I received a specific request to compile the below information in a shareable post.

Note: I am NOT an epidemiologist or even a scientist - I'm an attorney. I have no formal

qualifications in science and if you read this, know that the conclusions below are merely and solely
my opinions. You should review the data and come to your own conclusions. That said, I was asked
to prepare this - apparently because I have some skill at research and at reviewing and compiling
data. I've had very little work during this shutdown, so I've been doing a lot of research about the
COVID-19 pandemic in particular and epidemiology in general. That research has included
materials from numerous Doctors (medical and scientific), scientific studies, materials from CDC,
WHO, and other organizations, innumerable articles about the pandemic, etc... I've provided lots
of links below for the reader’s consideration. You can review the links and come to your own
conclusions about whether or not my analysis and conclusions have merit.

Some of you may have seen the video of two docs from Bakersfield, CA giving a press conference
about COVID-19 - which video has been removed from YouTube repeatedly. If so, you've probably
also seen articles "debunking" that press conference. The 10 parts of this post were prompted by
those articles are intended to address that and related issues.

1: The complaint about the docs is about their extrapolations from positive PCR tests to the whole
community of different places. It's an ostensibly reasonable complaint, because PCR tests have
typically been given to symptomatic patients, so the results would be skewed to potentially show too
many infections. Maybe. PCR tests only show current, active infection in the body.

Antibody tests, on the other hand, show whether or not the person might have had the virus in the
past. And that data would be more accurate in relation to the total number of infections, but such
testing has only been available in a few places so far - and critics have attacked some of that data,
as well (because it's allegedly not randomized enough). However, that data from various parts of the
country DOES show that the total number of people who have been infected is FAR higher than the
number of positive PCR tests. So while the Bakersfield docs' extrapolation is hardly going to be
accurate, it's probably not as far off as the critics are making out.

And as the doc says in the video, he's using the data available to him - all he has to work with are
the PCR tests. I still haven't seen anyone explain how that is any different from what the modelers
of this virus did when the extrapolated to say that this virus would kill MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.
They used data they had, guesstimated other data that was unknown, and threw out a number.

It's. The. Same. Thing. Except the modelers were actually speaking directly with government leaders
and influencing them into taking extreme measures based on their terribly inaccurate guesstimates.

------------

2: Until antibody testing results started coming in recently, the estimates of the fatality rate of this
virus have ALL been based on exactly the same sort of PCR (active virus) tests that the Bakersfield
docs used... the kind that are biased towards people who are currently infected... because that's
almost all of the people who have been tested with PCR tests.
That resulted in initial estimates by the WHO that the fatality rate of COVID-19 was 3.4%... which
appears to be incorrect by A LOT - and caused the entire world to go into a panic.

With more data available, Dr. Fauci then said that this virus is TEN TIMES MORE FATAL THAN
THE FLU (and he estimated the flu to have a fatality rate of 0.1%, which means Fauci was saying
this virus has a fatality rate of 1.0%).

Although it should be noted that Fauci can't make up his mind. In the New England Journal of
Medicine, Fauci and the head of the CDC said:

"... the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe
seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza
(similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS...".

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

Which is it, Dr. Fauci? TEN TIMES more fatal than the flu, or akin to a seasonal influenza? That's
a rather important distinction.

At any rate, 1.0% also appears to be too high.

For example, attached is a screenshot from an Italian document titled “Epidemia COVID-19"
showing total infections of Italian docs and nurses. Nearly 17,000 infected (left column). 60 died
(center column). The fatality rate (right column) for docs/nurses under 50 years old is the same as
or less than the flu. It's a little higher for age 50-59, higher than that for 60-69, and WAY higher for
70+. In other words, it's pretty much what we've seen from this virus everywhere. It is really bad for
old people and similar to the flu for people under 50. The total fatality rate for those Italian docs and
nurses was 0.4%. That's less than half what Fauci freaked everyone out with COVID being TEN
TIMES MORE FATAL THAN THE FLU.
And the Italian information likely includes only PCR tests, not antibody tests - which means that the
fatality rate is likely even lower than that.

Are the people who are criticizing these docs also criticizing the WHO and Fauci for using the data
available to them to estimate a fatality rate that is WAY higher than we're actually seeing? Shouldn't
there be articles titled, "CUE THE DEBUNKING, W.H.O. AND FAUCI GO VIRAL WITH DUBIOUS
COVID FATALITY CONCLUSIONS"?

I see people - like those in this article - questioning the antibody test results from California that were
released recently. But that testing is almost certainly more accurate than WHO's initial fatality
estimate and Fauci's subsequent fatality estimate.

Yet those criticizing the Bakersfield docs and the Cali antibody studies do not seem to criticize
WHO's and Fauci's errors, justifying them by saying that models are expected to be incorrect.
Hmm...

------------

3: The mere fact that two physicians aren't very good at extrapolating doesn't mean the remainder
of their conclusions are incorrect. Which is exactly what this sort of article tries to say/imply. But
here's the thing... in spite of the fact that their data is skewed towards infection based on PCR testing,
that DOES NOT mean that they're substantially wrong.

ALL of the antibody testing that has come in to date - from Germany, California, Massachusetts,
Miami, Kansas, and a couple other places I can't recall have shown that the actual infection rate is
a lot higher than the confirmed PCR tests have shown. A lot. Like 16 times more than the confirmed
number of cases:

https://reason.com/2020/04/26/miami-dade-antibody-tests-suggests-covid-19-infections-e
xceed-confirmed-cases-by-a-factor-of-16/

Or THIRTY-TWO PERCENT of the population infected when only 2 percent had tested PCR
positive:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken
-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/

In NYC, less than 2% of people have tested PCR positive for having active virus (159,865 out of 8.4
million). Yet the antibody tests have shown that...

TWENTY-SEVEN POINT FOUR PERCENT have had the virus.

https://www.livescience.com/covid-antibody-test-results-new-york-test.html
There have been similar tests in California, Kansas, Germany, the Netherlands, and I'm sure at least
a couple other places.

Additionally, waste water has been tested in a couple places here in the US (COVID is shed in feces)
and those results have shown...

"Fecal test suggests Delaware county may have 15 times more coronavirus cases than recorded"

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/24/new-castle-county-poop-suggests-
higher-covid-19-infection-rate/3019927001/

That sort of finding has been consistent every time antibodies or wastewater has been looked at.
While the percentage infected has varied greatly - mostly by the population density of the area - the
percentage that has actually been infected has consistently been many times higher than the
percentage that tested PCR positive. Even if there's some skewing of the test subjects in the
Bakersfield doc's sample, all of the above that COVID is far more prevalent than the confirmed PCR
test numbers.

So it is clear that the actual number of infected is far more than just the positive PCR tests - and that
means there are a LOT of infections that are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. So if the
Bakersfield docs overestimated based on PCR results available to them, the overestimation is not
as large as their critics imply.

------------

4: There is a constant unwillingness of almost everyone in media to accept ANY good news at all.
Good news doesn't sell. A Russian news site tried reporting only good news. And lost 2/3 of their
viewers:

https://qz.com/307214/heres-what-happened-when-a-news-site-only-reported-good-news-
for-a-day

So what DOES sell? PANIC. Fear. It gets people to watch/read the news. Everyone KNOWS that.
It's in movies and TV shows. They even have a common phrase to describe it:

"If it bleeds, it leads."

Here's an article discussing how the news media psychologically manipulates people with fear:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes-depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-le
ads-understanding-fear-based-media

As I said, everyone KNOWS the media is doing that... but in situations like this COVID situation,
people forget it's happening. Because media covers every. single. case. and. death. from. COVID.
hour. by. hour.
5: Do you know that the total deaths from COVID in this country just a day ago got up to the
number of flu deaths from 2017-18? Do you even remember the 2017-18 flu season? Do you know
that the worldwide deaths from COVID are still under the lowest estimate of worldwide annual flu
deaths? Has the media told you that?

Now... my point there is not to say that COVID is the flu (although for healthy people under 50 it
appears to be pretty much exactly that based on the results of the Italian docs/nurses study).

My point is that the panic has been presented for months with little to no context.

Flu (including pneumonia - which is how the CDC presents flu stats) kills 10,000 to nearly 100,000
people per year in this country (using the lower/upper CDC estimates for deaths over the last 10
years), every year, year after year, even though we have a vaccine for flu...

... and no one really cares. Tens of thousands of deaths are treated so lightly that the CDC doesn't
have an exact number because CDC doesn't require reporting of flu deaths of adults.

The CDC and the public just know that tens of thousands of people will die of flu every year and
don't get worked up about it. It's just part of living. Life has lots of risks. Flu is one of them.
Pneumonia is one of them. Heart disease is one of them. Highway deaths is one of them. Cancer is
one of them. COVID is now one of them.

------------

6: Speaking of shutting down the entire world, we're already seeing warnings of food supply issues
and possible shortages.

Suicide rates are rising.

Domestic violence and child abuse are rising.

Studies show that as unemployment goes up, so do deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, etc...

People are dying at home of heart attacks and other issues because they're too afraid to go to the
hospital for treatment.

Cancer specialists say that since people who have cancer cannot get regular tests and treatment, that
the incidence of cancer death will go up substantially in the near future. According to some, cancer
deaths caused by the shut down will exceed the deaths from COVID:

"Richard Sullivan, a professor of cancer and global health at King's College London and director
of its Institute of Cancer Policy, said: "The number of deaths due to the disruption of cancer services
is likely to outweigh the number of deaths from the coronavirus itself over the next five years."

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1268059/cancer-deaths-coronavirus-nhs
7: "Flattening the curve" merely delays the inevitable infections, and herd immunity (natural or
vaccine acquired) is necessary to stop spread of the virus (I'm working from the assumption that
people who have been infected are immune for a significant period of time. That is uncertain but
likely with this virus. If it's not the case, then a vaccine isn't possible, so we better hope it is
possible).

For example:

"A flatter curve, on the other hand, assumes the same number of people ultimately get infected, but
over a longer period of time. A slower infection rate means a less stressed health care system, fewer
hospital visits on any given day and fewer sick people being turned away."

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-flatten-the-curve.html

"... flattening the curve doesn’t necessarily mean that we can decrease the total number of people
who are ultimately infected. Those who are at high risk for serious complications due to COVID-19
will still have the same risk if they are infected, and flattening the curve will not impact the disease
severity."

https://www.bcm.edu/news/infectious-diseases/life-after-flattening-curve-not-usual

Literally the only benefits to flattening the curve are preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed
and hoping that maybe a vaccine or treatment will be developed. Those are all good things.

But you're still going to get a similar number of cases eventually.

"What really matters is how you get to herd immunity," said Dr. William Hanage, an epidemiologist
at Harvard University. "And it will be impossible to get there without a large number of deaths."

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/leaders-weigh-pursuit-herd-immunity-experts-warn-risks/
story?id=70072952

"It will almost certainly take herd immunity to end the pandemic... That means that COVID-19 is
here to stay, and the pandemic will end only with herd immunity."

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-19-when-will-coronavirus-pandemic-social-

"... in the absence of mass vaccination programmes, the development of sufficient levels of immunity
in the population through natural infection (‘herd immunity’) is the only way to eventually decrease
transmission opportunities in the community..."

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/covid-19-social-distancing-mea
suresg-guide-second-update.pdf
The issue is not "It's too soon to open back up". The issue is that - as long as the virus is out there
and active and as long as herd immunity (natural or vaccine based) has not been reached - then there
will ALWAYS be another wave following social distancing being relaxed.

And if you social distance until a lot of cases happen in the winter, you can end up with 50% more
deaths than if the cases had happened in the summer. See here:

https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b

------------

8: To expound on that idea, if you let the virus run free, then you get one really bad "wave" until herd
immunity is reached. You suffer intensely for a relatively short period of time and then herd
immunity is reached. That is the approach Sweden has opted to take. They think they can shorten
the amount of time the suffering continues. Time will tell if they are correct. If Sweden is correct,
then they won't have a second wave and other countries will. If Sweden is incorrect, then their
choice may have resulted in more deaths than they would have had if they had locked down. Or
maybe not... but I'll get back to that in part 10.

If you decide not to let the virus run free and lockdown/shutdown, social distance, wear masks and
all that, then there is a high likelihood that:

A: You'll have a lot less cases initially.

B: You won't have achieved herd immunity after the first wave.

C: You will have one or more additional waves until herd immunity is reached.

(Possible exceptions: if the virus is "seasonal" and/or burns itself out in the summer head AND
doesn't come back in the fall, then you can avoid the additional wave(s). I haven't seen any scientists
think that either of those possibilities is likely).

Again, what I'm saying is that social distancing and shutdowns/lockdowns CAUSE the second and
third waves. Because such actions delay infections and herd immunity. In support of that
proposition, I present the following:

Social distancing caused three waves in Mexico with H1N1:

"Social distancing and school closures can create multiple outbreaks... The “waves” in the cases
considered here occur because the implementation of social distancing and school closure measures
pause, but not stop, the spread of the disease."

https://www.aimspress.com/fileOther/PDF/MBE/1551-0018_2011_1_21.pdf
Social distancing appears to have caused three waves in the 1918 Spanish Flu:

"Local epidemic curves during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic were often characterized by
multiple epidemic waves. Identifying the underlying cause(s) of such waves may help manage future
pandemics. We investigate the hypothesis that these waves were caused by people avoiding
potentially infectious contacts—a behaviour termed ‘social distancing’... We conclude that the
variable application of social distancing, whereby individuals reduced their infectious contact rate
in response to the perceived risk, is a plausible explanation for the multiple waves of pandemic
strain influenza seen during 1919 in Sydney, Australia."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3226987/

So if those two studies are how viruses similar to COVID-19 typically react, then social distancing
means that instead of one really quick, really deadly wave, you get two or three slower waves, which
are likely each less deadly than the single wave that happens if you don't socially distance.

However, as the total number of infections will likely be similar whether you have one wave or three
waves, the number of deaths will likely be similar (save for any deaths you might have saved by
preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed because of social distancing... but shutting
everything down for too long will result in lots of deaths in a secondary health crisis, so that also has
to be taken into account).

And it also has to be noted that the second wave of Spanish Flu was worse than the first wave, and
the THIRD wave of H1N1 in Mexico was the worst of the three there.

So the question becomes whether or not you want your deaths all at once or stretched out over many
months, a year or more. Sweden has chosen to have them all at once and believes they will not have
a second wave. Again, time will tell if that works out to their advantage. But note that our hospitals
have only been overwhelmed in a few places. Hospitals most places have lots of open beds now. So
there's no reason to continue to flatten the curve in those areas that are not overwhelmed - such
actions are just delaying inevitable infections and thus, delaying herd immunity.

------------

9: Now, some readers will be saying, “Wait a minute... we ultimately want to prevent as many
infections (and thus deaths) as possible until a vaccine for COVID-19 is available.”

Fair enough. It’s something that has been talked about by Dr. Fauci and that is a good thing to hope
for. Let's take a look at that issue. First, there's no guarantee that a safe, effective vaccine even CAN
be developed. No such vaccine has ever been developed for other coronaviruses.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-vaccine-may-be-impossible-to-produce-sci
entists-covid-2020-4

https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/wanted-coronavirus-vaccines/
Additionally, attempts at making vaccines for prior coronaviruses like SARS and MERS had
significant complications. For example:

"Studies about the safety of vaccines against SARS and MERS are relatively scarce. There is a
concern about the induction of antigen-dependent enhancement (ADE) and other adverse effects
derived from vaccination or natural re-exposure...

It has been found that certain vaccine platforms expressing the SARS S glycoprotein or using a
whole inactivated virus induced lung immunopathology and hepatitis after challenge in some animal
models. Furthermore, MERS coronavirus vaccination has been shown to induce pulmonary
infiltration after challenge in mice when using an inactivated MERS-CoV vaccine. Of note, some
SARS-CoV-infected animal models are not protected from MERS-CoV (and vice versa), and they
might develop adverse effects after secondary infection."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-020-00300-x

A safe, effective vaccine - if one is even possible... no vaccine for any other coronavirus has ever
been made - is probably YEARS away. I say that based on the historical evidence of the time it takes
to develop a vaccine. Fauci can say "12 to 18 months" over and over, but that doesn't mean it's going
to happen.

Actual vaccinologists say it will almost certainly take more time than that. For example,

"Tony Fauci is saying a year to 18 months -- I think that's optimistic," said Dr. Peter Hotez, a
leading expert on infectious disease and vaccine development at Baylor College of Medicine.
"Maybe if all the stars align, but probably longer."

Dr. Paul Offit, the co-inventor of the successful rotavirus vaccine [which took 26 YEARS to
develop], put it more bluntly. "When Dr. Fauci said 12 to 18 months, I thought that was ridiculously
optimistic," he told CNN. "And I'm sure he did, too."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/31/us/coronavirus-vaccine-timetable-concerns-experts-inv
s/index.html

Here's a list of more than 20 vaccines and the time it took to develop them. Conclusion:

"Taking these numbers literally, this gives a mean of 31.8 years of development, with a median of
27 years and a standard deviation of 17.7 years. If you exclude the vaccines still under development
(HIV, malaria, and ebola), the mean is 29.5 years (median 26, SD 17.4)."

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8qMDseJTE3vCFiYec/how-long-does-it-take-to
-research-and-develop-a-new-vaccine
And this:

"Under the best of circumstances, the world is still looking at 12 to 18 months before a vaccine
could be widely available, she says.

That in itself would be a remarkable achievement. The 2013 study found that between 1998 and
2009, the average time taken to develop a vaccine was 10.7 years. It is possible to speed this up to
some extent – since then, an Ebola vaccine has become the fastest-developed vaccine ever, being
produced in just five years."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24632804-000-why-itll-still-be-a-long-time-befo
re-we-get-a-coronavirus-vaccine/#ixzz6LABhylhX

So playing the "wait for a vaccine" game - while keeping the country partly or completely shut down
for possibly YEARS - will almost certainly result in a huge economic crisis and the accompanying
secondary health care crisis, including those things listed under point number 6 above. Tons of
unemployment, suicides, overdoses, domestic abuse, child abuse, increased cancer deaths, etc...
Some of those things are already happening and we've only been shut down for what, a month and
a half?

IMO, a better hope than a vaccine - at least in the short term (as in within months rather than years)
would be for a treatment that could prevent death in more cases once the inevitable infections occur.
Let's hope and pray that fast advancement is made in that direction.

------------

10: In closing, there appears to be zero or near zero correlation between shutdowns and lower deaths
from COVID.

https://medium.com/@yinonweiss/coronavirus-shutdown-effectiveness-visualized-part-2-
1a6e7b97649d

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/04/62572/

If those two articles are accurate, then there seems to be little reason to continue
shutdowns/lockdowns. An approach like that discussed in the below link seems to me far more
reasonable and tenable - focus on protecting the people most at risk - the elderly and those whose
immune systems are compromised. And let those who are at relatively low risk go back to a more
or less normal life, spreading the virus and quickly moving towards herd immunity:

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494949-we-can-protect-the-most-vulnerable-and-re
open-the-economy

Please consider the data/information above and draw your own conclusions from it. Don’t assume
that I have any formal qualification or expertise in science or epidemiology. I don’t.