Don't judge a story by the headline...
First, to see who reads past the headline, let's start by saying the common cold is a variation of coronavirus. While people may still die from the common cold, we have collectively agreed it is ‘common’. It is not our intent to minimize any deaths for any disease for this article, but one would think that appeals to emotion should not overrule logic, statistics and facts, or lack thereof, especially when it comes to policy.
Now lets more specifically talk about COVID-19, but we will return to coronavirus.
Since day one of COVID-19, we have seen statistics. Statistics on the total deaths, statistics on the death ratios, statistics on the confirmed cases, the possible cases, the asymptomatic cases etc.
We have seen people try to use these statistics to justify their positions, whether for or against a policy. People taking the population of their city or region then dividing the deaths by their population to come up with "percentages for death ratios", or dividing it by their confirmed cases etc. But what if ALL of this was wrong?
Let's do 'The Math'
A common methodology for critical thinking that spans through various teachings from the Liberal arts, to Kaballah, to Supreme Mathematics and others, is that of the “the Trivium”. Whether looked at as “Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic” or as “Knowledge, Wisdom and Understanding”, these three things (the Trivium) work as a mathematical equation and throughout teachings are often given numerical representations.
1. Being 'knowledge' or 'grammar'. Facts or information.
2. Being 'rhetoric' or 'wisdom'. Debating or conjunction of facts and information.
3. Being 'logic' or 'understanding'. A conclusion from the debate or conjunction of knowledge.
The "math" of these equations can be broken down as follows:
1 (knowledge) +1 (knowledge) = 2 (wisdom)
1 (knowledge) +2 (wisdom) = 3 (understanding)
This is simply adding qualitative principles to each number. The point of this being just like when people are doing their math for COVID-19 if they do not have the proper value of 1 (or proper knowledge), the whole equation becomes messed up. If we have incorrect knowledge, then all the debate, all the arguing, all the math, all the graphs, all the statistics, all wisdom and understanding becomes misguided wisdom, and misunderstanding.
Maybe a better example is you ask someone to build a house in feet, and the whole time they build in meters never converting the feet to meters but just using meters as measurements, the house will be way too big and will probably go off the property. You need the correct knowledge or measurement to start your building process, your equation, your logic.
So what do we KNOW when it comes to COVID-19?
When trying to figure out the death ratio for any disease one must first figure out a few things. The number of people that have died, the total confirmed cases, the false positives, and how many asymptomatic or mild cases that have not been tested. While some of this may seem like an easy task, you would think one would just go to John Hopkins University to look at world stats, or Halton Region Public Health to see stats within Halton Region or some other organization or government body tasked with tracking deaths. But while information is available on these sites, how much of it is accurate?
We will look at both Halton Region and the world.
At the time of writing this article (September 1, 2020), according to John Hopkins University we have 25,540,888 “confirmed cases” and 851,781 global deaths. This would give us a global death rate of 3.33%. For Halton Region, we have 981 total cases and 25 deaths. Giving a death ratio of 2.54%.
This looks very scary at face value especially when we compare to the flu which has as the average death rate of 0.1%. This would make COVID-19 33 times more deadly than the flu for the world and 25 times more deadly for Halton Region IF these numbers were all we were to take into consideration.
However, to get an accurate death rate, one must also know the number of asymptomatic cases or mild cases that were not tested. Because we don’t know who has not been tested and has no or very mild symptoms, or even more severe, we are only left to estimate this amount.
So how many asymptomatic cases? The reality is, we don’t know.
We have seen articles saying asymptomatic cases can be anywhere from 40% of cases , to 88%, to as much as 96% [ which was later changed to be presymptomatic] This could make our death rate anywhere from 2% to as low as 0.13% for the world. And for Halton Region could make our death rate anywhere from 1.5% to as low as 0.1%.
Again, in comparison, seasonal flu has a death rate of 0.1% and that is with a vaccine.
A spokesperson from Halton Region Public Health stated “Halton Region Public Health cannot speculate on the number of asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 in Halton. However, we know that some cases can remain asymptomatic for the entire duration of their infection. Since COVID-19 testing in Ontario was expanded to any individual who wishes to be tested, we have observed a slight increase in the proportion of confirmed cases who were asymptomatic at the time of testing”.
So, while we may never truly know the number of asymptomatic cases at least we know the number of people who have died of COVID-19…. or do we?
We have seen multiple instances of numbers of deaths being reported as "inflated" or "miscalculated". Stories of someone getting in a motorcycle accident being calculated as a COVID death, to get media attention and later be corrected, and someone who was terminally ill with cancer being tallied the same. We have seen many Facebook and social media posts such as these…
We have even seen multiple Doctors and Nurses come out questioning numbers and methods, one of the most prominent being Doctor and Senator of Minnesota; Scott Jensen who came out in a video explaining how he was being investigated by the Board of Medical Practice for Minnesota after stating publicly the numbers are being inflated and how death certificates are not being done how they should in some states across the USA.
But what about Canada?
Acton UP stumbled across this tweet from Toronto Public Health from June 24 stating “Individuals who have died with COVID-19, but not as a result of COVID-19 are included in the case counts for COVID-19 deaths in Toronto”.
Acton UP reached out to Halton Region Public Health to ask if they took the same approach. “Yes, Halton Region Public Health takes the same approach, as stated in the data note below the tables on our website: “Deaths include any death that occurred among a person who tested positive for COVID-19, even if the death may not have been directly attributable to COVID-19. However, this approach applies only when individuals die while still considered active COVID-19 cases.”
Halton Region also maintains that “An individual who tests positive for COVID-19 but then dies of a clearly unrelated cause after their COVID-19 infection was considered resolved would not be counted as a COVID-19 death.”
Which begs the question… What is a CLEARLY UNRELATED cause?
Regardless of the answer, it still shows that some “COVID-19 deaths”, may not actually be COVID-19 deaths at all, even if they are being presented as such. What percent? we have no idea. But this would also be sure to drop the death rate…. at least until we factor in the last part of our equation.
What we also need to look at is how many confirmed cases for COVID-19? Which brings us back to Coronavirus.
A spokesperson from Halton Region Public Health says “COVID-19 virus belongs to a family of Coronaviruses. Seasonal coronaviruses are known to cause common cold-like symptoms in humans. However, some types of coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and the new coronavirus COVID-19, are known to cause more severe disease.”
We asked Halton Region whether they are specifically testing for COVID-19 or Coronavirus and they said “Testing for the virus is ordered by a physician based on their clinical assessment of the patient. Laboratories are able to test for the specific type of coronavirus. So if a physician orders the COVID-19 test, the laboratory will conduct the test specific for COVID-19. If a physician orders a seasonal coronavirus test, then the laboratory will test for seasonal coronaviruses.”
Which begs the question, are Physicians ordering the test specific for COVID-19? Also this response (from Halton Region) sounds as if they are speaking of specifically “viral tests”, but on the CDC (Centre for Disease Control) website they mention two types of tests: “viral” and “antibody”.
The CDC mentions "Except in instances in which viral testing is delayed, antibody tests should not be used to diagnose a current COVID-19 infection. An antibody test may not show if you have a current COVID-19 infection because it can take 1–3 weeks after infection for your body to make antibodies. To see if you are currently infected, you need a viral test. Viral tests identify the virus in samples from your respiratory system, such as a swab from the inside of your nose."
According to the CDC an antibody test “shows you may have antibodies from an infection with the virus that causes COVID-19. However, there is a chance a positive result means that you have antibodies from an infection with a virus from the same family of viruses (called coronaviruses), such as the one that causes the common cold.”
So then the question is… are these positive antibody tests for Coronavirus being counted as positive cases for COVID-19? or are these positive Coronavirus tests being tested and re-tested for the viral infection until they can 100% confirm? Ultimately, it seems this is up to the individual physician, and on the CDC website under the “what do your test results mean” section it only mentions positive antibody tests being tested again for antibodies as opposed to viral.
“Talk with your healthcare provider about your test result and the type of test you took to understand what your result means. Your provider may suggest you take a second type of antibody test to see if the first test was accurate.” So if you are positive (in an antibody test) you ‘may’ not even get a second test, and ‘IF’ you do, that ‘may’ be just another antibody test which could only diagnose coronavirus and not more specifically COVID-19.
To test if someone currently has the virus, the viral test is to be used, but after much research it is hard to find out the accuracy of these tests, as we have seen accuracy being reported as anywhere from 50% as mentioned by Ontario's Chief Medical Officer, Dr Yaffe mentioned in a press conference on July 30th. Or it could 99.9% as mentioned by Public Health Ontario.
However even if we were to presume testing is 99.9% accurate and if all of Ontario was to be tested, mathematically that could lead to 147450.4 false positives.
In Conclusion
So after all is said and done, how deadly is COVID-19? If we go by statistics, we have no clue. We don’t know how many people have died, we don’t know how many people are asymptomatic, we don’t know how many false positives there are, and we don’t even know the confirmed cases. So it could be higher than 3.3% or it could be 0.01%, maybe even less.
What we do know is all these numbers are being counted for us and accepted as reality not only from a lot of the media, but also from health agencies, and governments.
While we are still learning about COVID-19, one would hope these numbers are being counted as efficiently as possible when accuracy is so crucial for proper study. This becomes especially vital as when the death tolls or case tolls rise, so does fear and restrictions within our society.
It also makes you wonder, if one was to calculate their taxes by the same methods, counting their net income as gross and/ or their gross income as net, what would that be? And if the person put a little asterisk in fine print saying they were “calculating their taxes by this method…” would the government accept it as reality?
References
John Hopkins University Coronavirus stats
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Halton Region Public Health Coronavirus Stats
https://www.halton.ca/For-Residents/Immunizations-Preventable-Disease/Diseases-Infections/New-Coronavirus
40% asymptomatic cases
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/40-45-who-contract-new-coronavirus-are-asymptomatic
88% asymptomatic
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/20/we-tested-all-our-patients-covid-19-found-lots-asymptomatic-cases/
96% asymptomatic
https://nationalpost.com/pmn/health-pmn/in-4-u-s-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96-without-symptoms
96% presymptomatic
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2020/06/17/ohio-prisons-chief-walks-back-claim-that-96-of-prison-covid-19-cases-were-asymptomatic/
Sen. Scott Jensen Video
https://www.facebook.com/SenatorJensen/videos/265249484771683
Motorcycle accident being listed as COVID
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-motorcyclist-covid-death/
Centre for Disease Control
https://www.cdc.gov
What do your results mean
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html
Only 50% accuracy in testing
https://globalnews.ca/video/7236095/coronavirus-ontario-health-official-explains-why-mandatory-testing-not-being-used-for-teachers
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