While COVID-19 is a deadly pandemic, it is useful to compare it to pandemics of the past.
The news of COVID-19 terrifies billions of people. This terror frightens people into accepting lockdowns, mask mandates, mandatory vaccines, and vaccine passports without regard to the costs of these measures. This fear has separated people from one another, destroyed livelihoods, and caused an epidemic of anxiety and increased deaths of despair. The damage caused by lockdowns and fear have transferred trillions of dollars from the poorest to the richest and have caused untold psychic pain.
Fear has eroded freedoms around the world and in Boulder County.
The goal of this page is to present facts about COVID-19 to help you make good choices to protect yourself, your family, and the community.
Natural Immunity to COVID-19.
In Boulder County, there have been 56,155 reported cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, as of Jan 27, 2022. For each reported case, there are at least an additional 4.7 people who have been infected who don’t even know it, according to the CDC. This means that around 263,000 people or around 80% of those living in Boulder are naturally immunized. (326,000 call Boulder County home.)
According to a large Israeli study, “Natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.”
Natural immunity is equal or superior to existing vaccines, according to over 140 studies showing the effectiveness of natural immunity to Covid-19.
As of January 2022, 74 million American’s reported cases of COVID-19 as of January 26, 2022. ( In January 2021, over 30% of all Americans had natural immunity to COVID-19, according to Nature.)
Nationally, there are 74 million reported cases of COVID-19 as of Jan. 26, according to Statista.
COVID-19 kills sick people
The vast majority of those killed by COVID-19 were severely ill before contracting the virus. According to the CDC, >94% of those who died from COVID-19 had on average four comorbidities, Because CDC fails to distinguish between those dying with COVID-19 and those dying from COVID-19, the percentage who die from comorbidities may be even higher. Furthermore, many hospitals do not report obesity as a comorbidity. If obesity were included, the percentage of deaths due to comorbidity may be higher yet.
COVID-19 kills sick people who happen to be old.
As people age, many become ill and more susceptible to COVID-19. While some believe that COVID-19 kills everyone, facts reveal a different story.
The average age of people killed by COVID-19 is older than the expected average lifespan (79 in the US). This is also seen in the UK, where the average life expectancy is 83 and the average age of people killed by Covid is 84. 93 percent of COVID-19 deaths nationwide have occurred among those ages 55 or older, according to data from the CDC.
“As of December 2, 2021, around 28 percent of total COVID-19 deaths in the United States have been among adults 85 years and older, despite this age group only accounting for 2 percent of the U.S. population.” according to Statistica.
COVID-19 does not kill young, healthy people. The CDC reports that 542 children under the age of 18 have died with a COVID-19. According to research conducted by Johns Hopkin’s Professor Dr. Marty Makary, all of the children they examined who died of COVID-19 had a preexisting illness.
Compared to other Pandemics, COVID-19 is relatively less severe.
Around 5.5 million people around the globe have died of COVID-19 as of January 27, 2022. This represents 0.07% of the world’s population of 7.9 billion people.
Had the COVID-19 pandemic happened in 1918, no one would have noticed. This is because COVID-19 kills older people, many of whom would not have lived long enough in 1918 to have contracted COVID-19. The average age of those who die from COVID-19 is 20 years older than the age of the average life expectancy in 1918 (age 55). 93 percent of COVID-19 deaths nationwide have occurred among those ages 55 or older, which is older than the average oldest age of people living in 1918.
The chart below compares the deadliness of COVID-19 to other pandemics.
Notes
In addition to the bad news about COVID-19, we now know enough to protect people, including the most vulnerable without implementing draconian measures. We can also find reassurance to know that in Boulder County, no one under the age of 30 has died of COVID-19 and that we can give extra care and protection to those most vulnerable. Data also shows that many people have natural immunity which is up to 27 times more effective than vaccines.
If the social and economic disruption was necessary to prevent a Black Death type of pandemic, it would have been worth it. But data shows that the COVID-19 pandemic was orders of magnitude less deadly. We need to make sure that the cure is not more deadly than the disease.
What if we put COVID-19 into perspective? Would we be so afraid? Would we allow others to mandate lockdowns, masks, vaccines, vaccine passports, and government overreach? Could we save more lives? Would we allow the transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthiest 0.0001 percenters?