Flu Vanishes, Trump Questions ‘Exaggerated’ CDC Claims
In a recent Tweet, Donald Trump questioned the infection and death rates due to Covid-19. He also questioned the relative cases and deaths as compared to other countries, which use different methods and which may also intentionally downplay their numbers:
The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low. “When in doubt, call it Covid.” Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021
This sparked another public disagreement between President Trump and Dr. Fauci. Perhaps Trump is upset because he viewed the CDC statistics on the CDC’s own website. According to the CDC, the flu seems to have disappeared between week 51 (December) of 2019 and Week 51 of 2020. The flu has existed for over 100 years and has never disappeared to this miraculous degree during the flu season. This has caused many people, including perhaps The President, to once again call into question the testing methods and motivations of the people in charge of these things–including the CDC.
Some suggest that, perhaps, the flu and Covid-19 cases are not being properly separated in the data, or that there is no way to distinguish between the two, functionally. In any case, it is quite a scientific miracle that the flu could nearly vanish. It is also quite interesting that it did so at precisely the same time that COVID skyrockets. Is there any previous biological precedent for this?
Influenza-Like Illnesses, Week 51 2019 (Left) vs. Week 51 2020 (Right)
Below, you can see the Influenza-Like Illness levels from the CDC website for the end of 2020 December season suring week 51:
However, below, you can see the Influenza-Like Illness levels from the CDC website for the end of 2019 December season during week 51:
As you can see from the CDC color maps, there has been a miraculous drop in flu cases, which doesn’t ever seem to have occurred before in previous data available through these illness maps.
NTD reports that “according to the CDC, nearly 337,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, the disease the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus causes, and more than 19.4 million people were infected by the end of 2020. The agency says on its website that the statistics are based on the most recent numbers reported by states, territories, and other jurisdictions.”
But, Donald Trump is far from alone in his criticisms. Minnesota has some politicians wanting to investigate what appear to be large irregularities in their Covid-19 data:
“Earlier this week, a pair of Minnesota legislators called for a nationwide audit into the COVID-19 death count after they allegedly found evidence that people who died from something other than the disease were added to the state’s pandemic death totals.
Republican State Rep. Mary Franson and State Sen. Scott Jensen said during an interview with Fox News that a team they enlisted to examine data provided by Minnesota’s health department found that COVID-19 was blamed for some deaths that are clearly unrelated.
“We found clear-cut examples from the Minnesota Department of Health’s own files—public records—of suicide, a drowning, an auto accident where the passenger was ejected from the vehicle…”
Let us hope Minnesota turns up some answers and that more states and countries follow suit. We need the truth in order to maintain scientific integrity that properly informs policy decisions.
