After Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 Election, I would have made a substantial bet that COVID-19 was going to disappear like magic. I was sure the CDC would send out guidance lowering the cycle threshold for a positive COVID test, artificially reducing the number of “cases” following Inauguration Day. Indeed, the CDC would amend the death certificate instructions to require that the overwhelming respiratory inflammation and clotting caused by severe COVID were the primary cause of death to be counted. Suddenly, the distinction between “with COVID” and “from COVID” would be made, and compulsory testing of all hospitalized patients would end.
None of these things happened. The failure of the Biden administration to massage the data to match reality and declare victory over the virus made it clear the response was never about public health. It was about politics and control. However, COVID-19 is becoming politically inconvenient for Democrats heading into the 2022 midterms.
Some of the most authoritarian governors are ratcheting back restrictions and mandates to save their own butts at the ballot box. The National Governors Association pleaded with President Biden to back down the COVID response, and Virginia Senate Democrats signaled support for legislation to enshrine Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s order making masks optional in schools. Even my terrible senator, Raphael Warnock, conceded, “People are tired.”
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So, here comes the biggest COVID-19 lie yet. While it is not the most significant whopper an accurate history will reveal, it is notable.
The gaslighting by the Biden administration is stunning to behold. According to Politico, the administration is looking for ways to reduce the number of hospitalizations attributed to COVID. It has mounted a task force to do what New York Gov. Kathy Hochul accomplished in about 48 hours:
The group is asking hospitals to report numbers of patients who go to the facility because they have Covid-19 and separate those from individuals who go in for other reasons and test positive after being admitted, the two officials said.
The administration’s goal is to get a more accurate sense of Covid-19’s impact across the country and whether the virus is causing severe disease. Senior Biden health officials have increasingly relied on hospitalization numbers, rather than case counts, to determine how to respond to the virus as well as the efficacy of the vaccines. Lower hospitalization rates could inform the administration’s thinking on public health measures such as masking. More accurate Covid-19 numbers also could provide a better picture of the strain on hospitals and which resources they might need during surges.
Recalculating the hospitalization rate will not be easy, said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and former advisory board member of the Covid Tracking Project, a team that worked to collect and synthesize local Covid-19 data during the peak of the pandemic.
First, Eric Topol is a politicized hack. He is now a relentless advocate for the COVID vaccines. However, in 2020, Topol mounted a social media campaign to prevent earlier approval of their use. When President Trump was released from the hospital after recovering from COVID on Oct. 5, 2020, he indicated vaccines would be approved shortly. As MIT Technology Review reported at the time, Topol actually met with the FDA and tweeted the following on Oct. 10, 2020: “We were on a path for a vaccine emergency authorization (EUA) before November 3rd. Thanks to the FDA, Trump’s plan was disrupted. That won’t happen. First real sign of the independence of FDA since the pandemic started. And that’s important.”
After Joe Biden won in November, Topol was advocating 2-3 million people a day get vaccinated by December 29, 2020:
A helpful interactive graphic to calculate the time to herd immunity, by @Harry_Stevens @PostGraphics https://t.co/lCjFtrOO5H
It's clear we need 2-3 million people vaccinated per day (w/ 2nd dose) to get there in <8 months.
Prior infections (w/o vaccine) may help accelerate pic.twitter.com/Cijoj41PTw— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 30, 2020
Topol’s only goal was preventing a vaccine announcement that could benefit President Trump. The fact people still interview him without asking why he let thousands of people die during the winter wave of COVID in 2020 for political reasons is egregious.
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His comment on the relative difficulty of getting accurate hospitalization data is also absurd. Either someone gets admitted for symptoms of a COVID infection, or they don’t. Any emergency room physician is capable of assigning an appropriate admission diagnosis. It is also ridiculous because the CDC is well aware of the attribution of hospital admissions and deaths to COVID when the underlying illness or cause was something else. Here is CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitting as much in May of 2021:
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, somewhat confusingly, says they are aware of 223 people who have died with covid after being vaccinated.
"Not all of those 223 cases who had covid actually died of covid. They may have had mild disease but died, for example, of a heart attack." pic.twitter.com/KmjbrXnd1k
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) May 16, 2021
The CDC always made the distinction between patients hospitalized for COVID and those who happened to test positive and were admitted for another reason when they were interested in monitoring breakthrough infections. Here is the assessment from May:
A total of 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough infections had been reported from 46 U.S. states and territories as of April 30, 2021. Among these cases, 6,446 (63%) occurred in females, and the median patient age was 58 years (interquartile range = 40–74 years). Based on preliminary data, 2,725 (27%) vaccine breakthrough infections were asymptomatic, 995 (10%) patients were known to be hospitalized, and 160 (2%) patients died. Among the 995 hospitalized patients, 289 (29%) were asymptomatic or hospitalized for a reason unrelated to COVID-19. The median age of patients who died was 82 years (interquartile range = 71–89 years); 28 (18%) decedents were asymptomatic or died from a cause unrelated to COVID-19.
Here is Dr. Anthony Fauci explaining many children listed as COVID hospitalizations were really there for another illness in December 2021:
Here, Dr. Fauci explains that a large percentage of the kids hospitalized with covid are actually in the hospital for another reason and are then incidentally testing positive.
Terrific that he he flagged but it’s alarming we don’t have these basic data quality issues solved. pic.twitter.com/w4xlKonei4
— Zac Bissonnette (@ZacBissonnette) December 30, 2021
The overcounting of pediatric hospitalizations was apparent in two studies from California in May of 2021. At that time, detailed reviews found 40% of pediatric inpatients were admitted for a reason other than COVID, even though they tested positive for the virus.
The idea that a task force is required to change the reporting on COVID hospitalizations is next-level gaslighting. Leaders at the CDC and NIH have known about the issue for months. They had criteria to separate incidental and symptomatic COVID positive tests when minimizing breakthrough infections was critical and should have been aware of multiple studies demonstrating the problem in overcounting both hospitalizations and deaths. They also spoke of it casually in media appearances. Topol’s additional commentary is worthy of all the eye rolls:
“You need a panel of experts to review the cases to adjudicate if a hospitalization is for a person who came in for Covid or with Covid,” Topol said. “It’s not something that is coded in the chart. A lot of people will say an individual came in with Covid, but it was actually the Covid that exacerbated the lung or heart disease.”
The idea that COVID has exacerbated anything when the patient exhibits no symptoms of COVID is insane. The type of inflammation and clotting that would cause a worsening of heart or lung disease would happen with symptomatic COVID and result from an overactive immune response to the virus. Topol knows this. Hospital charts also contain admission diagnoses. If a patient has no symptoms of COVID, then it should not be listed as a reason for admission even if the patient tests positive.
But most of all, the issue of insufficient and misleading data on COVID did not begin with Omicron, and it won’t end until the health bureaucracy decides honesty is more important than politics. Until they do, their own credibility will continue to suffer.
