Your Health
WHO’s COVID infection number when compared to death number indicates virus no more dangerous than flu
Oct
GENEVA, October 16, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – In an apparent attempt to incite a level of fear regarding the spread of COVID-19, World Health Organization (WHO) officials released what at first glance appears to be an alarming infection rate number. When that number is compared to the number of deaths, however, it proves that the death rate of the novel coronavirus is comparable to the seasonal flu, something that many experts and close observers have been claiming for months.
According to the AP, the WHO’s executive director of emergencies, Dr. Michael Ryan, indicated as much on October 5th during a “special session of the WHO’s 34-member executive board focusing on COVID-19.”
“The disease continues to spread. It is on the rise in many parts of the world,” Ryan stated. “Our current best estimates tell us that about 10 percent of the global population may have been infected by this virus.”
WHO spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris elaborated further explaining this “best estimate” of 10 percent, came from averaging the results of antibody studies around the globe, and emphasized that the virus still had “opportunity” to continually spread to the remaining 90 percent “if we don’t take action to stop it.”
Though reporting by many news outlets remained consistent with the words and tone of the WHO officials, promoting a pronounced fear of the virus and of a resulting “difficult period” ahead, Kit Knightly of OffGuardian observed that this 10 percent figure is “actually good news.”
Given a world population of approximately 7.8 billion people, the total number of COVID-19 infections would be around 780 million individuals. With “the global death toll currently attributed to Sars-Cov-2 infections at 1,061,539,” this would equate to “an infection fatality rate of roughly 0.14%,” which Knightly affirms is “right in line with seasonal flu,” along with the research and “predictions of many experts from all around the world.”
Indeed, even Dr. Anthony Fauci, on February 28 of this year, published a paper with two colleagues which predicted that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968).”
petition and related issues.
Just 12 days later, however, while advocating for severe lockdown measures at a congressional hearing, Dr. Fauci stated that the novel coronavirus had “a mortality rate of 10 times” that of the seasonal flu.
Contributing to such alarm in early March, helping justify severe lockdown measures around the globe, the WHO asserted that the death toll from the virus was 3.4% globally, more than 24 times larger than the 0.14% result from their “best estimate” above.
According to several months of data, as tracked and presented by Swiss Policy Research (SPR), it is the early Fauci prediction and the current “best estimate” of the WHO which remains correct: the overall death rate of COVID-19 “ranges between 0.1% and 0.5% in most countries, which is comparable to the medium influenza pandemics of 1957 and 1968.”
Knightly emphasizes that even these numbers may be significantly inflated due to “over-reporting” for which there remains ample evidence (here, here, here, here). Still, SPR clarifies that, even according to the present numbers, the risk of death “for the healthy general population of school and working age is comparable to a daily car ride to work.”