COVID-19

Official Sources

NOTE: As recently re-announced, the official current position of the WH Coronavirus Task Force is to classify all decedents who died with COVID-19 as having died of COVID-19, a critical distinction, which obviously presents inflated mortality figures. For more, listen as Dr. Birx explains this more “liberal approach to mortality”.

So, I think in this country we’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality … if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID death.
[Emphasis added]
Deborah Birx, WH Coronavirus Task Force Press Briefing (April 7, 2020)

For those interested, Dr. Annie Bukacek offers a more detailed analysis.

2019-2020 U.S. Flu Season: Preliminary Burden Estimates | CDC (last checked Apr. 7, 2020)
- Season: October 1, 2019, through March 28, 2020
- 39,000,000 – 55,000,000 (47M avg) flu illnesses
- 18,000,000 – 26,000,000(22M avg) flu medical visits
- 400,000 – 730,000(565K avg) flu hospitalizations
- 24,000 – 63,000 (43.5K avg) flu deaths
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Cases in U.S. | CDC (last checked Apr. 7, 2020)
- Total cases: 395,011*
- Total deaths: 12,754*

* Data include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020, with the exception of testing results for persons repatriated to the United States from Wuhan, China and Japan. State and local public health departments are now testing and publicly reporting their cases. In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.

Additional Sources

Perspectives on the Pandemic, Episode I

Dr. John Ioannidis, Stanford University (March 23, 2020) – YouTube
- Transcript

Perspectives on the Pandemic, Episode II

Professor Knut Wittkowski (April 1-2, 2020) – YouTube
- Transcript

Event 201, a pandemic exercise to illustrate preparedness efforts

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.

Statement about nCoV and our pandemic exercise

In recent years, the world has seen a growing number of epidemic events, amounting to approximately 200 events annually. These events are increasing, and they are disruptive to health, economies, and society. Managing these events already strains global capacity, even absent a pandemic threat. Experts agree that it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global—a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes “Event 201,” would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.