It is worth remembering that the government-big tech-big pharma cabal squashed any voices that questioned lockdowns, masks, school closures, and other extreme measures. Their muted admissions almost three years later are not enough.
Leading US health officials have finally acknowledged that pandemic restrictions they supported may have fueled a boom in respiratory bugs currently overwhelming hospitals.
Healthcare systems across the country have been pushed to the brink after an unseasonably high number of flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases with some pediatric units forced to erect inflatable tents to treat patients in parking lots.
There are signs that both viruses may have already peaked, but last week the country was dealt a further blow when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it was investigating a rise in severe Strep A infections – a normally harmless bacterial infection that has killed more than a dozen children in the UK and is rising across Europe.
So lockdowns and mask mandates saved COVID lives and flu lives. There were an estimated 5000 flu deaths last year compared to the average of 34000 since 2010. The numbers are not exact due to such a SMALL flu season, because no one was interacting and spreading it.
FWIW: Japan had 22 flu deaths in 2021. 22 out of 125 million people. Compare that to the US who had about 5000 out of 330 million people. This is a lot due to Japan’s culture of wearing masks in general. When I went there 10 years ago it was common. It is one reason why they are a “less sick” nation than the US.
Now the flu is running rampant during flu season, and more people are dying of it and taking up beds. But guess what, most of the people who are dying from the flu are the ones who DIDNT get the flu shot. Because this year’s flu shot is actually really good against the main strains that are attacking. I can totally understand the exhaustion of not wanting another shot, I have never personally gotten a flu shot and have probably gotten sick once (maybe twice) in the last 25 years from the flu.
A nice thing is that I see more and more people wearing masks. People that don’t want to be infected or don’t want to infect people. Almost any mask it good for RSV as it is passed by droplets during talking, coughs, and sneezes. And it is similarly helpful against the flu.
I don’t know if this season is worse than others in the past as far as severity of the flu & RSV, if we are hitting a snap-back from not mixing up all of our dirty germs last year and we are more susceptible, or if we are all just less cautious because we were sick of being locked down and now people are more likely to intermingle while being sick?
I don’t know JonnyV, this particular article kind of ties several of the recent issues brought up in B&S.
Politics: Democratic tactics of vastly over dramatizing issues during Rep Presidents has been on heavy display this century and you just keep on defending and drinking that wonderful Kool-Aid. Remember the daily death toll in Iraq under Bush that went completely away the minute Obama took over, even though he sanctioned the Afghan war during his entire 8 year tenure and was given a peace prize for Bush’s already planned extraction from Iraq? As soon as Trump took over the anti-Afghan war campaign started up immediately and the Covid death tolls began their daily count ascent into the stratosphere as soon as Dems could assign a number to something and then virtually disappeared as soon as Biden took over.
News and social Media: Since, it has become worse than Covid just leaving the headlines, it has disappeared from the archives. While Trump was President, Heart disease had gone down to pre-1950 levels while Covid deaths dwarfed all other causes of death. Today, if you look up heart disease numbers, they did not drop a bit throughout the pandemic and Covid was the 3rd largest killer of Americans even in its worst year. Dems colluded with news, social media and scientists of many stripes to plant a big lie to gain power, properly scare their base and control the population. You can no longer find any of those Trump era Covid numbers that crushed heart disease in the kill department. It is all gone. The CDC sites have been scrubbed and the real death toll info is available today.
None of the fake news that convinced so many Dems to elect a man barely holding on to his sanity still exists. And since then we have heard Fauci admit more and more of his lies and we can see the real death toll numbers all turned down to mute. We see this newest admission that the CDC admits their policies may have done as much health harm as good (not even discussing the significant harm caused to the economy) all played so far in the background that you have to read it in local blogs.
And here you are, still drinking prodigiously and telling us how the numbers that have lied to us this entire century are mysteriously showing us exactly what Dems want to show us. How many deaths from the flu were just assigned to Covid when it suited their agenda to have more Covid deaths and less flu deaths? How many Covid deaths will be assigned to the flu and RSV death count now that Dems have declared the “Covid scare” to be over and the flu/RSV scare campaign has commenced? We will find out in 3-4 years after the real numbers come out when it no longer has any political use.
I think Dems love to be scared. They love to be victims and they have been taught to vote to allay their fears. Only trouble is, fear will never go away from being in the forefront of Dem tactics and control. They have the perfect sado-masochist relationship. The libs in control are the sadists and their supporters lap up the pain in true masochistic fashion.
How many deaths from the flu were just assigned to Covid when it suited their agenda to have more Covid deaths and less flu deaths? How many Covid deaths will be assigned to the flu and RSV death count now that Dems have declared the “Covid scare” to be over and the flu/RSV scare campaign has commenced?
The right questions. Remember T, that the hospitals were well-rewarded for having “Covid” deaths and treating “Covid” patients. Dying with a bullet through your head–while you had Covid?? One more Covid death!!
As to “lockdowns and masks saved lives”–that’s an assertion made by Fauci. “Saved” compared to what? The studies which demonstrate that masks have ZERO impact on Covid transmission are all over the place, peer-reviewd, large numbers of subjects; but that Kool-Aid is tasty!
>This is a lot due to Japan’s culture of wearing masks in general.
No JV it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with Japan’s closing of their borders… You know something that Liberal idiots claim is xenophobic when our leaders even think of it? You are clueless.
Jason, I am talking about Japan’s overall health record, going back decades. They are a country that has always embraced mask usage and tend to have lower flu season numbers per capita than the US in similarly populated areas.
That same amenability to mask usage is what lead them to their part in WWII. It is very true that oriental cultures still have a MUCH greater emphasis of believing and following the instructions of their elders and leaders. That same culture is what leads to despotisms like Imperial Japan in the 30s, Korea in the 50s, Vietnam in the 60s and 70s, and North Korea and China over the last several decades. With enlightened leadership much can be accomplished with an eastern culture. With leaders raised in the western cultural style running an oriental culture, much can be destroyed.
You and Jason are arguing about two sides of the same coin, you are both pretty equally right and wrong.
‘Keeping a race’s culture’ is vastly simplified when there is only one culture. Japan’s leaders know this and they do not make it easy to move to Japan if you are not Japanese and they have just about zero illegal aliens. It is not that amazing that the least problem countries are usually the most homogenous. It is also not that amazing that many despotisms actively genocide other races to increase homogeneity. Hitler gained control by blaming the Jewish people. He gave Germans a target to focus their anger that had been building steadily from the serious sanctions that the allies put on them at the end of WWI. He made them proud to be of Germen heritage and gained control through it.
When you have a highly heterogenous population the opposite approach to the goal of control is required. In America, it is just one infighting issue between multiple different groups after another, and while the population bickers leadership can increase power and control by keeping people divided. If you think this is a new harebrained idea from Rick, go ahead and read some Machiavelli. Much of what he wrote was taken from much older origins than 500 years ago. It is just actively being hidden today in schools ‘as not politically correct behavior’ so that people like you will do things like make comparisons between an eastern culture and a western culture as if they are two equal and comparable things.
The causes of WWII used to be taught. Today kids are just taught how evil Hitler was. ‘He just hated Jews, nothing to see politically here. Except maybe that all the race haters in America seem to be Republicans’…nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Just one example of the programming going on in public schools today.
Sure JV…
“FWIW: Japan had 22 flu deaths in 2021. 22 out of 125 million people. Compare that to the US who had about 5000 out of 330 million people. This is a lot due to Japan’s culture of wearing masks in general. “
JohnnyV, you are so 2019-2021.
You need to catch up with the times and current science.
Let me help you JonnyV!!
Here’s an excerpt from a PEER-REVIEWED and PUBLISHED study on masking in grade schools. The study refutes the garbage-can scraps “study” used by CDC a couple years back.
By the end of the ninth week after reopening average daily pediatric case rates in counties without mask mandates were 15.8 per 100,000 while counties with mandates averaged 18.3 per 100,000; the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.12).
As Fauci told us early on, masks are bullshit. He changed his tune, but that happened because he wanted a lot more obedience from the sheep. And some (you-know-who) actually swallowed the bait.
Dad, I can believe that masking in grade schools wasn’t much difference. We saw that children weren’t as severely affected by COVID. The masking was highly precautionary in schools because we were unsure of how easily it was spread from children to adults. We knew early on about the virus and children. Extrapolating that to all the population is dubious at best.
And your BS comment about Fauci. That has been addressed many times. The original statement was the gov’t trying to stop a run on masks early on to make sure that more important institutes had them available. Do you remember the people who were JACKING UP the prices on N95 masks early in the pandemic? In hindsight I don’t agree with the fact that they lied to the public about having the masks, even if it was for the greater good of the hospitals. The Gov’t lies to us all the time for what they consider our own good. Sometimes it is possibly for the best, sometimes not.
>Extrapolating that to all the population is dubious at best.
Actually, because they’re comparing Non-Masked to Masked with similar grouping…. it is logical to extrapolate that. The delta between the extrapolated groups will carry forward regardless of how each group in affected once the disease is active. I don’t recall anything saying Children were less likely to become infected, only that their symptoms would be milder.
Not sorry to burst your bubble, Jonny, but you’re wrong.
Fauci wrote: “Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.
“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you.”
He added: “I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location.”
That was PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE to Obama’s HHS Secretary. It was NOT a public lie. And his spin was rather clumsy, too…..
Are you really quoting a private convo from Feb 2020? When there were like 100 known cases in the US? Before we knew what was going on with the virus!
That is a stretch even for you.
>When there were like 100 known cases in the US? Before we knew what was going on with the virus!
All we’ve heard the past 2 years is how Trump failed because he did all the wrong things and should have known how bad thing are. Are you really telling them that they were wrong?
Are you really quoting a private convo from Feb 2020?
That would Feb 5, 2020 to be exact.
Here’s Fraudci a month later: “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” – Mar 8, 2020, 60 Minutes .
That is a stretch even for you.
Sorry, pal. The advice he gave is relevant NO MATTER the number of cases nor the disease. Focus here:
“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you.”
That’s a generic “USELESS” statement if there ever was one.
Not only The Fraud, but CDC:
“…White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha did, however, make the stunning admission during a recent online discussion that masks aren’t the magic safety net that we’ve been told:
“There is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.”” –quoted at RedState
Merry Christmas!!