My Rebuttal To Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards

by: Mike Church

[Editor’s note: this was originally published on 18 July, 2020]

I confess, that I am the culprit Governor Edwards mentions in line 1 and give him permission to name me as Public Enemy #1 if it will bring an end to his tyrannical madness in the face of what should be a beautiful summer. Below is the Governor’s Facebook screed and my rebuttal line by line.

JBE: For anyone out there minimizing the seriousness of the current COVID-19 situation across the state and deliberately spreading misinformation, you are doing yourself, your neighbor and Louisiana a terrible disservice. A positive COVID-19 case reported to the state refers to a specific individual, whether they tested positive once, twice or however many times.

“Spreading disinformation” requires that there be information that is invalid, misrepresented or outright false. NOTHING I have “spread” about the CoronaCoup™ is personal opinion and is always meticulously footnoted with primary sources. The governor cherry picks statistics that seem ominous and then uses them to expand his disinformation campaign. At the close of this article I will list some sources I have cited and promoted on:

The complete lack of medical or scientific information that confirms the medical efficiency of “masking” in public.

The “lethality” of Covid19 and its relation to previous flus.

The non-existent data for keeping schools closed because kids are primary transmitters of COVID19.

JBE: One case = one person. It is grossly irresponsible to suggest or imply that the state is inflating numbers.

First of all why is a positive antibody test a “case”? By FDA & CDC’s admission a positive antibody can indicate a PREVIOUS, completely recovered infection. That’s a POSITIVE development that should go on the “good side” of the ledger but the fact is the RT-PCR Test cannot tell us at what stage the antibody is yet the governor often refers to a “case” as an “infection”, FULL STOP, but how does he know that!? And if he does know it, he must reveal the SCIENTIFIC method he is using to make that distinction so we can all see and evaluate it. Furthermore, according to David M Brady ND the FDA says the following of a diagnosing COVID19:

per FDA guidelines, a diagnosis of COVID-19 can only be arrived at when the patient is exhibiting the respiratory symptoms correlated with SARS-CoV-2 infection (ie, cough, sneezing, rhinitis, shortness of breath, elevated temperature) and is also positive on molecular testing of a respiratory sample, preferably with RT-PCR on an NP swab or lung sample (bronchoalveolar lavage or bronchial washing). Additional information supporting this diagnosis can be obtained with “positive” or “detected” IgM antibodies for SARS-CoV-2, preferably with serum sampling.

Translation: The RT PCR Test CANNOT be used to diagnose a COVID19 case. There must also be acute symptoms. By definition then, a “positive” test means nothing and certainly does not equal a “case” and most importantly, without physical examination, an “infection”. There, the governor’s “epidemic” just went up in smoke.

JBE: COVID-19 is going to show up in testing first, hospitalizations second and deaths third.

Does anyone not see the horrid illogic here? Sans the governors “the COVID Sky is falling” campaign, NO ONE would voluntarily be tested for COVID19. If they displayed signs of having “a cold” or “the flu”, SYMPTOMS would show up first THEN (see FDA guidance above) a test might ensue then, in 0.74% of those examples “hospitalizations” might occur; he has the process completely inverted to produce his desired outcome: fear and continued “emergency declaration” status. 

JBE: There’s no way the hospitalizations are going up and the deaths are going up and the cases aren’t going up with them—it just doesn’t make sense.

Did anyone proof read this? Of course it doesn’t make sense, Governor, your logic and reasoning are flawed and your statistics are wrong. “Deaths”, which in Louisiana include “died with COVID19″, are going down, perfectly parallel with every Louisiana flu season since Lasalle discovered the Mississippi river. Furthermore, the FDA guidance on terms is COVID19 is a set of symptoms confirmed by a RT-PCR test:

[A]ccording to FDA, COVID-19 disease can only be diagnosed with positive SARS-CoV-2 results on a respiratory sample.

Now here is the latest data from CDC (July 18th), for Louisiana’s ILI (Influenza Like Illnesses).

While it is true that there is an increase in positive ILI, why is JBE calling 4% of ILI visits, returning positive tests “an alarming spike”!? The “spike” is 1/4 of the May peak which LA hospitals handled without using a solitary “tent hospital” bed that JBE said we would “need 12,000” of. Note in the charts below that the highest number of ILI cases, this CDC cycle, was actually in the last week of November 2019, yet no panic, no masks, and no hysterical alarms!  Even more damning to your “epidemic” fantasy is the fact that in week 25, that’s the 3rd week in June, 2018, there were actually MORE ILI positive tests than there were THIS June during your self proclaimed “epidemic”. Again, this is CDC data for Louisiana.

JBE: We’ve put in multiple redundant systems to scrub the data and to make sure it is accurate and timely. And we are sharing it with the public in a way that we can be as transparent as possible. Even if for some strange reason, which is totally incomprehensible to me, you don’t care about COVID-19, you should care about hospital capacity when you have an automobile accident or need a life-saving procedure.

Newsflash, Governor, Louisiana hospitals are currently at 58% capacity (according to current, LDH figures) of all hospital beds from all 9 regions. Here are the actual numbers:

14,390 = Hospital beds in Louisiana

2,060 = ICU beds in Louisiana

1,585 = “COVID19” Hospitalizations (no reporting on “cases” WITH Covid19 but CDC reports 1536 ILI “positives”)

9,619 = TOTAL hospitalizations in Louisiana

So, there are 6,831 beds available in Louisiana hospitals or 42% of capacity; at the peak of the Covid19 “crisis” there were 1,991 hospitalizations, assuming JBE’s paranoid dream of an “epidemic” for COVID19, returning at previous peak levels, add 406 hospitalizations to the current for a grand total of 10,025, that would leave 6,425 hospital beds; so there are PLENTY of beds available should you get in an automobile accident. Does your health “team” not have calculators or is this not the “model” you guys are using? Again, show us the data that differs from my calculations or stop spreading dis-information.

JBE: This is a statewide epidemic now, and the increase in hospitalizations across the state is alarming.

The amount of TOTAL hospitalizations from week 29-30 actually DECLINED, please check your own LDH website for details. Episdemics require the IFR rates for a known pathogen must be substantial, the medical dictionary defines it thus and the actual data do not support your alarmist claim:

occuring suddenly in numbers clearly in excess of normal expectancy, in contrast to endemic or sporadic.

JBE: We’re especially concerned about Acadiana, Central and Southwest Louisiana. Every health care system in every region is being affected by this surge. COVID-19 is very prevalent throughout our state, and it is more widespread than ever before.

No its not, the only thing more widespread is the use of RT-PCR tests returning positives for anti-bodies which as stated above and as Dr. Johnathan Ionnadis at Stanford Medical Research has demonstrated, the now medically demonstrable IFR rate is a meager 0.27% meaning if 100,000 test positive 270 would die.

Across 32 different locations, the median infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.24%). Most studies were done in pandemic epicenters with high death tolls.

JBE: We are at a critical point, which is why everyone needs to take this virus seriously and continue all of the mitigation measures that we know will slow the spread.

Again, you have no evidence that your “mitigation efforts” have produced anything other than economic collapse, thousands of restaurants & bars permanently closed and citizens turning against citizens to enforce your unconstitutional masking edicts. It is a medically proven FACT that cloth masks do nothing to inhibit the spread of known viruses but they do have well documented, adverse side effects which include increased respiratory sicknesses. The public should educate themselves about this deceitful, government imposed fad of forced masking. The CDC you so love to quote will tell you this if you ask them. Since you’re busy castigating your subjects over their facial fashion choices, I asked them for you.

Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning.

Oh, but there’s much more bad news for you on the subject of the complete hoax that forced public masking is. This is from the May edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.

JBE: Those minimizing the current COVID-19 situation in Louisiana are a small minority, and I want to commend the vast majority of Louisianans for doing their part to stay informed and stop the spread.

Your implication that a small minority of citizens are somehow less patriotic citizens than the sycophants wearing masks in 92º while walking their dogs is insulting and beneath the office of an elected official especially one who signs executive orders claiming statistically insignificant minorities are actually superior to the rest of us. It was a small minority of men who, 234 years ago this month, lay their “lives fortunes and sacred honor” on the line by declaring 13 states to be “free and independent”.

A small minority refused to ride in the back of buses or eat at separate lunch counters. 

And, a tiny minority thought it was possible to “send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth”. Just because the opponents of your acts are a minority does not make us wrong, you of all people should know and respect that and, given the actual, current, medical and scientific evidence, give us and by extension the rest of Louisiana the freedom to choose how we “distance” and sanitize against this flu and the one that comes every October.

For Louisiana Liberty,

Mike Church

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless – Though the whole world relies on RT-PCR to “diagnose” Sars-Cov-2 infection, the science is clear: they are not fit for purpose. Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter

Is SARS-CoV-2 viral load lower in young children than adults? Jones et al provide evidence that it is (in spite of their claims to the contrary). – Kevin McConway (The Open University) and David Spiegelhalter (University of Cambridge)

Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy – Review of the Medical Literature. Here are key anchor points to the extensive scientific literature that establishes that wearing surgical masks and respirators (e.g., “N95”) does not reduce the risk of contracting a verified illness. Dennis Rancourt, PhD

The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data (not yet peer reviewed) – To estimate the infection fatality rate of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from data of seroprevalence studies. John Ionnadis

Studies on Covid-19 lethality – A Compendium of Studies and Research Papers From Across The EU, China and The United States

BIOGRAPHY 

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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