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What the Hell is the VAERS Database for?

By Devin

August 30, 2021

Alright, I have to write about this because I am getting frustrated as hell by these idiots out there saying and parroting the line, “Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.” As if that has a damn thing to do with it! The VAERS (Vaccination Adverse Events Reporting System) was never intended to prove a causal relationship between the administration of a vaccine and a subsequent reaction to it. It was created to alert medical authorities and government health agencies if a pattern of adverse events begins to emerge related to a particular vaccine. We now have over 5,000 deaths reported in VAERS for the COVID vaccines. To put this into perspective, that happened in eight months, whereas the total number of deaths reported for all other vaccines in the 30 year history of the VAERS database is under 3,500! Tell me that’s not a pattern! Go ahead. Tell me one more time! BULLSHIT!

That phrase about reports not necessarily meaning causation really just means that each and every case has not been investigated to confirm or deny the cause of the adverse event. That’s it. And I fully expect that if such an investigation were conducted, what you would find is a few that you could ultimately point to something else as the cause. But let’s be realistic here, what are the odds that that is more than just a handful of the reported cases? Seriously. Far more probably the vast majority of the reported COVID vaccine adverse events, and particularly deaths, were caused by the COVID vaccines. This reminds me of a game my kids used to play. I’d give them scenario and they would try to invent alternative explanations to the obvious one. The crazy Gordian Knot explanations they came up with were utterly ridiculous. But they all had one single element in common. They were, however remotely, possible. I told them emphatically, “possible does not mean probable!” And I think anyone who considers him or herself to be an adult understands this.

The next thing I hear from these self-same idiots is that the VAERS database is open to anyone who wants to submit an entry, so therefore the data are unreliable. Okay, let’s talk about that for just a moment. How many people who aren’t healthcare professionals even knew of the existence of the VAERS database until very recently? And even now, how many people know about it? Not many is my guess. The fact is, that nearly every entry in the VAERS database was submitted by a healthcare professional who observed an adverse event following a vaccine that they could not otherwise explain. Else why on God’s green earth would they waste their time submitting it? They aren’t that stupid! They knew about the database and they took the time to report the event. Furthermore, most of the people like myself who had never heard of the VAERS database still would not have heard of it if the numbers of adverse events, and particularly deaths, related to the COVID vaccines were not already off the charts. In other words, if there really was nothing to see here, then I wouldn’t have been compelled to write this article, because I wouldn’t even know the database existed. I say this because there might be some idiots out there who would suggest that people who are not healthcare professionals have been entering false data. Nevermind the level of effort that would take and how difficult it would be to do in such a way as to not be obvious. A simple statistical analysis would prove the lie.

Now I want to address a serious conflict of interest going on here. Who are the people out there saying that a reported event in the VAERS database does not necessarily mean causation? You know the answer. The VERY SAME people who are pushing as hard as they can for 100 percent vaccination of the world population. Them and all their mindless, robotic shills called Medical Doctors. And all the government health agency tin pot tyrants across the land. And all the mainstream media shilling for the pharmaceutical industry and spouting wall-to-wall propaganda for the Deep State and the Biden Regime.

A doctor friend of mine recently sent me a link to an article posted at factcheck.afp.com on the subject of posts misrepresenting European data on COVID-19 vaccine deaths. In the article, the following quote can be read: “EMA has identified a few rare but serious side effects with Covid-19 vaccines, and in some, but by no means all cases, these have proved fatal.” The spokeswoman quoted here went on to say, “Apart from these rare cases, there is no indication that the deaths reported were caused by vaccination.” Can you believe this sh__? The first statement is an admission that some of the reported deaths were, in fact, caused by the COVID vaccines. Straight up. Guilty as charged. The very next admission is that they don’t really have an accurate number (or any number at all, for that matter) of how many were, in fact, killed by the vaccines because they haven’t looked into them. What I want to know is, how did they confirm the cases of vaccine-caused fatalities and why in the name of God have they not investigated every single other case until an undeniable conclusion was reached? Are we now so completely inhumane that we don’t really care anymore if someone dies? This is unbelievable. Yet, every word of it is true.

Literally the only argument provided by these monsters is that “there is no indication that the deaths reported were caused by vaccination.” That’s it. Period. If that is really true, then these databases, VAERS and others, are utterly and completely useless. If one can simply blow off over 5000 deaths by simply saying, oh, there’s no proof the vaccines caused them, then why even bother recording this kind of data?! And the TOTAL lack of curiosity by these “people” to find out whether or not there is a causal relationship is incredibly weird. Unless, of course, there is a real conflict of interest, as I have pointed out.

The next idiotic thing I hear from these same freaks is how many billions of the COVID vaccines have been administered and how even if a small number of people die as a result of an adverse reaction to them, the “benefit outweighs the risks.” This is followed by politicians clamoring for “mandatory vaccination” and vaccine passports. Let me just tell you people who are saying this, I WILL BE THE JUDGE OF WHETHER THE BENEFIT OUTWEIGHS THE RISKS OR NOT! NOT YOU! And if you are one of those people who agrees with the vaccine pushers on this, let me ask you, if one of those deaths that they have admitted was caused by COVID vaccines was you or your spouse or you own child, would you still think the benefit outweighed the risks??? If you would, you’re an idiot. And a collectivist scumbag. I guarantee you that if anyone else makes a product with this many deaths associated with it, that person or those people are going to be sued into oblivion and then, quite possibly, criminally prosecuted. Not even this many deaths. It only takes three to form a pattern that can meet the definition of proof in a court these days.

So I’m done listening these fools spout this crap about “reports do not necessarily mean causation.” And if you have even two neurons to rub together, you should be, too.

Medical Tyranny and New Mexico Public Education

By Devin

August 20, 2021

My daughter is a talented visual artist who is a Junior at a prominent charter school in Santa Fe. On Tuesday afternoon, August 17, I received a notification from my daughter’s school that she had been identified as having been in “close contact” with someone at her school who tested positive for COVID. Said contact presumably occurred a week ago, August 10-12, and now my daughter is not allowed to attend classes in person for 10 days from the date of contact. Unless, of course, she is vaccinated against COVID. She is not. And she never will be.

So, my daughter and I went to the school on Wednesday morning and met with the principal and the school head to find out what their plan is to ensure that my daughter continues to get the same high quality education as her classmates who are allowed to go to class in person. They have no plan. And furthermore, they do not intend to make a plan.

Given the current state of the spread of COVID, it is very likely that this is going to continue to happen for the foreseeable future. The school’s response is that they don’t care. They. Don’t. Care.

I told the principle and head that I understand that they have no control over the situation. But they agree with the State’s orders. For them, it is not a problem. They are fine with students (who choose not to get the experimental COVID vaccine) missing valuable in-person class time. They. Don’t. Care.

From last year, the teachers have screens and cameras still set up in their classrooms for online teaching. No plan at all to turn them on for the students who are being denied an in-person education. Of course we have asked the teachers if they will turn them on, but they have decided not to do so. And as we learned last year when all schools went online, that is no substitute for in-person learning.

“what is a parent who believes in ‘my body, my choice’ to do?”

So, what is a parent who believes in “my body, my choice” to do? If I take my daughter out of this school, where does she go to get a high quality education that caters to artists? Is there a school in Santa Fe that isn’t following the PED’s orders? I can’t imagine it. Is there even a private school that isn’t following the PED’s orders? As if I could afford it.

How about homeschooling? My daughter is an excellent student. She works hard and is motivated to do well. She makes excellent grades. She belongs in a classroom with real teachers and classmates that she enjoys learning with and who enjoy learning with her. Furthermore, she is amazingly healthy. She never gets sick or even gets colds. No allergies. No diabetes. Nothing. And, she takes 5000 IU of Vitamin D daily. She has absolutely nothing to fear from COVID.

It should be obvious to everyone that what we are witnessing here is Medical Apartheid. Ostracism of an innocent young person for not conforming. For thinking for herself and making her own decisions for herself. This is sick. And it has to STOP. You can say all the day long that she should just get the shot and move on, problem solved. If you say that, you are completely missing the point. Completely.

Our Governor is ultimately responsible for this vicious policy of Medical Apartheid. How much longer are New Mexicans going to continue to allow her to get away with this vile, sick abuse of our children? What will she do next? How much longer before she begins requiring unvaccinated students to wear a black armband with a gold biohazard symbol on it?

No matter your political stripes, you should be outraged at this kind of totalitarian behavior.

Bullies, Tyrants, and Deadly Vaccines

Governor Grisham of New Mexico is a Bully and a Tyrant

By Devin

July 31, 2021

On Thursday, July 28, 2021 the governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, issued Executive Order 2021-045 notifying all State employees that as of 8:00 AM on August 2, 2021 all non-vaccinated State employees must provide proof that they have tested negative for COVID-19 within the past 7 days on a biweekly basis, indefinitely. The EO states that the vaccines for COVID-19 are “safe and effective.” Whether this is true or not is absolutely debatable, but what is not debatable is a human being’s right to decide what does or does not get injected into his or her body.

My body, my choice.

If you take the time to go to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, commonly referred to as VAERS, available online at: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html, and do a deep dive into the available data on not just the COVID-19 vaccines, but also all vaccines over the last 30 years, you will find that the number of adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines exceeds the number of adverse reactions for ALL other vaccines combined since the VAERS database began collecting these data, by a full order of magnitude. You will also see that as of this writing, VAERS is reporting over 5,000 deaths for the COVID-19 vaccines. At the same time, VAERS is reporting just over 3,400 deaths for all other vaccines combined for the entire 30 year period of record. CLEARLY, something is wrong here. But it isn’t the data. The very same criteria is used to report deaths for the COVID-19 vaccines as for all other vaccines. Think about that. Over 5,000 deaths reported for the COVID-19 vaccines in less than one year and less than 3,500 deaths reported for ALL other vaccines combined for 30 years! But the governor of New Mexico says the COVID-19 vaccines are “safe and effective.”

During the Nuremburg Military Tribunals for war criminals following World War II, a list of conditions that must be met before medical experimentation can be carried out on human beings was created. These conditions are known as the Nuremburg Code. They are as follows:

  1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion, and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment. The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.
  2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
  3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
  4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
  5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
  6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
  7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
  8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
  9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
  10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required by him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject. 

These conditions were devised as a result of human experimentation carried out by Nazi scientists during World War II. Those experiments were often inhumane, cruel, deadly, and carried out on people who did not give their consent. Of course, the Nazis didn’t bully these people into giving consent, they just forced them to participate against their will. But this is irrelevant. When does bullying turn into force? It is all too close to the same thing.

So, just how is Governor Grisham violating the Nuremburg Code?

Condition #1 of the Nuremburg Code is being flagrantly violated by Governor Grisham. That is obvious.

Condition #2 means that if you can find another, safer way to obtain the data you need from the experiment, you should do it that way. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, this means using the methodology prescribed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Namely, Phase 1 trials, then Phase 2 trials, and finally, Phase 3 trials, if you make it that far. This has not been done and is not being done for the COVID-19 vaccines.

Condition #5 has been violated given the facts above on the number of reported deaths related to the COVID-19 vaccines. This is true regardless of whether or not the “experimenting physicians” participated. And frankly, we don’t know who those people are. The inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology, Dr. Robert Malone, has come out publicly and forcefully against continued use of the COVID-19 vaccines.

With regard to Condition #7, it is self-evident that “proper preparations” have not been made to “protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death” given the number of people who have died from the vaccine already.

Condition #8 is being routinely violated daily as the people administering the COVID-19 vaccines are not scientifically qualified persons and they are not even among the group of “experimenting physicians.”

Regarding Condition #9, people who have experienced a wide range of debilitating reactions to the first shot of the two-dose COVID-19 vaccines are being told, in spite of their reactions, to go ahead and get the second dose! This is insane!

And finally, regarding Condition #10, given the large number of deaths that have been attributed to, or at a minimum associated with, the COVID-19 vaccines, it is self-evident that this condition is being flagrantly violated, as well.

The Nuremburg Code is not just some quaint old bit of history. It was created as a result of tyranny. It was created to protect humans from evil governments and evil people in government. It is real and just as relevant today as it was when it was written.

Let me put it this way, if you agree with government policies that force other people to do things against their will, what are you going to do when that day comes when it forces you to do something against your will? And it will come. Let there be no doubt about that.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

~Martin Niemöller, 1946

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is not only a bully and a tyrant, she is also violating nearly every condition of the Nuremburg Code with her Executive Order. This needs to be stopped. Now.

For more reading on the COVID-19 vaccine statistics, click here:

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/07/31/cdc-says-vaccinated-may-be-as-likely-to-spread-covid-as-unvaxxed-as-reports-of-serious-injuries-after-vaccines-surge/

My Body, My Choice.

Why mandatory vaccines are ridiculous

The death-loving, pro-abortionists are always shouting “my body, my choice!” Well, is this true, or not?

July 23, 2021

By Devin

Practically every day now the drumbeat in the news, at your doctor’s office, your workplace, everywhere, to GET VACCINATED YOU IDIOT!!! gets louder and louder. I ask you, why?

I’m old enough to remember when doctors all agreed that the purpose of achieving a high vaccination rate in a given population was to protect those who could not get the vaccine. The number I’ve always heard bandied about is something like 80 percent. At this level, so few people haven’t been vaccinated that the disease cannot find another host to infect before the infected person’s immune system wipes it out, or they die. This makes sense and it always has, because it hasn’t always been possible to vaccinate everyone. Not everyone could afford the cost. You had to go to a doctor and they cost money. There weren’t enough doses to vaccinate literally everyone, so you vaccinated as many as you could. In the past, the inability of some people to get vaccinated was a real thing.

But notice something here. The purpose of achieving a high vaccination rate is to “protect those who cannot get the vaccine.” So tell me, who in America, cannot get the COVID-19 vaccine? It is so widely available now that some states are offering to pay people to get it and setting up vaccine lotteries, while others are considering making it mandatory. And it’s free! And many businesses are starting to require employees and customers be vaccinated. There’s talk about vaccine passports. All this talk would be absurd if the vaccine was simply not available to everyone who wants it. (Or if, maybe, it doesn’t actually protect people? But that presents a whole different set of absurdities that make no sense.)

Therefore, my question to anyone who thinks they have the answer is, if everyone who wants the COVID-19 vaccine has gotten it or can get it whenever they want, then why does it matter if there are people who choose not to get it? Seriously. If all the people who have gotten the vaccine are protected (and they are the ones shouting for everyone else to get it), then why do they care about whether or not anyone else gets it? The only argument could be that they want the voluntarily unvaccinated to get vaccinated so as to protect the other voluntarily unvaccinated. But the voluntarily unvaccinated either do not care if they get COVID-19 or they have decided that the potential benefits do not outweigh the risks. If this were not true, they’d go get the vaccine. As everyone knows, it’s readily available to anyone who wants it. So this argument is idiotic.

If the unvaccinated are unvaccinated purely by choice, then they have accepted the risk associated with that decision and no vaccinated person who disagrees with that decision need worry about them, since they themselves are protected by the vaccine. So, to all you vaccinated busybodies out there that are pissed at those of us not getting the vaccine, mind your own damned business!

My body, my choice!

Freedom. The Most Dangerous Idea of All

May 14, 2021

By Devin

Freedom is dangerous. I don’t know about you, but I never spent much time considering the value or importance of freedom during the first 45+ years of my life. Nor did I think much about the implications of freedom to how we live our lives. It was easy to just enjoy the freedom I was born into assuming that life, as an American at least, would always be that way. Some said, “Oh, this is America. It’ll never change. Certainly communism will never happen here.” What is it they say about saying “never?”

When I was kid, we frequently walked to and/or from school over a mile away. We crossed six-lane highways by ourselves when we were barely 10 years old. We used to walk on weekends a couple of miles away to the soda fountain to get a coke. No parents. We didn’t wear helmets for anything. We rode our bikes all over town, by ourselves. I got my driver’s license at 15 and immediately started driving everywhere. No parents. We drank and drove and it wasn’t even against the law, at first. Then, when it was, nobody enforced it. Seatbelts? Who needed them? When I left home at 18 to go to college, I have no idea how I survived for the next dozen years or so without health insurance. The list of dangerous activities we participated in in those days goes on and on and on.

Then, something happened. Gradually, over time, people started focusing on the need for being safer. To be sure, curbing the drinking and driving was a good thing. Although we haven’t completely stamped it out, imagine how dangerous the road would be nowadays if there were no DWI laws and no social pressure not to drink and drive? But once we sort of accomplished all we could with that, then it was on to the next most dangerous thing. I’m not sure what that was, but certainly at some point, we decided it was safer to wear a helmet while riding bicycles. And safer not to let children roam so far from home without parents. Eventually, the phrase, “Safety is our Number 1 priority!” became a phrase heard from every business in America. Safety. Safety. Safety.

Yikes.

Fear as a means of control

An incident occurred at my church a few weeks ago. I wasn’t there and I don’t know what it was about, but I got an email from the pastor saying that everything was handled well and that there was never any danger to our membership or “the children.” Our pastor stated that as always, “safety is our Number 1 priority.” I thought to myself, since when??? I thought saving souls was our Number 1 priority! Safety? Pffft. Definitely not Number 1! And probably not even Number 2 or possibly even Number 3!

If you’ve turned on a TV and watched the news anytime in the last 20 years, you’ve undoubtedly been subjected to all kinds of news stories about how dangerous the world is and what we need to do to be safe. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Oh, and COVID! If you want a real measure of just how effective the TV is at scaring the living daylights out of people, just look at how we responded to COVID.

So what purpose does all the fearmongering and promotion of safety serve? I will tell you. It serves to take away your freedom. It serves to give those in power, more power.

What total freedom looks like

Let’s go back to North America pre-1492. There was no centralized government in North America. No government at all. No land ownership. No laws. No police forces. No armies. It was truly the definition of Anarchy. The people who lived here were tribal, because tribalism was necessary for survival. And yes, tribes fought each other, but it is a vast continent and horses had not yet been introduced from Europe, so travel was very slow. Interactions were necessarily fewer. And no telephones or even telegrams to communicate messages over long distances. All communication occurred by word of mouth. I submit that in the course of human history, rarely has there ever been a place and time where more freedom was enjoyed by more people than in pre-1492 North America.

Now imagine yourself suddenly being sent back in time to that era here in North America. You might not make it through a single day before someone or something killed you. Or you might survive long enough to learn how to protect yourself. Maybe. Jared Diamond says in Guns, Germs, and Steel that if you didn’t know anyone or weren’t related to anyone, you’d likely have been killed by the first person you encountered. Even now, when two people meet for the first time, they often try to figure out if they know anyone in common. And if they do, somehow that makes them feel better. Now you don’t have to fight to the death! But you might forget each other as soon as you walk away.

Regardless of how you’d fare, one thing is certain, without any laws or law enforcement, you’d experience a level of freedom you’ve never had before. Ever. But with that incredible level of freedom, you would also experience a level of danger like you’ve never had before. Anyone, at any time, could kill you without any repercussions whatsoever. That’s kind of scary. But the freedom. Oh, the freedom! That dude that just offended you? Stick a spear in him and walk away, if you want to. Or not. Total freedom. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good thing. I’m just saying that is a very, very high level of freedom.

One of my favorite books is Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides. The book is an historical account of New Mexico and the life of Kit Carson. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. In the book, Kit Carson lived a life of such amazing freedom as no American in the last 100+ years has ever even imagined. As a legendary Mountain Man he survived and thrived in the wilderness of the Mountain West. He killed anyone who attacked him and no one ever questioned it. It was a supremely dangerous existence. He didn’t have to live that way. He was born in Missouri in civilization. He bolted from an apprenticeship as a teenager for the west and never looked back. He lived by his wits and most importantly, he CHOSE to live the life he lived. The threat of possibly being killed himself did not scare him back to Missouri. And he wasn’t a particularly big man. In fact, he was kind of short and small. Not exactly what you’d think it would take to be a legendary Mountain Man in the early 1800s.

Control and a lack of freedom go hand in hand

My point is, freedom and danger are inseparable. INSEPARABLE. Being free and living in a free society is inherently unsafe. The safer you make your world, the more you limit freedom. How many laws do we have on the books here in America now? Does anyone even know? And how many people are in prison? And how many law enforcement officers are there in America today? And people with cell phones recording everything that happens so they can bust you later if need be? We live in a surveillance state. We have instantaneous communications systems so we can call out whatever forces necessary immediately to handle any lawlessness we want to. (Notice I said “want to,” not “have to.”) There are so many laws on the books now, it’s as Stalin’s Deputy Premier Lavrentiy Beria said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” We see that going on now with the selective and politically motivated prosecutions being undertaken by various prosecutors across our nation.

The only way to make sure everyone is absolutely safe is to put EVERYONE in prison. Since that isn’t practical, the next best way is to control every aspect of your life. How do you do that most efficiently? By scaring people into conformity. Let fear be the driver. How do you scare them? You threaten their safety. How do you do that? You show them images of rioting on a nightly basis. You show them interviews of doctors talking about how deadly and dangerous some virus is. You talk about the crime wave. You talk about pedophiles stealing children and trafficking them. You post images of the lost children on milk cartons so everyone is constantly reminded of how dangerous the world is. You talk about war in the Middle East and you do everything you can to stoke it.

You also make sure the rich get richer and the middle class gets poorer. How do you do that? By printing money like it’s going out of style, thus causing rampant inflation, and pumping that money into the stock market so the rich get richer, while raising taxes on the middle class. You jack up the price of gas at the pump by shutting down pipeline projects and prohibiting drilling on public lands and placing a moratorium on horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Then your news media reports all the bad economic numbers and stresses people out.

Finally, you fan the flames of racial tension every day. You highlight every instance of a white police officer causing injury or death to a brown or black person while ignoring the vastly larger numbers of black and brown people killing each other. And ignoring when a black or brown police officer kills a white person (yes, it happens). You make it so brown and black people hate white people and white people are scared of offending brown and black people. These are people who used to live and work side-by-side comfortably, but now look at each other with suspicion. Is my neighbor a white supremacist? Is that guy walking down the street a Black Lives Matter rioter? I’ve lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for over 20 years and now, for the first time, there are posters downtown shouting for white people to leave. Get out now!

Wow.

The natural state of man

As the Founders of the USA believed, and I believe, the natural state of Man is to be free. God made us to be free. With that freedom comes great responsibility. You may have heard that before. But even more importantly, with that freedom comes great danger. And the more freedom you have the more danger you are in. That’s just a fact. The two are inseparable. Some people have a very high tolerance for danger and others have little or none. How do you create a society and a nation that accommodates everyone? It’s not possible. However, you can aim for the sweet spot. You create a system of extremely limited government, just enough laws to punish those who commit the worst crimes, and a police and justice system appropriate in size to carry out the punishment of those who violate the laws. You don’t selectively enforce the laws. You don’t create a political class that is above the laws. You make darn sure the rights of free speech, free exercise of religion, and the ownership of firearms and ammunition are protected absolutely. And people need to understand that they themselves and their families are primarily responsible for their own safety. The police are there primarily as back up and to arrest and charge those who break the laws. Not to be your personal body guard.

You’ve probably heard the expression, “Freedom ain’t free.” That’s true. But it’s also true that freedom is dangerous. If you want to live in a world where there is no danger, then I’m afraid you’re going to have a hard time finding a place to live. Certainly America is not your place to be. But if you want to be free to do whatever you want to do, to chase your dreams, and live your life according to your own moral standards, so long as it doesn’t infringe on others’ rights to do the same, then the America envisioned by our Founders is the best place in the world to be. Let’s hope the Socialists, Communists, Fascists, Political Elitists, Big Tech Oligarchs, and finally, the worst of all, the Globalists don’t succeed in tearing our country down and destroying the last best hope for freedom (and the inherent dangers and risks that come with it) the world has ever known, America.

Oh. And KILL YOUR TV!

I Do Not Choose to be a Common Man

“I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon. I seek to develop whatever talents God gave me—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any earthly master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say – ‘This, with God’s help, I have done.’ All this is what it means to be an American.”

Dean Alfange, 1952

Gaslighting Explained – Author Unknown

November 28, 2020

This article is published online by David Blackmon with the following disclosure:

[NOTE: I received the explainer below in an email from a friend this week. It has been making the rounds in email and social media for awhile now, and is the best tutorial on the concept of “Gaslighting” I have seen. Thus, I want to share it with the audience of DBDailyUpdate. Unfortunately, I have no idea who the author is – If I did I would give him or her proper credit.]

I found it, also, to be the best explanation of what the term “gaslighting” means and wanted to give it as much distribution as possible, so I have copied it here. Again, the author is unknown, but should the name of the author come to light, we will make sure to give the proper credit to them. -Devin

[BEGIN]

“Gaslighting – The term originates in the systematic psychological manipulation of a victim by her husband in Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play “Gas Light,” and the film adaptations released in 1940 and 1944. In the story, the husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment and insisting that she is mistaken, remembering things incorrectly, or delusional when she points out these changes.

The play’s title alludes to how the abusive husband slowly dims the gas lights in their home, while pretending nothing has changed, in an effort to make his wife doubt her own perceptions. The wife repeatedly asks her husband to confirm her perceptions about the dimming lights, but in defiance of reality, he keeps insisting that the lights are the same and instead it is she who is going insane.

Today we are living in a perpetual state of gaslighting. The reality that we are being told by the media is at complete odds with what we are seeing with our own two eyes. And when we question the false reality that we are being presented, or we claim that what we see is that actual reality, we are vilified as racist or bigots or just plain crazy.

You’re not racist. You’re not crazy. You’re being gaslighted.

New York State has twice as many deaths from Covid-19 than any other state, and New York has accounted for one fifth of all Covid-19 deaths, but we are told that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has handled the pandemic better than any other governor. But if we support policies of Governors whose states had only a fraction of the infections and deaths as New York, we’re called anti-science and want people to die.

So, we ask ourselves, am I crazy? No, you’re being gaslighted.

We see mobs of people looting stores, smashing windows, setting cars on fire and burning down buildings, but we are told that these demonstrations are peaceful protests. And when we call this destruction of our cities, riots, we are called racists.

So, we ask ourselves, am I crazy? No, you’re being gaslighted.

We see the major problem destroying many inner-cities is crime; murder, gang violence, drug dealing, drive-by shootings, armed robbery, but we are told that it is not crime, but that the police are the problem in the inner-cities. We are told we must defund the police and remove law enforcement from crime-riddled cities to make them safer. But if we advocate for more policing in cities overrun by crime, we are accused of being white supremacists and racists.

So, we ask ourselves, am I crazy? No, you’re being gaslighted.

The United States of America accepts more immigrants than any other country in the world. The vast majority of the immigrants are “people of color”, and these immigrants are enjoying freedom and economic opportunity not available to them in their country of origin, but we are told that the United States is the most racist and oppressive country on the planet, and if we disagree, we are called racist and xenophobic.

So, we ask ourselves, am I crazy? No, you’re being gaslighted.

Capitalist countries are the most prosperous countries in the world.  The standard of living is the highest in capitalist countries. We see more poor people move up the economic ladder to the middle and even the wealthy class through their effort and ability in capitalist countries than any other economic system in the world, but we are told capitalism is an oppressive system designed to keep people down.

So, we ask ourselves, am I crazy? No, you’re being gaslighted.

Communist countries killed over 100 million people in the 20th century. Communist countries strip their citizens of basic human rights, dictate every aspect of their lives, treat their citizens as slaves, and drive their economies into the ground, but we are told that Communism is the fairest, most equitable, freest, and most prosperous economic system in the world.

So, we ask ourselves, am I crazy? No, you’re being gaslighted.

The most egregious example of gaslighting is the concept of “white fragility”. You spend your life trying to be a good person, trying to treat people fairly and with respect. You disavow racism and bigotry in all its forms. You judge people solely on the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. You don’t discriminate based on race or ethnicity. But you are told you are a racist, not because of something you did or said, but solely because of the color of your skin. You know instinctively that charging someone with racism because of their skin color is itself racist. You know that you are not racist, so you defend yourself and your character, but you are told that your defense of yourself is proof of your racism.

So, we ask ourselves, am I crazy? No, you’re being gaslighted.

Gaslighting has become one of the most pervasive and destructive tactics in American politics. It is the exact opposite of what our political system was meant to be. It deals in lies and psychological coercion, and not the truth and intellectual discourse. If you ever ask yourself if you’re crazy, you are not. Crazy people aren’t sane enough to ask themselves if they’re crazy. So, trust yourself, believe what’s in your heart. Trust your eyes over what you are told.

Never listen to the people who tell you that you are crazy, because you are not, you’re being gaslighted.

Sophocles said: “What people believe prevails over the truth.” And that’s what the media are trying to exploit.

If you have read this far let me say one thing. I did not write the above and I am not sure who the author is.

I sent this to you because you are hopefully smart enough to understand what is being done to you on a daily basis from many directions.  I do not care about your political party affiliation. Just think through what you are being told.  Don’t listen with a deaf ear, or see with a blind eye.  Question everything  —  even things from people who you think you can trust.

Question why you are being told whatever, by whomever.  Question their motives. Question who benefits. Question if there is a hidden agenda behind the propaganda. Question, Question, Question.  Then do your own research, and use some of your own critical thinking skills to get to the truth.  Listen with your heart and with your mind.

Sadly, 95% of the masses don’t even know that they are being gaslighted.  At least now you do.

If this makes sense to you, then forward to your friends who you think might “get it”.

[END]

I would add, trust your own eyes. When what you see with your own eyes does not match what you are being told, don’t believe what you are being told! It is SO easy to just sit back in your chair and turn on the TV and watch and listen to whatever the talking heads tell you and they make it SO believable. STOP doing that! Get online. Go to every alternative news source you can find and READ what they have to say. Get on Youtube and watch alternative news sources so you can get BOTH sides, or even multiple sides, to the stories of the day. It takes more effort, yes, but there is NO value in just soaking in the lies you are being fed all day long by the major news media outlets.

If you are wondering where to start, I strongly recommend the news aggregating site: https://www.whatfinger.com/ This site provides some links to mainstream media sources, but most of the links come from alternative news sources. It also includes some video links at the top and occasionally down below. If what you see offends you, ask yourself, why? Why does it offend you? Most likely it’s because you have been so thoroughly gaslighted that you cannot believe it.

If you are more video oriented, and not so much a reader, try some of these sources:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJdKr0Bgd_5saZYqLCa9mng

https://www.youtube.com/user/PowerfulJRE

https://www.youtube.com/user/patrickbetdavid

If you spend enough time watching and reading from these sites you will begin to notice the gaslighting when you turn on your TV and watch the major news media outlets. I promise you that you will. And you will thank me when you do.

Devin

Following the Data: Covid-19 and the State of New Mexico – August 26 Update

August 26, 2020

by Devin

This article was written to provide an update to the original, which was published on August 14 in the Los Alamos Reporter. If you haven’t read that article, we highly recommend you go back and give it a read. Now we have 13 more days of data to add to the previous data set and given the impending expiration of the Governor’s latest orders, it seems prudent to give interested New Mexicans the most up-to-date information on the status of COVID-19 in our State. The data in this article, as in the original, are sourced from The COVID Tracking Project(https://covidtracking.com), sponsored by The Atlantic. Drilling down, the historical data for New Mexico can be found here: (https://covidtracking.com/data/state/new-mexico#historical).

If you read the original article, you will know that for New Mexico the main takeaways were: 1) the so called “spike” or “second wave” of the virus was not real because it was simply the result of a very real spike in daily new testing; 2) there was no corresponding “spike” or “second wave” of daily new hospitalizations or deaths; 3) the probability of a random New Mexican having died from COVID-19 by August 11, 2020 was approximately 2.1 in a million, and; 4) the numbers across the board were trending downward. The questions we want to address in this article are: 1) after 13 more days, do these conclusions still stand; 2) are the numbers still trending downward; 3) if so, by how much, and; 4) what else do the data tell us? 

The great news is, the answers to these questions appear to be yes, yes, and see below.

What the New Data Tell Us

The Death Count

The historical data for New Mexico show that the daily number of deaths from COVID-19 peaked around mid-May with an average daily value of approximately 8 deaths statewide per day. Daily deaths continued to decline after that until early July when the average daily value bottomed out at approximately 3 deaths statewide per day. The daily average rose back up to around 5 by the end of July and lately has been trending back down. The overall average daily number of deaths since the first case was recorded in New Mexico is approximately 4.5. The overall trend through August 22 is basically flat, with a very slightly downward trend, as can be seen in the graph below.

Previously we talked about the number of deaths from COVID-19 in New Mexico for the purposes of comparison with the most recent two influenza seasons. Since those numbers are absolutes, it seems more useful now to talk about trends. Using the US Census total population data estimate for 2019 for New Mexico of 2,096,829, during the two-week period of peak average daily deaths, from May 3 through May 16, on any given day a random New Mexican had approximately 4.2 chances in a million of dying from COVID-19. For the most recent two-week period ending August 22, 2020 on any given day a random New Mexican had approximately 2.1 chances in a million of dying from the disease. Half the chances of the peak period. Breaking these numbers down further, by age group, consider the following chart and graph:

Clearly, older age groups have a much greater chance of dying from COVID-19 than younger age groups in New Mexico. In fact, in New Mexico, for all practical purposes, the chances of someone under the age of 25 are almost zero (since the data set is incomplete, we can’t say it is zero and we know that it isn’t). Those aged 25 to 64 years account for approximately 29 percent of deaths in New Mexico from COVID-19. Approximately 70 percent of deaths from COVID-19 are among those aged 65 and older. What this means is that on any given day during the most recent two-week period, if you are a New Mexican aged 65 or older, your chances of dying from COVID-19 were approximately 1.5 in a million. If you are aged 25 to 64, your chances were 0.6 in a million, or significantly less than one in a million. If you are under the age of 25, your chances were almost zero in a million. Not to diminish the value of every human life, but these are amazingly low odds. 

There is also an abundance of evidence now strongly associating at least one or more comorbidity with dying from COVID-19 (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/evidence-table.html). What this means is that healthy young people are, for all intents and purposes, in no danger at all from COVID-19. Furthermore, healthy middle-aged adults are also in practically no danger from COVID-19. Finally, the highest risk people are those over 65 years of age who have one or more established pre-existing health conditions that have been strongly correlated with mortality from COVID-19. According to the CDC, these are: serious heart conditions, such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, or cardiomyopathies; cancer; chronic kidney disease; COPD; obesity (BMI>30); sickle cell disease; solid organ transplantation, and; type 2 diabetes. So if you are healthy and over the age of 65, your chances of dying from COVID-19 on any given day during the last two weeks were less than 1.5 in a million.

New Cases and Testing

Moving on to daily new cases, we continue to see a sharp decline in new cases being detected on a daily basis. Since the peak on July 28 at 460 new cases, the average daily number of new cases for the most recent one-week period, ending August 25, 2020 is 122, with 73 being reported on August 25. This is an average rate of decline of 12 new cases per day. If this rate of decline continues, in approximately 11 days, sometime around September 5, New Mexico may no longer be recording any new cases.

From our previous analysis, we found a directly proportional relationship between daily new testing numbers and daily new case numbers. The graph below presents the data for daily new testing. As you can see, daily new testing has slightly declined from near the end of July through August 25 (with a 2-day spike in new tests near the end of the period).

The following graph shows the weekly average new cases per test (in percentages) since testing began in New Mexico.

The peaks on this graph are artifacts of the data set that resulted mostly in the beginning of the pandemic when data collection was still being organized and the initial challenges that go along with any major data collection effort is undertaken. As you can see, over time, as the data collection process became more streamlined, the line becomes more stable. The trendline, shown as a dotted line, provides a more accurate picture of reality. And the reality is, since the week of July 11 this average has either been flat or in decline. For the most recent week recorded, that average number of cases per test was 2.1 percent. What these two graphs mean when taken together is that daily new cases have been declining at a significantly higher rate than daily new testing; therefore, we cannot attribute all of the decline in new cases to reduced testing. In fact, it shows that very little of the decline in new cases can be attributed to reduced testing.

Hospitalizations

The following graph shows the daily hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients in New Mexico since the first patient was admitted in April. Once the reporting procedures stabilized around the last week of June, the average daily number of new COVID-19 patients being hospitalized was approximately 17.4. This number trended up until the end of July, where it was averaging around 28.1 new admissions per day. Since then it has been trending down, with the average daily admissions for the most recent week at 8.1. If this trend continues on its current trajectory, hospitalizations may also reach zero in New Mexico within the next week to two weeks.

Our final graph of the data that includes new cases, deaths, and hospitalizations combined is shown here:

Although the lines for new hospitalizations and deaths are somewhat difficult to see, it is clear that all the trends are either flat or down.

Conclusions

Over the last three calendar years, fatalities from automobile-related accidents in New Mexico averaged 1.1 per day (https://gps.unm.edu/gps_assets/tru_data/Crash-Reports/Fatality-Reports/2019-fatalities.pdf). As a community, we have accepted the risks associated with driving on our roads and highways, knowing that every day, someone is going to die in a car accident. If that number were 2 people per day, or even three people per day, would we radically change the way live our lives? Would we reduce speed limits to half their current limits if that brought the number down and, if so, how much would it need to bring that number down before we would accept such a change? These are very difficult questions and everyone is sure to have a different opinion.

The current public health order is set to expire this month. The daily numbers are rapidly approaching zero. Given this information, the question before us is, how much longer do we need to keep the various restrictions in place, if at all? Given that there was no second wave or spike in cases in New Mexico to begin with, a very strong argument could be made for ending them right now; however, an extension of the restrictions still would not be justifiable beyond an additional two weeks. If, after an additional two weeks, the trends reverse, we could, of course, consider extending some of the public health orders further, but clearly, no public health orders are even now warranted by the data. What is certain is that if our leaders are truly allowing science and data to drive their decision-making, another full month of restrictions is completely unjustified.

Endangered Species: Political Independents, Why Pre-Election Polling is Useless

August 18, 2020

by Devin

For as long as I have been paying attention to politics, namely, my whole life, all I have ever heard from the Political Intelligentsia, is that politicians who want to get elected must lean to their party’s extreme to win in the primary and then move to the center to win the general election. If this is news to you, you definitely are new to American politics. This is because it is typically the party die-hards who show up for the primaries, who want to see a candidate get nominated that best reflects their party’s values, but a lot more people show up for general elections and those people are less idealistic than the party die-hards. To win these less idealistic voters over, it is said that politicians must soften their views so as not to sound so extreme and thus convince these so-called “Independents” that they are the best choice for the job. Hence all the negative advertisements during the general election painting opponents as extremists, with lots of pull quotes from their primary campaigning to prove it.

“…anyone who pays any attention to politics, enough to participate in elections by voting, in 2020, and even in 2016, cannot possibly, by now, not know who they are planning to vote for in the Presidential Election.”

When the pollsters conduct a pre-election poll, they prefer to poll “likely voters.” After all, what point would it be to poll people who aren’t planning to vote? But to do so, they have to select a representative sample of voters from the population. Typically the pollsters will try to estimate the percentage of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents that are going to vote and then make sure the polling reflects those proportions (or not, if they have a different objective). The farther off these estimates are from reality, the lower the accuracy of the poll will be, so they say. Exactly how they come up with these estimates is not a topic I have spent any time trying to figure out, but what I do know is that undersampling or oversampling a particular group will definitely throw off the results. That is how they got the 2016 Presidential Election so stunningly wrong.

One of the explanations for inaccurate polls that I have heard many times over the years is that the people who are polled cannot be relied upon to tell the truth. The theory goes that they may not want anyone, even a pollster who doesn’t know them, to know who they are really planning to vote for. Then, of course, there are those who just want to mess with the pollsters by giving them false answers. But I have a new theory as to why the polls, as this article is titled, are simply useless. Their premise about Independents, is false.

It occurred to me recently that anyone who pays any attention to politics, enough to participate in elections by voting, in 2020, and even in 2016, cannot possibly, by now, not know who they are planning to vote for in the Presidential Election. In fact, the USA is so incredibly polarized now, and has been since at least 2015, that it is impossible for me to imagine anyone who pays sufficient attention to want to vote, to be sitting on the fence between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Am I right?

But if this is true, then who really are all these so-called “Independents?” I have an idea.

“…there really aren’t any voters that are truly Independents.”

For many years I called myself an Independent, but then I realized at some point that even though I called myself that, I always wound up voting Republican. (In middle school, I stood on the corner of a bypass holding up a Dick Riley sign in Greenville, SC, because he went to high school with my father. That’s my only brush with support for a Democrat.) So why did I call myself an Independent? Because I wanted to signal that I was open to voting either way, depending upon which candidate seemed to be the best choice for the job. Of course, that was mostly back in the days when there were still a few centrist Democrat politicians around. My wife, Amanda, also called herself an Independent for many years, even though she almost always voted Democrat (she calls herself a Libertarian these days). So it occurred to me that maybe people who bother to take the time to go to the polls and vote really don’t include a set of people who might vote either way. At least, not in significant numbers.

But if that’s true, assuming that party die-hards always get out and vote and do so for their party’s candidates, how to explain the shifts back and forth in various elections from one major party to the other? And the occasional landslide?Here is what I think. I think that there really aren’t any voters that are truly Independents. Okay, maybe a handful. A statistically insignificant few. But in fact, everyone, for all intents and purposes, knows what party they most closely identify with. Sure, this year it appears that there may be a fairly significant number of people who are changing their party loyalty, but these aren’t Independents. These are people who are fed up with the direction their party has taken.

“Enthusiasm completely controls the outcomes of general elections.”

So what does this mean? First, it means that the current polling methodology is USELESS. Second, it means something else is driving the outcomes of general elections. Something other than politicians moving to the center to capture the “all important” Independent vote. So what is driving the outcomes of general elections?

ENTHUSIASM.

PERIOD.

FULL STOP.

I wrote a couple of blogs back in 2016 that touched on this that are still up on The Gatherer. I went back and re-read them the other day and everything in them still holds true. I wouldn’t change a word. Enthusiasm completely controls the outcomes of general elections. It may also be true in the primaries, but each party has so much power to control the outcomes of their primaries, that it probably isn’t as big of a factor. Think about it. If your party’s candidate isn’t firing up the base, how on earth do you expect the less idealistic voters in your party to get motivated to vote? And isn’t that exactly what we see going on right now in the Presidential campaigns?

“Enthusiasm for Trump is sky high. Enthusiasm for Joe Biden is practically non-existent.”

In my city, Santa Fe, New Mexico, you could potentially drive around all day and not see a single solitary campaign sign or sticker for Joe Biden, and this town is super left-wing. Of course, you don’t see that many Trump signs or stickers either, but then again, Trump’s voters don’t want to get beat up or have their car or truck get keyed. And they generally like their liberal friends and don’t want to be ostracized by them. Which is a very real possibility.

But I can assure you, there are plenty of Trump fans in Santa Fe and they will be coming out of the woodwork to vote for him on November 3rd. There may not be enough of them to overcome the Democrat die-hards, but their numbers won’t be insignificant. One thing is certain, there will be many, many more voters for Trump in New Mexico this time around than there were in 2016. When I speak privately with my conservative and centrist friends who plan to vote, they say they cannot wait for November 3rd to get here. Enthusiasm for Trump is sky high. Enthusiasm for Joe Biden is practically non-existent. It wasn’t that long ago that New Mexico was considered a “purple” state. If my theory is correct, it likely still is. And if that’s true, then Trump and the Republicans may very well just flip this state red this fall.

So what are the main takeaways from this idea that there really aren’t any Independents to speak of? First, to get accurate polling, pollsters should be polling enthusiasm. Period. Anything else is going to give a poor result. Second, politicians who want to win, need to stop swinging back to the middle to try to capture the so-called, but really non-existent, Independents. Does Trump ever walk anything back and apologize for anything he says? No. He doubles down. If there were any truly independent voters out there, doubling down would be the kiss of death for a candidate. Instead, what we see is his supporters getting even more fired up when he does that. That should be all the proof we need.

Author’s note: My apologies to Libertarians out there, whom I have left out of this analysis, but they so rarely have an impact on elections, that I couldn’t see how to fit them in.

Following the Data: COVID-19 and the State of New Mexico

July 13, 2020

by Devin

When a new SARS-type virus from China began to make the news this past winter, like so many others before it, my first inclination was to ignore it. It sounded just like all the others to me, much to do about nothing. But then it became much more apparent that this one was going to be different. As momentum started building and the disease we now call the all-too-familiar name COVID-19 was formally declared a pandemic, states and countries started mobilizing their health agencies to gather data on this novel coronavirus. Various organizations began compiling all this state and international data, collating it, and posting it on their websites. At this point I began taking a much greater interest in it. Looking around online, I found?The COVID Tracking Project(https://covidtracking.com), sponsored by?The Atlantic. Drilling down I was able to locate the historical data for New Mexico (https://covidtracking.com/data/state/new-mexico#historical).

The first thing I noticed is that the data are presented in a less-than-optimal way to understand what they mean. While the numbers for New Tests are given as a daily total, the numbers for Cases, Hospitalized, and Deaths are provided as cumulative totals going all the way back to the beginning of the data set. Cumulative totals are deceptive in that they are much larger than daily totals and they don?t tell the real story. In order to find the real story, you have to subtract the previous day?s total from the current day?s total to get the current daily total, for every single day of the data set. So I did this, and the results are very interesting.

As I did the math to get the daily totals, I typed them into three spreadsheets. The first spreadsheet tracks the daily deaths from COVID-19. These numbers are among the most important, because most people agree that the state of being dead is not particularly debatable and because ultimately, death is the worst and most feared potential result of becoming infected with this disease. The second spreadsheet tracks daily new cases of COVID-19. The key metric in this data set is not so much the number of cases, but the daily number of new cases per daily number of new tests. This value is expressed as a percentage since there are far fewer cases than tests. This value is so important because it removes the effect of variability in the daily new tests numbers. In other words, what we really want to know is not how many new cases there are, but are more people really catching the disease? The third spreadsheet combines the data for daily new cases, new deaths, and new hospitalizations, so that we can see how they compare.

What the Data Actually Tell Us

The Death Count

Starting with the daily number of deaths the first thing we notice is that deaths from COVID-19 peaked around mid-May with an average daily value of approximately 8 deaths statewide per day. Daily deaths continued to decline after this until early July when the average daily value bottomed out at approximately 3 deaths statewide per day. The daily average rose back up to 5 by the end of July and lately has been trending back down. New Mexico is currently averaging approximately 4 deaths statewide per day. The overall average daily number of deaths since the first case was recorded in New Mexico is approximately 4.5. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the most recent estimated population of New Mexico (for 2019) was 2,096,829, or roughly 2.1 million.

As of August 11, 2020 the total number of deaths from COVID-19 in New Mexico was 688. Given a population 2.1 million people, that means that we have experienced approximately 32.5 deaths per 100,000 residents for the entirety of the pandemic. By comparison, during the 2018-2019 influenza season (Oct.-May), New Mexico experienced 11 deaths from pneumonia and influenza per 100,000 residents and in the prior season, 14 deaths per 100,000 residents (New Mexico Epidemiology, Vol. 2019, No. 10). So far, that means that in New Mexico, the chances of a random resident dying of COVID-19 are roughly two and half to three times their chances of dying from pneumonia or influenza in recent years. Not to diminish the value of every human life, but these are not large numbers. On any given day, a random New Mexico resident has approximately 2.1 chances in a million to die from COVID-19. Those are pretty good odds. A graph of the daily new deaths from COVID-19 is shown here:

The dotted trendline approximates the running average and notice that generally speaking, the line is relatively flat and there is no spike in deaths corresponding to the ?spike? in cases. A very slight uptick, yes, but nothing anyone could realistically call a spike.

New Cases

Moving on to daily new cases, what we see in the data are two things. First, from the beginning, we see a rise in daily new cases, which leveled off in early May at around an average of 140 new cases per day and declined slightly until the beginning of June, settling at around an average of 130 new cases per day. Second, starting in early June, we see another significant rise in daily new cases, peaking most recently in late July at around an average of 300 new cases per day. For the most recent two weeks, daily new cases have been trending downward with the most recent 3-day average as of August 11 being around 160 new cases per day. At first glance, these numbers would seem to support the claim that New Mexico experienced a ?second wave? of infections from COVID-19, which has now passed (see the graph below); however, a closer look at the data reveals the truth.?

First, as testing began, our testing capacity was extremely limited. As time progressed, our testing capacity increased; however, in order to make sure we had enough tests to go around, we limited testing to those who were experiencing actual symptoms of COVID-19. That made sense. If you?re not sick, you?re not in immediate danger of death from COVID-19. Second, in late April, our testing capacity increased dramatically and we opened up testing to anyone who wanted to be tested. A ?case? was redefined in the process from being someone who exhibited symptoms?and?tested positive for COVID-19 to?anyone?who tested positive?for COVID-19,?even if they were entirely asymptomatic. To find out the impact of increased testing and the new definition of a ?case,? we have to remove the effects of these variables from the data. To do so, we simply divide the number of daily new cases by the number of daily new tests performed. The result is startling. As you can see quite clearly in the graph above and the graph below, the daily number of new cases correlates very closely to the number of daily new tests performed since the beginning, with very minor small-scale variations.

The next thing to notice is the difference in the scales of the two graphs. The scale for New Tests is approximately 23 times as high as the scale for New Cases! To see what that means visually, the next graph, below, shows the two data sets on the same scale. It is difficult to see a spike in new cases in this graph.

And now, the most important graph of all, the graph that tells the real story, is the graph showing the weekly average number of new cases per test, below.

The peaks on this graph are artifacts of the data set that resulted mostly in the beginning of the pandemic when data collection was still being organized and the initial challenges that go along with any major data collection effort is undertaken. As you can see, over time, as the data collection process became more streamlined, the line becomes more stable. The trendline, shown as a dotted line, provides a more accurate picture of reality. And the reality is, since the beginning of June, when the ?spike? in new cases began, the weekly average number of cases per test has not exceeded 5 percent and for the last 4 weeks this average has been in decline. For the most recent week recorded, that average number of cases per test was 2.9 percent. The bottom line is, the ?spike? in cases was caused by the spike in new testing and the testing of people who were and are asymptomatic. The reality is, fewer and fewer residents of New Mexico are coming down with COVID-19 and at some point no amount of testing will give the appearance otherwise. This also means that there isn?t going to be a third wave, because there never really was a second wave. If you start hearing about a third wave, follow the data. Therein lies the truth, but that?s not the end of this story. We have one more data set to look at: Hospitalizations.

Hospitalizations

The third spreadsheet includes daily new hospitalizations from COVID-19 along with daily new cases and daily new deaths. A graph of these data is shown here:

This graph clearly shows that the number of daily new hospitalizations and deaths did not dramatically increase with the number of new cases. This is further evidence that the ?spike? in new cases was caused entirely by the extreme increase in new testing.

So what does all this mean? The number one justification for all the public health orders mandating the closure of ?non-essential? businesses, social distancing, mask wearing, self-quarantine, and staying at home except for emergencies and absolute necessities, was the oft repeated mantra of a spike in cases, the ever growing number of deaths and hospitalizations, and the rationalization that if these measures ?save just one life? they will have been worth it. The question before us is, is it worth it? Has it been worth it? I?ll leave that for you to decide for yourself, because as New Mexicans, that?s what we’re going to do anyway!

If you would like to have a copy of the Excel spreadsheet file from which these graphs were derived, you can download it here:

WUFLU-NMDownload