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Media Lies about Chinese Virus, Round 2
Arizona network news are lying about the Chinese virus, hoping to flip the state to their party this election. They are willfully deceiving their viewers, so yes, they are lying. The same almost certainly holds true for every other battleground state, as a minimum. There is absolutely no dispute about the facts, which are clearly displayed on the Arizona Department of Public Health Services website, as they have been for the past half year. Arizona has never been in real danger, and is not now in any coronavirus crisis. Who are you going to believe, the lying media or your own eyes?
The answer to lies is truth. The answer to fear is a combination of reassurance and counter-fear. Fear, a feeling, cannot be effectively answered with mere facts. As human beings, we are not logic machines, we are wonderfully made with both reason and emotion, with sense and sensitivity. The public health bureaucracy in Arizona, a political battleground state, has done a very fair job of presenting the facts about hospital capacity and COVID-19 versus other ailments driving hospital occupancy. At the same time, the worthless head of the AZDHS has mouthed the lab coat left’s lines, playing with the facts she must present to hurt President Trump and Arizona as much as possible in the service of Democrats. Pathetically, even conservative talk-radio has failed to show up and defeat her with real substantive questions at press conferences. Nor has Lord Governor Ducey faced any real, sustained challenges on the reality of the medical and life damage he has imposed with his dictates. Yet, from ICU beds, to respirator use, to overall occupancy, the pictures are very reassuring. That is precisely why local broadcast media avoid these graphics.
Arizona hospitals are not facing a crisis of increased load from a new COVID-19 wave. The red is COVID, the dark grey is all other reasons for admission. Notice that occupancy has been steady since the height of COVID in Arizona. See the massive suppression of other patients’ needs when Fauci’s fraudulent prescription drove all other areas of medicine out of public health focus. As you can see, Arizonans have since gone back to the hospitals, as the whole of modern medicine reengages. At no time have we ever been in real danger of overwhelming our hospitals, as this capacity does not include a strategic reserve of hospitals taken offline in the name of efficiency and brought back into readiness by the Army Corps of Engineers this past Spring.
Ah, but what about specialized care? What about ICU beds and all the associated equipment? See for yourself that the demand for ICU beds tracks the same way as general occupancy. See also that ICU demand has been unchanged, excluding COVID, since Lord Governor Ducey relaxed his iron fist slightly. What happened to all the people who would otherwise have gone to the ICU during an executive dictatorship? Perhaps they showed upcoded COVID, perhaps their treatment was delayed, their suffering prolonged at home, and perhaps bad things happened in their homes or ambulances, off the hospital books.
What about emergency room beds? Arizona never even got close to breaking a sweat on emergency department bed usage. The red in this chart are beds in use. You can see that we never even got past half-occupancy. We have always been safe from a medical crisis.
Oh, but what about those ventilators? The picture is the same as for emergency rooms. We never even stressed capacity, period. It was always a big lie and a long con game. Never mind the lessons learned about proper treatment protocols and the rise of effective treatments short of assisted breathing, Arizona was never in any danger whatsoever. We were never Italy, with its broken, fragile medical logistics. This is ‘Merica! We have been safe and we are still completely safe from a coronavirus crisis.
Yes, there is another set of tabs that are COVID specific, excluding all other information and context. Those charts only have meaning the full context of all medical needs, so the charts above give you the straight story. The media, both national and local, are deliberately distracting and deceiving, that is, they are lying like a rug to influence the election for the benefit of their radical leftist party.
The lead statement on last night’s local news – CBS I think – was that one, I repeat one, student at a Tucson HS bad come down with the virus. Good grief. I give up.
Everywhere there is a conspiracy–and I mean conspiracy to mislead and frighten all of us. It’s unconscionable. Thanks for your efforts to keep us informed, Clifford and for your commitment to truth.
Thanks for reinforcing my impression of the bit of network news I caught.
I see that Dr. “Death” Fauci has called for a national mask mandate.
I no longer live in Arizona, but I copied this to an ex-neighbor who always needs help with his thinking.
I’ve been following the AZDHS and Maricopa data daily since April and your summary is 100% correct. The surge ended in August, levels were very low in September, there has been some slight increase over the past month, but on most metrics the state is below where it was in early April.
As someone in the business in AZ, I would say that some hospitals were stressed at the COVID peak but never overwhelmed. The state did a good job of coordinating efforts.
what remains unanswered is why did our cases and deaths ramp up so rapidly. Folks on the left will say it was Ducey’s loosening of restrictions around Memorial Day but other states (i.e. Colorado) had a similar loosening and didn’t see the same spike. The Navajo spike had already started to come down by then. A lot still to learn.
A further point: folks left and right want to score political points about what has happened with COVID in city/state/country “X”. We’re still in the middle of it! In June and July our neighboring state, NM, was held as a counter example to AZ as how to do it right.
Well follow the link below to see where NM is now. This is not meant as gloating but maybe to facilitate some humble perspective.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-mexico/
I was in a Tucson hospital in July for surgery. Chatting with the nurses, I mentioned that I had heard the hospital got $19,000 for each admission with the virus diagnosis. They corrected me. It was $40,000.
So what those struggling small rural hospitals need is more virus cases.
Great point. Too many people have been too willing to quickly proclaim winners and losers. What looked to be true in April looked different in July which looks different today and may be completely different from what early 2021 looks like.
There was a surge in the border region of Mexico at the same time, apparently. But that cause, like leftist riots, is unmentionable, especially by Lord Governor Ducey.
Week at this point the largest # of cases are in Maricopa county.
The vast majority of cases in AZ have been in Maricopa Cty; actually a bit over 60% of cases have been in Maricopa Cty and the county is 60% of the states population. Pretty proportional.