Positive news on COVID-19 constantly overlooked by media

Democrats and their media surrogates are burying a lot of positive COVID-19 pandemic news. Breathless reports of “exploding” infections dominate coverage. Because most new infections are mild or asymptomatic, the only way anyone can know infections are “exploding” is because testing is. Nearly 40 million Americans have been tested, and testing continues at extraordinary levels.

Ironically, infections have been overcounted, because some states double counted and/or counted “probable” but unconfirmed cases. Some added positive antibody test numbers to their active infection counts.

Shutdown coverage is also misleading. Shutdowns were imposed to delay, not prevent hospitalizations. It’s been largely unreported that in New York City, the ineptly-managed epicenter of the COVID outbreak, the hospitalization rate was only 2%, that current overall COVID hospitalizations are below the March 21 level, of shorter duration, and dropping — as are case severities — and that shutdown-delayed non-COVID-related procedures account for most recent hospitalization increases. America hasn’t faced hospital capacity crises.

Furthermore, there’s been a two-month-plus downward trend in daily COVID-related deaths. The Atlantic magazine’s excellent online “COVID-19 Tracking Project” shows that deaths began dropping in mid-April. By the end of June they were down by nearly two-thirds — 12% in June’s final two weeks alone.

A late June data update from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention practically admits that COVID deaths, too, are overreported, possibly substantially: “For 7% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.5 additional conditions or causes per death.”

Though infections may have exacerbated vulnerable victims’ heart diseases, hypertension, respiratory disorders, cancers, obesity, diabetes and/or other preexisting comorbidities, in many cases counted as “COVID-19” deaths, people died with the virus rather than from it.

Reporting irregularities were widespread. For example, after misreporting actual causes, Pennsylvania removed hundreds of deaths from its mortality count. When New York reached 10,000 COVID “fatalities,” The New York Times revealed that

“3,700 … people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus … never tested positive.”

In fact, COVID-19 largely affected a handful of hot spots, and it poses a far greater threat to specific at-risk groups than to the general population. Healthy school- and working-age populations’ odds of dying from COVID-19 are substantially less than an average seasonal flu.

Certain governors, notably New York’s and Pennsylvania’s, caused tens of thousands of premature deaths by directing unprepared long-term-care facilities to admit or readmit infected elderly residents, thereby exposing and infecting large at-risk populations and killing alreadyailing seniors who needed and still need the most protection.

After factoring out gubernatorial policy blunders and totaling in new mild/asymptomatic infections, America’s COVID-19 mortality flattens to a rate similar to nasty flu seasons that never shutter schools and businesses.

Now, COVID-19 infections are increasing, but overall deaths have been dropping. Democrats and media hype the infections and soft-pedal or ignore death statistics. In the current political environment, reasonable people might logically conclude that a positive COVID-19 news blackout is calculated to keep the public frightened and America shut down — a cynical tactic to prevent reelecting a Republican president. Unfeeling partisans’ hunger for power permits them to view the devastating economic, social, medical and mental health damage of shutdowns as acceptable collateral damage.

In reality, new, positive COVID-19 data largely discredit individual states’ management of the original shutdowns and provide no rationale for new ones.