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Lockdowns may be much deadlier than we realize. Why?
1: PCR tests sharply overstate how many people have Sars-COV-2.
2: States use those tests to assign deaths from #COVID. If many people are falsely positive, real COVID-related deaths must be lower than the reported figure...
1: PCR tests sharply overstate how many people have Sars-COV-2.
2: States use those tests to assign deaths from #COVID. If many people are falsely positive, real COVID-related deaths must be lower than the reported figure...
3: But the excess mortality this year is real. It is quite possibly the ONLY real and reliable number we have. It has closely tracked reported #COVID deaths, which is convenient - it makes us think, oh, excess mortality must have risen and fallen with COVID.
NOT NECESSARILY.
NOT NECESSARILY.
4: Early on, many excess deaths occurred in nursing homes in NY, MA, etc. Those deaths were often assigned to COVID EVEN WITHOUT POSITIVE TESTS. But care was disrupted; some people likely died because they weren't being fed, etc. Family members have reported this to me.
5: The lack of feeding even happened in hospitals, or so family members have said. Remember - families were blocked from seeing patients, and medical staff were terrified.
Those are not COVID deaths, but they will forever be counted that way.
Those are not COVID deaths, but they will forever be counted that way.
6: Since April, nursing homes and hospitals are doing better, so the risks to the very frail have fallen. But routine medical care has been disrupted (increasing cardiovascular and cancer deaths). Overdoses have spiked too.
At the same time, TESTING FOR COVID HAS EXPLODED.
At the same time, TESTING FOR COVID HAS EXPLODED.
7: We now know the testing is leading to some deaths that have nothing to do with COVID to be classified as COVID.
But we have no idea how many. We have no idea how the real increase caused by lockdown deaths interacts with the artifactual increase in COVID-classified deaths.
But we have no idea how many. We have no idea how the real increase caused by lockdown deaths interacts with the artifactual increase in COVID-classified deaths.
8: It is possible that the number of lockdown deaths is in the tens of thousands, while the number of misclassified COVID deaths is quite small - in the thousands. (That's what the reported figures say - excess deaths are somewhat higher than COVID deaths, but not much.)
9: But - and I would NOT have said this before the NYT piece on PCR testing - that the number of misclassified COVID deaths is now very substantial, while the number of lockdown/panic deaths is actually over 100,000 (let's call the nursing home deaths "panic" deaths).
10: Further evidence is here, in the age-stratified death data, which shows that excess deaths in younger people have been remarkably consistent since March, even though the epidemic has waxed and waned. https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1296457973313798151
