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Corporate Media Keeps Focusing on
Maine’s “Surging” COVID-19 Cases
While Hospitalizations Remain Low
Continually Hyping Positive Case Numbers Out of
Context is Just Sloppy, Irresponsible Journalism
By: David Deschesne
Fort Fairfield Journal, November 4, 2020
Maine’s corporate, establishment media has been incessantly fixated on the rising COVID-19 positive PCR tests in Maine over the last few days of October as if they were actually cheerleading for the virus to make a comeback after a lackluster summer in the Pine Tree State.
While it isn’t surprising that respiratory illnesses of all types are rising, now going into early winter in Northern Maine, what seems to be lost on the corporate media shills posing as journalists is the fact that as Maine saw an increase of around 600 cases of COVID in the last week of October, the overall hospitalization rate was only 17 people in total in the entire State. There were only 5 patients with COVID-19 in an ICU bed in the entire state at the time of this writing (October 31, 2020).
Rising case numbers with the quirky and sketchy RT-PCR tests are practically irrelevant information. While the tests may indicate the presence of a particle believed to be associated with the now infamous COVID-19 virus, what these tests are not designed to do is tell what the viral load is, whether or not the person is contagious, how far along they are in the infection, or if the particle identified is either from an active virus or simply stray remnants of a defeated virus long since past that simply hasn’t been eliminated by the body, yet - or if it’s even RNA from the COVID-19 virus to begin with. Additionally, Maine is one of 18 states in the U.S. that double-counts the same person twice if they test positive, then come back later to retest and come out positive again. In Maine, that one person counts as “two cases” so the actual real people case numbers in Maine are impossible to really know for sure.
While media hype, uncertainty, errant hospital protocols and bad government decisions in New York and other states created the illusion of a deadly virus in the beginning of the outbreak, we’ve learned a lot about this virus since then and the current data shows the fatality rate of COVID-19 is no worse than seasonal flu. But, it’s difficult to get the mainstream media and governors to shift the narrative to more accurately reflect this updated reality.
Focusing only on positive case numbers is meaningless, unless the goal is sensationalist journalism with an intent to generate fear and anxiety in an already COVID-frazzled public.
While there were only 5 COVID patients in ICU beds in all of Maine at the time of this writing, it’s important to bring some context by mentioning the fact that there were 289 people in ICU beds throughout Maine for illnesses and issues that were not related to COVID-19. Believe it or not, there are other diseases and illness out there that people do suffer from and in Maine those illnesses vastly outnumber COVID-19 by over 56 times.
Part of the reason for increased positive cases is due to the fact that Maine had increased the rate of testing on those days. When one looks at the data compiled for Maine by Johns Hopkins University, they will find Maine’s COVID-19 positive rate for October 29 was just 0.8% - which is where it has been hanging around for the past three months, anyway. So, there was no real “surge” in cases.
Another interesting fact lost on the establishment media is that for the month of October, Maine only logged 5 deaths attributed to COVID-19 out of the 1,295 positive cases reported for the month. Since that’s not fodder for a sensationalist headline, the establishment media simply chose to ignore it.
As of October 31, 2020 Maine had only 147 COVID deaths for the entire outbreak. Meanwhile, 5,554 COVID patients have recovered.
Twice as many people in Maine have died from drug overdose than have died from COVID-19 so far this year.