Those who control the numbers, controls the world.

People are afraid. There are scary things out there, but as long as you trust the people in power, they will protect you. As long as you do what they say. Follow the “science”. Pay no attention to those that spout “misinformation”. Any scientists or doctors that say otherwise, you do not have to pay any attention to them. Those people have probably been fired anyway. (Some sarcasm was implied.)

Feel free to ask any questions that you want, only not on social media, or TV or in print. On second thought, if you do ask any questions, those that are “woke” will make an example of you. Your employers may let you go, and you may become a pariah. The concept of an “open exchange of information and ideas” was soooo 20th Century.

Let us look at an example. This pandemic that we are experiencing is now entering its second year. The mainstream media has had banners moving across its screens, showing the death toll and the millions of “cases” that has been increasing every day. There is a new term, which has come into common usage, and it’s called “fear porn”. There are a lot of grownups that have been pushing it for some time.

Kids are terrified that they may die, or that their parents may die at any point. Suicide rates and substance abuse started climbing as the younger generation had to come to grips with it.

OK. The role and job that a parent has, when their children wake up from a bad dream, is to comfort them, and tell them that everything will be all right. They show them that there is nothing in the closet or under the bed. Let me see what I can do, in my role as a grownup.

First, I have a story to tell – hang in there, there are some scary big numbers in there, but it will help prove a point. There is a story of a wealthy King in Persia, who liked to play games. He was quickly becoming bored because there was not anything new that he could play. One day, a peasant came before the King, and showed him a game, that today, we would recognize as chess. It had lots of variations and great playability. The King was overjoyed, and offered the Peasant a large reward for giving the King this new game. The humble peasant told the King, that all he wanted in return, was to take a kernel of wheat and place it on the first square, and then to double it for the second square and then to double it again for the next square and so on. The King quickly agreed, and a deal was struck. (Remember there are 64 squares on a chess board).

And remember, we are just talking about kernels of wheat here. One for the first square, two for the second, four for the third, eight for the fourth – doesn’t look too bad, does it? The 10th square had 512, the 20th square had a half million, the 28th square had 134 million, the 35th square had 34 billion and the 40th had 550 billion. The King soon realized that he promised the total output of his kingdom, for the next 100 years. I do not know what happened to the peasant, but being true to form, the King probably cut off his head.

Keep those numbers in mind.

Typically, today, to find out if you have COVID, you get a PCR Test. (Or for the geeks out there – “Polymerase Chain Reaction”) – in English and in a nutshell, this is what it does.

Using a swab, they take a sample (for example) up your nose, seal it up and send it to a lab. The PCR test takes a piece of the DNA in the sample, and heats it up, adds an enzyme they call a “primer” and in a couple steps, they soon have two exact copies of the DNA. They do it again, and then they have four DNA samples. They do it again, and they get eight DNA samples. (Do you see where this is going?) They run this test repeatedly, to see if any traces of COVID are in there.

DNA is very small. What they are doing, in effect, is enlarging the sample, so that they can detect if the person has been infected with COVID or not.

Anthony Fauci, the greatest doctor since Doctor Phil and Dr. Jill Biden, was quoted as saying in 2020 that running the test more than 35 times (or cycles) is useless and misleading, and that a positive result, indicating infection, cannot be accepted or believed. By examining the sample with such high magnification, they may have a very low level of the virus, but still be considered a “case.” They have the virus, but in many cases, are not infectious.

But wait a minute – across the U.S., most PCR tests set cycle limits at 40 (some others, 37). Using the wheat example above, that is the difference between 17 billion and 550 billion.

There are several studies that have been done, looking again at people that have been declared “COVID positive”. For example, in Massachusetts, the New York Times “determined 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July (2020) with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles.”

Quoted in the article was University of California virologist Juliet Morrison: “I’m shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive,” she said, adding a more reasonable cutoff would be 30 to 35. Other doctors have even suggested a cutoff of 30 cycles or less.

Our local and state governments make decisions based on these inflated numbers. How can they make rational decisions when the information that they are given are wrong? If only there was a way for open discussion, that people could meet and discuss discrepancies. When the “party line” is the only line, bad decisions are formed.

How many people have died in the US from COVID? According to the CDC, “During 2020, COVID-19 was listed as the underlying or contributing cause of 377,883 deaths.” But how many are COVID-only deaths? Again, according to the CDC and Reuters, only around six percent of COVID deaths in 2020/2021 had no underlying health conditions that contributed to that person’s death; that means the vast majority of COVID deaths were aided by conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

It’s these underlying conditions that are the true danger when it comes to COVID, not COVID itself. This may explain why 98 percent of everyone in the U.S. that gets COVID recover from it, either through treatment or natural means, because they lack those serious underlying conditions.

Not a “fun fact” but a sobering one, is that in 2020, heart disease account for nearly 700,000 deaths, and cancer accounted for almost 600,000 deaths — together, heart disease and cancer accounts for three times the number of deaths from COVID. If all the money spent on COVID was moved into those areas we would see a serious decrease in our nation’s death toll. After all, almost everyone who gets COVID gets over it. I do not believe you can claim the same for heart and cancer issues.

That is a lot of numbers to take in, but the reason to point it out, and to point out to your family and children, is that they do not need to take in all the fear porn. Despite the signs saying the opposite, there is no “getting rid of COVID”. As long as there are people on the planet, there will be someone that will catch it, or else one of its varieties. You may catch it, and then get over it. Get out in the sun, eat healthy, get married, live life.

There have been several studies that show that Vitamin D is a good COVID deterrent and can build up your immunity. Dr Fauci says that he takes over 5,000 IU every day.

Get out and enjoy life. Losing weight is one of the single biggest things you can do for reducing your risk from COVID; obesity is the number one of the biggest factors for if you get over COVID or not.

I am in no way wanting to minimize the hurt and pain of losing a loved one, either through COVID or the other bad things that are out there. Losing a loved one is always painful. But while it is possible that flying in an airplane could lead to death, or more likely, driving on Highway 405, as adults we juggle probability whenever we leave our house. We decide that what we need to do that day, is more important than just huddling in our homes. We take risks. Some are more likely than others. We can’t focus on all of the bad things that might happen. We need to live our lives with our eyes open.

Take this time, and this season, to reconnect with family and friends. Share your feelings. Make amends and build bridges. Do not give into the fear.

Life is good.