The Difference Between What Something Is and How It Appears

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" 

You might have heard this philosophical thought experiment at some point.

It raises questions regarding observation and perception which leads to additional questions.

Can something exist without being perceived by consciousness?

Can we assume the unobserved world functions the same as the observed world?

What is the difference between what something is and how it appears?

I have been thinking about this a lot recently as I review the latest Covid data and compare it to the media attention it is receiving today compared to last year.

Last year at the this time, and for all of the previous year, we heard about Covid morning, noon and night.

The incessant messaging bombarded our consciousness.

Masks and other visible reminders of Covid permeated our observed world wherever we went.

Today that is not the case.

There is barely a mention of Covid amidst the news of inflation, gas prices, the stock market meltdown and Ukraine.

You would think Covid had almost gone away.

However, compare confirmed cases last year at this time to what we see currently.

Cases are over 8 times higher now than they were last year and it is barely raising a concern.

This number is also undoubtedly understated when considering the much higher use of home testing this year compared to last year.

Some would argue that the reason for less attention and concern is that the predominant Covid variant today is not as virulent and the vaccines have made the risk of severe illness less likely.

Is that the case?

That view is not supported by the data.

Daily new hospital admissions are substantially higher today than they were at this time last year.

This is especially true for those age 70+ which are the most vulnerable and also the most highly vaccinated group in the country (91.3% of age 65+ fully vaccinated, 70% boosted once. 32% boosted twice per CDC data.).

Hospital admissions for Covid are more than double what they were last year for those age 70+ and 50% higher for all ages in total.

How is this possible if the vaccines are supposed to be "highly effective" in preventing severe disease?

Covid deaths are essentially the same as they were last year.

The 7-day average was 321 last year on June 20, 2021. It is 311 right now.

In addition, most people do not realize that deaths during the Omicron wave this winter were much higher for those age 65+ than they were with the Delta wave last summer which was supposed to be much more deadly. This is a fact that even The New York Times acknowledged.

However, when you consider that there have been over 300 million vaccine doses administered in the United States since this time last year (600 million doses in total since vaccination began) wouldn't the expectation be that deaths would have fallen dramatically?

Has there ever been a vaccine that was considered successful where cases and hospitalizations went up and deaths increased or stayed the same?

The trends in other parts of the world are just as troubling right now.

Consider Portugal which is one of the most vaccinated and boosted nations in the world.

Almost 90% of every man, woman and child in Portugal is fully vaccinated.

65 booster doses have been administered for every 100 people in the nation. The comparable number in the United States is 36 per 100.

There are 20 times the number of confirmed cases in Portugal right now than there were at this time last year.

More troubling are Covid deaths.

Deaths in Portugal are over 10 times what they were at this time last year.

71% of Covid deaths in Portugal have come after Covid vaccines were introduced.

Deaths have also accelerated since boosters were introduced.

It is interesting to compare Portugal with South Africa.

Portugal is a much more advanced country with considerably better health resources for its citizens than what is available in South Africa.

As an indicator, the average life expectancy in Portugal is about 17 years longer than in South Africa.

The Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa. Additional variants to Omicron have also been initially identified in South Africa.

Note that not even a third of the population is fully vaccinated in South Africa.

There have been less than 10% of the booster doses per capita in South Africa as in Portugal.

According to the narrative, you would think Covid would be ravaging South Africa as compared to Portugal.

However, the exact opposite is true.

This chart shows Covid deaths per capita in Portugal and South Africa since the beginning of the year.

Portugal is experiencing more Covid deaths right now than it did in the January, 2021 surge.

South Africa has 1/20 of the deaths per capita that Portugal is seeing right now.

What is also interesting is that deaths per capita in both countries were tracking pretty closely until January, 2021 when vaccines were first introduced and Portugal began its aggressive mass vaccination campaign.

At that point, the experience of the two countries diverged.

When I see data like this I cannot help but think of the warnings of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche and the risks he sees in mass vaccination efforts such as Portugal has engaged in.

I have written about Vanden Bossche's theories before in these pages here, here and here.

Vanden Bossche has recently warned that he foresees that Omicron will mutate further into a variant that is both more contagious and more virulent than we have experienced before.

Source: https://twitter.com/DavidLWindt/status/1533532689957113856

He predicts that it will be significantly more deadly.

Hospitalizations will spike, especially in highly vaccinated countries.

Source: https://twitter.com/DavidLWindt/status/1536694303384391680

Most troubling is that he believes the virus will be more dangerous to those who are vaccinated than those who are not and even more dangerous to those who are boosted than those who are merely vaccinated.

He also stated a month ago that he expected we might see this during the summer rather than with an expected seasonal surge in the Fall.

Is this what we are seeing in Portugal?

Has this next stage also begun in Israel that is also one of the most vaccinated and boosted countries in the world?

This is the headline from a story out of Israel from last Friday.

Source: https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/coronavirus/1655482328-covid-israel-reports-70-rise-in-seriously-ill-patients

I don't know but the data I am seeing should raise questions in anyone who is paying attention.

As I have written before, I fervently hope that Dr. Vanden Bossche is wrong.

However, the data, and what we have seen over the last year and a half, better supports the predictions that Vanden Bossche has made compared to anyone else I have studied.

If Vanden Bossche is correct, we face some very challenging times ahead.

I don't even want to comprehend what is the result if we have hundreds of thousands of vaccinated people who might be hospitalized or die after trusting government and public health authorities that they had to be vaccinated for their own health and the good of society.

If Vanden Bossche is correct, the advice we were given was 180 degrees wrong.

If anything close to what Vanden Bossche is saying is correct, the sound will not just be like one tree falling in a forest.

It will be as if the entire forest came down.

And the reverberations will last several generations as trust in our institutions and health professionals will be irreparably damaged.

I will say it again.

We need to hope and pray that Vanden Bossche is wrong.

However, no one should ignore what he is saying. That is especially true considering his past record.

The fact that you were not there to hear the sound of the tree falling does not mean that it can be totally ignored or dismissed as misinformation.

It is information. Take it or leave it as the case will be. It is not misinformation merely because it does not conform to the narrative or how someone wants things to appear.

Only future events will tell us how big the tree (or the forest) was when it fell or whether it fell at all.

In these times it is important to always keep in mind the difference between what something is (the reality) and how it appears (the narrative).

I will continue to write about the data and facts for you to consider and compare to the media and public health narrative so you can make up your own mind on what is reality and who and what to believe (BeeLine included).