how to massively skew reporting of covid deaths and vaccine reactions

when you subsidize something, you get more of it. when you tax it, you get less.

economics is based on a simple premise: people respond to incentives in predictable ways.

people mistakenly presume this applies only to money, investment, production, etc. this is not so. it applies to every kind of tradeoff that humans make as they engage in the decisions that determine the course of their lives. all of them.

it’s easy to get people to do more of something if you pay them to do it. that’s simple and straightforward.

hospitals got paid massive sums for finding covid cases. there was a huge pool of federal money that went to them and vastly boosted revenues. states got aid based on covid counts and covid deaths, so they found ways to get more covid on more death certificates. it’s just simple math. you do what pays.

even family members were recruited into the act and medical fees were paid for by the government if it was covid (but not, for example, if it was pneumonia).

even funerals got into the act.

all in all, it has been a massive river of money flowing into the “go and make a lot of covid” industry.

like medieval rat catchers who got paid by the tail, everyone was incented to turn in as many as they could.

but, at a certain point, the ratmen are showing up with pieces of twine, strips of leather, and anything else they can pass off as rodent parts.

can anyone act even remotely surprised that that occurred here in a program with so little oversight? look what happened with the relief money:

do you seriously think that hospitals were different?

no way.

they were, right from the start, wizards of case coding optimization, insurance mining, subsidy snarfing, and maximizing revenues from everything from payment pools to over-testing and complex billing. their back offices run like hedge fund arbitrage departments.

no way they missed covid.

here’s the hospital meghan ranney claimed was overwhelmed.

patient counts were WAY down from 2019.

but revenues weren’t.

that came from somewhere. and the by-product was lots and lots of reported covid.

and lots of doctors tried to “help” patients by getting them coded covid so that they got federal funds and did not have to pay out of pocket.

honestly, it was a kind thing to do given the incentives.

everyone got their share of the gravy.

that’s subsidy for you.

but what of penalty?

because if you report a vaccine adverse event (AE) you get in trouble. the feds frown. there’s zero money in it. even the boards that certify doctors have been threatening licenses for telling “unapproved vaccine narratives”.

and instead of a vast gravy train of covid cash from uncle sam, when you get a vaccine reaction, you are ON YOUR OWN.

the internet is full of stories like this.

peer support groups for the vaxx harmed are all over.

but support from the government that told them to get vaxxed or the vaccine companies that said it was safe?

nope. nada. none.

instead, it’s “te absolvo” and the vaccine makers skate with their gold plated indulgences fresh from the pharma popes in hand.

hospitals cannot help you pay. the government leaves you behind.

as ever, thomas sowell is on point:

and contrary to what many claim, the VAERS system is hard to use. it’s clunky, difficult, and requires reams of information. so the hurdle was never a low one.

adding in putting the doctor in jeopardy to win nothing from the state or for the patient by doing so leaves you with a system reliant on people spending time and effort and perhaps taking personal risk to get nothing back in return save the feeling of “having provided data.”

this all works to raise the price of reporting. it’s functionally a tax.

hardly a recipe for high participation rates.

imagine instead that vaccine AE’s were treated like covid cases, covered by the government, paid by special funds, and patients not left hanging and out of pocket. imagine what VAERS would look like then. imagine what every insurance company would be clamoring to duck and every patient leaping in the air to catch.

can anyone doubt VAERS deaths in the US would be 80,000 not 8k?

the simple fact is we’re getting what we paid for.

we paid for fake rat tails and so buckets of shoelaces we got. covid counts of hospitalization and death “with” covid vs “from” covid have inflated this pandemic by multiples.

meanwhile, we made it costly and fruitless to report adverse events. and despite this VAERS has blown out to 10-200X any level ever seen before.

so much of this data is a mess because the choices made in public health made it a mess.

call it stupid or call it willful (the truth is likely some of both) this has been an unprecedented set of perverse incentives, subsidy tax, and bribery and threats.

it’s the inevitable consequence of letting bureaucrats run riot with nearly unlimited funding in short time frames, play fast and loose with rules, definitions, and standards, and not only bear zero responsibility for outcomes, but profit from perverse ones.

this all needs tearing out, root and stem. agencies should not have anything like this power and the wet pants panic panderers in congress who enabled this grand grift all need to go as well and their power be curtailed as well.

we’ve been paying lip service to small government for decades while both parties have blown out budgets, debt, and power.

the issue of our time is slaying leviathan, of returning the state to one limited to and ONLY to those powers specifically enumerated and granted to it.

free people and free markets create and weigh incentives well.

dictatorial states do not.

you just got a nice big whiff of what that machine looks like when it really springs into action.

how did you like it?

now it wants to do the same with climate and social justice and energy and business.

and trust me, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

so what are you going to do about it?

because if we do not starve this monster, it WILL eat us.