Lab leak vs natural spill over is a distraction from the lack of evidence that COVID-19 is a viral pandemic originating in China.

In my previous threads I showed that the lockdown in Wuhan was too late.

I showed that all cause mortality was already well above normal and an estimated 7 million people left the city in the weeks leading up to the lockdown, including 300,000 people on the eve of the lockdown.

I showed that the vast majority of international travelers went to other Asian countries.

I showed that studies, including the Seattle Flu Study, finding a lack of early spread of the virus lack plausibility due to the absence of false positives, and I showed that there is a larger body of contradictory evidence.

In this thread, I will show that the excess mortality during the spring 2020 wave was associated with a decline in emergency department utilization, not just for low acuity visits but for high acuity visits as well.

If this is confusing due to media reporting on overwhelmed hospitals, the confusion is coming from the fact that the emergency department and intensive care unit are separate.

I will present data showing that ED utilization went down while ICU utilization went up, suggesting that patients delayed care until it was too late.

ourworldindata.org/grapher/exc

nytimes.com/interactive/2020/0

Follow

Graphs showing emergency department visits for Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) and/or COVID-19-Like Illness (CLI) as a percentage of total visits can be highly misleading.

The following CDC graph serves as a good example:

It makes it look like emergency department utilization went up when in fact it went down.

I downloaded the data table still available on the internet archive and created a more honest data visualization.

Additionally, by definition ILI is a subset of CLI, meaning that there will always be more CLI than ILI.

"ILI is defined as
fever (temperature of 100.4 degrees F [37.8 degrees C] or greater)
AND a cough
AND/OR a sore throat without a known cause."

“COVID-19 like illness is described as
new onset of subjective or measured (≥100.4F or 38.0C) fever
OR cough
OR shortness of breath
OR sore throat that cannot be attributed to an underlying or previously recognized condition. ”

CDC: Emergency Department Visits Percentage of Visits for COVID-19-Like Illness (CLI) or Influenza-like Illness (ILI)
web.archive.org/web/2023012808

Health Alert # 6
COVID-19 Updates for New York City
nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/p

US NAVY COVID-19 STANDARDIZED OPERATIONAL GUIDANCE VERSION 3.1
web.archive.org/web/2020120308

@covid19
@auscovid19
@bioinformatics

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