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The Atlantic on 17 September reported on a study, based on hospital records, that addresses the question of what is the best or most reliable figure to assess COVID’s impact and the risks it poses. Is it the number of cases, the number of persons hospitalized, or the death count?
Each of those can provide a different picture, and even within each category, it’s important to understand how they’re calculated, how the definitions vary, and therefore how misleading the numbers can be.
Case numbers, for example, often cited to show how serious a risk the virus poses, indicate only how many people have tested positive. Aside from case numbers rising simply as a result of more people getting tested, case numbers include those who have negligible symptoms, or no symptoms at all.
Trends Journal has, from the start, reported on how the case numbers are rigged and misreported. See for example, “CRUCIAL COVID DATA IGNORED BY PRESSTITUTES” (3 Nov 2020) and “PCR TEST NEEDS ADJUSTMENT” (26 Jan 2021).
And as American media celebrates that more Americans died of the virus than the Spanish Flu in 1918, the numbers are rigged. Their death count is an unreliable indicator. For one thing, it implies that COVID is the cause of death, without factoring in the comorbidities that are so often present. See “NEW ANALYSIS: CRITICAL ERRORS IN COVID DEATH TOLL” (1 Dec 2020 ) and “BUY THE COVID HYPE, AVOID THE FACTS” (9 Sept 2020).
The death toll also doesn’t shed any light on the number of people who were seriously ill, but recovered.
TRENDPOST: So, while it is being sold that the number of people hospitalized is a reliable gauge of COVID risk, that metric is subject to any number of variables that prove the numbers are rigged.
For one thing, it lumps together everyone admitted to a hospital who tests positive for COVID-19 (in accordance with federal requirements), even if admitted for other (serious and/or potentially fatal) conditions. Nor does it differentiate between those who have very mild vs. serious COVID symptoms. The study cited indicates that roughly half those COVID cases hospitalized in 2021 may have been admitted for some other reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of the disease.
So even if hospitalization tallies provide a better index of the scope and risk of COVID-19, it’s important to consider that not all COVID hospitalizations are the same, and to draw the distinction as to whether a patient has been hospitalized with COVID or because of COVID.