Statistically Significant: Why It Makes a Difference

It is always sad when people die. Why they die is often another sad story. But make no mistake, when fear and anxiety are perpetuated by those who should know better onto those who don’t know the difference between a significant fact and a fruit loop, people suffer panic needlessly. 

Unfortunately, this type of fear is too often used to serve political, social and even economic purposes. That is why you need to be fully aware of the facts, so you can avoid being manipulated by fear anytime but particularly during this pandemic.

It is interesting how the leading immunologist in the spotlight today is quick to label the positive results that are being observed and documented by those who are using Hydroxychloroquine as anecdotal, while he ambitiously pushes his social distancing theory as being scientific.  

The fact is, there have been NO double-blind placebo studies that prove his social distancing theory works.  Yet, this doesn’t keep him from repetitively labeling the Hydroxychloroquine regime of treatment anecdotal while calling his social distancing a scientific fact.  As a physician, he is aware that he is supposed to use all available means to help his patient(s).  But his irrational outspokenness on this topic leads one to believe that we are involved in an imposing social experiment rather than a true health crisis.

Here are some supporting data, reported by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), which mathematically and scientifically back up this bold hypothesis.

• Out of 327.2 million people, there were 501,444 total deaths in the United States from January 1, through April 8^th this year
• 4,065 of those deaths were from COVID-19
•  4,467 of those deaths were from the flu
• 35,230 of those deaths were from pneumonia
• 1,879 of these pneumonia cases also had COVID-19

Here we have some data that we use to calculate some scientific mathematical facts, not propaganda.

1.  0.153% of the US population died between January 1 and April 4, 2020
2. 0.81% of those deaths (0.001242% of the population) were due to COVID-19
3. 0.89% of those deaths (0.001352% of the population) were due to the flu
4. 766.67% more deaths have occurred from pneumonia than from COVID-19

Since statistics are always about probability, NOT absolute certainty, there must be a cut off rate that makes the probability of a particular statistic significant.  Scientists and mathematicians have agreed upon an acceptable cut off rate which, in this case, means there is a risk of being wrong 1 out of 5 times or 20% of the time.

With this understanding, the data from the CDC proves that the probability of:

• Deaths due to COVID-19 are NOT significant, meaning that this many people could have died from anything and the world at large would NOT have taken notice
• 0.81% and 0.89% are also NOT statistically significant, which is why we don’t really notice the number of people who die each year from the flu unless they were close to us, and we wouldn’t have noticed any more people dying from COVID-19 without all the media and medical hype that has surrounded this pandemic.
• The chance of dying from non-complicated pneumonia this year (so far) is 766.67% greater than the chance of dying from COVID-19.

But we need to investigate even deeper to really understand the facts of what is going on during this pandemic. According to the CDC, 2,841,600 people died in the US in 2019.  That averages out to be 236,800 per month.  Yet only 501,444 deaths have occurred nationwide this year between January 1, 2020, to April 9. Averaging the death rate over the first 3 months of 2019, there should have been 710,400 deaths, not merely 501,444, especially since the death rate for the flu is historically highest in January, February, and March.  So, where are all the bodies from the 0.001242% deaths caused by COVID-19?

In reality, we are experiencing a lower death rate in 2020 than in previous years. This lower death rate could be a mere coincidence, but historically the scientific data documents that when doctors go on strike, or simply don’t come to work, death rates drop significantly. In fact, no study has proven that death rates decline when doctors do come to work. The point being made here is, that when doctors are not performing elective, non-emergency procedures and interventions, (basically non-essential services) death rates historically drop. But as soon as doctors come back to work and non-essential services start up again, death rates increase.  You might find it interesting that during this pandemic many doctors are being laid off.

This is a significant fact. It shows that it is highly probable that the public, and doctors themselves, tend to overestimate the affect and effects of medicine and the medical care system, while underestimating the ability of the human immune system to adapt and overcome infections, including COVID-19 infections.

For those who can remember clearly, at the beginning of this pandemic, death projections initially were modeled to be 2.2million. Those models included all the known available treatments and included the social distancing measures that are now being enforced upon all of us, and they were scary.  Yet, without even a hint of guilt or apology, those same medically modeled projections have been revised to estimate less than 61,000 deaths. This grave discrepancy is not because of science but is the result of revisionist propaganda. Science demands honesty, especially when your model or hypothesis fails. Not admitting this fact is a fraud.

As mentioned earlier, many doctors are not working currently because their non-essential services are not needed, and this is the most probable reason that the death rate is only 70.59% of what it was in 2019 (5,116.76 per day instead of 7,248.98 per day) at this same time (April 9th.)

In conclusion:

1. Should people at risk isolate themselves and take extra precautions to avoid becoming infected?  Of course. 
2. Would it be a good thing for us all to be more careful, wash our hands more frequently and stop touching our faces so much? Absolutely. 
3. Must we all be treated like criminals, being locked up and arrested for playing in the park with our child while these unscientific medical models furiously fan the flames of fear and anxiety?  Statistically, it doesn’t make sense.
4. Finally, should we continue to allow our economy to be “infected” by these unproven, hypothetical medical models merely because politicians don’t know how to interpret fact from fiction? Absolutely not!

As we have yet to reach the total death rate reported in 2019 for the same time period (January 1st and April 9^th), it appears that there is something seriously wrong with the way this pandemic has been reported and handled by the medical community, the media, and the politicians. 

Pathetically, it most likely isn’t going to get better when as of April 8, 2020,  all patients with coronavirus are now being classified as “Death due to COVID-19,” regardless of the real cause of death. This draconian method of manipulating data to conform to your hypothesis is pure evil.  It allows the medical community, the media, and politicians to cover up their errors, distort their miscalculations, and falsify their reports so that they can justify even further measures that will attempt to control, manipulate, and profit from those who don’t understand the importance of “statistical significance”.