CORONA---Another Philly Update

 

"Across Pennsylvania, the percent of coronavirus tests that came back positive climbed above 16% last week...."

 

          ---Philadelphia Daily News, 12-14-20

 

          I have discussed the rising “positivity rate” here and how it, along with current protocols for reporting COVID deaths, has created a situation where large numbers of such deaths will be reported indefinitely, regardless of how many people actually die of COVID.  In November, the positivity rate was around 6%, which meant that about 65 Philadelphians would be reported as having died of COVID that month.  And they were.  Now, with the rate at 16%, at least 200 of Philly’s 1400 December deaths will be reported as being caused by the virus, though we will have no idea how many actually were.

 

          The report in the Inquirer and the Daily News was presented as fact, uncritically, completely without context, and without a hint that this extraordinary 16% number might occasion some doubt among people who gave it two seconds thought.

 

          A lot of people are getting tests these days.  Back in April, when testing sites were hard to find, the only people who got tested were those who were sick or thought they were or thought they had been exposed in some dangerous way.  Now, however, people get tests so they can travel, or so they can visit grandma at Christmas, or to present to an employer after a quarantine.  There are a lot of reasons, and most tests are taken by people who think they're NOT sick and want to be able to prove it.  Those who get tests today are much more of a cross-section of society, rather than a bunch of worried sick people.  People who get tested today may not be a completely random sample of Pennsylvanians in general, but it’s probably close.

 

          So the Philly papers, dutifully regurgitating what they are told by our public health bureaucrats. are telling us that in this random sample of Pennsylvanians, 16% of the population is infected.  Right now.  Today.  One out of every six people I see walking through Target or riding on a bus or strolling down Spruce Street has an active COVID infection.  I guess it’s that asymptomatic spread again, eh?  What else could explain why 1/6 of the population here is afflicted with a deadly virus but you never really notice it because the vast majority of them remain in perfect health?

 

          When presented by the public health bureaucrats with a number as absurd as the 16% positivity rate, journalists feel no obligation to question it.  The least likely explanation for the 16% positive rate is that 16% of Pennsylvanians have COVID, right?  So why not at least mention the growing scandal of false positives generated by Dr. Drosten's PCR tests?  Or the increasing likelihood, based on the recent massive study out of Wuhan, that so-called "asymptomatic spread" is just a crock?

 

          Ah, well….  Just get in line for your shot.  And we’ll let you take that mask off in a couple years.

 

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki