Covid logic and the flu
Let’s be fair to ourselves and apply Covid logic to the flu…
As we know, the flu has been around for 6000 years, however, to be fair, let’s start from 1918, the year the flu was first identified…
Let’s now assume the PCR test existed back in 1918. Let’s now take that test, and, as done with the test to identify Covid infections, let’s magnify the results the same amount so that the test can pick up the slightest of trace of flu-like identifiers, and call that a positive response, even if in error. Now, as per Covid, let’s then start using this test to test en-mass continuously, i.e., test as much of the population as possible, all the time.
As well as testing everyone continuously, we would, as with Covid, ensure the public were kept informed about the newfound statistics including a running total of flu infections and graph them for all and sundry to see. To be fair, let’s assume the Internet was around in 1918, which would reflect the ease of which Covid statistics are spread to almost every person on this planet we call home.
To follow Covid methodologies, we would, back in 1918, decide that we should, from then on change the way deaths are classified; that is, from that year on, we would label anyone having died and tested positive for the flu a flu death no matter if the cause was obviously something else or not. Now, as per accepted Covid practices, we would ensure the public were made aware of these findings and publish the increasing number of flu deaths that our new classification method was discovering.
We would then keep up with this strategy to this day and into the future. In the process we would discover that the flu mutates. We would also invent vaccines against various mutations.
Sounds familiar thus far?
OK, so what would we have discovered had we started applying Covid methodologies to the flu back in 1918? Would it happen that we would discover a trend: the more we tested, the more infections we would discover and that the running total of infections would keep going up? Would we also find that many, many millions and millions, reaching into the billions, would have gotten tested positive for the flu since 1918? Would we possibly find that many, many millions, if not billions of deaths would have been attributed to the flu? What would have been our natural reaction to such discoveries? We would naturally panic! We would be frightened that we’ve been overrun by an invisible enemy that’s running havoc amongst the global population killing millions and billions in its wake. We would feel powerless and at the mercy of an invisible enemy within.
Never mind that we would jump to this conclusion simply because we had changed our mindset back in 1918 to focus on something that had been part of life for the past 6000 years and that we had coexisted with, and, sometimes, unfortunately, died from. But hey, since we started focusing in on this, and graphed it and changed our methodologies to generate numbers that caused us panic, then we must all run for cover and live in caves as far away from each other as possible.
Does this logic really make any sense?