The Dimensions of Covid-19: The Hong Kong Flu Redux
Politics / Pandemic Aug 04, 2020 - 04:59 PM GMTBy: Stephen_Merrill
Is the Covid-19 global breakout a deadly pandemic calling for the most extreme measures to avoid a far greater catastrophe?
Or is the dimension of Covid-19 far, far less than stated by the Western media and officialdom?
Unique and Deadly?
The population wide death-rate from contracting Covid-19 is 0.1%. The numbers are consistent with a bad flu season in places like the United States where the exposure level is higher and a moderate flu season through most of Europe, for instance. The World Health Organization estimates that flu kills between 290,000 and 650,000 people in a season. About 600,00 people have died globally after testing positive for Covid-19, acting as a co-morbidity in almost all cases.
Generally, 80% of human exposures to Covid-19 are asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms.
This surprising natural resilience to Covid-19 illness by the human immune system is not all that surprising, it turns out. That is because Covid-19 is not a novel, unique virus strain, as advertised.
Covid-19 is the seventh coronavirus identified since 2002. With its easy human transmission, the general virus strain has circulated across the globe for almost 20 years.
The first major episode of the Covid-19 outbreak demonstrated the roughly 4 to 1 ratio in those capable of becoming sick. The Diamond Princess was stranded at sea for two months with the virus amok and limited medical capacity. Yet only 17% of the crew and passengers aboard the Diamond Princess tested positive for the virus at any point, though four people died.
Further proof is the nation of Vietnam which is praised as the most effective country in suppressing the virus. Southern China, Taiwan and South Korea are also praised as effective in containing the virus.
Yet, the reason why is not lockdowns or contact tracing. The reason is that the SAARS coronavirus originated in that region spreading very widely. It is this immunity from prior virus waves that is making this region of the world different for the dimension of Covid-19.
As noted by the BBC, research scientists have discovered a high level of natural immunity to Covid-19 infection. For every person that tested for Covid-19 specific immunity due to past exposure, two more people tested for having the very same T-cell reactors that repel the virus.
The Covid-19 Flu is mild compared to many in the past.
The Spanish Flu of 1918, for instance, killed 50m people globally in a world of 1.5 billion people. That truly deadly pandemic killed indiscriminately, including the young and healthy.
The Asian Flu of the 1950’s killed as many as 4m people globally. An estimated 70,000 Americans died in the outbreak.
The Hong Kong Flu also killed up to 4m people globally with little fanfare in the United States which was also seriously affected. Over 100,000 Americans died from the virus at a time when the national population was only 200m.
The Woodstock rock concert was held in the midst of the Hong Kong Flu outbreak in 1968, along with mass protests against the Vietnam War far larger than the protests of today. The idea of business closures, social distancing and mandatory masks was nowhere on the radar.
The saving grace for the Hong Kong Flu was the widespread immunity resistance to the virus built up globally due to the Asian Flu ten years before, another similarity with Covid-19.
No one in 1957 or in 1968 was being paid $1700 per flu death recorded nor designating gunshot and accident deaths as flu-related due to a positive virus test. The Hong Kong flu had nothing to do with politics, including the momentous Presidential election of 1968.
Covid-19, by comparison, has killed around 650,000 in 7-months worldwide, 150,000 in the US, with a narrow category for its major mortality, the old and seriously infirm.
The Virus Cycle is Progressing to its End
Following the typical virus life cycle, as the number of those exposed to the virus increases, the virus runs out of hosts. This is always what ends virus outbreaks, including when a vaccine is found, called herd immunity.
The steady decline in Covid-19 danger is proven by the choppy but falling death-rate globally, including in the United States down 75% since April.
Fortunately for the citizens of Sweden, their leadership recognized that Covid-19 in their country was already spread well beyond the stage where lockdown measures may eradicate the virus completely. This virus, especially given its easy transmission, was going to take the full course.
Policies like lockdowns and contract tracing might only be helpful when virus eradication is reasonably possible. That has never been the case with Covid-19, except for some remote areas of the world.
But, on the more positive side of it, Covid-19 is virtually non-lethal in healthy people. In the case of people under 18, the virus typically is blocked by natural immunity, in whole or part. In the few cases where children do contract the virus, they are non-spreaders of the virus given their low viral load.
However, the old and sick members of society are at risk and therefore in need of extreme precautions, especially those in nursing homes.
So Sweden decided not to lockdown beyond banning gatherings of over 50 people and protecting the vulnerable. No business or school or church in Sweden was ordered closed which remains true today. Few Swedes wear a facemask. Sweden largely failed in eradicating the virus in nursing homes, like almost all other nations failed in this respect.
Sweden’s Covid-19 death-rate per citizen ranks 9th in the world presently with the average age of victims being 75. It is a rate lower than eight lockdown nations. The number of deaths daily in Sweden has now slowed to a trickle.
Sweden’s mortality chart could not look more like a natural virus cycle.
The United States, massive lockdowns and all, presently ranks 11th in the world in its Covid-19 death-rate. This so demonstrates the utter futility of all US lockdown measures once compared to Sweden.
These world rankings for both Sweden and the US will fall as the areas of the world where the virus has not thoroughly spread yet also undergo the virus cycle.
Though the advent for an effective vaccine is often hyped as coming soon, typically vaccines take years to develop with frequent misfires. Dr. Fauci has been the US head at finding a vaccine for AIDS and herpes for thirty years now with no success yet. The Swine Flu vaccine rushed out did more harm than benefit.
But the advances in therapeutics for Covid-19 is impressive, including the sudden but unlikely hero in epidemiology, Hydroxychloroquine, malaria’s cure. Like gold, it seems HCQ cannot be suppressed for long. These discoveries in successful treatments could crash the Covid-19 death rate quickly.
With the massive ramp-up of testing in the US, perfectly healthy people are for the first time being tested for the virus. Even though the positive tests in this group are of people who have successfully repelled the virus, they are counted as “new infections” and presumed to be at risk of death in a few weeks’ time. This media campaign of “surging new cases” is statistical nonsense and irresponsible journalism. The reporting should say the US is successfully approaching herd immunity to the virus in many parts of the country.
As the additional supporting basis for these observations, here is a List of Covid-19 Facts developed by independent global researchers for consideration by the Swiss government. That page has a chronology of Covid-19 events that is the best reporting on the virus one can find.
In summation, the Covid-19 outbreak is steadily coming to its end without earth-shattering consequence, vaccine or not, lockdowns never needed. The US media’s massive exaggeration of the dimension of the virus outbreak would be comical, if not so harmful to so many people with the lockdown and isolation policies imposed.
STEPHEN MERRILL
Mr. Merrill, a practicing Alaska attorney, served in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps and as a Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer.
Mr. Merrill is the editor of the Alaska Freedom News, formerly the Hampton Roads Freedom News.
Copyright © 2020 STEPHEN MERRILL - All Rights Reserved
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