UPDATED AS NOTED BELOW.

It seems that the economy — and with it the livelihoods of millions of Americans — has been severely damaged for no good reason. Not only are face masks useless, or worse than that, but lockdowns are ineffective in halting the spread of COVID-19. If the reports that I’ve linked to are correct, COVID-19 is essentially unstoppable until an effective vaccine is produced and administered in vast quantities.

In the early going, there was a lot written about misdiagnosis and wrongful attribution of deaths. I haven’t seen much of that lately, but that doesn’t mean that those things aren’t still happening. Regarding misdiagnosis, consider what has happened this year to the official tally of flu cases, as against the tallies of the preceding five years:

This year, the cumulative number of flu cases was on track to set a new record, surpassing the totals of 2018 and 2019 (source). Then, just as word of COVID-19 was beginning to seep into the “news” media, the number of recorded cases suddenly stopped growing. How can that be? Did COVID-19 kill the all of the flu germs that were floating in the air and lurking on surfaces? Hah! I wonder what other conditions are being misdiagnosed as COVID-19.

UPDATE 11/27/20: Well I wonder no more. Because it seems that a lot of deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 when they should have been attributed to other causes. (See this and this.) In fact, for the period studied, the rise in COVID-19 deaths was almost exactly offset by the decline in deaths due to other causes.

UPDATE 11/28/20: For a detailed discussion of the meaning of “cause of death”, see this. It should reinforce your skepticism about the validity of official tallies of COVID-19 deaths.

If you were to believe the media — and I’m sure you don’t– COVID-19 is the worst scourge since the Black Plague. Well, it’s not even close:

As of yesterday, about 1 in 100 COVID-19 diagnoses becomes a death statistic. And the rate seems to be dropping. Which can mean that the number of cases is overstated; the most vulnerable persons have already been killed by COVID-19; or that both statements are true and the vast, healthy majority of the populace is being penalized out of political fear — fomented mainly by leftists, of course.

Finally, let’s put COVID-19 in perspective:

Enough said, for today.

Related reading: Kip Hansen, “Survey Results: Where Are All the Sick People?“, Watts Up With That?, November 21, 2020 (see especially the discussion of the number of flu cases)