Tuesday, February 02, 2021

The Doctor Visit

I went for my yearly physical today and got an AOK.  I mention to the doctor that I think I had Corona Virus a year ago.  I had a pretty bad case of the flu, but it didn’t stop me from going to work.  Two weeks after I recovered, I put a bagel in the toaster oven and went back to my paperwork. After a while, I noticed that the dog was barking a lot and my glasses looked awful dirty. Then the smoke alarm went off.  My bagel was on fire in the toaster oven. I put the toaster fire out and noticed that the timer didn’t stop at zero it went past it, and kept on toasting. At this point I realized that I could not smell anything.  That explained why food didn’t really taste very good lately.  I had lost my sense of smell.  My doctor said that he had many cases that started in January, a year ago, including his wife.  He mentioned that he was at a loss as to why the media had not picked up on this.

 Right now, the media has kept the death count from last year of 300, 000 and continued on this year adding to it.  This is what I call yellow Journalism.  Exaggeration for readership and political influence.  The death count for this year should have started at zero and it didn’t.  79 percent of the people dying from the disease are over the age of 65.  People do die from old age, don’t let the Corona Virus take all of the blame.  99.9 percent of the population will survive the disease, so why the panic?

 The news media has panicked the nation.  It makes good copy and sells advertising.  People are frozen in place in terror because of the news media.  “My god, I could kill someone by not wearing my mask” this projected suggestion to the public is blatantly wrong.  The truth is most of us can go out and do business with no problem.

 Remember the first restrictions were to lower the curve so hospitals could accommodate the patients.  It was not pointed out to anyone that the area under the curve remained the same, the same number would die only over a longer period of time.

 I think we will find out, that most people will get the Corona Virus and survive.  It is a form of the cold virus and it has been around forever. I think we will also discover that the death counts for other diseases like heart disease, will drop considerably from previous years, from fear to consult a doctor.  The total death rate for the nation will be above 2.7 million per year. But bear in mind the average reader has no visual concept of 2.7 million people dying each year normally.  This has panicked the masses, the perspective of 80,000 drug deaths, 40,000 car deaths, 70,000 Influenzas deaths has left the people with no perspective of how to interpret the data.

 The yellow press impresses upon us, that 300,000 died last year from Corona Virus.  People do die of old age and it is usually after the age of 65.  Funny how elderly people are not supposed to die from Corona Virus, but rather from old age.  How many of the people that died had one foot on a banana peel?

6 comments:

dearieme said...

"It is a form of the flu": nope, it's caused by a coronavirus not an influenza virus.

Averaged over the whole adult population it's comparable to a particularly bad flu epidemic, but not remotely as bad as the Spanish Flu of 1918/19. Happily it almost entirely spares children and healthy young adults.

Among the old, where the deaths are concentrated, it kills men at about twice the rate of women. This scandalous inequality needs to be addressed, most simply by bumping off old women until the rates are equal.

In studies in Sweden of the killing fields - i.e. "care" homes for the elderly - those who were recorded as dying of Covid fell into three groups. 8% were wrongly classified - they had had Covid, recovered from it, and then died of something else. 75% fell to the Grim Reaper - they were ripe for death, failing from other illnesses, and he gathered them in. 17% were assassinated by Covid - they were otherwise in stable health, and Covid alone caused their deaths.

In Sweden, as in Britain and NY State (and many other places, no doubt), failure to protect the care homes was probably the worst government blunder of the whole episode. By contrast, Singapore defended its care homes effectively.

Jim in San Marcos said...

Hi dearieme

You are right, its not a form of the flu, I reworded it. I knew what I meant but that's not what I said.

I laughed at your mention of the death rate for elderly men was twice that of women. In the 90's I used to visit my grandmother in a rest home. They had about 60 people and only 5 of them were men (and quite popular, in fact, with the women). My grandmother use to call it scandalous.

Old age starts at 65 and medicine can keep our bodies alive a lot longer. The fact that so many of the people who die are old isn't really a surprise unless you're trying to sell newspapers. People put in rest homes, not retirement homes, usually are there for what I have read, as about 5 months before they pass away.

Thank you for the humor and the added info.

dearieme said...

Just come across this, Jim.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-death-covid-higher-flu.html

I hope you spend long hours basking in Californian sunshine or take Vitamin D if you can't.

Best wishes.

Jim in San Marcos said...

Hi dearieme

Thank you for the link. The information presented seems to obfuscate the issue.

It appears that a lot of people that get the virus, get well and go on their way.

As an aside to your question, I am not enjoying the California sun, my medications state no sunlight, may cause blemishes so I take a lot of vitamin D. Old age kinda sucks (I'm 74), and I'm stuck with it. It's not a bad thing, it happens to everyone.

dearieme said...

"my medications state no sunlight, ... so I take a lot of vitamin D. Old age kinda sucks"

Snap!

dearieme said...

I spent some time in the hospital this week. On the way home I realised it was a mild Spring day, with sunshine falling on lovely ancient buildings and wonderful patches of crocuses in the grass.

Hurray! The bad times will soon be over.