From The Ramparts

You’ve Been Had, You’ve Been Took

Junious Ricardo Stanton

“Ah, I say you been mislead, you’ve been had, you’ve been took.”- Malcolm X

            We’ve been had. We’ve been duped into believing the COVID 19 virus is a plague when in fact it is a contagious respiratory infection not the deadly pandemic we are being led to believe it is.  You say, you’re not an epidemiologist or a virologist, how do you know this? You are correct I am not a scientist or statistician but I know how to read, I know how to do research and I have common sense.

 When we stop to think about the media bombardment we’re currently subjected to, we have to conclude there has been only one narrative put before us by the government, the CDC and World Health Organization; and this narrative has created an atmosphere of fear and panic. Whether this is deliberate I can’t say for sure, all I know is most of what we see and hear in the media is negative and discouraging so it doesn’t matter what the intent is, the results are the same.

The CDC, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, World Economic Forum and World Health Organization narrative have a monopoly on airplay and dissemination by the media conglomerates. All we hear night and day over and over is worst case scenarios. But there are other findings by epidemiologists, virologists, statisticians and public health officials that are not getting air time. We need to see all the facts and options.

            We have not been told for instance the tests for COVID 19 are not reliable.  There have been several problems with the tests which are to be expected since this virus is new and no tests previously existed for it. This is what an Associated Press article had to say about that, “To help increase the number of people being screened, the Food and Drug Administration issued emergency authorization for CDC-certified labs run by state health departments to begin processing swabs, and they were provided with kits that could test 250 patients.  As the first tests were processed at the state labs, technicians reported getting inconclusive results, which the CDC has said could be due to the test looking for signs of generic coronaviruses, of which there are many, rather than the specific virus that causes COVID-19.” Testing blunders crippled US response as coronavirus spread https://apnews.com/c335958b1f8f6a37b19b421bc7759722

            Also there have been high percentages of false negatives and false positives, this inaccuracy posses challenges for public health officials. “The problem is that tests almost never have 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. The test and the truth together create four possibilities: true positives, true negatives, false positives and false negatives. There’s a trade-off involved because an increasingly liberal test (more sensitive) will include more and more individuals in the population who do not actually have the disease (less specific). This trade-off has important implications for interpreting Covid-19 population trends based on testing to date and going forward.

For Covid-19 testing, the threshold for calling a test positive should not be set too high. Failing to isolate someone who actually has Covid-19 and sending her back to a nursing home would be put many people in harm’s way. But if the bar for calling a test positive is set too low, then a subset of patients who do not have Covid-19 will test positive for it.” COVID 19 testing: overcoming challenges in the next phase of the epidemic - ARJUN K. MANRAI and KENNETH D. MAND https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/31/covid-19-overcoming-testing-challenges/

             The fact is the exact number of people who are or have been infected with COVID 19 is unknown for many reasons, poor testing, inaccurate numbers and reports for example. This is a new phenomenon that is still dynamic so exact figures are hard to come by. When we examine the literature we can see some organizations are predicting higher mortality rates based upon faulty models or data which is not good. “Other metrics used to gauge the scale of the outbreak, such as hospitalizations and deaths, have their own limitations. Not all states are reporting hospitalizations, and once hospitals are full, additional cases might not show up in reported figures. Death statistics are also a function of case-by-case diagnosis and cause-of-death methodology. Many deaths due to COVID-19 may have been—and many more may continue to be—misdiagnosed as the result of pneumonia or another respiratory ailment. With time and increased testing, the state of this outbreak will come into focus. But leaders should be humble, and citizens must be patient, about the fact that no single metric is gospel right now. Even many health statistics taken together can offer at best an incomplete picture of the scope of the crisis.” All The Coronavirus Statistics Are Flawed Derek Thompson The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/fog-pandemic/608764/

            COVID 19 is a contagious respiratory condition similar to influenza and the flu. What we are not hearing or seeing in the charts and graphs presented by the corporate media is most people who do not have pre-existing underlying medical conditions recover quickly and for many the symptoms are mild! We cannot allow the media to create fear and hysteria which in turn creates stress and panic which lowers our immune system’s ability to fight infection.

It is imperative we maintain a well functioning immune system. Our confidence in our own body’s ability to fight infection and our own ability to promote a healthy immune system must be greater than our fear of the coronavirus!  Don’t allow the media scare machine, what Catherine Austin Fitts calls the shriekometer, to punk you. Use common sense, do what you can to promote a healthy immune system and have confidence in your body’s ability to protect and heal you.

                                                            -30-