It’s not a pandemic pandemic. This has not been the mother of all biological nightmares.
Right off the bat the projections of millions dead were regularly revised downward, though Joe Biden keeps saying things like 200 million Americans will be dead from COVID by the time he finishes a three minute speech.
But this isn’t about Mr. Biden or the symptoms of dementia. Anyone who can count and read the data reported by our own Washington Department of Health can see that what we’ve gone through the past nine months has been very serious, with tragedies, challenges and heroic efforts by medical professionals. But it falls short of what has traditionally been understood to be a viral pandemic.
Let’s go back to how the term was understood before the World Health Organization manipulated it as a trigger for lucrative pharmaceutical contracts during the 2009 Swine Flue outbreak. That is when the term started getting mushy because it had morphed from a strictly medical/scientific term into a bureaucratic and political lever for turning on gushers of money and turning off checks and balances on governmental power.
The term’s Greek components mean “of all people.” (pan and demos). This means that the outbreak is not isolated in one community, one nation, or one continent. It spreads everywhere. Further, “pandemic” had always carried with it a connotation of extreme, extraordinary severity in terms of infection, transmission and death.
According to a 2005 WebMD article, using the long-standing Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition, a pandemic means “occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.” It is to be distinguished from a seasonal flu epidemic which “may sicken millions, but those who die are typically a small number of the elderly, very young children, and people with weak immune systems. That’s not the case during the worst influenza pandemics.”
While it is inaccurate to say that COVID-19 is “just another flu,” what we’ve seen resembles the impact of just another but very severe flu.
Washington has a population in excess of 7.6 million. According to the latest Department of Health reports, 2,037 people who had a positive RT-PCR COVID 19 test result have died. That does not mean that it was the virus alone that killed them, or that they would not have died by other causes during this year. By now, we must certainly all be aware that almost everyone who tested positive for the virus and died also had substantial, chronic and sometimes life-threatening health conditions. The Department of Health has also recognized that it had included in its mortality numbers deaths due to homicide, suicide, or accident, and naturally occurring deaths unrelated to COVID-19.
The Department of Health counts as a COVID death anyone who passed away after testing positive and whose death certificate lists COVID “as a contributing factor.” I had unsuccessfully sought information on deaths counted as a COVID death for which COVID alone was the cause. The Department of Health and the Governor’s office did not answer my questions, even though I had been promised an answer. By their silence, I think it is fair to assume that there are no deaths in Washington for which COVID-19 was the cause of death.
In its “Death Category Report,” the Department of Health calculated that 89% of reported COVID deaths were “confirmed COVID” as a contributing factor death. That leaves 11% they can’t say with scientific certainty were caused by COVID as a contributing factor.
Suspected, but not confirmed COVID deaths accounted for about half of that 11%. These are deaths where the cause could be a natural death but the person had at one point tested positive. That brings up another bit of uncertainty. Even in the case of a “confirmed” COVID death it may be counted though the person’s positive test had occurred months before their death. There is no temporal cut-off beyond which a positive test is considered immaterial. The date of the test could be remote from the date of death, but it still goes on the books as a COVID death.
The DOH also includes in its death count those instances where the death certificate merely mentions COVID, but there is no record of a positive COIVD test result. A person could not have COVID at all, instead symptoms of another respiratory illness along with fever, and they are counted as a COVID death.
If we used the 89% DOH “confirmed” cases figure – where COIVD contributed but may not have caused death on its own – and apply that to the most recent DOH total death count, we would be on firm ground in concluding 1,813 deaths resulted from COVID as a contributing but not sole cause of death.
1,813 out of 7.6 million is .02385% of the state’s population.
Not Across All Demographics, and Not Everywhere
These deaths are not spread across all demographics. They are concentrated almost entirely among the elderly who are suffering from other maladies. But, unlike the flu, COVID has pretty much spared the young and young adults.
Those above age 60 account for 89% of all deaths. Those above age 80 account for 51%. Hospitalizations for those above age 60 account for 56% percent of all hospitalizations.
Younger people account for 44% of the hospitalizations, but they recovered with little loss of life. DOH data does not indicate length of hospital stays. Even in the case of a ninety-year old Jefferson County woman, her COVID hospitalization was a mere overnight for observation. She was released and recovered. So we don’t know from DOH stats how long the reported hospitalizations were.
Across the state, though the virus has been diagnosed in every county, is has been limited in terms of the severity of its impact and incidence of diagnosis to a handful of counties. King County alone counts for 33% of all hospitalizations and 37% of deaths. Snohomish County comes in at 11% of hospitalizations and just over 10% of deaths; Yakima at 11% of hospitalizations, 13% of deaths; Spokane at 6% of hospitalizations, 7% of deaths; and Pierce at 11% of hospitalization and 9% of deaths.
These are, excluding Yakima, the most populous counties. But they have about 60% of the state’s population versus 80% of all the COVID-categorized deaths, which is their share if one adds in all the fractions which were rounded in the preceding paragraph.
Of Washington’s 39 counties, 24 have experienced fewer than 10 deaths. Seven have yet to suffer a single death. Thirty-one counties have had fewer than 25 deaths attributed in some way to COVID over the past 9 months.
Add to this one consideration from beyond our state’s borders that shows COVID-19’s lethal impact is not “everywhere.” This image shows that COVID deaths, rather than being “everywhere,” were concentrated substantially in only two states, New York and New Jersey. 
Those two states, as of August 12, 2020, had over 40% of the nation’s COVID deaths, though they rank 4th and 11th in terms of population. New Jersey had a death rate of 1,797.5 deaths per 1 million population, with New York at 1,698 deaths per 1 million of population, versus the national median for states of 308.2 deaths per million population. Washington’s death rate was 226 per 1 million of population. The staggering numbers for New Jersey and New York have several explanations, from mismanagement to gross, perhaps criminal negligence in returning elderly COVID patients to nursing homes where they spread the virus in close quarters to other highly vulnerable senior citizens. The U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division is investigating.
Worse than a Bad Flu, But Not a Pandemic, Either
Remember what was said above, a pandemic is far worse than a seasonal flu epidemic which “may sicken millions, but those who die are typically a small number of the elderly, very young children, and people with weak immune systems. That’s not the case during the worst influenza pandemics.”
COVID has not in Washington killed anyone under age 20, and only 1% of the deaths are among people under age 40. Its impact has been limited to the quite elderly and those who were already very sick with compromised immune systems. Obesity, defined as a BMI greater than 30, always a killer under its own power, has been found in 40% of all COVID related deaths.
The lethality of this novel virus is somewhat geographically limited and not spread evenly across the landscape.
This is thus not a “pandemic” in any traditional understanding of the word.
COVID 19 was never what is was cracked up to be. It never overwhelmed our hospital resources. (See our earlier report.) It fell–thank God–far, far short of the dire predictions used to justify the Governor’s lock down order. COVID is rapidly loosening its grip on Washington. The question remains when, if ever, Jay Inslee will loosen his grip on the lives of the people in this state.
A closing note that reinforces the conclusions drawn above, and also is a cause for hope and good cheer: Of the more than 10,000 hospital beds available statewide, as of September 19, only 266 were occupied by patients with “COVID-like” symptoms and statewide only 21 people were on respirators.
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our "About" page for more information.
Due to the continuing and totally unwarranted ChiCom Virus lockdown and many other social and political deficiencies, Jefferson County remains the most backward county in the most backward state in the Union.