(Misinformation in July 9, 2020 “Truth in Media” w/ Ben Swann on YouTube)
The video on YouTube was terminated.
NOTE: An explanation of the article, including quoted material is shown in black text. My comments are shown in red.
I have found misinformation in most of the major points discussed here by Ben Swann. When the explanations are as simple as he states, there is often misinformation, especially at a time when science still has things to learn about this virus!
INTRODUCTION
(section starting at 0:00)
(0:06) “… according to the CDC, new numbers show that the number of deaths is so low compared to the number of new cases that coronavirus might be about to lose epidemic status.”
(0:17) “… the number of people with antibodies in their system has just been confirmed at ten times the number previously believed”
(0:29) “Again, it’s good news, because once again it proves that the coronavirus is not what we’ve been told.”
“CORONAVIRUS MIGHT BE ABOUT TO LOSE EPIDEMIC STATUS”
(section starting at 1:16)
(1:30) “… while the rate of infection is certainly rising and the number of confirmed cases is absolutely skyrocketing, interestingly, the death toll associated with coronavirus is not, and as we get far more cases on the rise and far fewer deaths, it creates a very clear picture that coronavirus may not even be a pandemic. On Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the percentage of deaths in the United States has dipped low enough so that the nation is at the “epidemic threshold“, which means “if the percentage drops any lower, the CDC will no longer call the coronavirus an epidemic.”
(1:55) The webpage displayed, “Amid Percentage Of Deaths Having Declined, CDC Admits Coronavirus On Verge Of Non-Epidemic Status”, displays no clear source information, but it can easily be located on a Google image search from the title and looking for the image shown on the page. This is, however, not the actual page of the article. The page displays a #CONSERVATIVE VIEW hashtag, references dailywire.com and author Hank Berrien, and provides a link to “View on dailywire.com” (published July 7, 2020).
Clicking on this link accesses “Following Death Percentage Decline, CDC Says We’re On ‘Epidemic Threshold’” an article published on dailywire.com on July 7, 2020 with a different title (which I imagine may have been changed from the original shown in July 9, 2020 “Truth in Media” in response to flak received):
It is true that the CDC has stated that the nation is at an “epidemic threshold” as can be seen at:
COVIDView Summary ending on June 27, 2020
(MOVED OR REMOVED)
However, the “epidemic threshold” is only one indicator that can be used for viruses in general to declare an epidemic. Several other factors, including its obvious prevalence and growth are far more important factors for Covid-19 to maintain epidemic or pandemic status, and most likely still for months to come. The CDC has NOT given any indication of any possible lowering of status for Covid-19, implied or otherwise.
There are also other potential reasons for the current low number of deaths, such as (1) that the lag time is now sufficiently longer because hospitals generally have not yet reached capacity (although they’re coming close to it in many locations in the US) making it easier to provide the necessary care and (2) that doctors are becoming much better at treating patients from what science has learned about the virus. The latter appears to be very good news consistent with evidence and how science can be expected to be able to help in such a situation, given enough time.
FAR MORE CASES ON THE RISE COMPARED TO DEATHS
(section starting at 2:44)
(3:07) “… even so, so far the number of deaths is not vastly increasing. In fact, what we are seeing right now is far fewer deaths in comparison to the tens of thousands of new cases being reported on a daily basis. The number of coronavirus cases in the US is on the rise again, but the number of daily deaths is still dropping from the US’s mid-April peak.”
(3:53) “… coronavirus is not dangerous for most people who are younger, who are healthy and who have no pre-existing health conditions.”
There is certainly plenty of scientific evidence that Covid-19 is not dangerous to people who are younger, healthy AND without pre-existing health conditions. “AND”, a word that Swann did utter, is important, if the sentence is understood to have all three requirements fulfilled in the same person, a person who is young, healthy AND without pre-existing health conditions, but the stakes are high and many young people had not known they had underlying health conditions that had make them susceptible, which has led to strokes, heart attacks and death in individuals of all ages.
TEN TIMES MORE PEOPLE HAVE ANTIBODIES
(section starting at 4:10)
(4:13) “the CDC’s own numbers now prove that the rate of infection among people in the general population has been much higher than had been accounted for in the past.”
(4:34) Antibody’s are “nature’s way of creating immunity”.
(5:03) “… looks like [the number of people with antibodies is] about ten times higher than the number of recorded cases.”
(5:23 to 5:28) Web site header displayed: “CDC Antibody Studies Confirm Huge Gap Between COVID-19 Infections and Known Cases” by Jacob Sullum. Although the web address is not shown, a text search can find it on Reason.com.
Swann lists estimations of the number of infected individuals being 4 to 24 times higher than the number of recorded cases as reported in the article.
There HAS been evidence already for months that the number of infected individuals has indeed been far higher than the recorded cases, but for many reasons it has been very difficult to pin down exact numbers and all such studies were not equally well conducted. (To get accurate data, people should be tested at random, which is not easy to do if, for example, so many people are self-isolating at home!) On June 26, 2020 CDC Director Robert Redfield indicated a “best guess” estimate of ten times more people infected than the number of cases as of that date, although the number is far from certain and will hopefully become more precise in the near future.
If the ratio is this high, it is certainly very good news for one reason, which is that the infection fatality rate (the real chance of dying if you’re infected) is then much lower than the case fatality rate (calculated only from known cases), as those who have died are a smaller percentage of many more people that are infected. This means that Covid-19 is indeed less deadly than science thought earlier this year it could end up being. This is very good news, but it is not really new news, as it is derived from an attempt by the CDC to pin down a number as a best guess, while plenty of evidence for this has been mounting during the past months.
(6:35) Swann goes on to use this data to indicate that “as we watch a surge in confirmed cases … we can expect … based on CDC numbers … if 10,000 pop up in Florida, that means that 100,000 have [antibodies] and don’t even know it.”
This seems to be stated in a misleading way, because it could be interpreted as every time 10,000 cases are recorded that there are a fixed number of times more people that are infected! Perhaps the first time in some hotbed 10,000 cases are recorded, there are as many as 100,000 infected (90,000 not yet accounted for), but the second time 10,000 are recorded, most of the others have hopefully already been accounted for. As testing accelerated in the US, it was catching more and more of those that were missed earlier!
As a “thought experiment”, imagine everyone in Florida is able to be tested in one hour and 100,000 of those tests are positive. It cannot possibly then apply that there are ten times more people who are infected, as everyone has already been tested and accounted for except for those unfortunate individuals who were infected a few minutes after being tested and before all the tests were completed!
If you feel this is a moot point, and perhaps it is, then forget it. More important to remember is that it is not a good idea to trust predictions in a very dynamic situation based only on a “best guess” estimate where the ratio of infected individuals to cases is expected to keep dropping as testing accelerates.
In theory, the idea that Swann states is basically good news (if not the latest news). It is certainly good in the long run for there to be more and more antibodies in the population, but note that we are still a long ways away from the herd immunity that he is touting. The CDC estimates that between 5% and 8% of the US population is already infected, which is far less than the 60% or so of the population that may be required for herd immunity. Until then, case and death counts are expected to rise exponentially, currently at rates hardly affected by the number of individuals with antibodies.
CONTACT TRACING WOULD FAIL MISERABLY
(section starting at 7:19)
(7:28) With such large numbers of cases “contact tracing would fail miserably”.
In many areas there are too many cases and contract tracing wouldn’t be as helpful, though still possible, but in many other areas with lower numbers it is still a very usable, valuable and recommended tool.
(7:45) “… because so many people have antibodies in their system from coronavirus, a contract tracing program for coronavirus would fail miserably because the idea behind contact tracing is to be able to follow where one person contracts the disease and who they come in contact with, but it only works if you know that the majority of the people who are coming in contact with that patient didn’t already have the disease in the first place. So many people have antibodies already in their system right now that contact tracing would be completely ineffective.”
Mr. Swann doesn’t go on to tell people why the fact that the number of people that already have antibodies in their system interferes with the ability to contact trace and almost seems to leave it to the audience’s imagination to infer that the obvious reason is that people can’t then be tested for Covid-19. There are two types of tests. One with a nasal swab for determining infection and another that detects antibodies in the blood. Whatever he leaves for the audience to infer, there is no reason that this fact alone would prevent contact tracing. What makes contact tracing less effective is not who already HAD the virus (those with the antibodies), but how many have the virus now (detectable from the RNA of viral particles in the nose), so there are areas, in particular away from congested cities, where contact tracing can still be very effective.
MAKING THE POPULATION MORE SUSCEPTIBLE
(section starting at 8:28)
(9:25) “… coronavirus rarely transmits outdoors and yet where have politicians forced us to be for the last few months? Not outdoors, but indoors.”
(9:50) “… it’s not protecting the population, it’s making the population more susceptible to this disease.”
This is a very misleading statement that a moment of rational thinking should be able to straighten out. It’s not the fact of our staying indoors or outdoors that is the primary goal. The most important issue is to keep the virus from spreading. Isolation (staying inside) is an extreme form of social distancing, but it is very effective (even in ways that can still be comfortable enough) to stop the spread. (And in most places, regular solitary exercise alone won’t hurt anyone!) If there’s enough room outside for living groups to walk around together and at the same time avoid contact with other people, that could (at least in theory) be better than staying inside, but Swann is mixing two totally different issues. The reality is that when people spend more time outside the home, the more they will share indoor spaces in public areas (for example in shops and rest rooms) with other people. It is there that the danger of contagion is the greatest, where masks should be used and where people should stay apart. Restricting errands to those that are essential reduces the possibility for contagion. Moreover, in urban settings, if people can’t stay far enough apart outside for lack of space, masks are also important. And whether indoors or outdoors, when people are away from home, the chances of touching the same objects and surfaces that other people have touched and then touching one’s face is far greater.
Bottom line: The virus doesn’t spread as easily outdoors, but it spreads much less easily through walls and windows!
(10:19) “We were told that in order to flatten the curve, if you just stayed inside, coronavirus would go away, but it didn’t go away.”
This is even clearly contradicted by the page the video shows at 10:23: “Many hundreds of thousands of infections will happen, but they don’t all have to happen at once.” (But hardly anyone gets a chance to read it during the five seconds it is displayed and while Swann is speaking.) The scientific idea was never that the coronavirus would “go away” during a shelter in place. Or was “they” referring to sources of misinformation rather than authorities basing their decisions on science? Either way, it’s totally misleading. Social distancing (which does not need to be a full “lockdown”) was both to avoid having health-care capacity become overloaded and to buy time to advance our knowledge of the virus and how best to treat it. I believe that science has been able to advance in many ways since January to decrease mortality rates, which may be one reason for the death counts being lower than expected, which would be excellent news, except the story isn’t over yet.
If the true situation is not “what we’ve been told”, it might be because there’s a lot of misinformation floating around, or because the general public does not understand that it takes time for science to become more and more certain of facts in such a crisis situation. Mr. Swann’s upbeat narration may provide optimism to many, but the misinformation therein can also endanger great swaths of the population who can feel freer to let down their guard in ways that are inconsistent with what current scientific knowledge would advise.