The Lie of the 500,000

The media was giddy. The new “administration” threw a party. And scared, Chicken Little Americans ran to social media to weep and gnash teeth over the widespread death brought by the novel coronavirus. Leftists everywhere cast blame on everyone who didn’t adequately prostrate themselves before the altar of state power, offering their God-given freedoms in exchange for the always just out of reach promise of “safety.”

“500,000 have died!” they proclaimed apart from any context whatsoever. Blood was on the hands of everyone who didn’t offer enough support for the government or unquestioningly comply with the ever-changing orders issued by the “experts.” As America crossed the 500,000 death threshold, new contradictory information poured out of the government-media-expert cabal from insufferable attention seeker Anthony Fauci. Wear two masks! On second thought, there’s no data to support that. We’ll be out of the weeds soon! On second thought, we might have to mask up until next year. Get the vaccine! On second thought, you aren’t any safer with it than without it.

Anthony Fauci and his ilk can never be wrong because they take every imaginable position on the issues.

Yet the lie of the 500,000 was created long ago when the WHO and the CDC decided to exchange long-standing and scientifically valid epidemiological definitions and reporting standards for vague, unscientific, and entirely novel ones. This new standard was entirely new for COVID-19 and served to create a wildly inflated death statistic for COVID-19 versus any other historical respiratory disease. The CDC did not engage in discussion or peer review regarding their brand new reporting rules, and financially incentivized hospitals to label as many deaths “COVID-19” as possible.

Using basic mathematical analysis with regard for prior epidemiological standards, the 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States are likely closer to 30,000-35,000. This is in a country that attributes over 50,000 deaths to influenza each year. For the record, flu deaths virtually disappeared this time around. This is also in a country where around 3,000,000 people die every single year, and where COVID-19 did not increase the overall mortality at all.

The 500,000 number, while helpful to the fearmongering media and shameless political class, is a provable, ridiculous lie. Don’t buy into it.