Everyday, headlines bombard us with the latest Covid-19 numbers. For the most part, these numbers are overwhelming, however the coronavirus numbers being reported daily are actually not facts. Confirmed cases, confirmed deaths, active cases...what do they all mean?

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Confirmed cases: this is the number of people who have tested positive for coronavirus. This includes people who currently don't have coronavirus - people who have recovered...

When they say "x million confirmed cases", it gives the impression there are millions of people walking around with Covid. This is intentional. If transparency was really the object, emphasis would in fact be placed on people who actually have corona.

Speaking of which...

It is impossible to know how many people have coronavirus, because you would need to test everyone at once, repeatedly, as almost 100% of infected people routinely recover from the virus. "x million confirmed cases" is mighty impressive/scary if that's the effect one is going for

Confirmed cases depend on tests conducted. Sudden increase in testing results in an increase in confirmed cases, it doesn't mean there's an increase in infections. Same goes for "new cases", which increase with tests conducted and has no real meaning beyond "be very afraid"

2. Active cases: this is supposedly the number of people who tested positive and have not recovered yet or died after testing (N.B with being sick or not). Problem is you have to test again and again until you're clear. Or die. This leads to the next batch of numbers...

3. Tests conducted - this gives the impression that x people have been tested, it includes people who have tested more than once. This number also means nothing other than to give the impression the minister of health is hard at work "fighting the pandemic"

4. Confirmed deaths - it's easy to assume that this refers to people who died from coronavirus. Again, there's a lot of weasel words and intentional deception when "reporting" these figures...

There are people who are said to have died from Covid-19, i.e BECAUSE of it
There are people who died WITH Covid-19, i.e they were likely asymptomatic & it had nothing to do with their death
Then there are "comorbidities" - those who statistically would have died SOON anyway

The South African government simply lumps all these deaths together under "Covid deaths". Back in March, the DoH tried to separate people who died from other things while infected with coronavirus, but it soon became clear that this approach was slowing down the death numbers

Now, everyone and anyone who dies WITH, or AFTER TESTING POSITIVE for coronavirus is a Covid death. Hence you get people saying "17 people in my family died from Covid-19". Whether they died from it became irrelevant a long time ago

You see, people who die from Covid are basically those who would statistically have died this year anyway, as they had reached the end of their lives, their weakened bodies no longer able to able to cope with everyday stress (incl. the around 150 viruses currently in circulation)

Lumping death numbers together makes it impossible for us to understand the true impact of this thing. Clarifying what a Covid-19 death is indispensable for understanding the impact and for informing the best government responses to the pandemic. Nobody wants that. No Surr!

The truth is there is absolutely no way of knowing the real impact of any highly infectious flu, let alone countering it. That's why every measure taken results in ever more disaster. There are clearly other objectives not being publicly communicated. We'll soon find out

Sources: https://theconversation.com/died-from-or-died-with-covid-19-we-need-a-transparent-approach-to-counting-coronavirus-deaths-145438

https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/coronavirus-making-sense-of-the-numbers/index.html

https://www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2020/04/08/covid-19-what-do-south-africas-numbers-mean/

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/faq-surveillance.html

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/june/01/german-official-leaks-report-denouncing-corona-as-a-global-false-alarm/ https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-2019-nCoV-Surveillance_Case_Definition-2020.2