10,000 New Cases Of Covid19 Today In Philippines!

 

Today the Philippines struck a new high for daily cases of Covid at almost 10,000.

Let's keep in mind that we have no idea if this is really the most cases because this only represents the number of people who tested positive and it is a fact that there have always been a great many more people with the virus than have ever been tested. 

The real peak may have been somewhere in the past. The only way to know the real number of daily cases for sure is to test every last person every single day, which is obviously impossible. This makes the daily numbers and the so called curve little more than  fantasy.

An increase in daily numbers may be explained by many things like:

• an increase in testing
  
• an actual increase in daily cases
• faulty testing kits

But let's assume the worst and play like this really is the peak thus far.

Is 10,000 new cases something to be worried about?

To put it in perspective, the US is only about 3.5X the population of the Philippines and it hit 300,000 daily cases back in January. The US did not cease to exist. It is still over there.

So 10,000 daily cases in the Philippines is not the end of the world by a long shot.

But is it something to be concerned about?

By the DOH's own numbers 98% of these new cases and all cases are asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms. Let's break down those numbers. Almost 84% have no symptoms at all. So, are we sure they actually have COVID? Another 14% have symptoms like a cold. Scared yet? 

The remaining 1.9% have a lot of comorbidities like diabetes, liver disease, cancer etc., meaning most of them were already terribly sick before they got COVID. That 1.9% who have symptoms that are serious or critical equates to about 200 people across the entire nation. And remember, these were added in a single day - the peak so far.

Is that something to be worried about in a country of 100,000,000?

Again, let's put it in perspective.

In 2018 the Philippines recorded almost 80,000 deaths from flu and pneumonia.

That equates to about 220 people dying every single day from flu and pneumonia. With that many deaths you can be sure that there were many thousands of cases every day and hundreds if not thousands of people added to the rolls of serious and critical cases every single day.

The average number of people dying in Philippines of coronavirus daily since the pandemic began is about 35. 

That is 16% (about 1/6th) of the daily flu and pneumonia deaths in 2018.

Did you see any panic over flu and pneumonia in 2018? Neither did I. No one noticed. Yet from the stats it seems to have been a far worse event than COVID19 has been thus far.

Let's take a closer look at comorbidities mentioned above.

The comorbidities data from the CDC for cases in the United States is enlightening:

For 6% of these deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 3.8 additional conditions or causes per death.

In other words, 94% of coronavirus deaths in the US had just shy of four additional serious conditions that were just as likely to have killed them. How do we even sort out whether coronavirus was a deciding factor in these deaths? Is anyone even attempting to do that or to determine if these people would have died anyway? What about people who get run over by buses and test positive for COVID at the morgue? It happens.

 

The comorbidity data I could find for Philippines is a bit dated from May 2020. It places the percent of COVID deaths with comorbidities at 57%.

 

Some point to excess mortality data to prove the lethality of COVID. A lot of other causes of death beside COVID have increased over the course of the pandemic. These need to be accurately assessed to get the correct picture of COVID deaths. Excess deaths could normalize over the next five years, since COVID disproportionately strikes those people who have many comorbidities and are likely to have died within a few years of other causes has COVID not been a factor. 

 

Another critical question that will probably never be answered is that of how many deaths are attributable to medical malpractice, which is already a leading cause of death around the world. Some nations hide the stats on this pressing issue. Philippines has frowned upon the use of ventilators to treat coronavirus victims and this is a good thing, since these machines have been so abused and misused with fatal results in countries like the United States:

Among the 2,634 patients for whom outcomes were known, the overall death rate was 21%, but it rose to 88% for those who received mechanical ventilation, the Northwell Health COVID-19 Research Consortium reported.

A great many of this pandemics deaths that have been labeled with COVID as the cause were likely caused by the treatment rather than the disease.

 

So where does this leave us in our quest to understand the true nature of COVID19?

 

We cannot trust media, particularly in the US, to give us an accurate picture of the pandemic because they are beholden to the pharmaceutical industry:

According to a 2009 study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, with the exception of CBS every major media outlet in the United States shares at least one board member with at least one drug company. Let me put it in perspective for you, these board members wake up, they go to a meeting at Merck or Pfizer, and then they have their driver take them over to a meeting with NBC to decide what kind of programming that network is going to air. For those board members who aren’t pulling double duty with a media conglomerate and a big drug company, they still understand that they can’t be honest and objective about big pharma because big pharma pays their bills.

Drug companies spend about $5 billion a year on advertising with these corporate media outlets, so when Pfizer or Merck or Eli Lilly, or any of the drug companies, kill or cripple Americans with defective drugs, do you really think these board members are going to allow their story to be told on the air? It can take anywhere from three days to a full week before the media reports on a drug or a medical device recall, if they report at all.

This is not to say COVID is a joke or that no one dies from it. But lots of other things kill more people. If data exists showing definitively how many people have actually died as a result of COVID rather than something else, such data has yet to be shown to the public.

So is COVID something to be greatly worried about if you are an otherwise healthy person?

You decide.