31 August 2020

Throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, governments and a controlled mainstream press have been bombarding us with numbers. Further analysis though shows that these numbers have been seriously manipulated or distorted, presumably to exaggerate the situation, keep the population in constant fear, and enable governments to implement their restrictive measures and generally do as they like without opposition.

Here in Spain this is particularly the case, with the figures that are being released inconsistent, incomprehensible, and incomplete. Positive cases are being recorded when in fact people were just placed in lockdown, such as the 52 lifeguards at a Spanish beach resort who were forced into 15 days quarantine as one of their numbers “tested positive” (bet they’re having fun working from home!). Criteria for recording C-19 deaths keep changing (due to / with / suspected of having etc.), information released by regional authorities don’t coincide with national figures (e.g. Catalonia reporting more deaths in a day than Spain did in a week), weekly figures are reported as daily, figures are reported out of context, the list goes on and on.

We will therefore try to put things in perspective below in order for the real situation to be known.

Deaths per million by country. The Spanish government is claiming that they have saved hundreds of thousands of lives with the lockdown, masks and other protective measures. The mainstream press is citing figures from other countries where lockdowns have been limited or non-existent as an example to back this up, in particular USA and Brazil (one mathematically challenged reporter even mentioned that over 75% of all Covid deaths in the world were in the USA!). However they never mention that the populations of those countries are many times larger than Spain. Looking at the real figures, there seems to be little difference, with countries implementing draconian lockdowns actually topping the list.

However the difference is the number of additional deaths that will surely rise as the result of those measures (people with serious illnesses who couldn’t get to hospitals or were too frightened to do so, depression and suicides by people having their businesses ruined and their jobs suppressed, reduced natural resistance and respiratory problems caused by the lockdown, masks, excessive hand-washing, etc., etc. Countries that did not go into lockdown will not have those problems, their economies are still going and their natural resistance is increasing.

Covid-19 deaths compared to positive cases. The government are pushing the second wave, and are threatening to return to lockdown if this continues. However, although the number of cases rose in August, the number of deaths is still low, suggesting the virus has weakened, and is under control as medical treatment improves. The number of positive cases obviously reflects the much higher number of PCR and other tests carried out, plus the fact that these tests do not actually test for Covid-19 itself, as mentioned elsewhere. Many people are ‘asymptomatic’, which probably means they are not actually infected, as test settings are being ramped up to show more positives (openly accepted by the authorities “it’s better to have too many false positives than false negatives”). The number of reported asymptomatic cases varies wildly (cases seen in the press ranging from 2% to 76%!), depending on the spin being put on this. We are also being told that more young people are being infected – an obvious distortion of the facts, as tests in the past were largely carried out on older people who were more affected by the disease, and young people who only had mild symptoms weren’t tested before. The graph below shows the figures since March:

Covid deaths compared to deaths due to other causes. Despite the low number of deaths seen above, the authorities are still insisting that swathes of people are dying from the disease. The mainstream press continue their onslaught, particularly on internet sites, where rolling figures, cut and pasted from site to site, continue to push the message: an outbreak of 10 cases here, 15 positives there, hour after hour, day after day. Deaths of course are rarely reported nowadays, as there just aren’t enough of them, even counting elderly patients with multiple co-morbidity, or people who tested positive 3 months ago and have been run over by a bus. The Spanish people are therefore becoming numb to the fact that more people are dying of other causes, pneumonia/flu, suicides, even drownings, than of this virus. What seems to have been forgotten is that over 8,000 people die in Spain on average every week, and that 100 or so ‘Covid’ deaths is not a big event in this context, certainly not enough to justify ruining what is left of the Spanish economy, and especially given that effective medical treatment such as HCQ is available, should the authorities ever listen to the thousands and thousands of doctors who are crying out for restrictions on these medicines to be lifted.

The ‘thought police’ are not publishing any of those facts at the moment though (as if no other disease exists right now), so we have compared below figures for the average number of deaths based on statistics from 2018:

These compare to the average weekly figures for Covid since March, as below. Bear in mind as well though that no serious analysis has ever been carried out in Spain as to the real cause of death. Many elderly people were left to die in insanitary and understaffed nursing homes at the beginning, and many of those had one or more severe illnesses. All were recorded as Covid deaths though without any test or autopsy, as were people who died in hospital due to incorrect or over-aggressive treatment, such as intubation. The government did change their criteria at the end of May though after these figures were questioned; hence the large drop in numbers as from June.

Again (to the best of our knowledge), no figures have been released in Spain as to whether death rates for other illnesses have dropped, which would be logical if such deaths were reclassified as Covid, and only time will tell if this is the case. Each country has its own criteria though, and probably the best way to judge the real impact of the disease is to look at the number of excess deaths compared to a normal year. Some limited information is already available on this, such as the figures released by the Health Foundation in the UK, which compared six countries over an 11 week period from March to May, as below. As can be seen, the figure for Spain is the highest of them all, including in comparison to Sweden, which did not impose a lockdown. It remains to be seen whether this figure will be compensated later in the year, given that, for example, the elderly persons who died with other serious illnesses may have died later in the year under other circumstances, although we expect there to be further deaths, in particular of people with other diseases who were not able to get medical treatment, as well as suicides and people dying of aggravated respiratory problems due to the forced wearing of masks.

The conclusion to be drawn from all of the above is that the strict measures implemented in Spain have not really contributed to saving lives, and in some instances have actually increased the number of deaths. This is particularly the case for the elderly in nursing homes, and people with serious illnesses who were not able to be treated, as mentioned earlier. The cure in this case seems to be worse than the illness, and it is only going to get worse as the frightening reality of the economic recession hits us – GNP is expected to be down by over 15%, the tourist industry is devastated (a 98% drop in income in June!), and many businesses, including up to 40% of hotels, bars and restaurants, will be forced to close, with millions already unemployed and dependent on government hand-outs. Couple this with further lockdowns, and it is a recipe for disaster.

From the above figures it is clear that we are being manipulated into accepting the unnecessary, ineffective and inhuman wearing of masks, further restrictions on our human rights and more suffering for all, while the politicians and other people behind all of this cash in, railroading through unpopular laws and dishing out multi-million euro contracts to their buddies for useless protection equipment under their ‘state of emergency’. They are still paid while they languish in their holiday homes this summer, oblivious and uncaring about all the suffering they have caused, and even pinning medals on themselves for “saving the world”. They no longer represent the people of Spain, and it is time to end all of this now, or our children will end up paying the price.