COVID OPERATION: What Happened, Why It Happened, and What's Next by Pamela A. Popper Shane D. Prier

Author:Pamela A. Popper, Shane D. Prier [Pamela A. Popper, Shane D. Prier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pam Popper
Published: 2020-01-15T08:00:00+00:00

Not surprisingly, more testing yielded more cases.

The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) provided instructions for a new category of “case” – the “probable case” which was applied to people who had any symptom from a long list such as headache and a sore throat; who belonged to a “risk cohort”; or who had contact with anyone who tested positive such as living in or visiting “an area with sustained, ongoing community transmission.”85 While this vague information might be useful to an epidemiologist, it had absolutely no relevance to what would really be important to know, such as how many people were sick, the population most affected, and the mortality rate.

Armies of Contact Tracers were hired to follow up with “cases” to grow the case rate by asking people to disclose who they had been in contact with during the previous few days. These contact tracers were not required to have any medical training and were not even required to ever meet or even talk to people who were declared “cases.” In other words, a person could be considered a case just by virtue of having been in contact with another person who had been declared a case, even if the original case was declared a case by virtue of contact with a person living in a place with lots of cases. Did you get that?

The cases could be categorized as a “probable” case even if the person did not answer the phone when the contact tracer called.

The CDC endorsed and promoted this byzantine scheme. Here are excerpts from the guidance document for contact tracers:86

“COVID-19 case investigations will likely be triggered by one of three events:

1. A positive SARS-CoV-2 laboratory test or

2. A provider report of a confirmed or probable COVID-19 diagnosis or

3. Identification of a contact as having COVID-19 through contact tracing

If testing is not available [or declined], symptomatic close contacts should be advised to self-isolate and be managed as a probable case. Self-isolation is recommended for people with probable or confirmed COVID-19 who have mild illness and are able to recover at home.”

Not only did this inflate the number of cases in counties and states, it made accurate compilation of the data by the CDC almost impossible. For example, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, and Virginia included probable cases and deaths in their reports. Some states, including Arkansas, New Jersey, and Washington included probable deaths but not infections.

Some states, like Maine and Kansas, included probable deaths but not probable infections. Other states reported probable cases or deaths versus confirmed cases or deaths or both separately, but the CDC listed both together in totals for those states. These included Alabama, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and South Carolina.

Eight states decided to exclude probable cases and deaths from their totals, and those included Alaska, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, and Oklahoma.87

There was a backlog of patients who had procedures and treatment postponed when hospitals were closed while waiting for the “surge” that never occurred. These patients were another source of cases. Almost all

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