As with many people, I am both concerned where this pandemic is taking us all, and just how much this chaos is being used by certain global figures to push an agenda.
Anyway, with that statement of uncertainty established, we can try, as best we can, to look at the current covid stats as compared with the data surrounding normal seasonal flu illness and associated deaths.
So taking that at face value, in a bad year we might have as many as 650,000 flu deaths. Clearly we know 2020 IS a bad year, but I'll lean to a conservative figure and pop the average flu deaths right in the middle of the range and say we have 470,000 deaths on average in a bad year.
If we delve further into this, we also should consider the effectiveness of vaccines
So, and this is assuming all nations around the world are effectively using vaccinations, let's again err on the conservative side and assume that vaccines are considerably less effective than the lower range of 40% of people are, in reality, assisted by a vaccine. I'll pick 20% just to understate the life saving capacity of the flu vaccine program. This brings the global flu deaths to 470,000/1 - 0.20 = 587,500 deaths without a vaccine.
Just to emphasiss, to arrive at my figure of 587,500, I have reduced the assumption of effectiveness of the flu vaccines from that of the official figures, and, likewise, reduced the number of deaths in a bad flu season. If I had been a bit less conservative, I think I could have pressed a case for a much higher count (closer to a million) of flu death.
When I look at the corona virus stats I see the following global count of deaths - 593K as of today
So, still less than the worst death count in a bad flu season (650,000) as reported by the WHO; about the same if you factored in the vaccine assistance; and finally quite a bit more than the lower range of 290,000 from flu in a good (low death) season. As we are less than a year into this, let's imagine deaths may go up from covid-19 by another 100%, so we hit 1,000,000 deaths, which is beyond the extreme end of a bad flu season with a poor vaccine response. Perhaps 250,000 more than a bad flu season with a poor response, which would be 0.0033% increase of deaths of the global population.
So, I'm not saying that 250,000 more people dying than in a bad flu season with a poor vaccine response is a good thing, nor do I want to be one of that number, I'm just making the point that, even when I double the current death count, I arrive at a death figure which is only a fraction of a percent higher for the global population than a bad flu year - 2018 was a bad one. So the prospect of a fraction of a percent increase in my still to happen 100% increase in covid deaths has been enough to allow the political elite to shutdown the economy and prevent people from having routine, but potentially life-saving, operations and health checks.
There are many other factors here and I'm certainly not suggesting what I'm saying here is the last word, I just see it as one word from one side of an argument, that no one seems to be allowed to examine further.
So we will continue on this path, with unqualified politicians allowing only approved scientists to speak. Alongside that, we will also face the near certain guarantee that the economic and social impact of this enforced shutdown will have negative repercussions for many years to come.
I don't come here to provoke, I have family and friends of an age and fragility who are in danger, so, if what I have said here comes across as insensitive to those that are impacted, then that is a consequence of a poor choice of words on my part more than any intent to offend.
