Flu Cases Down
Great news, the cases of influenza are way down this year. Is the reduction due to an early roll-out of the annual flu vaccine? More people getting the meds because of increased availability? Or just one of those statistical anomalies where flu infections are down in certain demographic groups? Is there another, darker reason?
Poetrooper sends.
Epidemiologist Says Influenza Cases Are Being Counted as COVID-19
“Influenza has been renamed COVID-19 in large part.”
By Paul Joseph Watson
Top epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski says that the massive drop in influenza cases can be attributed to the fact that many are being falsely counted as COVID-19 cases.
Wittkowski, former Head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design at Rockefeller University, cautioned that, “Influenza has been renamed COVID-19 in large part.”
According to CDC figures, the cumulative positive influenza test rate from late September into the week of December 19th was just 0.2%, compared to 8.7% from a year before.
According to Wittkowski, this is because many flu infections are being incorrectly labeled as coronavirus cases.
“There may be quite a number of influenza cases included in the ‘presumed COVID-19’ category of people who have COVID-19 symptoms (which Influenza symptoms can be mistaken for), but are not tested for SARS RNA,” Wittkowski told Just the News.
Those patients may “also may have some SARS RNA sitting in their nose while being infected with Influenza, in which case the influenza would be ‘confirmed’ to be COVID-19,” he added.
Wittkowski challenges the notion that masks and social distancing have resulted in a drop in flu cases, asserting that flu and COVID-19 viruses are “more similar than people want to acknowledge.”
Federal reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid, federal insurance programs for seniors and the disabled, and people with low incomes, for treatment of COVID-19 are a huge incentive to ignore influenza cases. Small wonder the cases of flu are under-reported. Read the rest of the article here: Summit News
Thanks, Poe.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Guest Link
We’ve been joking about this for months now. We noticed the CDC numbers showing 90%+ drops in Flu cases. We actually dropped the number of deaths total last year too.
Nobody has died from anything or been sick from any other cause other than the Chinesecommunist Originated Virus Infecting Disease of 2019. And that includes the ‘possum that didn’t quite make it across State Rt 23 on the Frontage Road.
I actually got the Flu Shot this year. Little Miss Thang Brown Sugar from the local health dprt was giving them away at the voting place on the 3rd of Nov. Not only was it completely free with 0 co-pay, I didn’t feel a thing from the stick and for the FIRST time, I didn’t catch the flu a week later. In years past when my regular Chancre Mechanic insisted I needed to have one, he would make the jab and then invoice me/the BC/BS insurance at $135, knowing the max the insurance would pay is about $28.
” … this is because many flu infections are being incorrectly labeled as coronavirus cases.”
Yep. Money talks …
Flu is sooo passe.
Always…always…always…FOLLOW THE MONEY:
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/state-by-state-breakdown-of-federal-aid-per-covid-19-case.html
This SERIOUSLY chaps my hips.
UFB! Well, no, actually, it is believable.
It is ALWAYS about the money…OUR MONEY!
OUR CONFISCATED MONEY!
Out of curiosity, what aspect of it chaps your hips? Is it just the government spending tax dollars, period? Or the breakdown? Or something else entirely?
In this case, all this shows is the distribution of the initial $30B that hospitals got to prepare for the pandemic, based off historical Medicare share. So, if Alabama, for example, represented X% of last year’s Medicare expenditures across all states, it got (roughly) X% of that $30B, irrespective of how many cases it then had.
So, this wasn’t ‘incentive’ money, or money given for reporting COVID cases, it was ‘just’ money given to hospitals in a somewhat reasonable way. I say ‘somewhat reasonable’ because, at first pass, I’d imagine Medicare spending tracks relative age demographics, and anticipating a wide spread of the virus, that seems like a reasonable, if imperfect, distribution.
Dividing it by the number of cases at the time is an editorial thing this article does, but had nothing to do with the distribution, as I understand it.
LC, are you REALLY going to come to this forum and try to convince us the Covid-19 mortality stats aren’t being skewed to financially benefit hospitals and major healthcare organizations who not only have their feral snouts, but both front feet, in the federal trough?
And let’s not even go into how such data manipulation is being used to benefit certain political entities, hmm?
Well, I’d love to do that, but in this particular post, I was just trying to better understand OS’s point of frustration, and point out that this allocation was based of Medicare expenditures, not COVID cases.
And I think our disagreement would depend on the magnitude of skew you allege in the statistics. There’s always some amount of error and fraud. Like medical fraud itself, which is estimated to be between $70B – $320B in the US…. but, as enormous as those numbers are, they represent roughly 3% – 10% of health care spending. If you say, for example, that there’s maybe 3% – 10% more COVID cases being reported by hospitals, I doubt I’d argue. If you say they’re inflating their numbers by 200%-300%, I’d take two Tylenol, laugh at you, and then argue.
WOW ,,got my COVID cash today my life is all better.
Test run for Democratic Socialism?
Yeah, Gretchen Whitler has deemed that the Michigan DHHS “review” all death certificates and “associated paper work” to determine if the death should be attributed to Covid, rather than a motor vehicle accident or heart attack, I guess.
When they announce the death toll daily, they never mention how far back they go to make that determination, or what the original cause of death was listed as.
Go figure…
When my mother passed last May, the funeral director advised us since she did not pass in Crook County, the death certificate would be available in a few days to a week. If she had been in Crook county, death certificates were taking 14 business days at a minimum because the coroner was “reviewing” every death certificate/paperwork for Covid cases.
Condolences, OAM.
Thank you, Ed. It was as peaceful as such things can be, here at home on hospice. We were not going to let her die in a hospital where we couldn’t hold her hand or even let her see and feel us with her. She literally smiled at the end.
IT’S THE COVID!!!!
I hate to say it but you guys have no fucking clue. My wife is a hospitalist provider at the local hospital and no one there has ever seen anything like this before. It isn’t just bad, it is end of days type bad. So many people are dying they literally can’t keep up. The entire hospital system is full and they have nearly run out of vents.
Whole adult families are dying. If anything the numbers dead are being radically under reported. Several days our state reported zero deaths, while I actually went on calls for unattended deaths where the person died of covid (PE).
We have people getting into crashes and dying because they are hypoxic.
Any little shits who wants to make fun of the current situation I hate to tell you there is a tsunami of karma on the way. You best pray to whatever gods you believe in that the vaccine is safe and effective. If not we are looking a million+ dead by this time next year.
Sadly, you’re right on the eventual number of dead. One half of one percent of this country is over 1.6 million.
The issue is and has been how this is being handled, reported, etc. I attended a funeral last week of someone who is being claimed as a Covid fatality. But, the man was 81, had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, was a brittle diabetic and has had open heart surgery, a pacemaker and a heart valve replacement. He did not have any symptoms of Covid and was only discovered to have the active virus because he was tested prior to the most recent round of chemo. If he did not catch Covid, he may be alive today.
If he did not have those other, terminal, conditions, he may be alive today, too. But his death certificate lists Covid as c.o.d. even though that is the only medical issue he had but was asymptomatic for either before or at the time of death. The virus may have weakened his already stressed system, or it may not have had any impact. We simply don’t know because he was not retested at the time of death (his kidneys shut down, actual mechanism of death was renal failure) but it serves an agenda to list the fatality as Covid, particularly in this State.
Is it not possible to acknowledge this is being inappropriately hyped, reported and mishandled but still a serious risk for some populations? Is it mutually exclusive?
Do you believe that an 81 yo being treated for cancer couldn’t pay his hospital bill and therefore the provider had to file for compensation through another source? Because that is how the covid reimbursement program works.
Providers don’t get extra money for claiming the person died from covid they can merely file for reimbursement when there is no other way to get paid for care through either insurance or some existing program. So we are talking about a very small portion of the population, especially in the most relevant age groups where most people are on Medicare. This is to prevent hospitals from going under in the middle of a pandemic.
Since we’re arguing from authority here. I’m an epidemiology major. This isn’t anywhere near end of days bad and I’m going to question your intent AND your merits based on the doomsday preaching alone. Being blunt.
Sub 1% death rates are still a lot of people and I feel bad for the people that hit that number. That’s the name of the game when you get to that scale though.
tl;dr? Wake me up when DR Tuberculosis mutates far enough.
I’m sorry I missed what capacity you fill at the hospital where you work or was it the CDC or a state department of health?
Curious what you do for a living as an SME, asking for a friend.
I stated my credentials you clown. I can pull the numbers direct from the CDC and other sources. It’s a sub 1% death rate virus, only truly a threat to people who are already at risk from damn near anything else. It’s not a doomsday scenario and your fear mongering doesn’t help anyone. Nor does your reliance on ad hominem and argument from authority rather than, as Poet noted, that your current location is getting hard hit.
Personally? I think you’re LARPing like Lars.
If I learned anything from military service it was that having a major in a certain degree does not an SME make. You sound like every officer who; working in an ops center tried to tell me what was going on in my AO without ever going there. Not much authority on that at all to be certain.
Also I should point out that the CDC cites a 3-4% mortality rate, but you already knew that since you read it on their website right?
Really?! Care to share?
I’ll wait.
(and appeals to authority get you more authority, Lars Jr.)
Okay 5JC, you need to tell us where you are, because the Doomsday picture you paint of your environs is certainly not representative of most of this country.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d wager you’re one who believes we’re all (especially the polar bears) totally doomed because of evil American fracking-induced, anthropogenic global warming, right?
You should get tested for the Chickenlittleitis Virus stat. If you do test positive, you’re in luck because there’s a cure:
A strong, healthy dose of common sense and reality…
Wow, I’d wager I deal in more “reality” in regards to covid on a daily basis than you have all year. But feel free to prove me wrong. How many dead and dying from covid have you dealt with?
For where I am look for the current epicenter of per capita cases in the US and I am within a ten minute drive.
So far as your conclusions on the rest, well it is pretty lame to come up with such stupid (and wrong) red herrings. I thought you were better than that, it makes me sad to be so wrong about you.
So you admit your confirmation bias, being in the highest area of effect in a job with very high concentration of cases/observation, far end of both curves, yet expect everyone else to doom and gloom because it must be so everywhere as it is for you.
That is an epic fail for you.
Spread your panic porn elsewhere. Most folks here ain’t buying.
Really panic porn? That is the best you can do after posting all that garbage?
In LA County EMS crews have been instructed Not to take the very sick to the hospital because they are going to die anyway.
If they do put you in the ambulance you are going to wait outside the hospital in the ambulance for eight hours or more for somebody to die or get discharged so they can let you in.
Does this sound even remotely normal?
This is in the most populous County in the country. In fact if LA County were a state it would be the 11th most populous state in the country. They have more hospital bed space than most states too.
The holiday covid fallout hasn’t even hit yet.
Has it occurred to you that bad news is going to start to disappear just like it did during the Obama years? That doesn’t mean bad shit isn’t going to be happening.
You don’t need me to be the canary in the coal mine anyway. It’s already too late. Just tell everyone to smile and think good thoughts cuz you repeated some bullshit you heard on the internet when if you had thought about it for another ten minutes you might have had an ephinany. In 2-3 weeks time we can revisit this and you can tell me how wrong I was. Nobody will be happier than me.
So LA is all fouled up, due to LA “leaders” who utterly failed to act with -months- to do so. With all kinds of fussing they made about “second waves” and “holiday surges” .
Not my problem. Your problem. Not my job to fix. Yours. Vote for more effective crooks.
Where is the temp hospital capacity that we can stand up in a week? (And did so, many places and times, you may recall, never really used)
No CA NG callout? Why? They could handle much of the non-crit stuff.
Didn’t rent unused warehouse/mall space to repurpose and to offload non-crit cases to free hospitals for crit-sit?
No O2 stockpile adds?
Your taxes are very high. How can you -not- afford basic services? Your government is swimming in other peoples’ money.
Or maybe LA just wants fedbucks from other places spent so the glommers in office don’t have to shift the grift?
LA is screwed up by its government, who are only slightly less dysfunctional than SF, and screwed by LA voters, who chose these clowns.
Peddle the panic porn elsewhere. Aint buying.
What the heck will you folks do when we get a real pandemic, one with something more than sub-one-percent lethality?
Collapse. That is what y’all will do. And it might not take much more for it to happen. Better fix that government, fast.
In your rush to dish on California you miss the point completely.
I don’t live anywhere near California. It isn’t the epicenter. On a per capita basis they aren’t even in the top ten.
Now imagine how things are where things are actually really bad.
Around here they send people home on 5l of oxygen because they are not sick enough to get admitted. You should look that up to see what it means.
“You should look that up to see what it means.”
Don’t need to; been watching it for years. It’s the result of a half century or so of cost cutting by the medical industry and government. Empty beds are expensive, so they have been minimized. Like “just-in-time” inventory control. The system works like a charm until something unexpected happens, then the system breaks down; no reserves or flexibility.
Some of us get to say “I told you so”.
Lemme ask you a stupid question then:
Over the past 15-20 years, how many hospitals or ERs have shut down because of them being overrun by illegals, etc., and the state of CA not reimbursing them for the care they provided?
I left CA in 2006, and I can think of at least a half-dozen examples off the top of my head.
So it’s not just covid causing the overflow but the reduction in available beds over the same timeframe. Perfect storm and shit.
You weren’t wrong about me, 5JC–it’s your position, your thinking, that’s changed, not mine. And as Mail says, your location confirms that your current frame of mind is heavily influenced by the malfeasance of your government, local and state.
You apparently are expecting all of us to look at this situation through your eyes which is a very unlikely thing to happen inasmuch as yours seem to be very unfocused at the moment. Your reality is not our reality and your reality is the one that is atypical, not ours, although you seem to think ours soon will be.
Sorry, but we disagree.
The reason I responded to you as I did was this:
“I hate to say it but you guys have no fucking clue.”
That is straight out of the Commissar’s playbook and it elicited the very same response his angry, know-it-all comments usually do from me. Again, it was you whose manner has changed not mine, and, yes, it caught me a bit by surprise.
So who should be disappointed in whom?
Once again for the people with their hearing aids down low; I DONT LIVE ANYWHERE NEAR CALIFORNIA.
It’s pretty bad how fast you guys jump to false conclusions and make all the wrong assumptions about me, my politics and make ad hominiem attacks all of which really reinforces my contention about the cluelessness and having no real idea about the virus. If you want to discuss the virus and the flu, ok. If you want to be condescending and call me a coward you have no idea what a fool you really are so I forgive you. But there is no point in talking if you go that way.
But more to the point:
1- No, providers don’t get extra money for designating a someone dead from Covid.
2- Your description of how the reimbursement program works is incorrect. So incorrect I suggest you go and actually read it.
3- There are several reasons why flu deaths are “down”. Firstly the numbers in the past were only poor estimates that have been shown to be inflated. The numbers these days are actual, or at least as close to actual as a health system can get it. This isn’t TV, not everyone gets an autopsy. Secondly it doesn’t cohabitate well with covid. Covid is also much more likely to get you much sicker and has a much higher morality rate. Even if you do have both the covid is 30x more likely to kill you.
No one can really say for sure if masks helped or not. But absolutely no one can argue that they made things worse.
Since you never answered my question I am going to go ahead and draw an assumption of my own, that you are indeed speaking out of turn, without any RW experiences to work off of, using perhaps bloggers as your source of reference. Again, if wrong feel free to show me.
I just reviewed the US flu vaccine numbers:
2018-19 = 166M doses (typical year)
2019-20 = 175M doses (record high)
2020-21 = 196M doses estimate.
While correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation I think where there is smoke there is fire.
“Firstly the numbers in the past were only poor estimates that have been shown to be inflated.”
But suddenly we’re to believe that current numbers aren’t? On your say-so?
That’s laughable and totally Lars-esque…
It isn’t my say so. Believe it or not people are actually paying attention to it now because they got this pandemic on. It was in all the news, fake and real.
” Firstly the numbers in the past were only poor estimates that have been shown to be inflated. The numbers these days are actual, or at least as close to actual as a health system can get it.”
LOL.
Speaking of clueless.
Look, 5JC, if you and your physician wife are fully engaged in a serious fight in a Covid hotspot, you have my thanks and admiration. But when you blow in here telling us we know fuck-all simply because our experiences aren’t the same as yours, that’s full-blown Larcissism and is guaranteed to garner negative responses.
Nearing eighty and with multiple cancers, I’m in regular contact with a variety of physicians and other medical personnel. I routinely ask their assessments on the Covid situation and in spite of the fact that our state is supposedly one of the nation’s hotspots, they are unanimous in their responses: the issue is being overblown and the numbers being reported are suspect.
You want us here at TAH to see things from your perspective–well what about my perspective where every one of my doctors and nurses is telling me that your perspective is the exception rather than the norm?
Had you entered this thread with an observation like, “Look guys, I don’t know what the situation is in your AO, but here in mine it’s overwhelming,” you would likely have received supportive responses and many well-wishes for success and safety for you and your hospitalist wife.
But no, you had to go full-Lars and attack, telling us that our experiences and the opinions based on those experiences are all bullshit simply because they vary from yours. So if you get some blowback, that’s on you, pal–you bought it–you own it.
And for what it’s worth, I do admire those like you and your wife who are going in harm’s way to fight this virus and hope you both remain safe.
Just don’t keep trying to convince me that my own experiences and observations are worthless…
Let’s give it a few weeks and see where the road takes us.
The reduction ie because people are wearing masks and social distancing. As well as lockdowns.
It works on the flu too.
Explain why masks and lockdowns work on conventional flu, but seems to be ineffective against COVID-19.
GTFO.
1. People are not wearing masks that actually work. A t-shirt wrapped around your face does not a mask make. If it’s easy to breathe through it’s not providing any sort of actual protection for anyone.
2. People are not wearing their PPE in a proper manner. The amount of people wearing a “mask” below their nose is staggering. PPE only works if you wear it properly. Wearing PPE improperly is the same as not wearing it. Graveyards are full of these examples.
3. Ahhh, lock downs. So you lock everything down. Now large swathes of the population, who happen to be those at risk for food insecurity and homelessness, what happens to them? You are aware that a rise in poverty directly relates to a rise in mortality, right? And the economic/life impact of these asinine policies, being dictated by people who’s paycheck is still rolling in, won’t be fully counted for a decade.
4. Not to mention the concept of “isolation” for a pandemic is not something that is realistic in today’s world. Lock downs worked before you could travel around the world in a day or 2. Our logistical footprint means lock downs are no longer feasible.
5. The stats are being manipulated. If you can’t grasp that you need to retake statistics 101 and reevaluate the data.
What do you know? Another topic you chimed in on where you have zero knowledge, skill or ability.
By the way, this is yet another example of why you are a fusking racist. You advocate for policies that will disproportionately affect minorities and you will not be affected by.
Lets see how your “morals” and “ethics” hold up when you are tired, cold and hungry. Easy to pontificate when you aren’t the one paying the price.
How many black and brown kids are worth going hungry to protect the children?
And those masks reduced highway deaths too? Amazing.
Is their nothing dictatorial idiocy can’t achieve?
If I can smell your bullshit from 3000 miles away through my mask, you know what that means?
Masks. DO. NOT. WORK.
Say, what happened to all those tent-city hospitals and hospital ships?
the original wave that didn’t need them was on a “disease naive” population. Now, with significant immunity in the population from prior exposure, time to panic! Are they rebuilding the tent hospitals? Or is this just “winter”?
Florida should have been devastated and South Dakota depopulated by now, apparently. Yet it is Calizuela with its draconian nonsense that is ” out of control” .
Hm. Odd that, eh?
Panic! Doom! Collectivize under the Donk-Stupids! Give total control and obey without thought! It’s our only hope! Quick before alleged reality refutes!
Nah. Buzz off, panic-porn pushers.
I’ve been wondering that myself. Every hospital in San Diego set up those emergency overflow tents outside their ER at the beginning of the year. They all sat empty for weeks and were taken down without ever housing a single patient. Now we’re being told how overwhelmed the ERs are, but not a single one of them has brought the overflow tent back out.
I haven’t looked, so I don’t know if the data is out there. I’d be curious to see how the capacity used of ICU and hospital beds compares to the normal. I spent a lot of time around ERs over the years and they were always very busy. Several hours wait was not unusual.
Since COVID, all the hypochondriacs and people with tooth pain are avoiding the hospital cause they don’t want the ‘rona. I’ve had to twice go to the ER in the past several months and both times it was a ghost town. No patients, no waiting for doctors. I even got a CAT scan and was in and out of the ER inside two hours. Not only was the physician quick, but so was the radiologist! I’ve been to the ER on flesh wounds like a dog bite that took me longer to get seen and released.
ICU beds seem to get used if they’re available, as are hospital beds in general. It’s just a gut feeling that all the doom and gloom of “90% beds in use!” is actually pretty normal.
And, if a new surge was so predictable, why the heck didn’t anyone set up tent hospitals, rent closed malls, order refrigerated trailers, etc. Oh, and strictly observe their own mandates.
So which was it? Yeah. Panic porn -and- incompetence.
The purpose of this exercise seems to be to continue the insanity until everybody is insane. Argue about things which do not matter until you are too tired to focus on something of actual substance. Oh, yeah, that’s a winning strategy. Uh-huh.
Simple life principles still apply whether there is a pandemic, stolen elections, floods, full moons, or spring flowers. Feed yourself a bunch of junk and your health eventually will fail. Works for both your physical and mental well being.
Our options are many. Select wisely because eventually you will be incapable of making corrections and must simply learn to live (or die) with the results of earlier decisions.