Official UK data (July 23) and Delta has significantly lower mortality than alpha, beta and eta variants

Alpha and Delta are split about 50:50 causing the vast majority of UK cases.  Here is the updated report:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1005517/Technical_Briefing_19.pdf

Mortality in the over 50 age group (pages 14 and 15) was 4.8% for alpha, 4.3% for beta, 5.3% for eta, and only 1.8% for Delta.

Here's the thing:  the USG spin doctors created a lie about Delta so they could keep the panic going.  Perhaps Delta looked fearful at one time.  But now the Delta story is all bullshit.  While Delta may be the first variant to break through vaccine-induced (limited and waning) protection, I can guarantee it will not be the last.  Breaking through vaccine protection is a completely different issue than how virulent or deadly a variant or strain is, overall.

Just to confirm this for yourself, go look up The NY Times daily cases and deaths.  The US cases are said to be over 80% Delta.  You will find that case numbers began shooting up 4 weeks ago.

Deaths have normally followed case upticks with a two week delay.  But this time, deaths have barely budged over the last two weeks, failing to follow the trajectory of cases.

It just shows we are living in scamdemic times. But are any of these numbers reliable?  For whatever reason, it appears the UK government is significantly less brazen about making up statistics than the Walensky's and Fauci's are on this side of the pond.

The unvaccinated among us can be pleased we did not waiver from our convictions.  Looks like for Delta, vaccinees got all the risk, and none of the benefit.  And now they want to sell you a booster...

Mandates, wow. Look what can be accomplished when the president lacks a brain/ NYT

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/us/politics/biden-vaccine-mandates.html

"If you want to do business with the federal government, get your workers vaccinated,” the president said bluntly...

Numerous businesses — including Netflix, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Washington Post, Ascension Health, Lyft, Google and Morgan Stanley — all announced get-tough policies that require their workers to get shots as a condition of employment..." 

WaPo's big CDC scoop on Delta variant in the vaccinated is unintelligible. Was it meant to be?

Here is the WaPo article, which the paper exclaims is "free" for all, not kept behind a paywall like the rest of the Post.  So they want everybody to read it.  Perhaps a federal agency or vaccine company paid for the privilege?

In a nutshell:  WaPo reports that CDC admits that vaccination does not protect you against the Delta variant.  Unsaid is whether it protects you against the other variants.  

Has protection worn off, or was it missing for Delta to begin with?  That simple question is never addressed.  Might the vaccine make you more susceptible?  This is a rare possibility, if it induced blocking antibodies.

Or is antibody dependent enhancement occurring?  I don't think we know yet.

Ingrained in this message is is the hint that we will immediately need boosters--but they may not actually be boosters, if there is no immunity to boost.  We might instead need a newly designed vaccine.  Two more doses?  But not to worry, that was the whole idea of the mRNA vaccines:  new versions can be put together in a hurry.  And Pfizer has been working on it.

Don't forget, our government in its infinite wisdom contracted for a couple of billion doses.  What did they know that we didn't?

No doubt this story will stoke the market for monoclonal antibodies, a several thousand dollar treatment that only works in the early stage of illness, before you actually know whether you need it.

This article is allegedly based on a leaked  slide show from CDC.  And CDC is said to have its knickers in a twist over its vaccine "messaging."  How will CDC deal with the fact that government officials told a Big Lie last week about 99.5% of hospitalized cases being unvaccinated, when the truth might stoke vaccine hesitancy?  What message can they now use, having painted themselves into a corner?  

But why did they paint themselves into a corner?  Why did Fauci et al. make such an outrageous claim (the 99.5% one), when data from Israel, the UK, Singapore and elsewhere belied the lie?  

Much of the rest of the article is a collection of quotes from people to whom the WaPo showed the slides. Since these experts are vaccine boosters, what would you expect them to say?  Their remarks are vapid and unenlightening.

Of course this is more fear-mongering (CDC claiming that delta is the most virulent strain of all) designed to make us happily grab our retired masks and stop hanging with our vaccinated friends.  

And now the government is going to force a vaccine that doesn't work on millions of employees.

The one thing that is clear in this whole story is they want the ability to inject us with something, and to do it over and over.  We don't know why.  And they're not telling.

The NYT says half a million Americans are getting the shot every day.  Join the crowd!  The Europeans are besting us in the number vaccinated.  Do I believe the NYT?  

The NYT is confused tonight.  It has one article on the Delta variant-- CDC slides story, while it has another article claiming:

Although those steps fall short of a mandate, Mr. Biden also ordered the Defense Department to move rapidly toward one for all members of the military, a step that would affect almost 1.5 million troops, many of whom have resisted taking a shot that is highly effective against a disease that has claimed the lives of more than 600,000 Americans.

And Biden was late to get the message about the CDC slides, saying today:

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Mr. Biden said, calling it an “American tragedy” and talking directly to the 90 million Americans who are eligible for a vaccine but have not gotten one. “People are dying and will die who don’t have to die. If you’re out there unvaccinated, you don’t have to die. Read the news.” 

I guess those CDC slides really were leaked unexpectedly.  I had been wondering if the federal employee vaccine mandate might bring a few federal whistleblowers out of the woodwork.  Let's hope they keep the information coming.

WaPo 7/28 publishes multiple truth grenades as well as fake news about breakthrough cases

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/breakthrough-infections-cdc-data/2021/07/28/dcaaa6b2-efce-11eb-a452-4da5fe48582d_story.html

Health

CDC reversal on indoor masking prompts experts 
to ask, ‘Where’s the data?’

Excerpts:

New recommendations from federal health officials this week on when vaccinated Americans should don face masks came with a startling bolt of news: People who have had their shots and become infected with the delta variant of the coronavirus can harbor large amounts of virus just like unvaccinated people. That means they could become spreaders of the disease and should return to wearing masks indoors in certain situations, including when vulnerable people are present.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not publish the new research. In the text of the updated masking guidance, the agency merely cited “CDC COVID-19 Response Team, unpublished data, 2021.”

Some outside scientists have their own message: Show us the data...

" The Singapore Ministry of Health recently found that three-fourths of coronavirus cases in the past four weeks were in people who were fully or partially vaccinated, most with no or mild symptoms...

These post-vaccination infections have often been described by Walensky and other medical experts as rare. How rare is unclear. News reports of people getting sick after vaccination have been common in recent weeks. But scientific data is limited...

And here is the kicker:  3 months ago CDC acted to drastically reduce its breakthrough case numbers, by restricting reports to only people who died or were hospitalized, and requiring huge viral loads when tested, defined as having a positive PCR with cycle threshold no greater than 28... while normally Covid cases are considered positive with approximately 1000 times less virus --Nass

The CDC on May 1 said it would stop tracking mild and moderate breakthrough cases, and focus only on hospitalizations and deaths. As of July 19, the CDC had documented 5,914 such breakthroughs, including 1,141 deaths.

Even though the vaccines remain effective against all variants of the coronavirus, they are not designed to create “sterilizing” immunity. That’s why breakthrough infections happen." 

----------------

Yet on July 21, NBC Boston noted that in Massachusetts alone, with less than 2% of the US population, over 5100 breakthrough cases had been documented.

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/more-than-5100-breakthrough-covid-cases-reported-in-mass-at-least-80-have-died/2435719/

More Than 5,100 Breakthrough COVID Cases Reported in Mass.; at Least 80 Have Died

As of July 17, a total of 5,166 breakthrough cases had been reported to the state DPH. Of those, 272 people were hospitalized and survived. Of the 80 people who died, 23 died without being hospitalized; 57 died following a hospital stay.

Health officials insist vaccine confidence should not be shaken, and say these numbers should be put into perspective. The overwhelming majority of the reported breakthrough cases -- more than 93% -- did not result in either hospitalization or death. 

In other words, vaccinated breakthrough cases were just as likely to be hospitalized or die, or at even greater risk of these bad outcomes, as unvaccinated cases--Nass

Sorry I have been gone and need to focus elsewhere for a couple of weeks. I am okay

Here is how you do the Big Lie/ CNBC and the 99.5% of deaths in the unvaccinated

First CNBC set up the story.  It provided facts that actually don't mean very much. but sound frightening.  It said the virus is 1,000 times more transmissible than the original. In fact, precisely this strategy was used in the early days of Covid.  

The variant is highly contagious, largely because people infected with the delta strain can carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than those infected with the original strain, according to new data.

At the onset of the pandemic, in March 2020, SARS-2 was alleged to be 1,000 times more transmissible than SARS-1.  And today, the hot story is that the Delta variant is 1,000 times more transmissible than the original strain of SARS-2.  Which would make it 1 million times more transmissible than SARS-1.

But what does that really mean?  In the real world, more transmissibility is generally associated with lowered virulence.  And that is precisely the case when you compare SARS-1 and SARS-2, and the Delta versus the original Covid strain.  Each has considerably less virulence than the earlier coronavirus.

It means the Delta variant might be as transmissible as the flu. And it happens to be the least virulent of the seven variants being evaluated in the UK. 

Now that you have gotten everyone's attention, you throw in some quotes from the CDC Director, who happily obliges with more meaningless drivel.

“The delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters at a briefing Thursday. “It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of, and that I have seen in my 20-year career.”

Aggressive sounds pretty bad, but what does it mean?  In fact, it has no medical meaning. The claim of high transmissibility is repeated, while nothing else is being said.

How transmissible is flu?  CDC states that between 3% and 20% of Americans get the flu each winter, within a brief 3 months. Delta is presumably in the same ballpark.

The stage has been prepared. The CDC Director has opined on the latest horribleness. The audience is nervous and paying full attention. 

What comes next appears to be from a reliable source.  But in fact, it came out of left field.  There is no source.  No attribution whatsoever.  

CNBC stated:

"In hospitals around the country, 97% of people admitted with Covid symptoms are unvaccinated, and 99.5% of all Covid deaths are also among the unvaccinated."

The numbers cannot be verified by the press, or by me, or by anyone who does not have an official list of the vaccinated.  Most people were vaccinated in mass clinics.  The vaccinations are not in their medical records.  There are no insurance claims for the vaccine, which was free.  While the states and CDC do have those lists, somewhere, CDC has previously claimed it could not match the list of the vaccinated to reported post-vaccination deaths to corroborate and evaluate them. 

In the UK, with similar vaccination rates as the US, it was reported that the majority of hospitalizations are occurring in the VACCINATED. This according to Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK's chief science advisor, who is also known as a member of the Fauci Covid origin cover-up cabal.

According to Reuters, Vallance now says he misspoke.

Vallance earlier said at a news conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson that 60% of people being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 have had two doses of vaccine.

"Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference," Vallance said on Twitter. "About 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are not from double vaccinated people, rather 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are currently from unvaccinated people." 

When the public has no means of verification, the media (as well as government officials) can say anything they please.  How does 99.5% sound?  There's nothing stopping you. So why not go for broke? And if there is pushback, just change the numbers tomorrow.

In the UK, children will not be vaccinated for Covid unless at extremely high risk

 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/17/children-will-get-covid-vaccines-vulnerable/

Children will only get Covid vaccines if vulnerable

Ministers decide against mass vaccination for teenagers on advice of scientists

ByEdward Malnick,  SUNDAY POLITICAL EDITOR17 July 2021 • 9:00pm

Britain has opted against mass Covid vaccinations for all children and teenagers, with ministers instead preparing to offer jabs to vulnerable 12 to 15-year-olds and those about to turn 18, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is believed to have advised ministers against the rollout of vaccines to all children until further evidence on the risks is available.

Instead, under guidance due to be issued on Monday, jabs will be offered to children between 12 and 15 who are deemed vulnerable to Covid or who live with adults who are immunosuppressed or otherwise vulnerable to the virus.  They will also now be offered to all 17-year-olds within three months of their 18th birthday.

The move is at odds with decisions taken in countries such as the US, Israel and France, where children over the age of 12 are being routinely vaccinated.

Teaching unions had pushed for all young people to be offered a vaccine to protect them against serious illness from Covid and to help minimise further disruption to education after three lockdowns.

However, the JCVI's advice is expected to echo recommendations by Germany's vaccine commission, Stiko, which said last month that only children with pre-existing conditions should be given a Covid jab.

Ministers are preparing to announce the move after months of deliberation by the JCVI. A source said the committee would keep the possibility of vaccinating all children "under review". Patients' groups and MPs were briefed on the plans by Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, last week.

The disclosure comes ahead of the lifting of many Covid restrictions on Monday and as the Department of Health announced that every adult in the UK had now been offered a first dose of a vaccine – ahead of Boris Johnson's target date of July 19. 

More than two-thirds (68 per cent) of adults have now received two doses. Officials said that every adult now had the opportunity to have both by mid-September.

The NHS is now preparing to roll out the vaccine imminently to 12 to 15-year-olds with underlying health conditions and those living with vulnerable adults.

They will be offered the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was approved for use in children aged 12 to 15 by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency last month after a "rigorous review".

On Saturday, Prof Sarah Gilbert, one of the scientists behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine said the benefits of vaccinating children were "much lower and poorer" than inoculating adults. 

She added: "With still a limited number of doses available to vaccinate the world, we should be use those doses for healthcare workers and for older individuals in countries that don't yet have a vaccine." 

The UK decision is understood to have been made based on a "risk-benefit" analysis based on protecting children rather than a calculation taking into account excess supplies that the country could ship for use in adults abroad.

Teenagers aged 16 who are deemed vulnerable to Covid are already eligible for vaccines as part of group six of the vaccine rollout, which applies to adults aged 16 to 65 in an "at-risk group".

Those aged 16-65 deemed to be at risk include patients with blood cancer, diabetes, severe asthma, kidney disease and lowered immunity due to disease or treatment.

An NHS spokesman said: "Since the start of the NHS Covid vaccination programme, the biggest and most successful in NHS history, the NHS has followed JCVI guidance on delivering vaccinations to the population in England.

"If the JCVI updates its guidance, the NHS will act swiftly to reflect any changes and will continue to deliver Covid jabs to those eligible as quickly as possible, as it has done after previous updates."

The Kids were Safe the Whole Time/ NY Magazine

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/the-kids-were-safe-from-covid-the-whole-time.html

The kids are safe. They always have been.

It may sound strange, given a year of panic over school closures and reopenings, a year of masking toddlers and closing playgrounds and huddling in pandemic pods, that, according to the CDC, among children the mortality risk from COVID-19 is actually lower than from the flu. The risk of severe disease or hospitalization is about the same.

This is true for the much-worried-over Delta variant. It is also true for all the other variants, and for the original strain. Most remarkably, it has been known to be true since the very earliest days of the pandemic — indeed it was among the very first things we did know about the disease. The preliminary mortality data from China was very clear: To children, COVID-19 represented only a vanishingly tiny threat of death, hospitalization, or severe disease.

Yet for a year and a half we have been largely unwilling to fully believe it. Children now wear masks at little-league games, and at the swimming pool, and when school reopens in the fall they will likely wear masks there, too. But the kids are not at risk themselves, and never were. Now, thanks to vaccines, the vast majority of their parents and grandparents aren’t any longer, either.

But first: the kids. Over the course of the pandemic, 49,000 Americans under the age of 18 have died of all causes, according to the CDC. Only 331 of those deaths have been from COVID — less than half as many as have died of pneumonia. In 2019, more than 2,000 American kids and teenagers died in car crashes; each year, according to some estimates, about a thousand die from drowning.

Some of these comparisons aren’t so neat, since the data on other diseases and accidents are sometimes unreliable, and because the extraordinary precautions against COVID-19 probably prevented significant additional spread (and also suppressed the spread of other diseases). But, last year, fewer kids died of COVID-19 than of heart disease, “malignant neoplasms,” suicide, and homicide — not to mention birth defects, which killed hundreds of times more. All told, 600,000 Americans have lost their lives to COVID over the course of the pandemic; just 0.05 percent of those were under the age of 18, a population that represents more than 20 percent of the country’s population as a whole...

FDA promised very extensive surveillance for adverse effects of Covid vaccines--presentation to FDA VRBPAC Advisory Committee, October 22, 2020

https://www.fda.gov/media/143557/download

It should be apparent that FDA was aware by October 22, 2020 of many of the side effects of Covid vaccines that the public only learned about later.  It should also be apparent that FDA (and CDC has access to even more methods for surveillance) has many databases to learn about vaccine safety--whose data are being hidden from the public.  The EUA statute requires that known benefits and risks be provided to potential vaccine recipients.  That is not happening.

The first slide below, "Slide 17" at the URL above, would suggest that FDA was well aware, presumably from the clinical trials, of all the severe adverse events that have subsequently been publicized.  But if FDA knew about these 9 months ago, it has been slow to tell the public.  For instance, we only just learned about Guillain Barre syndrome last week being a known adverse effect.

 

France and Greece (possibly the most independent cultures in Europe) demonstrate over vaccine mandates. If they roll over, will the rest of Europe?

 Protests hit Athens and Paris over new coronavirus restrictions, vaccine mandates

A woman holds an anti-vaccination placard in response to new coronavirus curbs in central Paris on July 14. The sign, written in French, reads: “The liquid of the dictatorship will never enter my body.” (Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images)

By 

Erin Cunningham

 and 

Isabelle Khurshudyan

 

July 15, 2021|Updated today at 9:02 a.m. EDT

Protests flared in France and Greece on Wednesday as residents angry over coronavirus curbs and vaccine mandates in both countries marched against new, stricter regulations that they say discriminate against people unwilling to be inoculated.

In Paris, demonstrators clashed with police after French President Emmanuel Macron announced sweeping measures to fight the pandemic earlier this week. He mandated vaccinations for all health-care workers and said new rules would require unvaccinated people to show negative coronavirus tests before entering bars, restaurants and other entertainment venues.

Also this week, Greek authorities said all medical workers would need to be immunized or face penalties, and only vaccinated individuals would be allowed to use public indoor spaces until Aug. 31, through the height of Greece’s tourism season. The policies prompted demonstrations in Athens, where thousands gathered outside parliament Wednesday under heavy police presence, Reuters reported.

Here are some significant developments:

• Regional authorities in Barcelona Thursday were waiting for a judge to greenlight their decision to impose a nightly curfew in northeastern Spain as the delta variant spreads. A Spanish court had ruled the previous day that strict rules confining residents to their homes last year in an effort to curb infections were unconstitutional.
• New coronavirus cases in Tokyo again hit a six-month high Thursday, with more than 1,300 infections reported in the Japanese capital during the past 24 hours, just eight days before the start of the Olympic Games.
• Australian officials in Melbourne said Thursday they were putting the city and the rest of Victoria state in a snap five-day lockdown, as a growing outbreak of the more virulent [actually the least virulent but more infectious--Nass] delta variant eludes the country’s otherwise successful pandemic response.
• Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most-populous country, has emerged as the hotbed of the pandemic in Asia as it battles the spread of the delta variant. The Muslim-majority nation recorded its highest number of daily cases on Wednesday, registering more than 54,000 infections.

The unrest in France and Greece has underscored the difficulty that some leaders face in weighing public health during a pandemic against policies that appear to encroach [only "appear" to encroach?] on individual freedom. The struggle has been exacerbated by the recent spread of more contagious variants of the virus, including the delta variant, which the World Health Organization says is on track to become dominant around the globe.  [Delta is the mildest, so the best variant to get to obtain durable immunity.  Then treat early.]

In Russia, for example, vaccine mandates and digital health passes for restaurants and bars in Moscow and other cities have been deeply unpopular. Last month, authorities in the capital said 60 percent of public-facing employees — from teachers to taxi drivers to salespeople — must be fully vaccinated by Aug. 15.

Moscow’s Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova said Wednesday that the majority of medical workers, teachers and social workers in the city were inoculated. But in a recent poll by the independent Levada Center, 54 percent of Russians said they were not ready to get one of the locally made shots.

“It’s totally arbitrary and wholly undemocratic,” on protesters in Paris, who identified himself only as Jean-Louis, told Reuters of the French restrictions Wednesday.

While France struggles with widespread vaccine hesitancy, Macron’s announcement has also spurred hundreds of thousands of people to book immunization appointments in recent days.

In Athens, protesters were particularly incensed by government plans to open vaccinations to teenagers, according to media reports, calling the vaccine “poison” and chanting, “Hands off our kids!”

But most Greek residents have either been vaccinated or plan to be in the near future, according to a Pulse survey on behalf of Skai TV. According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, 48 percent of adults in Greece have been fully immunized, with 59 percent having received at least one dose.

Danish Medical Association Calls to Halt J and J vaccine

This happened after 4 reported cases of VITT (2 fatal and the other two probably touch and go) with 46,000 J and J shots given in Denmark.  Glad the Danes are a bit more cautious about getting vaxxed than we Americans have been.

https://cphpost.dk/?p=126430

Corona Round-Up: Danish doctors call to axe Johnson & Johnson jab after rare side-effect

The optional J&J vaccination scheme is under fire following the same blood-clotting side-effects previously linked to AstraZeneca (photo: Maj. Michael O’Hagan)

July 15th, 2021 11:55 am| by Lena Hunter

The Danish Medical Association has called for Parliament to terminate the optional Johnson & Johnson vaccination scheme following a possible case of a rare but serious side-effect.

VITT – Vaccine-induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia – causes a combination of blood clots, bleeding and a low platelet count. The same side-effect caused the Danish Health and Medicines Authority to remove AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson from the official vaccination program in the spring.

“Probable connection”
Since the vaccines were introduced, the Danish Medicines Agency has received four reports of VITT, two of which were fatal.

Three cases were reported after AstraZeneca vaccinations, while the fourth was observed in a person who opted for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The Danish Medicines Agency has therefore announced a “probable connection” between the unusual disease and the vaccine.

Experts call for J&J termination
“There’s no need to put more people’s lives and mobility at stake. Very soon we will have enough other doses to offer people a better and much safer vaccine,” Anders Beich, the chair of the Danish Society for General Medicine, told Jyllands-Posten.

The head of the Danish patients association, Morten Freil, agreed: “We believe that the decision should be reconsidered – also in light of the many additional BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines that we have received from Romania.”

Political pushback
However, according to Jyllands-Posten neither Dansk Folkeparti, Konservative nor Radikale support changing the current system.

Rather, they believe the optional scheme will phase out naturally now that all over-16s have been offered jabs from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna under the general vaccination program.

According to Statens Serum Institut’s latest figures, 46,323 people have been vaccinated with the one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson (pretty much unchanged for a month, though), while 1,317 people have had the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine.

Boosters Without Data/ MedPage Today

 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/93565

What Evidence Do We Need to Move Forward With COVID Boosters? — More data and an evaluation of several factors at home and abroad are key

by Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH July 14, 2021

... Boosters Without Data

If we accept boosters in the U.S. while the rest of the world remains unvaccinated, and if we authorize them based on inevitable improved laboratory titers without clinical outcomes, we run the risk of creating a medical industrial perpetual motion machine.

We will continue to breed new variants outside of our nation, which will lead to calls for yet more boosters, and we will continue to get new boosters without any evidence they are necessary (i.e., lower severe COVID-19 outcomes). Our arms will ache, our hearts will hurt, our wallets will be empty, and so too will our brains, as we will have abandoned all principles of evidence-based medicine.

NY Times is also having trouble with the various ways of counting and reporting Covid deaths

 Just some excerpts from the NYT article:

For more than a year since the coronavirus outbreak, New York State officials have stuck with an approach that has allowed the state to report a lower and incomplete death toll.

The number of deaths reported on the state’s online dashboard, and during Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s numerous coronavirus briefings, only includes people who died at hospitals, nursing homes and adult-care facilities, but not at home or prisons, for example. The toll also includes only deaths that were confirmed with a coronavirus test by a lab.

New York’s methodology differs from that of many other states, as well as the federal government’s National Center for Health Statistics, which uses more precise criteria to assemble state-by-state death tolls, relying on death certificates submitted by state health departments.

Now, the effect of New York’s more constrained count has begun to show: The state’s official coronavirus death toll as of Wednesday was about 43,000, compared with the death toll of more than 54,000 compiled by the N.C.H.S., a subdepartment of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

“With regards to deaths, the gold standard is the death certificate,” said Bob Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the N.C.H.S. “The reporting in the permanent record will be from the death certificates and that will be true for New York and for the United States.e said a death would be added to the official tally “if the death certificate says the death was caused by Covid-19, or Covid-19 was a significant factor.” [Note that he is misspeaking--the instructions from Anderson's office say that a death will be counted as a Covid death if Covid is mentioned on the death certificate.  I have quoted the precise language used about 6 months ago.]

Pediatric Covid death numbers: can vaccinations of children be justified?

 https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/

I'd like to start this discussion with data released by the AAP 2 days ago. To look at the granular data you must download the full reports, linked at the URL above as pdfs.

Having dealt with US Covid data for over a year, the most germane message I have come away with is that US data are seriously screwed up.  And I finally concluded it was all deliberate.  It seems that one purpose of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is to generate bizarre statistics in order to make it impossible for ordinary citizens to use them in a methodologically appropriate way.

Here is one way this is done.  Each state collects data in a unique or idiosyncratic manner.  So how could you expect CDC to get the numbers right? But CDC gives huge grants to the state public health agencies, which bend over backwards to give CDC what it wants, when they are paid to do so. In January, the CDC announced it would be doling out $22 Billion dollars to the states and territories for activities related to Covid, especially track-trace, testing and vaccinations.  Do you think some cohesive data collecting could be thrown in for a sum like that?

From my perspective, which could be incorrect, this confusion is how the CDC wants it.  Keep the public stupefied.  After all, that has proven to be the M.O. for all things Covid so far.

Tonight's example has to do with child mortality from Covid.  The American Association of Pediatrics has been posting detailed statistics about child cases, hospitalizations and deaths on a regular basis.  But they don't have data for all the states.  Instead, they provide pediatric data for 43 states, New York City, Puerto Rico and Guam. And they also list 11 states which have just made a change in how they report their data. Nebraska took its Covid dashboard offline on June 30, 2021. Really?

It gets better.  The AAP posts hospitalization data for 23 states and New York City.  And testing data comes from 11 states.   And states or territories or cities can revise their case counts at any time.  [A county in California recently reduced their reported Covid deaths by about 30%.

It gets even better. The definition of the pediatric age group varies by state.  Some states use 0-17 years.  Some use 0-18 years, some 0-19 years and some 0-20 years.

Surely the CDC has better data than this? Here is what CDC had to say in an MMWR report on 121 deaths during the first 6 months of the pandemic, in those under 21, published last September.  BTW, 78% of those deaths were in Black, Hispanic or Native populations. Seventy-five percent of the children who died had pre-existing conditions.

Fifty states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands were asked to submit information on SARS-CoV-2–associated deaths among persons aged <21 years, including COVID-19 or MIS-C case status (as determined by each jurisdiction), demographics, dates of illness onset and hospitalization, underlying medical conditions, and location of death. Number of days from illness onset to hospitalization, days from hospitalization until date of death, and days from onset to date of death were calculated for decedents with available data... 

Among the 55 health jurisdictions invited to submit information on SARS-CoV-2–associated deaths among persons aged <21 years, 47 responded...

So, if you try to generalize, you cannot, because each state collects its data uniquely.  Not all appear to provide CDC with the "requested" data.  CDC blames the states. And only the central government probably knows what is going on, but they make it very hard to catch them out.

Using the AAP data (released 2 days ago) there were 344 pediatric Covid deaths reported (which include some people up to age 21, but omit some states and include some territories.)  

If you go to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics there have been 335 deaths in the US in the age 0 through 17 age group from Covid since the start of the pandemic. The NCHS further tells us that these deaths account for 0.7% of all pediatric deaths during the pandemic period.

If you want to search NCHS for adult deaths, CDC has thrown a few curve balls there, too.  Most adult age groups listed span 10 years.  But one age group, 50-64, spans 15 years. 

There are 74 million children in the US. They makes up 22% of the population, but only 0.05% of the Covid deaths.  Only 1/4 of the children who died were perfectly healthy.  Let me repeat that.  Only about 85 healthy US children (roughly one in a million kids) have died of Covid since the start of the pandemic, according to the CDC.

Is Covid an emergency for children?  Are the risks from the vaccines (myocarditis, blood clots, Guillain Barre syndrome and others not yet defined) outweighed by the benefits?