Day 48: You Get One Chance to tell the Truth (even if you are a PhD or MD)

In my practice, I always tell people that they get only one chance to tell the truth. Either you say nothing until you are ready to tell “your story” or you tell “your story” then live with it. The reason is that even the most honest person can’t tell the same story twice the exact same way. And when you tell two stories, you inevitably face the question: “Were you lying then, or are you lying now.” Today I ask the CDC the same question.

In late February, President Trump first thought that this COVID-19 virus would be no worse than a bout of seasonal flu with annual deaths up to 70,000! At the time the President said that that number was “incredible.” His instincts were right; that number was “incredible.” It turns out that CDC just multiplies the actual known, confirmed number of deaths by whatever figure they think will scare us into all taking the vaccine, and publishes that number like it is a fact. (You can read a summary of the story here, but the original essay by Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust has either been taken down or is now behind a paywall because I could not read it again to write this.) Artificially inflating numbers is disingenuous. Disingenuous is a fancy way to say they were lying.

So can you blame us citizens for questioning every number and fact that comes out now. One thing we all know is that liars continue to lie until they are caught. We know they were lying then, so are they also lying now?

So it turns out that during the last 6 flu seasons, the actual deaths attributed to flu were between 3,500 and 16,000 per year, while the confirmed death total so far for COVID-19 is 63,000 as of May 1, 2020. Therefore COVID-19 is killing 9.5 to 44 times more people than any flu. If we can believe the numbers. And if these numbers are true, the extraordinary measures were warranted. If these “confirmed” numbers are also made up, then it it a tragedy. How do we know what the numbers are? Who do we trust when even the doctors are exaggerating?

See how you get one chance to tell the truth?