• An excerpt from Chapter 4 of “The Truth About COVID-19” by Dr. Joseph Mercola. [citations omitted}

You know the official story: COVID-19 is a highly contagious and deadly infection that can be stopped only by social distancing, frequent hand-washing, lockdowns, masks, mass testing, contact tracing, and ultimately vaccines. But in reality, COVID-19 appears to be a highly contagious, dangerous, lab-manufactured ~trigger" for the preexisting conditions of an aging and increasingly chronically ill population. The virus itself isn't the primary cause of most COVID-19 hospitalizations and fatalities. Rather, the virus exploits other serious diseases with high mortality that are widespread in the population and dangerous in and of themselves. It's these comorbidities, along with rampant medical malpractice (and other factors we've already touched on and will cover further in this book), that are the main drivers of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. To put it simply: People are dying ~oith COVID-19 as opposed to dying from it.

Data Show COVID-19 Isn't a Significant Threat

To understand the truth versus the official story, we have to separate the real statistics from the “official" statistics on cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. A relatively high “case" load does not mean people are actually getting sick and dying. The media has been conflating a positive test result with the actual disease, COVID-19, thereby deliberately misleading the public into believing the infection is far more serious and widespread than it actually is.

COVID-19 is not confirmed by a positive test; it is a clinical diagnosis of someone infected with SARS-COV-2 who is exhibiting severe respiratory illness characterized by fever, coughing, and shortness of breath. By using a test that falsely labels healthy individuals as sick and infectious, mass testing drives the narrative that we're in a lethal pandemic. Indeed, the use of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests is at the very heart of this entire scam. If it wasn't for this flawed test, there would be no pandemic to speak of I will review this in greater detail in chapter 5.

Mislabeled Causes of Death

According to groundbreaking data released by the CDC on August 26, 2020, only 6 percent of the total COVID-19-related deaths in the US had COVID- 19 listed as the sole cause of death off the death certificate.1 To help that sink in: 6 percent of 496,112 (the total death toU reported by the CDC as of February, 21, 2021) is 29,766. In other words, SARS-CoV-2 infection was directly responsible for 29,766 deaths of otherwise healthy individuals--a far different story from the 200,000-plus (and rising) number reported in the media. The remaining 94 percent of patients had an average of 2.6 health conditions that contributed to their deaths.

These data paint a picture that's in stark contrast with Johns Hopkins University, which in August 2020 reported that about 170,000 of the 5.4 million Americans who had tested positive for COVID-19 had died, prompting Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to say that COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death in the US, killing more Americans than "accidents, injuries, lung disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many, many other causes." 2. Frieden is simply stoking the flames of fear with this claim.

Johns Hopkins has been having a hard time keeping its story straight. In November 2020 the institution published an article alleging accounting errors on a national level regarding COVID-19 deaths in the elderly.

"Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19," the author of the article said. "Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact) the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same." But after a link to the Johns Hopkins article was posted on Twitter, the article quickly disappeared.3 Fortunately, an archive of it is still available.4

The American Institute for Economic Research reported on the mysterious disappearance of the article and went a few steps further by posting its own graph taken from CDC data in April 2020. "This suggests that it could be possible that a huge number of deaths could have been mainly due to more serious ailments such as heart disease but categorized as a COVID-19 death, a far less lethal disease," the institute reported.5. Incidentally, this is precisely what CDC guidance has instructed medical practitioners to do.

The CDC's Plan to Intentionally Inflate Numbers of Deaths Due to COVID-19

The CDC has done its part to ensure that as many deaths as possible are attributed to COVID-19---even when it was not the actual cause of death. In personal correspondence, Meryl Nass, MD, reported that in March 2020: "The CDC issued new guidance that required doctors who complete death certificates to list COVID-19 on the certificate if it contributed to or caused the death. This was no different than what we did before. We are supposed to list all contributory causes.

The official communication at that time read:

It is important to emphasize that Coronavirus Disease 2019 COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death...

For example, in cases when COVID-19 causes pneumonia and fatal respiratory distress, both/ pneumonia and respiratory distress should be included along with COVID-19 in Part I... If the decedent had other chronic conditions such as COPD or asthma that may have also contributed, these conditions can be reported in Part II.6

In April 2020 the CDC issued new guidance documents on how to complete death certificates for COVID-19 and even hosted a webinar on the process, but according to Nass, the guidelines remained substantively the same. Then, later in the fall of 2020, the CDC changed course dramatically, this time without bringing any attention to the new guidelines. According to Nass: "Without fanfare, the CDC acknowledged on another webpage that even if COVID was not listed by the doctor as the underlying cause of death, or the proximate cause of death, as long as it was listed as one cause or contributor, it would be coded as the cause of death."

Indeed, the CDC website at the time of this writing reads (emphasis ours): "When COVID-19 is reported as a cause of death on the death certificate, it is coded and counted as a death due to COVID-19.” 8.

All of this caused Nass to conclude that the fanfare that occurred in April was "deliberate misdirection." You may not appreciate how absurd this is, so let me give you an example. If a young healthy person died in a motorcycle accident and had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, according to these CDC guidelines, their death would be listed as a COVID-19 death.

All these machinations with the death certificates hide the fact that the death rate from COVID-19 for everyone except for those over 60 is significancy lower than the death rate for influenza.

COVID Versus Influenza

Though an article in Scientific American called the claim that the virus's fatality is on par with the flu "fake news,"9 there's nothing fake about it. We call your attention to research looking at the fatality ratio for the average person, excluding those residing in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, presented September 2, 2020, in Annals of lnternal Medicine: “The overall non-institutionalized infection fatality ratio [for COVID-19] was 0.26 percent... Persons younger than 40 years had an infection fatality ratio of 0.01 percent, those aged 60 or older had an infection fatality ratio of 1.71 percent."10

Other sources are reporting similar findings. During an August 16, 2020, lecture at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness convention, Dr. Lee Merritt pointed out that, based on deaths per capita--which is the only way to get a true sense of the lethality of this disease--the death rate for COVID-19 at that time was around 0.009 percent.11 That number was based on a global total death toll of 709,000, and a global population of 7.8 billion. This also means the average person's chance of surviving an encounter with SARS-CoV-2 was 99.991 percent.

In comparison, the estimated infection fatality rate for seasonal influenza listed in the Annals of lnternal Medicine paper is 0.8 percent. Other sources put it a little higher. In either case, the only people for whom SARS-CoV-2 infection is more dangerous than influenza are those over the age of 60. All others have a lower risk of dying from COVID-19 than they have of dying from the flu. White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx also confirmed this far lower than typically reported mortality rate when she, in mid-August 2020, stated that it “becomes more and more difficult to get people to comply with mask rules "when people start to realize that 99 percent of us are going to be fine."

Who Gets Sick?

In April 2020 nearly all crew members of the deployed aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt were tested for SARS-CoV-2. By the end of the month, of the roughly 4,800 crew on board, 840 tested positive. However, 60 percent were asymptomatic, meaning they had no symptoms. Only one crew member died, and none were in intensive care.13

Similarly, among the 3,711 passengers and crew aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, 712 (19.2 percent) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and of these 46.5 percent were asymptomatic at the time of testing. Of those showing symptoms, only 9.7 percent required intensive care and 1.3 percent died.14 Military personnel, as you would expect, tend to be healthier than the general population. Still, the data from these two incidents reveal several important points to consider. First of all, it suggests that even when living in close, crowded quarters, the infection rate is rather low." Only 17.5 percent of the USS Theodore Roosevelt crew got infected--slightly lower than the 19.2 percent of those aboard the Diamond Princess, which had a greater ratio of older people. Second, fit and healthy individuals are more likely to be asymptomatic than not--60 percent of naval personnel compared with 46.5 percent of civilians onboard the Diamond Princess had no symptoms despite testing positive.

Medical Errors Responsible for Host COVID-19 Deaths

Now that we've established that the official statistics aren't telling us the whole truth and that COVID-19 isn't responsible for nearly as many deaths as we've been told, let's look at a leading cause of death that you don't hear about in the media: medical malpractice.

In 2016 a Johns Hopkins study found that more than 250,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical errors, effectively making modem medicine the third leading cause of death in the US.15 Other estimates place the death toll from medical mistakes as high as 440,000.16 The reason for the discrepancy in the numbers is that medical errors are rarely noted on death certificates, and death certificates are what the CDC relies on to compile its death statistics. While medical errors are continually swept under the proverbial rug, they need to be brought to light now more than ever, because they play also play a role in the death toll attributed to COVID-19.

A significant portion of those who have died from COVID-19 were in fact victims of medical errors. In particular, Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, New York--which was the epicenter of the epicenter" of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US--appears to have grossly mistreated COVID-19 patients, thereby causing their death.17

Financial Incentives Increased Deaths

According to army-trained nurse Erin Olszewski, who worked at Elmhurst during the height of the outbreak in New York City, hospital administrators and doctors made a long list of errors, most egregious of which was to place all COVID-19 patients, including those merely suspected of having COVID-19, on mechanical ventilation rather than less invasive oxygen administration.

During her time there, most patients who entered the hospital wound up being treated for COV'ID-19, whether they tested positive or not, and only one patient survived. The hospital also failed to segregate COVID-positive and COVID-negative patients, thereby ensuring maximum spread of the disease among non-infected patients coming in with other health problems.

By ventilating COVID-19-negative patients, the hospital artificially inflated the caseload and death rate. Disturbingly, financial incentives appear to have been at play. According to Olszewski, the hospital received $29,000 extra for a COVID-19 patient receiving ventilation, over and above other reimbursements. In August 2020, CDC director Robert Redfidd admitted that hospital incentives likely elevated hospitalization rates and death toll statistics around the country. 18

Many Governors Radically Increased Elderly Deaths with Misguided Policies

Another major error that drove up the death toll was state leadership's decision to place infected patients in nursing homes, against federal guidelines.19 According to an analysis by the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, which included data reported by May 22, 2020, an average of 42 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the US had occurred in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care facilities. 20 "

This is extraordinary, considering this group accounts for just 0.62 percent of the population. By and large nursing homes are ill equipped to care for COVID- 19-infected patients.21 While they're set up to care for elderly patients—whether they are generally healthy or have chronic health problems--these facilities are rarely equipped to quarantine and care for people with highly infectious diseases.

It's logical to assume that commingling infected patients with non-infected ones in a nursing home would result in exaggerated death rates, as the elderly are far more prone to die from any infection, including the common cold. We also learned, early on, that the elderly were disproportionately vulnerable to severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Yet ordering infected patients into nursing homes with the most vulnerable population of all is exactly what several governors decided to do, including New York's Andrew Cuomo, Pennsylvania's Tom Wolf, New Jersey's Phil Murphy, Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, and California's Gavin Newsom.22

ProPublica published an investigation on June 16, 2020, comparing a New York nursing home that followed Cuomo's misguided order with one that refused, opting to follow the federal guidelines instead. The difference was stark.23. By June 18 the Diamond Hill nursing home--which followed Cuomo's directive--had lost 18 residents to COVID-19, thanks to lack of isolation and inadequate infection control. Half the staff (about 50 people) and 58 patients were infected and fell ill.

In comparison, Van Rensselaer Manor, a 320-bed nursing home located in the same county as Diamond Hill, which refused to follow the state's directive and did not admit any patient suspected of having COVID-19, did not have a single COVID-19 death. A similar trend has been observed in other areas.

Ventilators Did Not Help and Only Increased Deaths

The misuse of mechanical ventilation was not limited to Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. As early as June 2020, researchers warned that COVID- 19 patients placed on ventilators are at increased risk of death, and leading experts suggested the machines were being overused and that patients would likely do better with less invasive treatments. According to one study, more than 50 percent of mechanically ventilated COVID-19 patients died.24

The practice remained widespread, nonetheless. In a case series of 1,300 critically ill patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) in Lombardy, Italy, 88 percent received invasive ventilation, but the mortality rate was still 26 percent.25 Further, in a JAMA study that included 5,700 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the New York City area between March 1, 2020, and April 4, 2020, mortality rates for those who received mechanical ventilation ranged from 76.4 percent to 97.2 percent, depending on age.26

Similarly, in a study of 24 COVID-19 patients admitted to Seattle-area ICUs, 75 percent received mechanical ventilation and, overall, half of the patients died between 1 and 18 days after being admitted."27

There are many reasons why those on ventilators have a high risk of mortality, including being more severely ill to begin with. There are risks inherent to mechanical ventilation itself, including lung damage caused by the high pressure used by the machines. In cases of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the lung's air sacs may be filled with a yellow fluid that has a gummy" texture, making oxygen transfer from the lungs to the blood difficult, even with mechanical ventilation. Long-term sedation from the intubation is another significant risk that is difficult for some patients, especially the elderly, to bounce back from. [more]