Technocracy = Tyranny

OPINION

BY LEN CABRERA

There was a lot of tap dancing from the technocracy after Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s false positive COVID-19 test this week. The health bureaucracy’s stranglehold on “science” and insistence that there are no false positives came into question, so much so that their allies in the national media called anyone who questions the experts “pandemic deniers.”

The problem is that most elected politicians do not understand real science, and even those who do would rather shield themselves from actual responsibility by deferring to unelected bureaucratic “experts” like Dr. Fauci. These bureaucrats like to claim the mantle of “science” but are quick to ignore or denounce anyone who disputes their claims or even asks for proof.

Such a system is ripe for abuse and will lead to tyranny as dissenting voices are ignored, then discredited, and eventually silenced. How many doctors have to have their videos banned before people realize national policy is being made by a doctor who hasn’t seen a patient since 1968?

For over a month, we’ve had non-stop hysteria from the media about escalating numbers of cases and deaths to prop up the narrative that Governor DeSantis is doing everything wrong. All the while, Dr. Fauci has been proclaiming that New York Governor Cuomo  “did it correctly” despite four times more deaths in his state with 2 million fewer people than Florida (32,831 deaths vs. 8,109 as of August 8).

The propaganda and misinformation has succeeded. A survey released in mid-July reported that the average guess on the percentage of the population that had died from COVID-19 was well over 100 times the actual percentage (see page 24). The average for U.S. respondents was 9%. That would be nearly 30 million deaths. The actual percentage is under 0.05%: 162,000 deaths as of August 8.

Five months into corona-madness, the CDC finally released death counts by age. It reveals what Alachua Chronicle readers have known for months: 80% of the COVID deaths are from people over 65 (i.e., 16.5% of the population). There are 1.5 times more deaths from people over 85 than people under 65. The majority of the population has nothing to fear from COVID, but if people aren’t in terror, government can’t continue emergency orders.

The Florida Department of Health doesn’t do anything to counter the hysteria. Their Dashboard provides information on cases, hospitalizations, deaths, testing, and health metrics, but none of the data are relevant or useful. Cases are provided as a cumulative number, counting any positive test as a case regardless of symptoms and ignoring the possibility of false positive tests. The PCR test fact sheet actually says, “Laboratory test results should always be considered in the context of clinical observations and epidemiological data in making a final diagnosis and patient management decisions.” In other words, massive quantities of drive-thru tests on asymptomatic people are not a legitimate measure of the number of actual cases.

Similarly, hospitalizations are reported as a cumulative number, not indicating how many are current and not distinguishing between people who are hospitalized because of COVID-19 and those who just happen to be in the hospital and test positive. Someone can go in for a broken leg and have no COVID-19 symptoms, but be listed as a COVID hospitalization.

The graph of daily deaths on the Dashboard at least shows the deaths correctly by date of death, but the media misleads the public with headlines implying that the number of new deaths reported by FDOH occurred on the day they are reported. FDOH also does not include the date of death in their case line data file. Doing so would allow people to see that some of these deaths are associated with positive tests that are months old. There is also no attempt to distinguish deaths from COVID versus deaths with COVID. As we’ve shown in Alachua County, most died with multiple co-morbidities, and several were coded as accidents.

Alachua Chronicle has been reporting deaths both by the number announced each day and the distribution over multiple dates of the deaths; this is done by tracking changes in the FDOH  “Deaths by Day” page that is used to generate the Dashboard’s graph. This page is not advertised by FDOH or linked from the Dashboard. It also is not archived by date, so a true death-by-date chart cannot be reproduced by people who do not download the file daily. (The case line data is also not archived by date.)

The testing numbers have been suspect since we discovered negative tests were not being reported on July 7.

The most useful tab on the Dashboard is the health metrics, specifically the emergency department visits with COVID-like illness (CLI). Unfortunately, this data is only updated weekly, so it’s almost 2 weeks behind on Saturdays, for example. As this is written on August 9, the last update is from August 2. We tried to get updated data from FDOH and were simply referred back to the Dashboard.

This control over information allows the bureaucrats to influence political decisions (or whisper what politicians want to hear to justify their preferred policies). The mask mandate is one such case. We’ve documented many peer-reviewed, scientific journal articles that show masks do not work to stop the spread of viruses, yet mask proponents just respond with “wear your mask,” “your mask protects me,” or some other drivel. They may as well be saying, “It is known.“

The closest thing they have to proof is models that assume masks work. The lack of factual data to support mask orders drove the Kansas Department of Health & Environment Secretary to lie, using a second axis (with hidden values) to make mask-order counties appear better than non-mask-order counties.

The false positive test for Governor DeWine is a big deal because the technocrats have denied that there are false positives. In fact, it’s practically impossible to get figures on the accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) of the SARS-CoV-2 rRT-PCR test. As we show here, even if the test has 99% accuracy in both categories, there can be a large percentage of false positives if the infection rate is very low (as suggested by cumulative case to population ratio of only 1.5% in the U.S; 2.5% in Florida).

A false positive test can be life-altering for the peons who don’t immediately get cleared like Governor DeWine, who’s had three tests in three days. Even professional athletes like Matthew Stafford suffer from a false positive test. His family was simply inconvenienced, but small business owners can have their lives ruined, like Country Donuts in Illinois, which had to close because of a false positive test. We have a personal friend who tested positive five weeks ago but can’t return to work until she has a negative test (despite CDC guidance that says you’re no longer contagious 10 days after symptom onset). Unlike DeWine, she doesn’t get three tests in three days.

There is plenty of factual data countering the technocrat narrative echoed by the national media. Challenging that narrative does not make someone a “pandemic denier.” We’re just trying to hold these “experts” accountable. Their eagerness to manipulate and hide data suggests they’re following “science,” not real science, and certainly not the data that is readily accessible.

My March 23 statement stands: “Our society will survive the coronavirus, but we may not survive the heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all, patronizing dictates from statist politicians, drunk on power, who forget that they’re supposed to represent the citizens, not rule them.”

The technocrats are enabling the tyranny.