Can any government statistics on COVID-19 deaths be trusted?

It is an open question now that we are learning that the highly respected, world-class Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been lying to us.

This revelation comes a few days after I wrote here at American Thinker that New York City was lying about COVID-19 deaths.  The normal rules about reporting deaths have been violated by that city in the rush to inflate the body count, presumably to steer more taxpayer money to the Big Apple.

That the CDC isn’t telling the truth to Americans is no conspiracy theory:  it’s right out there in the open for everyone to see.  The CDC openly admits that it is fudging the COVID-19 death figures.

We know this because, among other truth-tellers, a plainspoken small-town physician from Kalispell, Montana, has pulled back the curtain.

Dr. Annie Bukacek, MD, explained in a presentation how death certificates are made.  (See “Montana physician Dr. Annie Bukacek discusses how COVID-19 death certificates are being manipulated,” YouTube, April 6)

Why should anyone care how a certificate of death is made?

Everyone should care “today when governments are making massive changes that affect our constitutional rights and those changes are based on inaccurate statistics,” Bukacek says.

The system is deeply flawed, she argues.

Few people know how much individual power and leeway is given to the physician, coroner, or medical examiner, signing the death certificate.  How do I know this?  I’ve been filling out death certificates for over 30 years.

More often than we want to admit, we don’t know with certainty the cause of death when we fill out death certificates.  That is just life.  We are doctors, not God.  Autopsies are rarely performed and even when an autopsy is done the actual cause of death is not always clear.  Physicians make their best guesstimate and fill out the form.  Then that listed cause of death … is entered into a vital records data bank to use for statistical analysis, which then gives out inaccurate numbers, as you can imagine.  Those inaccurate numbers then become accepted as factual information even though much of it is false.

This has been the way it has been done for some time, Bukacek says.

So even before we heard of COVID-19, death certificates were based on assumptions and educated guesses that go unquestioned.  When it comes to COVID-19 there is the additional data skewer, that is –get this— there is no universal definition of COVID-19 death.  The Centers for Disease Control, updated from yesterday, April 4th, still states that mortality, quote unquote, data includes both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19.  That’s from their website.

Translation?  The CDC counts both true COVID-19 cases and speculative guesses of COVID-19 the same.  They call it death by COVID-19.  They automatically overestimate the real death numbers, by their own admission.  Prior to COVID-19, people were more likely to get an accurate cause of death written on their death certificate if they died in the hospital.  Why more accurate when a patient dies in the hospital?  Because hospital staff has physical examination findings labs, radiologic studies, et cetera, to make a good educated guess.  It is estimated that 60 percent of people die in the hospital.  But even [with] those in-hospital deaths, the cause of death is not always clear, especially in someone with multiple health conditions, each of which could cause the death.

Bukacek refers to a March 24 CDC memo from Steven Schwartz, director of the Division of Vital Statistics for the National Center for Health Statistics, titled “COVID-19 Alert No. 2.”

“The assumption of COVID-19 death,” she says, “can be made even without testing.  Based on assumption alone the death can be reported to the public as another COVID-19 casualty.”

There is a question-and-answer section on the memo.

One question is, “Will COVID-19 be the underlying cause?”

The answer is:  “The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate.  However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause more often than not.”

Another question is, “Should ‘COVID-19’ be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?”

The answer is: 

“COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.”  [Boldfacing in original]

“You could see how these statistics have been made to look really scary when it is so easy to add false numbers to the official database,” Bukacek says.  “Those false numbers are sanctioned by the CDC.”

“The real number of COVID-19 deaths are not what most people are told and what they then think,” she says. 

“How many people have actually died from COVID-19 is anyone’s guess … but based on how death certificates are being filled out, you can be certain the number is substantially lower than what we are being told.  Based on inaccurate, incomplete data people are being terrorized by fearmongers into relinquishing cherished freedoms.”

It’s hard to argue with what Dr. Bukacek says, but no doubt angry social media mobs will find a way as her chilling words enlighten the populace that has been bullied into submission.

Of course, the disease’s body count is not the sole concern we should have about the Chinese contagion, but it is undeniably the primary driver of the rampant mass hysteria that has allowed state and local governments across America to crush our cherished civil liberties.

As they say in newsrooms:  if it bleeds, it leads.  Deaths are always going to be more “sexy” than confirmed cases.  It is the number that really, really counts, and Americans know this. 

The fraudulent death statistics also give ammunition to the legions of snitches and scolds who try to shame their fellow Americans for attending church or playing catch in an empty park or taking a harmless drive in the countryside to prevent themselves from going stir-crazy.

The fake death data from the CDC, coupled with wild guesstimates from experts, and the relentless barrage of fear porn the mainstream media subjects Americans to around the clock, have been getting results, even with a plague that is, so far at least, underperforming.

First, experts told us 2.2 million Americans would die.  Then the number fell off a cliff, plunging down to around 200,000. 

As of April 8, the number of those expected to die from the disease by August 4 was down to 60,000, or roughly a very nasty flu season.  The new figure comes from the influential model produced by the University of Washington that the White House regularly cites.

Has social-distancing, wearing face masks, hosing down packages with bleach, using hand sanitizer that is at least 60 percent alcohol, and washing hands with soap and water for a minimum of 20 seconds helped bring the grim worst-case-scenario body count down? 

Probably, I’m guessing, but it’s hard to know for sure.

Maybe those epidemiological modelers can be forgiven for scaring the bejeezus out of Americans.  Epidemiology is not, after all, an exact science, as its practitioners sometimes acknowledge.

But those who have force-fed modelers skewed data that led to the terrifying death forecasts that stampeded governors into pushing the nation down the road to totalitarianism need to be held to account.

Let the investigations begin.

 

Matthew Vadum is an independent investigative reporter in Washington, D.C. and author of Team Jihad: How Sharia-Supremacists Collaborate with Leftists to Destroy the United States and Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Can any government statistics on COVID-19 deaths be trusted?

It is an open question now that we are learning that the highly respected, world-class Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been lying to us.

This revelation comes a few days after I wrote here at American Thinker that New York City was lying about COVID-19 deaths.  The normal rules about reporting deaths have been violated by that city in the rush to inflate the body count, presumably to steer more taxpayer money to the Big Apple.

That the CDC isn’t telling the truth to Americans is no conspiracy theory:  it’s right out there in the open for everyone to see.  The CDC openly admits that it is fudging the COVID-19 death figures.

We know this because, among other truth-tellers, a plainspoken small-town physician from Kalispell, Montana, has pulled back the curtain.

Dr. Annie Bukacek, MD, explained in a presentation how death certificates are made.  (See “Montana physician Dr. Annie Bukacek discusses how COVID-19 death certificates are being manipulated,” YouTube, April 6)

Why should anyone care how a certificate of death is made?

Everyone should care “today when governments are making massive changes that affect our constitutional rights and those changes are based on inaccurate statistics,” Bukacek says.

The system is deeply flawed, she argues.

Few people know how much individual power and leeway is given to the physician, coroner, or medical examiner, signing the death certificate.  How do I know this?  I’ve been filling out death certificates for over 30 years.

More often than we want to admit, we don’t know with certainty the cause of death when we fill out death certificates.  That is just life.  We are doctors, not God.  Autopsies are rarely performed and even when an autopsy is done the actual cause of death is not always clear.  Physicians make their best guesstimate and fill out the form.  Then that listed cause of death … is entered into a vital records data bank to use for statistical analysis, which then gives out inaccurate numbers, as you can imagine.  Those inaccurate numbers then become accepted as factual information even though much of it is false.

This has been the way it has been done for some time, Bukacek says.

So even before we heard of COVID-19, death certificates were based on assumptions and educated guesses that go unquestioned.  When it comes to COVID-19 there is the additional data skewer, that is –get this— there is no universal definition of COVID-19 death.  The Centers for Disease Control, updated from yesterday, April 4th, still states that mortality, quote unquote, data includes both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19.  That’s from their website.

Translation?  The CDC counts both true COVID-19 cases and speculative guesses of COVID-19 the same.  They call it death by COVID-19.  They automatically overestimate the real death numbers, by their own admission.  Prior to COVID-19, people were more likely to get an accurate cause of death written on their death certificate if they died in the hospital.  Why more accurate when a patient dies in the hospital?  Because hospital staff has physical examination findings labs, radiologic studies, et cetera, to make a good educated guess.  It is estimated that 60 percent of people die in the hospital.  But even [with] those in-hospital deaths, the cause of death is not always clear, especially in someone with multiple health conditions, each of which could cause the death.

Bukacek refers to a March 24 CDC memo from Steven Schwartz, director of the Division of Vital Statistics for the National Center for Health Statistics, titled “COVID-19 Alert No. 2.”

“The assumption of COVID-19 death,” she says, “can be made even without testing.  Based on assumption alone the death can be reported to the public as another COVID-19 casualty.”

There is a question-and-answer section on the memo.

One question is, “Will COVID-19 be the underlying cause?”

The answer is:  “The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate.  However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause more often than not.”

Another question is, “Should ‘COVID-19’ be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?”

The answer is: 

“COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.”  [Boldfacing in original]

“You could see how these statistics have been made to look really scary when it is so easy to add false numbers to the official database,” Bukacek says.  “Those false numbers are sanctioned by the CDC.”

“The real number of COVID-19 deaths are not what most people are told and what they then think,” she says. 

“How many people have actually died from COVID-19 is anyone’s guess … but based on how death certificates are being filled out, you can be certain the number is substantially lower than what we are being told.  Based on inaccurate, incomplete data people are being terrorized by fearmongers into relinquishing cherished freedoms.”

It’s hard to argue with what Dr. Bukacek says, but no doubt angry social media mobs will find a way as her chilling words enlighten the populace that has been bullied into submission.

Of course, the disease’s body count is not the sole concern we should have about the Chinese contagion, but it is undeniably the primary driver of the rampant mass hysteria that has allowed state and local governments across America to crush our cherished civil liberties.

As they say in newsrooms:  if it bleeds, it leads.  Deaths are always going to be more “sexy” than confirmed cases.  It is the number that really, really counts, and Americans know this. 

The fraudulent death statistics also give ammunition to the legions of snitches and scolds who try to shame their fellow Americans for attending church or playing catch in an empty park or taking a harmless drive in the countryside to prevent themselves from going stir-crazy.

The fake death data from the CDC, coupled with wild guesstimates from experts, and the relentless barrage of fear porn the mainstream media subjects Americans to around the clock, have been getting results, even with a plague that is, so far at least, underperforming.

First, experts told us 2.2 million Americans would die.  Then the number fell off a cliff, plunging down to around 200,000. 

As of April 8, the number of those expected to die from the disease by August 4 was down to 60,000, or roughly a very nasty flu season.  The new figure comes from the influential model produced by the University of Washington that the White House regularly cites.

Has social-distancing, wearing face masks, hosing down packages with bleach, using hand sanitizer that is at least 60 percent alcohol, and washing hands with soap and water for a minimum of 20 seconds helped bring the grim worst-case-scenario body count down? 

Probably, I’m guessing, but it’s hard to know for sure.

Maybe those epidemiological modelers can be forgiven for scaring the bejeezus out of Americans.  Epidemiology is not, after all, an exact science, as its practitioners sometimes acknowledge.

But those who have force-fed modelers skewed data that led to the terrifying death forecasts that stampeded governors into pushing the nation down the road to totalitarianism need to be held to account.

Let the investigations begin.

 

Matthew Vadum is an independent investigative reporter in Washington, D.C. and author of Team Jihad: How Sharia-Supremacists Collaborate with Leftists to Destroy the United States and Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Judicial Watch, a watchdog organization, has filed a lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its counties for having nearly one million inactive voters on their voting rolls.

On Thursday, Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit against North Carolina, Mecklenburg County, and Guildford County, alleging that state election officials have failed to clean voter rolls in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

North Carolina, according to its own state data, has nearly one million inactive registered voters on its voter rolls. Likewise, Judicial Watch alleges that Mecklenburg County and Guilford County each have more registered voters on their rolls than the total number of eligible voters in the regions.

For example, Judicial Watch analysis finds that Mecklenburg County has a voter registration rate of 107 percent, while Guilford County has a voter registration rate of 102 percent. In Mecklenburg County, Judicial Watch alleges there are about 115,000 inactive voters on the voter rolls, and in Guilford County there are about 72,000 inactive voters.

According to Judicial Watch, about 17 percent of North Carolina’s voter registrations are inactive as of 2019 — making it the fifth-highest state in the country for inactive registered voters. The average state has an inactive registered voter rate of about 9.6 percent.

In about 19 North Carolina counties, Judicial Watch alleges, there are 20 percent or more inactive voter registrations that remain on the voter rolls. Three counties have an inactive voter registration rate of 25 percent or more.

Specifically, about 15.5 percent of Mecklenburg County’s voter registrations are inactive, while 18 percent of Guilford County’s voter registrations are inactive.

The court brief comes as left-wing organizations, funded by billionaire George Soros, are spearheading a nationwide effort to hold mail-in state primaries and nationwide mail-in voting for the 2020 presidential election.

Election expert Eric Eggers, research director of the Government Accountability Insititute, has said such a plan would potentially send mail-in ballots to an estimated 24 million ineligible voters — including two million dead voters and nearly three million voters who are registered to vote in more than one state.

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the West District of North Carolina. The case number is 3:20-cv-00211.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

The coronavirus outbreak reveals the value of faith communities in assisting people during times of crisis, said radio host Dennis Prager, author of The Rational Bible: Genesis and founder of PragerU. He joined Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow to discuss religious beliefs amid adversity.

Shortcomings in secular and unmarried life may be revealed during the coronavirus pandemic, estimated Prager.

“I think that people will realize that there’s been a certain foolishness in thinking that a godless and religionless life is is rich,” said Prager. “It isn’t, and it’s crises that make that clear.”

Secular people lack a “built-in community” relative to the faithful, added Prager.

Understanding the value of companionship in a loving marriage becomes more widespread in difficult times, Prager remarked.

“The other thing that I think is going to come out of this is I think that all these young people in America who have a cavalier attitude toward marriage … may realize that being alone with my CEO status or my Yale PhD isn’t quite as good as being with somebody that I might love and who loves me,” Prager determined.

LISTEN:

 

Marlow asked, “Has the absence of faith left us more vulnerable at this moment? Because I can’t help but feel that it has.” An “absence of faith” leaves people less prepared to confront suffering, he added.

“Of course we’re better prepared,” replied Prager, describing religious practice as preparation to deal with suffering. “Who’s better prepared if a ship sinks — people who have been practicing swimming their whole life or people who don’t know how to swim? The religious know how to swim when there’s bad stuff.”

Prager described part of his mission as helping people “understand why God is important.” He said, “I never try to convince people about God’s existence. I only try to convince people of God’s necessity. That’s far more important to me.”

“I don’t believe that that God will protect me from COVID-19 more than a secular guy,” Prager stated. “I do not believe that, so I just want to make that clear, however, that doesn’t mean you don’t call on God. ‘God is my shepherd. I shall not want.’ It doesn’t mean God is going to save me and not my secular neighbor. I don’t believe that.”

Prager continued, “I am absolutely convinced that a subtext here is that secular people fear death more. And we don’t want to die any more than anyone. I love life. I love my family and friends. I love everything I do. I’m crazy about life, but I don’t fear death. I believe there’s an afterlife. I don’t think this is all there is. Clearly, if you think this is all there is then you will fear losing it more than the guy who thinks this isn’t all there is.”

Marlow asked about reconciling worldly suffering with belief in God. “Why does God allow this to happen, and how would you describe it to people who do feel like they’ve been abandoned in times like this?”

Prager responded, “This is the oldest question. The book of Job is entirely about this. First of all, religious people are are not only allowed — but expected — to ask God, ‘Why do you seem like you’ve abandoned me?’ For a Christian, Christ on the cross’s last words are, ‘Why have you abandoned me?’”

Struggling with God is a biblical theme and “completely in keeping with being a religious person,” noted Prager. “The first monotheist, the first Jew, Abraham, argues with God,” he said. “The name Israel means argue with God.”

Prager went on, “God does not abandon us. Just because God doesn’t save us doesn’t mean he’s abandoned us. If God saved everyone in hardship, then belief would be idiocy. It would be nonsense. Of course people would believe. It’s like a celestial butler, ‘God, I have a trouble here, okay?’”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand Americans a year die from errors in hospitals, 250,000,” Prager remarked. “We’re not close … so I personally am more worried about the shutdown of the society than I am of COVID-19.”

A virtual seder will be available via PragerU on Wednesday beginning at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.

Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.

The coronavirus pandemic is exposing how the Food and Drug Administration puts Americans at increased risk of sickness and death. Decades of killing medical innovation and forcing industries offshore made this inevitable.

It can no longer be denied that the U.S. is overly dependent on China, especially during a national emergency that will result in political ramifications for both countries.

Rightfully, many are questioning how things got this bad. As political stock rises in calls for change in Washington, Americans must watch out for any false debate that merely aims at rearranging deck chairs.

The real debate should be over how best to downsize or abolish the FDA, which has contributed greatly to the vulnerable state in which America now finds itself.

The FDA is one of those many creatures of Congress that effectively wields legislative, executive and judicial power with almost no real accountability. It has grown mightily since its inception in 1906.

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Yet thanks largely to the servile mainstream media, many Americans have never imagined how the country might benefit from doing away with the bureaucracy. That may change now.

The FDA’s most public failure is its most recent: the blocking of any private production of COVID-19 test kits during the initial outbreak. How many Americans will pay the ultimate price for this policy remains to be seen.

It wasn’t until March 16, over two weeks after the first American diagnosed with coronavirus died, that the FDA allowed private labs to have their testing kits approved by state agencies. By that time, thousands of people in the U.S. had been infected, and nearly 100 had died.

Sadly, the only test kits available before then were produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They didn’t work, but luckily for the CDC, government agencies are never held to the same standard the private sector is.

Intrepid journalist James Bovard has documented for decades the FDA’s fatal flaws that pushed much of the American health care sector to foreign countries or out of business entirely. He traces these flaws back to at least 1990, when Dr. David Kessler was made commissioner.

As enforcer, Kessler employed tactics familiar in communist countries. His top enforcer of the Drug Surveillance Branch was quoted in a Washington University in St. Louis scholarly paper as saying, “We used to say that if a company made certain changes, then we would probably not take any action. Now, we won’t. Now, even if they make the changes, they might end up in court. We want to say to these companies that you don’t know when or how we’ll strike. We want to eliminate predictability.”

Bovard noted in a recent piece that the medical device industry was hit hard by Kessler’s FDA, citing an American Electronics Association survey that showed “40% [of medical device companies] reduced the number of U.S. employees because of FDA delays, 29% increased their investment in foreign operations, and 22% moved U.S. jobs overseas.”

Securing those foreign-produced devices for Americans has not been easy. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took it upon himself to have around 1,000 respirators flown into Los Angeles from overseas, but their delivery was held up by the FDA.

Despite the agency’s best efforts, there are still productive companies making medical devices in America. The San Francisco-based company Nurx announced a $181 coronavirus home test and a plan to send out 10,000 of them just four days after the FDA lifted some of its restrictions on private tests.

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However, Nurx was forced to cancel its product release because the FDA so far refuses to curtail its restrictions on home tests.

The lack of test kits are only half the story of America’s prolonged struggle with the coronavirus. The other half is the overregulation of medical treatments and medicines, which also dates back to at least the 1990s under Kessler.

Kessler ordered that approved drugs should only ever be used for their original purpose. Even if the approved drug was found to cure or treat another ailment, the manufacturers were prohibited from informing doctors of the fact.

It should be clear now why the mainstream media so reflexively maligned President Donald Trump for suggesting the anti-malaria medicine hydroxychloroquine could be used to treat coronavirus.

The media has a long history of cheerleading for increased government intervention or simply running cover for the regulators.

Take for instance this March 31 Bloomberg article with the headline: “Coronavirus Forces Cancer Trial Changes Patients Long Sought.” You have to read nine paragraphs before learning the FDA eased up on its clinical trial regulations. Is that what the headline suggests?

Coronavirus forces regulators to cut their own red tape to save face. That’s the real narrative of the whole government response to coronavirus. Reporters aren’t lazy. Telling the truth would be easier than lying.

The failures of the regulatory bodies and the media are piling up, but Americans may still recoil at the thought of outright ending the FDA. Any political leader who cares at all for public health must at the very least call for a drastic downsizing of the runaway bureaucracy.

The types of prohibitive powers the FDA exercises were once thought to require a constitutional amendment. Alcohol prohibition, after all, wasn’t instituted by a simple act of Congress, but instead was enacted through the 18th Amendment.

Shortly after the failure and repeal of prohibition, there was a dangerous shift in how the Congress interpreted its powers under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The FDA might be the most egregious example of the consequences of this disastrous turn in history.

The Congress cynically touted the Commerce Clause as a mandate to legislate beyond their limited, enumerated powers. As a result, the original purpose of the Commerce Clause, to ensure free trade between the states, was flipped into an unlimited power to prohibit commerce.

This is how the FDA grew into its current monstrous form.

In order to overcome the coronavirus crisis and to be fully prepared for the next public health episode, America must rid itself of the bureaucracy that has slowly choked out the greatest medical industry in the world.

If Americans want to live in a truly free country, one that is actually independent instead of dependent on the likes of China, then there must be internal reform before any meaningful external reform. It begins with rolling back the FDA.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

In the midst of a pandemic, here’s a friendly reminder that in the world of socialized medicine, a quality year of your life is too expensive once it costs more than $37,000.

That number comes to us from the National Health Service, the state-run health provider in the United Kingdom. The agency is now under fire for rules which critics say would discriminate against the poor and the aged amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Even The New York Times, usually not taken to dissing the NHS, didn’t sound overly thrilled with socialized medicine when they wrote a piece about it last Friday.

“Denying lifesaving care to conserve public resources is nothing new for Britain’s National Health Service,” The Times reported.

“In expensive treatments for cancer and other diseases, the health service officially limits what it will spend to postpone a death: 30,000 pounds, or about $37,000, for each year of full ‘quality’ life provided to a patient.

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“In the case of a pandemic, the public guidance from health officials for more than a decade has been that doctors should prepare to withhold scarce resources from the weakest patients in order to save more of the strong, especially with the use of life-sustaining ventilators,” the article continued.

“Yet now that a pandemic has finally arrived, the health authorities this week balked at spelling out exactly how to make those agonizing choices, evidently for fear of a public uproar.”

Huh.

This apparently reeks of heartlessness to The Times, which is surprising because, well, this is what you get in a system where rationed health care is built into the equation.

But at least it protects the most vulnerable among us — you know, unlike free market health care. Right?

Well, not entirely. The Times reported that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government “has elected to avoid the political pain of disclosing its already-drafted criteria for deciding which patients should be allowed to die of the disease — even those with some chance of survival.

“The absence of official guidance could effectively force front-line doctors to improvise their own criteria, lawyers and ethicists say, potentially consigning poor, aging or disabled patients to the back of the line,” The Times said.

The outlet goes on to note how the state-run health care system in Italy is so overwhelmed they’re withholding life support to some patients — a policy that American states and other European countries are reportedly “scrambling” to put in place “in case their hospitals become overwhelmed.”

However, the British were supposed to have expertise in this sort of thing, particularly when considering how familiar they are with rationing.

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“In the U.K., these are decisions by public bodies for which they are publicly accountable,” David Lock, a lawyer providing advice to the British Medical Association regarding legal and ethical issues, told The Times.

“Therefore, there is an urgent need for a clear framework for doctors to make these decisions on behalf of the public bodies that employ them.”

And therein lies the problem with the humane hand of the central planner.

Advocates for the aged argue that otherwise hearty older people might be shunted to the back of the line for resources by doctors who use age as a stand-in for health.

Advocates for the poor say the impoverished have more pre-existing health conditions like diabetes and heart disease, which means doctors might pass them over in favor of individuals with no pre-existing conditions.

The problem is that this is a feature, not a bug, of the NHS.

There are other problems with the United Kingdom’s pandemic readiness. The country has fewer than 10,000 ventilators available at the moment and one of the most broken testing regimes in the developed world.

Things don’t get much different when we aren’t in pandemic times, especially when you consider the fact that you only get £30,000 for a year of quality life. And even then, it’s (yet again) bureaucrats who determine what a”quality” life is.

According to a 2015 U.K. Independent piece, the country’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (or NICE, because if you drop just one letter from it the acronym seems positively Orwellian) is an agency which decides which drugs and procedures to allow and which ones to restrict due to cost.

“The drugs that Nice considers have already been licensed by the European Medicines Agency for use as safe and effective treatments,” the Independent reported. “That they work is not in doubt — the issue for Nice is: do they deliver value for money? Nice’s job is to answer the question: is the benefit they bring worth the cost, or could the money be better spent buying, for example, extra nursing care?

“To do that, it relies on what are acknowledged to be bafflingly complicated calculations based on economic models around which dispute swirls. The bottom line for Nice is that a treatment must deliver an improvement in quality and/or length of life at a reasonable price. That price is set at £20,000-£30,000 per Quality Adjusted Life Year (Qaly) — a measure of the improvement in either the quality or quantity of life that treatments can bring.”

There are innovative treatments that can go above this ceiling, but this is generally considered to be what the system is willing to countenance.

Meanwhile, absent pandemics like the current crisis, in a fully free market health care system, total premiums should always surpass total coverage costs. That way, you don’t have rationing.

Instead, in systems like the United Kingdom’s, you have a situation where the costs will always have to be tamped down and the care will always have to be rationed.

If you think it’s more egalitarian, think again.

If you can afford it, there’s also private health care in the United Kingdom — so even with a government-run system, there’s still health care mobility for the wealthy.

In the meanwhile, consider that most of the United Kingdom’s population is in the hands of a government that doesn’t think they’re worth more than $37,000 a year.

Don’t get me wrong: The people of the NHS — the doctors, nurses and other health care professionals — are doing fantastic work in one of the hardest-hit countries in all of Europe, particularly given their limited resources.

While they may be irreproachable, the system they work in is fantastically broken.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

This time, The Times isn’t fooling anybody.

The “newspaper of record” has spent four years on the warpath against Donald Trump – first as when he was a presidential candidate, then against the Trump White House – and has pushed the boundaries of new lows a supposedly journalistic enterprise can hit while abandoning its duty.

In an article this week, The Times published a veiled accusation that Trump is pushing the use of an anti-malarial drug to help those struck by COVID-19, and not even its leftist fellow travelers in the national media could go along.

Brutal day for The New York Times. The worst of the worst at The Washington Post, Vox, and Snopes were like “yeah that’s a pretty ridiculous fake news narrative.” pic.twitter.com/EmO1v8OMq4

— Matt Wolking (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@MattWolking) April 8, 2020

At issue was a Times report published Monday that suggested that Trump’s consistent pumping for the drug hydroxychloroquine might be really motivated by the billionaire businessman’s desire to make more money.

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Why else would an American president be promoting a drug he thinks could save the lives of countless of his countrymen – not to mention citizens in other countries?

As The Times article snidely put it, “the president’s assertiveness in pressing the case over the advice of advisers like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist, has driven a wedge inside his coronavirus task force and has raised questions about his motives.”

The ”raised questions” construction is a journalistic classic, a cowardly, passive-aggressive way of sliding a reader directly into the accusation a news outlet wants to make. And in The Times’ case, the accusation was that Trump was acting out of the worst mercenary motivations.

“If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president,” The Times wrote. “Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.”

Considering the article – which took four Times writers to produce, judging by the bylines – pretended to be an exploration of why Trump might be so enthused about a potentially lifesaving drug in the middle of a devastating epidemic, that was a pretty weak case to make for a president acting out of pecuniary interest.

So weak, in fact, that the ludicrously liberal “fact-checking” site Snopes couldn’t stomach it. The “explaining” leftists at Vox thought it was too much. And even a writer at The Washington Post (the anti-Trump newspaper that shared a Pulitzer with The Times for its “Russia collusion” reporting) called it out.

The “small personal financial interest” The Times mentioned is beyond “small.” As Snopes reported, the Trump money invested in Sanofil comes from three family trusts that have interests in a mutual fund that has a minuscule interest in the company. At its maximum, Trump’s investment amounts to $2,490.

That’s not an amount even a moderately middle-class criminal would take a risk for. To suggest that a billionaire president would is simply insane.

Vox writer Emily Stewart noticed.

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So the issue on the Trump/Sanofi thing is that if I were planning to make money off talking up a stock, I’d … invest directly in the stock, not a small portion through a mutual fund. Like if I’m talking up Apple and am invested in an S&P index, I’m doing it wrong.

— Emily Stewart (@EmilyStewartM) April 7, 2020

Fellow Vox writer Sean Collins went to considerable lengths to try to make Trump look bad in his report on The Times claim on Tuesday, but there was no getting around the fact that the allegation The Times was hinting at was a bust, and even liberals knew it.

At The Washington Post, correspondent Philip Bump again tried to slant the story in such a way that it was Trump’s fault The New York Times had tried to start a whisper campaign against him as some sort of merchant of death, but the bottom line was the same, the story was wrong.

Or as The Post headline tried to color it: “Trump’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine is almost certainly about politics, not profits.”

Obviously, the anti-Trump smear wasn’t new to The Times.

On the news side, among examples too countless to name, it’s thrown endless man-hours into drumming up the “Russia collusion” hoax. It was the conduit for former FBI Director James Comey to leak the memos that helped spur the appointment of the special counsel that dogged Trump’s first three years in office.

On the opinion side, its stable of columnists seem to compete to outdo each other with insults for the president – and by extension his millions of supporters. (The “winner” so far might be the reliably inane veteran columnist Gail Collins, who wanted to rename the coronavirus – which had killed more than 85,000 worldwide as of Wednesday – the “Trumpvirus.” She’s not the only reason 60 percent of Americans don’t like the media’s coverage of the crisis, but she’s one of them,)

It even published, in a full-length opinion page piece, anonymous claims from a supposedly high placed administration official claiming a “Resistance” is thwarting the president.

And through it all, it’s been hailed for its dedication to debasing journalism (like that Pulitzer Prize.)

But when The Times stooped to the veiled accusation that Trump is attempting to profit from the coronavirus pandemic by promoting a drug that he allegedly has a financial stake in, it stooped too low even for libs in the Trump-smearing business.

Naturally, Trump supporters took note.

Why do they keep doing this to themselves. It’s one blow after another. They are totally illegitamate at this point

— Diane Roy (@DianeRo25123293) April 8, 2020

hahah…everything they try to throw at him backfires…See the glory of the Lord!..

— Sandy Halverson (@sandyhalv46) April 8, 2020

They’ve had a few brutal days over the last 3 years. How are they still in business?

— Ted Baxter (@tedbaxter99) April 8, 2020

This time, the newspaper couldn’t even convince those most willing to suspend disbelief in order to swallow any accusation hurled against Trump from virtually any corner.

But this time, The Times wasn’t fooling anyone.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

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