We deserved the full data picture
The silence on the death rate from cases of COVID has been consistent throughout print, television and radio. One can infer that it is a conspiracy of silence. Why would this be?
I submit that it is control. Ignorance engenders fear. Fearful people are easier to control. Knowledge is power. Knowledge engenders challenge. Yet even the knowledgeable are fearful. Dissenting opinion brings ostracism, loss of work and grants and friendships. The ignorant, out of fear and “following the science,” can just as easily become a mob on the internet or in the workplace or among friends denigrating those who don't “follow the science.”
As Goethe said, “There's nothing so frightening as ignorance in action.”
As a person 79 soon to be 80, vaccinated only for diphtheria and smallpox, our age group caught all the children's diseases: measles, mumps, German measles and chickenpox. There was no polio vaccine and my sister came down with two of the three polio viruses, which were recognized immediately by our country doctor who sent her in an ambulance to a city with a hospital to treat her. There were no other cases in town and it was thought she caught it on a trip with our parents to a large metropolitan area. What did not occur was panic or hysteria within the family or the town.
Watching Jeff Goertzen and Kurt Snibbe's Daily Tracker in your newspaper since the early days of the pandemic, it was clear that the kids were not dying. It was mostly, predictably, older people who can go down for the count with flu. Yet the Tracker did not publish percentages of deaths, just the numbers of deaths and cases. One could easily do the arithmetic, so why were no percentages published?
What is the death rate? The case fatality rate in Los Angeles County, where I live, from January 2020 to March 10, 2023 per the County Department of Public Health was 0.96%. In California per the California Department of Public Health it was 0.9%. This is based on confirmed COVID cases. Many people either don't test or use an at-home test kit without their cases counted by the authorities, so the actual death rate is lower.
Right now in California according to the covid19.ca.gov dashboard, the seven-day average death rate linked to COVID is is 0.1 per 100,000. During the last major surge in February 2022, it peaked at 0.7 per 100,000. The only time I saw the percentage printed was in Keith Roach, MD's column months ago in the newspaper.
Who wants control over the population? Those with power are insatiable and may have convinced themselves they are operating in the public's best interest. Those in power are government agencies, politicians, tenured academics and those who fraternize with them, carrying their water: the media.
Those in power did not tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Dr. Anthony Fauci, in particular, dissembled about who was vulnerable, aside from the 80-plus.
The California Department of Public Health began publishing, several months after Goertzen and Snibbe, a weekly chart released on Fridays for COVID deaths and cases by age group. It is now only published monthly. Its last publication, on March 10, 2023 for deaths and cases from January 2020 to March 07, 2023 showed 35 deaths for kids under 5. For kids 5-17 from January 2020 to March 07, 2023 there were 62 deaths. In contrast as of March 07, 2023 those 65 and over have 72% of all deaths. Those 80 and over have suffered 38% of all deaths. Kids were and are unlikely to experience serious illness and we older people are typically more likely to die of respiratory illnesses than younger people.
For this the school houses were closed, the workers forced to the unemployment line and the elderly left to languish and die in nursing homes.
Because the rules and regulations are so Byzantine, the deaths and case counts and the percentages of deaths to cases are the only facts accessible to all.