34. Millions of Unneeded COVID Deaths in 2021?

December 14, 2020 Minding Corona No Comments

What do you think?

December 12, 2020

	Daily	Total
Cases worldwide	704.570	71.454.215
Deaths worldwide	12.413	1.600.483

(from Worldometer)

Nobody dies with no reason.

There is always a reason. But this present reason is irrational. It is inhumane. It is insupportable.

These are fathers, mothers, children.

They say that one death is worse than one statistic. At least, Joseph Stalin said it this way, meaning it in a certain way, in which peculiar way he was right.

Millions?

There are 1.6 million official COVID-deaths until now. A number of these are debatable: Would this one or that person still live without COVID? For some of them, the answer is negative; so, should they be counted as COVID-deaths?

On the other hand, many COVID-deaths are not officially counted, out of fear, shame, demoralization, or just a lack of resources. From what I know of this small world, you may count 50% more deaths, uncounted.

Those of you who have read Minding Corona know that the worst is yet to come. That is, in 2021, and maybe in 2022, and 2023.

That is the directly COVID-related chunk.

Most deaths will be out of starvation.

In 2021, there will be 270 million people on the brink of starvation, daily, according to the World Food Organization. That is 180 million more than pre-COVID. These are mainly COVID-related due to lockdown, one way or another. Say that only +/- 2% of these will die of hunger and lack of clean water, COVID-related. That easily makes 3.6 million.

With the direct COVID-related death toll in 2021 comparable to 2020 -> Direct + indirect COVID-related death toll amounts to +/- 6 million.

There’s a time when empathy reaches beyond itself.

I’m not talking about sympathy or emotional contagion. [see: “Landscape of Empathy”]

Empathy. You’re sitting in a boat, and you don’t care anymore. At any moment, you can jump into the water, please. There is a sea of misery.

Because the horror is so preventable in several ways. For example, the West could act like China.

We in the West want our freedom. Goodness. As good as no one in the West knows what freedom is about, in the first place. [see: “You Are Free Even while Freedom Is an Illusion“]

The same don’t know what ‘I’ is about, what consciousness is about, where motivation comes from, what religion is about, what ‘human depth’ might be, and not even whether rationality might be reasonable after all.

Still, we want ‘our freedom.’

In this case, I would prefer China.

Still, the West doesn’t need to act like China. Maybe there’s value after all in the Western quest for freedom, even while it’s misguided at present. It might be a road worth traveling on.

Yeah, it might be a road worth traveling on for China too!

I am convinced. There is strong merit in having the same goal worldwide. People can come together, understand each other, live in peace, and be ready for A.I. singularity ― hopefully in time.

What a wonderful world (it would be)!

Feet back on the ground. Or, at least, in rationality and science, where we encounter:

Your mind is more powerful than the virus.

Of course.

How powerful? We don’t know. My own experiences and scientific wanderings show me that, with optimal support, this may be a matter of millions of lives – saved or squandered. Yes, it is harsh.

Yet today, an extensive search in PubMed reveals almost no attention to this aspect. Remarkably, the few mentions that I found are by non-Western authors (Iranian, Indian, Chinese). Moreover, they’re not of the highest scientific quality.

So, there is little to no experimental science about the influence of the mind on COVID progression, whether positive or negative. There is a ton of theoretical science that shows mind→immune influences. The fact that nowadays, empirical science is necessary to make something ‘look like science’ is a fleeting historical artifact. There is no intrinsically rational reason for it to be so. It is, in the end, a sociological soon-to-be-relic.

Moreover, in anything mind-health-related, present-day experimental science has already shown to be a fluke. I dare to discuss this with anyone who dares to put his career on the scales. Of course, before he starts putting, I would like to show him the evidence. After that, go ahead, seriously. I mean, 100% seriously.

Vaccination time?

Looking at the present studies, I have this comment:

In a large group of subjects (+/- 30.000), those with heightened vigilance and suggestibility (not gullibility!) may be the first (of the few hundred) to ‘feel symptoms’ or notice existing minor symptoms, thus being subjectively diagnosed. They may also be the first to break the blind. When sensing to be in the placebo group, they may be feeling/sensing more symptoms (nocebo), thus getting more readily diagnosed. In the mRNA studies, there are several blindness-breakers, such as unblinded administrators. The study may therefore be a measure of vigilance and suggestibility rather than vaccination efficacy.

The clue is that ‘placebo’ is still not understood well. It is precisely about suggestibility. [see me on PubMed] So, in a novel study design, one can be very, indeed, very wrong ― especially with so few subjects in the real studies: only a few hundreds. Where in a good double-blind study, the suggestible are rather shunned, here, not on purpose but by study design, they are distilled from 30.000.

The fact that this has not at all been taken into account is preposterous. We don’t know how well the present vaccinations work. My guess is that they will, all in all, probably not influence the death toll pretty much in 2021.

Of course, I know

that these deaths form only part of the total misery caused by not wanting to see the true mind-related influence on health and well-being.

It is about so much more.

Yet COVID is new, visible, like the shockwave of a comet hitting the earth from a blue sky.

When I started studying medicine in 1979,

I had a vision – still remember it well – of only getting through seven materialistic years by turning my heart into a stone. I succeeded just enough. Meanwhile, during those years, I did read a lot of literature, poetry, depth psychology, philosophy, and all that really matters for healthcare.

It matters more now than in those years.

Medicine is technical. A good doctor also brings his heart – not just some superficial sympathy – into the consultation room. But that is not medicine. It is the physician as a person.

Medicine itself is technical.

Apart from this, the heart can be brought in different ways. It doesn’t even need to be medicine. It may be some kind of mental health hygiene…

Before that happens, millions will keep dying unwarranted deaths from psycho-somatic illness every year. Even more will suffer. Even more than this will not attain their potential.

At least, this deserves our attention.