Dr. Mercola: COVID-19 Could Soon Lose Epidemic Status

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At LewRockwell.com, Dr. Joseph Mercola notes that COVID-19 mortality is falling, and may soon dip under the epidemic threshold. He writes:

Even though the COVID-19 mortality curve has been flattened, mainstream media outlets continue to push doomsday predictions of an impending explosion of deaths. The New York Times, for example, published articles July 2^1,² and July 3,^3,⁴ 2020, basically warning everyone to not get excited about plummeting mortality rates, as the trend could change at any moment.

“Why Virus Deaths Are Down but May Soon Rise,” its July 2 headline states. The article goes on to claim “coronavirus trends in the United States are pretty dark right now” — based on surging case numbers, meaning positive test results, not hospitalizations or people exhibiting actual symptoms.

The article attributes the steady and relatively rapid drop-off in deaths to improved medical treatment and older people being more cautious, but warns that “Deaths may be on the verge of rising again,” because “middle-aged and younger people are acting as if they’re invulnerable” and have increased their social activities.

“Their increased social activity has fueled an explosion in cases over the last three weeks, which in turn could lead to a rise in deaths soon,” The New York Times states,^5,⁶ adding:
“With testing now more widespread, it’s possible that the death data will lag the case data by closer to a month. (In a typical fatal case, the death comes three to five weeks after contraction of the virus.) If that’s correct, coronavirus deaths may start rising again any day.”

This, however, completely ignores data showing that the COVID-19 fatality rate for those under the age of 45 is “almost zero,” and between the ages of 45 and 70, it’s somewhere between 0.05% and 0.3%.^7,^8,⁹

COVID-19 mortality — which had declined for the last 10 weeks straight — is currently at the epidemic threshold, meaning if it slides down just a little more, COVID-19 will no longer meet the CDC’s criteria for “epidemic” status.