July, 2020, Part 9,Political Class Insanity: How Government Cannot Count When It Comes To The Coronavirus, Chapter 2

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Today we will still be focusing on the coronavirus. Not because it has sickened and killed so many people around the world but because it illustrates the pure incompetence of government and the politicians that operate that government and their inability to simply be able to count effectively. You cannot solve a problem unless you understand the reality of the problem and almost always the reality of a problem is determined by the data and numbers that describe the problem. 

But if you cannot even collect that data and numbers correctly then your ability to solve a problem is almost nil. You are basing any solutions on faulty data and premises and only pure luck will ever get you to the right solution, as we pointed out in our previous post:

• A man in Tennessee was classified as a positively tested coronavirus person even though he had NEVER taken a coronavirus test.
• Multiple virus testing labs in Florida were found to have over counted the number of virus cases by up to ten fold.
• In Colorado, a man was classified as a virus death even though subsequent medical analysis showed he clearly died from acute alcohol poisoning, not the virus.
• We also cited other cases in Colorado where nursing home patients were classified as virus deaths but more testing showed that the virus had nothing to do with their deaths.

But it is not just state government and state politicians who cannot accurately count the actual number of virus deaths, that inability to accurately count may have been established by the Federal government back in the spring:

• Dr. Deborah Birx is the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force so she is a very important person in the fight against the virus in the country.
• But back in April, she stated that the Federal government was going to classify the death of any American who had the virus as a death caused by the virus regardless of any underlying, pre-existing medical condition that may have actually been the cause of the death.
• So, if I understand the good doctor correctly, if someone had stage four liver cancer and contracted the virus in the final days of their lives after a losing battle against the liver cancer, the Federal government somehow decided to classify that as a death caused by the virus.
• I think her words verify my conclusion and example: “There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney problem, some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death."

It seems other countries got their logic and counting right: just because someone who died had the virus, doesn't mean that the virus killed them. But for some godforsaken reason, in this country the Federal government says that anyone who dies who has the virus is to be counted as a virus victim, not a cancer, kidney, or other malady victim. 

As a result, we may have a significant over count of the number of deaths in this country caused by the virus which resulted in drastic economic pain and suffering which may not have been necessary because the Federal government did not know how to count. Insanity.

2) This inability to count is finally showing up in opinion polls as Americans begin to doubt what all levels of government are telling them about the virus:

• An Axios/Ipsos poll recently asked a sample of Americans the following question: “Do you believe the actual number of Americans dying from the coronavirus is more, less, or about the same as the number of deaths that have been reported?”
• The poll found that about one out three of those polled think the actual virus death toll is lower than what is being reported.
• 31% of those polled said the death toll from the virus is less, 31% said it is about what is reported and 37% said it is more than what is being reported.
• So in round figures about one third say it is under reported, one third say it is over reported and one third say it is correctly reported, you cannot be much more divided as a nation than that.
• Republicans are much more doubtful of the reported results with 58% of those polled thinking the death toll reported is too high and only 16% saying it is higher than what is reported. 
• Democrats go the other way with 61% saying the reported death rates are too low and only 9% believing that the death toll is lower than what is being reported.
• Again, you cannot be much more divided than that.

The more troubling aspect from the total responses is that those who think the death toll is less has gone up eight percentage points from the poll conducted just two months which would indicate there is growing doubt that the death rate is that high.

Again, if we cannot agree on the numbers and the true scope of the issue, then it is doubtful we will agree on a proposed remedy. All because government and politicians cannot even count.

3) In addition to the state by state cases we have talked about and their serious counting flaws, it turns out that there may be a more basic problem with the whole testing process across the country:

• Department of Health scientists in Connecticut found that a virus test being used widely across the country is causing false positives, i.e. the test results are saying that a tested person has the virus when they really do not.
• The test is made and distributed by Thermo Fisher Scientific.
• In Connecticut they found that out of 144 positive virus tests they looked at between July 15 and July 17, 90 of the 144 were really false positives, a totally unacceptable rate for a medical test of any sort.
• The saddest part of this failure is that patients who were falsely thought to have the virus in nursing homes may have been moved into areas of residents who actually had the virus which means that healthy nursing home patients were unnecessarily and possibly fatally exposed to the virus for no good reason because of the faulty test.

So, bad testing procedures, bad counting procedures, and growing doubt that anyone in the government or politics has a clue to what is really going on. Lord help us, please save us from the “experts” who apparently have no clue themselves.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w