ALAMEDA COUNTY’S NEW COVID DEATH TOLL IS 25% LOWER THAN THOUGHT:

A quarter of all deaths previously attributed to COVID-19 in Alameda County weren’t actually caused by the coronavirus, the Alameda County Public Health Department announced today.

That puts the county’s new official COVID-19 death toll at 1,223, down from 1,634.

The 25% decrease—or 411 cases—is due to the fact that COVID “wasn’t a direct cause” of death in these cases, according to county health officials.

County officials decided to revise the numbers after they reviewed guidance from the California Department of Public Health about how to classify deaths as being caused by COVID-19. The new count more accurately reflects how many people died as a direct result of, or complications from, a COVID-19 infection.

“There are definitely people who died from reasons that were clearly not caused by COVID,” said Neetu Balram, a spokesperson for the Alameda County Public Health Department.

Brit Hume adds that, “The overcounting fed the panic that produced the lockdowns, school closings and other regrettable decisions.”

As Jordan Schachtel wrote late last month in a Substack article titled, “What to make of the COVID-19 lab leak theory,” “The virus was not the cause for global catastrophe. It was the response to the virus that crippled the global economy and our society. The disease was not nearly as damaging as the ‘cure’ for the disease.”