Fighting The Fearmongering

Robert Malone provides a link today to an excellent dissection of the latest trend in media fearmongering. You may have seen yesterday evening, as I did, the WaPo article about Michigan. We have a particular interest in that state, so our antennae went up. It’s the usual stuff—a variation on the “pandemic of the unvaxxed” theme. As Malone notes—unsurprisingly—this appears to be a coordinated strategy that somehow, coincidentally? plays into the Ominous Omicron scare:

Robert W Malone, MD @RWMaloneMD

"How to debunk scarecrow articles" "There is a flood of articles about how terrible is the MI COVID situation...Similar cookie cutter articles appear about other locations. ...The problem is that these articles are lies"

igorchudov.substack.comMedia’s false fearmongering about MichiganHow-to debunk scarecrow articles and why the VAXXED should be in fear

The author’s debunking of the Michigan scare follows straightforward analytical lines. He demonstrates that an examination of available statistics—something that few readers are inclined to undertake—reveals a quite different picture:

Media's false fearmongering about Michigan

How-to debunk scarecrow articles and why the VAXXED should be in fear

First, the intro, which sets out the tactic:

There is a flood of articles about how terrible is the Michigan COVID situation, how the Governor of Michigan is calling in National Guard in desperation, and how hospitals are overrun with unvaccinated Covid victims. All these articles seem like their plot was recommended by one central committee, so here’s only one such example.

Similar cookie cutter articles appear about other locations. They always are meant to blame the unvaccinated for the situation and to scare people into getting vaccinated.

The problem is that these articles are lies.

The author then addresses the example hospital in the WaPo article, Spectrum Hospital in Grand Rapids, MI—part of the Spectrum Health system. I’ll provide here the basics of the author’s analysis, but there’s more at the link—including information on the staffing problems caused by firing qualified employees. Here are the basics. The author begins by pointing out how to examine, with a critical eye, key hospital system stats:

You can easily look at the situation and usually you can show that

• the number of hospitalized Covid patients is similar to last year (despite “safe and effective” vaccines)

• the number of non-Covid patients (usually sick vaccinated people) is about 20-30% higher than a year ago

• shortage of staff is due to firings of unvaccinated workers

Fortunately, there are simple tools that let you look into any locale (for example Grand Rapids, Michigan) and debunk these articles. Following this approach might allow you to expose your local Covid scare scam campaign, and become a local truth-telling celebrity.

You need to:

• Look at hospital utilization chart for your largest local hospital

• Compare hospital utilization with and without Covid patients included

• Look at data from a year ago

• Decipher cryptic statements about “staffing shortages” and properly explain them by firings of unvaccinated workers.

Hospital Use

I will cite the paragraphs from the Washington Post article and debunk them.

A flood of mostly unvaccinated covid-19 patients was arriving at emergency departments already packed with people suffering other medical issues, sending capacity to unprecedented levels. The only hesitation for Spectrum's decision-makers? Data suggested the covid surge was not over.

Look at Spectrum Hospital, Grand Rapids Mi utilization data, which is the one discussed by Washington Post, or choose another hospital for your own article. Look at data

…

Click on these images to see details. Subtract Covid patients from adult beds and ER visits and make a neat table:

You can instantly compare Nov 2020 with Nov 2021. You can easily see that only 31 more hospital beds are taken up by sick Covid patients compared to a year ago. But 168 more beds are taken by non-Covid patients. You can refer your readers to my article “Hospitals Full of Vaccinated Patients” and explain that most likely, these extra patients are the generally sick vaccinated people who are getting pneumonias from “terrible colds” and such.

Looking at ER visits is even more fun. There is a 9% REDUCTION in ER visits by Covid patients compared to a year ago, by 34 fewer people.

However, there is a 33% INCREASE in ER visits by non-Covid patients, representing 923 more visits than last year! And nobody ever postpones ER visits! What are these terrible non-Covid emergencies? Are they related to the booster shots, or other vax-caused sickness?

You can instantly conclude that the unvaccinated are not at fault for hospitals being overrun. Hospitals are overrun with non-Covid patients.

This calculation omits one important fact: about 20-40% of hospital stays and deaths due to Covid-19, are among VACCINATED people, depending on state. So if you properly consider “Covid-19 unvaccinated visits or beds used”, they are a lot less than the above numbers! Some of the Covid-19 ER visits or hospital stays are vaccinated. We do not have the exact proportion, but you get the idea — the data for unvaxxed is even more in their favor.

I encourage everyone to read the whole article—but also the comments. There are extensive comments from people who ran the numbers in their own locales, with very revealing results. Here’s just one example from a reader in IL:

Wow, what an interesting rabbit hole. I ran this for my local hospitals (6 hospitals in my IL county with a total of 1,860 beds) for the second week of November 2020/2021 and found that on average the COVID inpatient rate dropped 78.68% (which apparently includes influenza for some reason) and the non-COVID inpatient rate rose 17.69%. Perhaps even more telling for my county was the changes in ER visits. COVID positive visits (those that came to ER with covid-like illness and tested positive) decreased 36.20% over last year while non-COVID (covid-like illness that did not test positive) visits increased 53.57%. One hospital was down 63% for covid ER and up 106% for non-covid! A lot of data there to digest. Happy to send you my spreadsheet if interested.

And there are more examples. The point is, these example do not represent innocent mistakes. It’s deliberate fudging of data that is actually pretty clear. Almost no real analysis is required to get the real picture. But it’s happening all over the country. It’s coordinated.