How Much Did We Overestimate COVID Deaths and Hospitalizations?

We’re still only on the first steps of the road to learning how badly the COVID pandemic was handled by the government, the media, and, well… pretty much everyone. The veil on some of the unforced errors made is slowly being lifted. Even legacy media are beginning to admit that there was a serious math error, along with many other errors. The total number of COVID hospitalizations, deaths, and other errors reported was evidently much higher than it should have. Sarah Arnold, our Townhall colleague reports A CNN medical specialist and Washington Post columnist was allowed to speak truthfully. Many of those hospitalized were not from the United States. “for COVID” Many of those who died from COVID or any related disease sought medical attention for completely different reasons.

Nearly two decades after the Covid-19 pandemic was declared, Dr. Lena Wen, a CNN medical analyst and Washington Post columnist, admitted that hospitals exaggerated the death toll they claimed was due to Covid.

Titled, “We Are Over-Counting COVID Deaths and Hospitalizations. That’s a Problem,” Wren acknowledged this “90 percent of patients diagnosed with COVID are actually in the hospital for some other illness.”

“Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for covid, many are incidentally positive,” Wren wrote citing Robin Dretler who was an Emory Decatur Hospital attending physician.

As Sarah points out, while this admission may be a welcome step toward setting the record straight, it’s coming out two years too late. These death and hospitalization numbers were used to justify every form of government oppression and overreach. These facts will not change the past.

The math could have been wrong. That’s easy enough to explain. Each patient and body that showed up at a hospital, morgue or clinic was tested for COVID. The person whose test came back positive was added to the total. The death toll was increased for a person who was almost symptomatic and was struck by a vehicle. Another patient was listed with positive results after being admitted to hospital with a knife wound in the stomach. “COVID hospitalization.”

It’s not as if at least some of us didn’t already know this. It was something that many, including leading doctors, virologists and others, were discussing all throughout 2021. Or they did. Try It was a topic that we wanted to discuss. You didn’t hear a peep about this on MSNBC or CNN unless it was a segment calling out “misinformation.” Dr. Robert Malone, An actual mRNA-vaccine researcherTwitter banned a user for trying to raise this issue. (He was reinstated after Musk took over.)

Keep in mind that we’re talking about the period in 2021 when the virus was still running wild. Pandemic porn was a high-demand item in cable news and larger newspapers. Andrew Cuomo was still giving his Emmy-winning (later rescinded) daily pandemic updates and being touted as the nation’s “shadow president.” CNN maintained a running list of hospitalizations and deaths in the upper right corner of its screen 24 hours a day, no matter what story it was covering.

Experts knew that it was exaggerated. It was a topic that nobody wanted to discuss. The rising number of cases and ratings allowed for ever-increasing government action, including lockdowns, school closures, immunity passports, mandates, and many more. After removing all false positives, COVID seems almost certain to have been no worse than the common flu. There was one difference: large swathes of the population had either been vaccinated or developed natural immunity to the flu after having survived it. The first wave of COVID would strike us hard because no one was immune.

When all is said and done, there will be many people who have much to answer for. Will anyone be held accountable? Don’t hold your breath. (And if necessary, Do hold your breath for too long, you’ll probably be taken to the emergency room and counted as another “COVID hospitalization.”)