Hello Darkness, My Old Friend - Covid Edition

Just when I thought I was out……

I can’t really believe it’s August 2023 and we’re once again talking about covid, but the media is really ramping up the fear in recent days, with breathless articles about rising cases and hospitalizations. (All these are from the past 24 hours! Click any image to visit original link.)

We all know where this is leading, and I think it’s important to jump out in front of this media frenzy with some hard data before the fearmongering gains momentum. The only way to stop this is non-compliance — and to bolster that non-compliance, it helps to know your stuff so you can pass it along.

With that in mind, let’s flash back to early February, when I mourned the loss of the HHS page that broke down the percentage of hospital beds being used by patients with a positive covid test. Through a series of articles, I used this data to document and predict virus activity in the United States. When the page was removed, the data was moved to a near-unfunctional CDC page and ‘tracking’ virus activity in this way became impossible.

Until recently, when suddenly the functionality of the page was restored and expanded. (Props to Dr. Brown for the post bringing it to my attention!) This means that somebody (in government!) was paid to restore the page. Why spend money on a webpage collecting data about a virus that’s no longer an emergency? (Perhaps the request was made back in February and they’re just getting around to it — it IS government, after all.)

Regardless of WHY the page works once again, we can now use it to compare current hospitalizations with previous years! Let’s check out what the data looked like early August. On the left is 2020, on the right is 2021, and below them is 2022. (Click any image to enlarge.)

You can see that last year at roughly this time — long after nearly everybody was ignoring virus restrictions — only 6.1% of our hospital beds were occupied by somebody with a covid-positive test, while roughly 26% of beds were empty. This was not considered a crisis in 2022 — and rightly so.

Generally, the yearly data above is what we expect to see. Each covid wave is smaller than the last because fewer people remain susceptible to the virus. So with all the fearmongering, surely this year’s data must look WORSE that the 6.1% hospital occupancy that we saw last year at this time, right? Not exactly.

OF COURSE they had to change the color scheme again, but even a quick glance at the legend shows that virus activity is extremely low across the country — not even one state has 4% of their beds occupied by a covid-positive patient. Last year, multiple states were over 5%.

And although this information is no longer attached to the map, we can see on the page that only 1.9% of beds across the country are occupied by a covid-positive patient. In other words, the “problem” is 1/3 of what it was last year when it wasn’t a problem, either.

And when we poke around the site some more, we find this page stating roughly 27% of all beds are free. This means would multiply the number of covid patients by 10 and we’d STILL be running at roughly 90% capacity — far under the historical average:

Hospitals typically function at 95-98% capacity.

Just to hammer home how much of a non-issue this is, I’m going to highlight this article from Erie County, PA. (Nothing personal, David Bruce!)

Remember earlier when I mentioned that the new page actually EXPANDED functionality? One of the new things it does is break down information by county. (Knowing what I now know, I’ll bet large amounts of money that the ‘worry spots’ in the counties below are simply areas with a small capacity to begin with. See: Northern Idaho/Eastern Washington/Central Oregon.)

This expanded functionality means that when Mr. Bruce’s article his the ‘net, we can zoom in and see the specific data for Erie County:

0.4%. Up from 0.2%. (ADMISSIONS DOUBLING OMG) This is a near-meaningless change in a near-meaningless statistic, but the story went to the printer because it reinforces the narrative:

IT’S GETTING MORE DANGEROUS, BETTA GETCHA BOOSTA!

But if all that wasn’t enough to convince you that this latest round of fear is unwarranted, I present another piece of data that will probably shock new readers.

Very early in the pandemic, I started tracking this CDC page, which provides underlying medical conditions of covid hospitalizations. Even back then, pregnant women made up just under 30% of covid hospitalizations. (Pregnancy is the #1 reason people to to the hospital.)

Today, that number is over 42%.

This suggests that AT THE VERY LEAST, 42% of covid hospitalizations are there for something else and happen to test positive. And because this data is cumulative and the percentage has been steadily rising, that means recent numbers have to be EVEN HIGHER in order to drag up the average from the 30% years!

Add it all up, and this most recent round of fearmongering stinks to high heaven. I am of the mind that the goal is to push mass mail-in ballots again, but there’s also the ‘new vaccine’ angle ($), and probably even another ‘hospitals need a bailout’ angle as well. I’m sure I’m missing at least 10 other possibilities.

Whatever the ultimate goal, it’s important to respond quickly to this attempt to ‘nudge’ us back under the mandates and lockdowns they obviously want to once again impose. Luckily, at this point many of us are already connected and already know where to go to counter the programming.

If you like what you read, buy me a coffee on Ko-fi — no subscription required!