COVID Propaganda

In today's Seattle Times (8/14/20), an article was reprinted from the Washington Post claiming that the COVID-19 pandemic was comparable to the 1918 Flu pandemic which killed an estimated 50 million people. The article focused on New York City's brief high monthly death rate, switching to "excess deaths" to distort reality. New York was unusual in that elderly COVID patients were sent to care facilities from hospitals and, as a consequence, entire care facilities housing elderly patients with comorbidities were infected resulting in wildly excessive deaths for New York. Furthermore, the numbers just don't add up. As of 8/14/20, there were 760,000 reported COVID deaths globally for a death rate of 97 deaths per million population. And indications are that changes in reporting the cause of death have inflated the COVID-19 death rate. The 1918 flu caused an estimated 50 million deaths in a global population of 1.8 billion people for a death rate of 27,778 deaths per million population. The COVID-19 death rate is not even remotely comparable to the 1918 flu death rate and claiming so is pure propaganda. It should be further noted that COVID-19 deaths are significantly centered on the elderly with existing conditions whereas the flu effects all age groups including school age children.

This ongoing media propaganda campaign seems intended to justify and distract from the current restructuring of the global political economy from consumer capitalism to a form of totalitarian neofeudalism. This is in response to the end of the hydrocarbon era, the non-viability of our current financial system, and to the looming environmental catastrophe. COVID-19 is being wildly exaggerated, however, the underlying social and environmental conditions are extraordinarily serious, much more serious than the virus itself.

COVID-19  (8/14/20)      Deaths         Population        Deaths/mm
  US                                      167K               328mm              509/mm
  Global                                 760K                7.8B                   97/mm

Hong Kong Flu (1970)
   US                                      100K              205mm              488/mm
   Global                                  1mm              3.7B                  270/mm

Asian Flu (1958)
   US                                       116K             175mm               663/mm
   Global                                1.1mm             2.9B                 380/mm

1918 "Spanish" Flu
    US                                      675K             103mm            6,553/mm
    Global                               50mm               1.8B            27,778/mm