James Madison once said, "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.” The coronavirus fascists have succeeded in cementing their illogical, immoral, and illegal policies through the prism of false information about the timing of the virus, the specific nature and severity of the overall fatality rate, the number of actual deaths, and the utility (or perhaps harm) of lockdown policies in actually mitigating deaths – all the while obfuscating the much higher collateral deaths and damage caused by the lockdown itself.

Every day we learn new information demonstrating the lies driving lockdown. Here are some of the most important ones from over the weekend.

1) The shocking inflation of COVID-19 death numbers: From day one, we were warned that states are ascribing every single death of anyone who happens to test positive for the coronavirus — even if they are asymptomatic — to the virus rather than the clear cause of death. Now, thanks to a lawsuit in Colorado, the state was forced to revise its death count down by 23 % over the weekend — from 1,150 to 878. The state is now publishing numbers of deaths “with” COVID-19 separate from deaths “from” COVID-19. As I reported on Thursday, county officials started accusing the state’s department of health of reclassifying deaths of those who tested positive for the virus but died of things like alcohol poisoning as COVID-19 deaths just to insidiously inflate the numbers. This revision in Colorado is a bombshell story that, of course, will remain unknown to most Americans. Every state needs to do this, and if they did, we would find an across-the-board drop in numbers by at least 25%, the same %age by which Dr. Birx reportedly believes the count is being inflated, according to the Washington Post. For example, in Minnesota, state officials are now admitting that every single person who dies in a nursing home after testing positive is now deemed to have died from the virus, never mind the fact that 25% of all natural deaths in a given week occur in nursing homes and that most cases of COVID-19 are asymptomatic, which means more often than not, they died exclusively of other causes.

2) States with longer lockdowns had worse results: Kyle Lamb posted a solid analysis on Twitter, grouping states by how long they implemented a lockdown and averaging out the deaths per 100,000 people by each grouping. The results are stounding, as there is a perfectly inverse relationship between how long a state implemented a lockdown and how successful it was in keeping the deaths down. I independently cross-checked these numbers, and they appear to be accurate.

While this doesn’t necessarily prove that lockdowns cause more COVID-19 deaths (although they definitely cause other deaths), it’s nearly impossible to assert the other way around – that lockdowns prevent deaths – if we see zero correlation in the data. This is especially true given that Florida is the third most populous state and has the highest concentration of seniors, yet deaths and hospitalizations are way down since the state reopened on May 4. Florida is more densely populated than Michigan and Pennsylvania, yet has one-sixth and one-fourth of the deaths per capita, respectively. The same holds true for Georgia, which is a fairly densely populated state. Infections are down over 40% and deaths are down 31% since reopening. As Secretary of Health Alex Azar said yesterday, “We are seeing that in places that are opening, we're not seeing this spike in cases. We still see spikes in some areas that are, in fact, closed."

3) Outside nursing homes, the fatality rate never warranted such action, even if it would work: Every day we find more hard data showing that the overwhelming majority of cases are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, and outside nursing homes, the chance of dying is very low and very limited to a population we can more efficiently shield. For those who are younger and healthier, deaths are almost nonexistent. Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries and has a higher overall fatality rate than others, yet its age-stratified fatality rates mirror what we have seen in the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and elsewhere. One Twitter commentator has broken down the age-based fatality rates of the comprehensive Spanish antibody study, and the results are similar to what we’ve seen elsewhere: 

He used public information to calculate the case data and the population age data, and I have spot-checked some data points and they all seem on target. It’s identical to what the Netherlands found.

Remember, Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries, but even there, 57% of all deaths and the overwhelming majority of deaths of those above age 80 were in senior care facilities. When you take them out of the equation, the death rates are shockingly low. Yet the same politicians who focused on locking up an entire country failed to care for those in nursing homes. This demographic COVID-19 death chart from Massachusetts speaks volumes about the targeted scope of the danger.

It’s essentially the same story in every state.

4) Outside New York, this is barely worse than bad flu seasons: While Europe is opening its schools, almost every U.S. state continues to keep schools shut. Yet according to the CDC’s latest weekly report, "For children (0-17 years), COVID-19 hospitalization rates are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates at comparable time points during recent influenza seasons." Even the World Health Organization’s top scientist just admitted that children “seem less capable of spreading the virus.” As for everyone else, if you look at the bump in overall deaths for most states (outside the tristate area), they are either at, slightly below, or slight above the 2018 flu season. But at this point, everything is way below a typical flu season in the winter, yet you wouldn’t know it from listening to the media. According to the CDC, hospitalizations and deaths have been declining in all 10 designated regions for the past 3-7 weeks. Still, we are now being more fascist that even Italy in violating civil rights.

5) Excess deaths are from the lockdowns, not the virus: While there is zero evidence that lockdowns saved any lives of coronavirus patients, there is clear evidence they cost other lives. It has been observed in a number of states that there are excess deaths being detected, primarily from people dying at home. The CDC is predicting 21,462-40,097 excess deaths NOT due to COVID-19, likely from those too scared to come to the ER because of the exaggerated risk being associated with COVID-19. Also, a recent analysis of excess deaths in England shows that they are seeing thousands of people dying at home from other symptoms because of the lockdown.

6) Social distancing was invented by a high-school kid and politicians, not scientists: Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for Economic research reports that the origin of this cult of “social distancing” being used for totalitarian lockdowns was the brainchild of a high schooler’s sociology paper in 2006, promoted by the Bush administration during the avian flu. It was widely mocked by the epidemiological community, including by Johns Hopkins, for “causing the potential for a ‘serious adverse outcome,’” thereby ensuring that “a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

How have we allowed such an illogical approach to crush our liberties, economy, hospitals, education, and criminal justice? How have we lost our freedoms?

The answer is that the public is not getting the right information. This is why the political class is doing everything in its power to censor anyone who dares question the idolatry of this lockdown cult. YouTube has censored the videos of Knut Wittkowski, who was a top epidemiologist in Germany and then served as the head of biostatistics, epidemiology, and research design at Rockefeller University. One would think we’d want to hear his opinion, but there is only one view that is allowed to gain traction. Why is it that only one side is scared of the information of the other side?

As James Madison warned, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Editor's note: This article has been corrected to note that Florida is the third most populous state, not the fourth. CR regrets the error.

Updated: After the publication of this article, it was reported that one inmate at the Trousdale prison in Tennessee has died of COVID-19. Six others have been hospitalized, and one of them is in serious condition.  1 out of 1,300 is a remarkably low fatality rate. The inmate who died was reportedly 67 years old. The original article is below.

Lots of cases, very small number of deaths. That is how this virus works on all but the elderly and sick. The perfect case study? Prisons.

The ACLU is demanding that all prisoners be released because they might catch the insanely deadly virus COVID-19 and all die. Well, in fact, the ACLU is more correct than they realize, so much so that they are completely wrong. It’s true that SARS-CoV-2 spreads like wildfire in a confined population, but that horse has already left the barn. It is likely that hundreds of thousands of prisoners have contracted the virus, most are asymptomatic, and only a decimal of a decimal die. Thus, the fact that it has spread far and wide actually demonstrates that this is not the bubonic plague many people think it is, so long as you shield the most vulnerable people.

In what should be a national headline, the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Hartsville, Tennessee, tested every single inmate and found that out of 2,444 tests, 1,299 inmates tested positive. That is 53% of the inmates! Among the staff, it was 50 out of 281, with a few more pending results. Here’s the kicker: 98% were asymptomatic!

It is, therefore, quite evident that this virus has been spreading for quite some time in this prison, and yet nobody has died: Not one person out of over 1,300 staff and inmates infected.

Numerous serology study results have been extrapolated to show that when you account for the true number of people who have gotten this virus, the infection fatality rate drops to 0.1%-0.3%. And the deaths are very lopsided among the elderly and chronically ill, which indicates that younger and healthier people have an even lower risk of dying from COVID-19 – perhaps even 1 in 3,000, depending on the age or health status.

This latest case study from Tennessee proves the point. Many media pseudo-academics have cast doubt on the accuracy of serology tests and using them to extrapolate for the broader population. But there is no better case study than a prison, where you can test the entirety of an isolated population and get exact percentages.

We are seeing this across all state and federal prisons. It’s basic math. For example, we know that 70 percent of the roughly 2,700 federal inmates who got tested for COVID-19 were positive. There are 146,000 federal inmates in total. How many of those have the virus? We don’t know yet, but after the virus has been spreading for months in close confinement, that number has to be enormous.

According to Rep. Fred Keller, 33 federal inmates have died from the virus. If 70 percent of this confined and defined universe had the virus, that would mean the fatality rate is a remarkable 0.03 percent. But even if we assume only 20 percent of the total federal prison population had the virus, which is roughly in line with the rate in other confined environments, such as the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the Diamond Princess cruise ship (and in line with the staff infection rate in the Tennessee prison), it would still be a fatality rate of just 0.1%, or 1 in 1,000.

But it’s very likely the ratio of those infected is much higher. According to Reuters, a recent tally of 3,277 inmates in state prison systems in Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia who had tested positive for the virus showed that 96 percent of those who tested positive were asymptomatic.

Most federal prisoners are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s (80% are under 50), so it makes sense for their fatality rate to be under that of the macro numbers (0.1-0.3%) we are seeing from the serology tests.

According to the Marshal Project, 187 prisoners have died from the virus in state prisons. There are roughly 1.2 million state prisoners across the country. Again, if just 20 percent of them have the virus, that would be a 0.08% fatality rate nationwide in state prisons. If we use the 53% infection rate in the Tennessee prison and extrapolate nationally, that would be an infection fatality rate of 0.03%. In one women’s prison in Louisiana, 75% tested positive.

While the median age of state prisoners is roughly the same as the national median (38), there are significantly fewer seniors. Roughly 16% of the general population is over 65, while just 2.2% of state prisoners and 2.8% of federal prisoners are over that age. Just 10% of the state prison population is over 55, compared to 29% of the general population.

Thus, if anything, the hard data from prisons seems to show that the fatality rate, extrapolated for the general population, is actually correct and that if you isolate the numbers for younger adults, the numbers are even lower.

Similarly, not a single detainee in ICE detention facilities has died, despite the fact that 60 percent are testing positive.

The government is doing everything it can to obscure the fatality rate and muddle the separation of risk levels so that we can’t better target and prioritize the quarantine. But by hook or by crook, we will find out the truth from an unlikely source, thanks to aggressive ACLU efforts to empty the prisons and ICE detention facilities. The mass hysteria over coronavirus for the entire population might just burn itself out as the truth hits the fan in the nation’s prisons.