COVID numbers and the U.S. economy -- exaggerations, truth and expectations

Unprecedented Federal Reserve credit creation (out of thin air), 

unprecedented government spending, 

unprecedented federal deficits, 

and sharply declining COVID cases this year 

-- are all promoting fast economic growth,

 in the first half of 2021, and a rising inflation rate. 

The COVID cases should be sharply declining for three reasons:

(1) A change in COVID testing to sharply reduce false positives, 

(2) The vaccines,  and 

(3) The seasonal trend -- less COVID spreading as people spend more time outdoors in the warmer weather.

 

One big caveat: COVID mutations. 

Ordinary flu mutations tend to be milder than the original disease. 

But Brazil has had a COVID P1 variant that seems worse -- their Sinovac vaccine has been ineffective, younger people are getting seriously ill far more often, and it seems that antibodies from getting the original COVID are not very effective at fighting the P1 variant. 

In addition, the AstraVeneca vaccine has been only about 50% effective with a new South African COVID mutation -- better than no vaccine, but not great. 

There is no indication yet about how well Moderna and Pfizer vaccines will work with COVID mutations. 

 

In the US (and elsewhere) COVID cases have fallen sharply since mid-January 2021.

That was mainly due to inaccurate numbers in 2020.

For COVID19 in 2020, every positive test was called a “case”, even with no symptoms -- not the traditional medical definition of a "case".

The “second wave” was likely the result of increased testing -- more testing results in more positive tests.

US cases, deaths and hospitalizations have been going down sharply since the middle of January 2021 -- too early for the COVID vaccinations to have had more than a very small effect.

The cause was revised World Health Organization (WHO) PCR COVID testing guidelines on January 13, 2021.
 

WHO recommended asymptomatic positive COVID tests be repeated.

This followed WHO instructing labs to use lower cycle thresholds (CT values) for PCR tests, because values over 35 were producing too many false positives.

WHO ensured testing would produce fewer false positives.

That made it much harder to be labelled as an “asymptomatic case”.

So, we have been seeing a decline in healthy people being labelled “COVID cases”, based on false positives, from an unreliable testing process.

And that means fewer people dying of pneumonia, heart disease, cancer, or other diseases, are having “COVID-19” added to their death certificate, based on testing criteria that caused a lot of false positives.

The death rate outside of nursing homes is now about 2 deaths out of 1,000 infections (0.2%)

The death rate in nursing homes has always been exaggerated by describing deaths WITH COVID, as deaths FROM COVID.