James Fetzer - Does Trump Actually Have COVID-19? If so, How Severe Is It? Who Can You Trust Anymore? [ The Michael Decon Program ]

The President, First Lady, Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager Bill Stepien,  three White House reporters, and three key Republican Senators (Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, and Thom Tillis) have all tested positive for COVID-19. So just as the slugging match about who “won” the nondebate debacle was dying down, the perfervid reporting and pontificating about how this happened and what it means took flight.

Because the  term “cases” has been so misstated by a media that loves to create panic when none is called for, it’s worth examining what this means.

So what do these headlines really mean? What exactly is a COVID “case”?

Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, most US media outlets have been exceedingly credulous and complicit in their reporting. Journalists almost uniformly promote what we can call the “prolockdown” narrative, which is to wildly exaggerate the risks from COVID-19 to serve a political agenda. They may be motivated to hurt Trump politically, to promote a more socialist “new normal,” or simply to drive more clicks and views. Bad news sells. But the bias is clear and undeniable.

This explains why media outlets use the terms “case” and “infection” so loosely, to the point of actively misinforming the public…

Take a perfectly healthy person with no particular symptoms and swab the inside of their nose. If the culture shows the presence of staphylococcus aureus, do we insist they have a staph infection?

— A virus is not a disease. Only a very small percentage of those exposed to the virus itself — SARS-CoV-2 — show any kind of acute respiratory symptoms, or what we can call “coronavirus disease.”

The only meaningful statistics show the incidence of serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths. The single most important statistic among these is the infection fatality rate (IFR). Data collected through July shows [4] that the IFR for those under age forty-five is actually lower than that of the common flu. The COVID-19 IFR rises for those over fifty, but it is hardly a death sentence. And the data does not segregate those with preexisting health issues caused by obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. If we could see data only for reasonably healthy people under fifty, the numbers would be even more reassuring.

Yes, the media was dishonest in covering the health issues of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, so it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical of health reports on any president, but by his appearance as he left for Walter Reed Hospital, his tweets, and the reports of his physicians and those on the spot, the President’s “case” is asymptomatic or mild, so the fact that he has tested positive “is essentially meaningless.” People in this stage are sick for a few days and then they are not.

If this were more widely known and understood, the lockdowns by Democratic governors would never be justified, and there is every reason to note the harm caused by the eight months of  lockdowns outweigh the harm from the virus. As author Jeff Deist concludes, “we have had nearly eight months of life and liberty stolen from us by politicians and their hysteria-promoting accomplices in the media. How much more will we accept?”