{"id":209921,"date":"2020-07-07T07:53:27","date_gmt":"2020-07-07T07:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=209921"},"modified":"2020-07-10T06:09:44","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T06:09:44","slug":"mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-not-as-deadly-as-thought-did-the-experts-fail-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=209921","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMounting Evidence\u201d Suggests COVID Not As Deadly as Thought. Did the Experts Fail Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Miltimore \u2013 Foundation for Economic Education June 12, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

In April 2005, Charles Duelfer, the CIA\u2019s top weapons inspector in Iraq, admitted in the CIA\u2019s final report that after an extensive search, no weapons of mass destruction could be found.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,\u201d wrote Duelfer, the leader of the Iraq Survey Group. \u201cAs matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Today it\u2019s generally accepted that the presence of WMD was the primary basis for the Iraq War. Naturally, the absence of such weapons shook the world. The media blamed the politicians, the politicians blamed US intel, and the intelligence actors involved mostly defended their work.<\/span><\/p>\n

The official word, chronicled in the Robb-Silberman report<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, concluded that \u201cthe Intelligence Community didn\u2019t adequately explain just how little good intelligence it had\u2014or how much its assessments were driven by assumptions and inferences rather than concrete evidence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Iraq War WMD debacle is arguably the greatest expert \u201cfail\u201d in generations. The holy triumvirate\u2014lawmakers, bureaucrats, and media\u2014all failed to sniff out the truth. If any of them had, a war that cost trillions of dollars and claimed the lives of 100,000-200,000 people likely could have been avoided.<\/span><\/p>\n

It would be difficult to surpass the Iraq blunder, but emerging evidence on COVID-19 suggests the experts\u2014again: lawmakers, bureaucrats, and media\u2014may have subjected us to a blunder of equally disastrous proportions.<\/span><\/p>\n

A new NPR report<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>suggests the global response to COVID-19 may have been reached on a flawed premise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mounting evidence suggests the coronavirus is more common and less deadly than it first appeared.<\/span><\/p>\n

The evidence comes from tests that detect antibodies to the coronavirus in a person’s blood rather than the virus itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tests are finding large numbers of people in the US who were infected but never became seriously ill. And when these mild infections are included in coronavirus statistics, the virus appears less dangerous.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The current best estimates for the infection fatality risk are between 0.5% and 1%,” says Caitlin Rivers<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s in contrast with death rates of 5% or more<\/a><\/strong><\/span> based on calculations that included only people who got sick enough to be diagnosed with tests that detect the presence of virus in a person’s body.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many people will recall the fatality risk debate that took place prior to and in the early stages of the lockdowns. There was much discussion over how deadly the virus was and what the collective response to the virus should be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some voices exercised caution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe public is behaving as if this epidemic is the next Spanish flu, which is frankly understandable given that initial reports have staked COVID-19 mortality at about 2\u20133 percent, quite similar to the 1918 pandemic that killed tens of millions of people,\u201d Jeremy Samuel Faust an emergency medicine physician and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, wrote<\/strong><\/span><\/a> in Slate<\/em>. \u201cAllow me to be the bearer of good news. These frightening numbers are unlikely to hold.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, on March 5 vaccine expert Paul A. Offit, who holds the Maurice R. Hilleman Chair of Vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania, told Factcheck.org that he believed that the World Health Organization\u2019s 3.4 percent fatality rate figure was too high, suggesting it was well below 1 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re more the victim of fear than the virus,\u201d Offit said<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, adding that the world was witnessing a \u201cwild overreaction\u201d to the disease.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Professor Neil Ferguson. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Voices like those of Faust and Offit were quickly drowned out, however. The 24-hour news cycle fanned collective fear and outrage that more was not being done. Runs on toilet paper and masks ensued. Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, predicted millions would die in the \u201cbest-case scenario.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Following the example of China, one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world, most of the developed world was placed in indefinite lockdown by their own governments.<\/span><\/p>\n

The social and economic costs of the lockdowns soon became apparent. The US alone has seen 40 million jobs lost<\/a>, many of which aren\u2019t coming back. Recession looms. Hundreds of thousands of businesses have already been wiped away. The federal debt has surged to $26 trillion<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the COVID disaster and the aforementioned Iraq War fit a familiar pattern. As the historian Paul Johnson has observed, most of the worst events of the 20th century were perpetrated by experts who used collective power to shape world events in a direction they believed was beneficial.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is\u2014beware intellectuals,\u201d Johnson wrote in The Intellectuals<\/em>. \u201cNot merely should they be kept away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nobody denies the immense cost of the lockdowns, but what was gained by them remains a subject of contention.<\/span><\/p>\n

A May report from JP Morgan, as well as other evidence, suggests the lockdowns had little to no impact on the spread of COVID-19.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marko Kolanovic, a physicist and strategist for JP Morgan, pointed out that a majority of nations saw declines in infection rates after the lockdowns were lifted.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike rigorous testing of new drugs, lockdowns were administered with little consideration that they might not only cause economic devastation but potentially more deaths than Covid-19 itself,\u201d Kolanoviche said<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Most nations saw Covid infection rates go down after lockdowns were lifted, a recent @jpmorgan<\/a> analysis found. pic.twitter.com\/LPvwB4T3vn<\/a><\/p>\n

— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) June 10, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n