This discussion leads us nowhere. You are apparently willing to believe that CDC "hardworking scientists" are not lying and misleading us by giving us manipulated data. You have apparently forgotten that the director of the CDC was forced to make a public apology for lying about AIDS data. His excuse, you may recall, was that they "did it in a good cause".
This is frankly enough to make anyone disbelieve anything they say. The worst part is that this director was not fired, demoted, fined, nor did he suffer any negative consequences for this inexcusable betrayal of public trust. Nor did anyone of the "hardworking scientists" suffer the slightest punishment. I'll say it again. These people are corrupt to the nines. All the people who did this and said nothing about it are still there, unless they have retired by now. And I am certain that they are doing all sorts of things "in a good cause", including manipulating covid data. And you make my point. The rate of infection of covid is unknown and perhaps unknowable. For all we know, the infection rate is 100%, which would make the fatality rate low indeed. All of the lockdowns and mask wearing have proven to be utterly ineffective. Places where the most draconian restrictions have been enforced have had surges of infection similar to places where restrictions have been relatively relaxed. We keep schools closed in the U.S. even though places where schools have been re-opened have shown no particular covid spread. You should read the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, whereupon Big Pharma pays fees to the FDA, enabling them to put on more (corrupt) employees, so they can get their drugs approved on their own schedule. I'd call that paying FDA employees by Big Pharma. Maybe that's just me. The fact that such workers are not paid directly is merely a technicality, isn't it? This is not really a forum for this subject, so why don't we just agree to disagree. We can agree that the vaccines are a good thing, but for different reasons. On Saturday, November 21, 2020, 04:17:52 PM GMT+1, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: Michael Foster <mf...@yahoo.com> wrote: Yes, you are correct about the 6% figure. They merely stated that 6% of cases that listed covid19 as the sole cause of death failed to list the co-morbidities. Correct. COVID-19 itself does not kill patients directly as often as it leaves them open to secondary infections and things like that. But you have fallen into the trap of the CDC's tricky manipulation of data. There have been up to 80,000 deaths per year supposedly caused by influenza (which strains?). The CDC then gives the mortality rate based upon an *estimated* number of infections. In other words, any number they want to make up. No, they do not make up these numbers. The numbers are based on clinical data from doctors and hospitals, and field studies. They are estimated because ordinary influenza is not on the list of diseases that doctors must report. Some forms of influenza have to be reported but not others. See: https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001929.htm They then state the mortality rate among *known* covid infections. That is the only thing they can do. There are no other reliable numbers at present. There will be more data after widespread antibody tests can be performed. In any case, we know that COVID-19 kills at least 10 times more people than influenza in a typical year. Influenza typically kills around 30,000, although some years a dangerous strain will kill many more. We know that COVID-19 has only infected a small fraction of the population, because people have taken precautions such as wearing masks, whereas influenza infects a much larger fraction. If COVID-19 were to spread as widely as influenza usually does, it would kill ~40 times more people than influenza. It would also disable many people for life with permanent lung damage, strokes, heart problems, amputations and so on. Influenza seldom does that. So it is far more lethal and serious. These people at the CDC, the NIH and the FDA are corrupt to the nines. Not the ones I know. They are hardworking scientists. I think you should not generalize about people you know nothing about. In the FDA, and I know this is hard to believe, many of the employees' salaries are actually paid by pharmaceutical companies. That would be against Federal law. I know several people who work or worked for Uncle Sam, such as my late mother. They cannot accept so much as a ham sandwich from anyone. Where did you read that? Be careful what you believe.