What is the Real Effect

There is much ado about nothing these days. The much ado is named Covid-19. The nothing is the effect it has had on people. The real deleterious effect has been the reaction of the governing officials, and impossibly fearful people in the populace.

This author not only contracted Covid-19, but survived it quite easily. Treatment consisted of normal "home remedy" treatments for the common cold, which is a strain of corona virus. It was, for all intents and purposes, a "spicy cold" - this term being used by the author's 15 year old son and his friends. Symptoms were slightly more severe than a common cold, but not as severe as the flu. Five weeks after the fact, the author was tested for antibodies and the test was positive.

So, for people under age 60, we know that Covid-19 is not as deadly as the typical flu. For people over age 60 and with comorbidity factors, it can be as deadly as some more severe flu strains.

In Tennessee, there were at least 2100 flu deaths last year at the start of the flu season. There have been just over 1000 Covid-19 deaths in the entire year of 2020 as of this writing, according to the Tennessee Department of Health.

This begs the question - how deadly is Covid-19?

In order to answer the question, we must compare to deaths in prior years. And since many people get bogged down with numbers, and since many deaths due to Covid-19 have been over stated, let's look at how many more people have died than in previous years.

Dr. Damon Petty did just that in this presentation. And, he did not skew the data away from deaths due to Covid-19; instead, he skewed the data in favor of Covid-19 by adding influenza and pneumonia numbers with it. The results?

Given that "excess deaths will mean deaths over and above prior death rates. All influenza and pneumonia excess deaths in the US combine to be the 6th - behind Altzheimer's, hypertensive disease, Ischemic heart disease, diabetes, and cerebrovascular disease. There were fewer than 3000 excess deaths in the entire US since February 1 due to influenza and pneumonia.





In Tennessee, only 35 excess deaths in 2020 due to all influenza and pneumonia cases combined.

This is not worth a shutdown of our economy, nor mandates of wearing ineffective facial coverings.