That’s what journalist and researcher Alex Berenson has to say. He explained in a Twitter thread:
Most of you know I have been skeptical of the numbers and magical behavior ascribed to the Chinese coronavirus since the beginning, but this made me go digging. The evidence suggests he’s not wrong.
The CDC apparently doesn’t want this information widely distributed, they make it as hard as possible to get to the data sets I was interested in. However, this is the information age, so I found other sources.
The numbers in the chart above are a little out of date, but the distro holds true. Nearly 80% of all WuFlu deaths are in those 65 and older. More, there have been more deaths in those 75 and older than those under 65.
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At this point, the IFR, or infection fatality rate, is an estimate based on serology testing. While we don’t know the true number of infections, and likely never will, the estimates are generally pretty good. Anyway, the IFR tell us the rate of death of all those infected, not just confirmed cases (That’s called case fatality rate or CFR, and is typically higher though less accurate)
The IFR for the Chinese lung AIDS in the US is at .64%. The IFR for the flu in a typical year is, wait for it, .60% and can be as high as .70% in a bad year. The biggest difference is in the age distribution. The seasonal flu kills far more people under 65 than the Chinese coronavirus. In the 2017-18 flu season there were 385 reported pediatric flu deaths. There have been 26 pediatric deaths attributed to covid this year.
So, statistically, you’re at least twice as likely to know someone who died in an auto accident than you are to know someone, anyone, who’s died of the Chinese coronavirus. You’re about as likely to know someone who was struck by lightning as you are to know anyone under 40 who died of Chinese lung AIDS.
As Alex says above, the constant stream of panic porn is media and tech driven. When you look at what’s actually happening, it’s not so scary after all.