this.  They're not even trying to hide what they're doing.  They simply expect to be allowed to get away with it.

That's why I remain more than a little dubious about the value of a COVID-19 vaccination.  I'm not anti-vaxx at all;  I've had all too many of them in my lifetime.  However, I object to being pressured into accepting a vaccine that may or may not be efficacious, and may or may not have potentially serious deleterious effects.  How can I know for sure, when the figures are being fudged?  In the absence of demonstrably impartial, accurate, scientifically valid data, how can any of us say for sure whether the cure is - or is not - worse than the disease?

The CDC looks like it's become its own worst enemy.  It's certainly no friend of ours, with these sorts of statistical shenanigans on public display.




Peter


8 comments:

Tschifty Mccoy said...

It's a real mystery why so many people are willing to get injected with something that is undeniably experimental for a virus that poses very little risk even to vulnerable populations when treated effectively with proven anti inflammatories. Add to that the blatant lies of the government agencies re almost every aspect of this scamdemic and there is no reason to trust anything these people say. In fact, this is a situation where the wise choice is to do the OPPOSITE of whatever these liars advise. The mystery is the number of conservatives who continue to belittle doubters on the Wuhan Jab. Propaganda is potent stuff i guess.

Jonathan H said...

Have you looked into reported adverse reactions for these shots? I've heard the numbers are high but haven't looked far enough into them to say for certain. I have also read that reported reactions are likely a small fraction of the actual reactions.

Note that I don't call 2 of the 3 shots "vaccinations" since the Moderna and Pfizer shots are gene therapy, not vaccinations.

Sam L. said...

That's because it's Democrats allllllllllllllllllllll the way dowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

I carry my shot record in my shirt pocket, so that I can extract it, put it in my left hand and hold it out, and raise my right arm to 45 degress while saying, "Hier ist mein papier, Her/Frau Oberst!" Haven't had to.....yet.

The Freeholder said...

I think there are two likely reasons they're not trying to hide it:

* They don't think they need to any longer
* They think that most won't understand what they're doing, and that the few who do aren't a threat.

Unknown said...

COVID is a cash cow for state and local governments as well as many health care providers.

In KY we have a new category called audit deaths. Typically we get 3-10 audit deaths added every day without explanation. That is because COVID deaths equal money from the feds.

When all the parties report Covid cases and deaths using different parameters the data becomes useless.

Gerry

Aesop said...

There's flagrant bullsh*t a mile deep on both sides of the arguments around this pandemic, and has been since Day Zero.

The idea that this is a non-pandemic is chief among them, but it scratches the itch of the Flat Earthers and Black Helicopter/Chemtrail aficiandos out there who're convinced it never happened.

The Guardian article appears to be the equivalent of tipping the Chicago Stockyards upside down, and shaking the contents into print.

That can still be true, and the CDC can be full of rose fertilizer up to their eyeballs; the two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

But congratulations, Peter, you've finally pushed me to call it out definitively and in detail in upcoming posts.

I've already made my position on the current experimental vaccines crystal clear.

BladeRunner1066 said...


We seem to have a lot of true believers here. The only problem is that belief is be definition fact free.

There are 164 million documented COVID cases in 188 countries. The actual total number of infections is likely 2 or 3 times that, maybe more.

Over a million people have died from COVID in Europe, and in North America, and in South America. Likely over 2 million people have died in Asia, maybe a lot more than that. In Africa, who the hell knows?

Millions more are going to have dramatically shorter lives after "recovering" from COVID.

The vaccines work, it is a modern miracle that they work as well as they do. They are vaccines, not gene therapy. There are 15 vaccines approved worldwide using 8 different types of technology, and another 80 more in various stages of development. Still, all medical procedures have risk and individuals have different risk profiles. It needs to remain an individual decision.

Grouch, MD said...

To be clear, I am no fan of the CDC and haven’t been for years. But I read the linked article and it seemed the author misunderstood the difference between the breakthrough case definition and the threshold criteria to send breakthrough cases in for sequencing.

The case definition has not changed between vaccinated and unvaccinated, see link at the bottom for source:

“ For the purpose of this surveillance, a vaccine breakthrough infection is defined as the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen in a respiratory specimen collected from a person ≥14 days after they have completed all recommended doses of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized COVID-19 vaccine.”

There is no mention of cycles or symptoms.

The sequencing threshold is different because you need enough raw material to successfully sequence the thing in the first place. Sequencing out mRNA involves extra steps and you lose some material in the process. Before med school I was a research lab tech and have done an unholy amount of PCR and sequencing, I know whereof I speak here.

I’m not trying to defend the CDC or the vaccine here, as I think the former incompetent on a good day, and the latter suspect. But I want to mistrust them accurately, and I don’t think the author of the linked story is accurate.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html