The year 2020 is coming to a close in a couple of months. This year is challenging to say the least. COVID 19 involves the entire planet. Many countries are still under quarantine. However, is 2020 the most challenging year globally with pandemics?

Looking Back

Once an epidemic disease spreads beyond a country’s borders, it’s then officially classified as a pandemic. Communicable diseases will always exist. The shift from agrarian life 10,000 years ago created communities, making epidemics more possible. Close living quarters make the spread of disease easier.

Therefore, what are the deadliest pandemics through history?

1. Cholera can go from asymptomatic to a fatality in just under three hours. Cholera is a diarrheal disease caused by a bacterium that is usually spread through water or food systems lacking proper sanitation. There have been pandemics in South Asia (1961), Africa (1971), and the Americas (1991). Every year, there are as many as four million cases of cholera with more than 100,000 dying as a result.
2. Ebola comes with a high mortality rate, killing almost half of those infected. However, mortality rates can run as high as 90 percent. The deadliest Ebola outbreak spread out of West Africa in March 2014. It killed five times more individuals than all previous outbreaks combined. Cases were reported in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Spain. Full containment of the virus didn’t occur until 2016 two years later. (I live in Arkansas in the U.S. Ebola was seen in one of our larger communities during this time.)
3. Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by parasites leaving those infected with flu-like symptoms. Malaria remains one of the world’s most serious killers, infecting more than 200 million in 2016 and killing almost 500,000.
4. Tuberculosis is a deadly respiratory infection that can take two forms: latent TB and active TB. Latent TB isn’t contagious, and one’s immune system can often fight it off. In fact, one-third of the world’s population has latent TB. Active TB is highly contagious.
5. HIV/AIDS – Scientists believe that the virus crossed over from primates to humans in Africa during the early 20th century. The disease didn’t gain traction in popular culture until the early 1980s when several gay men in New York and California exhibited strange cases of pneumonia and cancer.
6. Syphilis a sexually transmitted disease that first appears with a benign chancre at the spot of infection. Secondary syphilis presents with a widespread rash and swollen lymph nodes. The bacteria enters a latent stage before surfacing as tertiary syphilis, which leads to neuromuscular degeneration, blindness, and dementia.
7. Polio is exceedingly rare today since Jonas Salk developed a polio vaccine. Prior to the creation of a vaccine, polio was easily transmitted in an infected individual’s stool or via droplets when sneezing. The disease is notorious for paralyzing individuals, requiring them to live the rest of their lives in iron lungs or today on respirators. Paralysis caused by polio can’t be reversed. (I personally know two men who had polio as children. Their lives have been very difficult.) 
8. Spanish flu was caused by one of the deadliest 20th-century pathogens, infecting 500 million individuals worldwide.
9. Smallpox is a vicious deforming agent, leaving those infected with noticeable sores across their bodies. In conjunction with other Old World diseases like the flu and measles, smallpox went on to kill almost 90 percent of the Native American population.
10. Bubonic Plague symptoms are devastating starting with fever, sweating and progressing to blackish-blue boils across the groin. If the boils aren’t lanced, they grow and people would die from the toxic buildup. However, lancing the buboes was often just as deadly and could lead to the pathogen becoming airborne.The mortality rate with this disease was upward of 70 percent.

I find it interesting that people no longer seem concerned about these diseases. Diseases like smallpox, polio, measles, and mumps are now starting to rear their ugly heads. As more and more people are not being vaccinated against these infections, they are starting to make a come back.

Coming back to today’s topic

How do we know what the facts are concerning COVID 19? The evidence is strong that the numbers have been inflated. Mainstream news media is pumping up the numbers to keep their readers coming back for information. Fear is a strong controlling factor. It’s a well known fact in the U.S. that covid is being put on death certificates when there is evidence to the contrary. Families are fighting to have this taken off death certificates.

In addition, the reporting of new cases is fictitious. In one of our communities it was reported there were over 300 new cases. Reality is, this was not true. I know nurses who are being pressured to report a covid case, when in reality it’s a lie. They are standing strong and refusing to do so.

Test are being counted, not people. I know that covid testing is done on patients having elective surgery more than once. I will give you an example that I know of. A patient having a knee replacement was tested two weeks before surgery. The test was negative. The same patient was tested again a few days before surgery and this time it was positive. However, the patient had not been ill and insisted on retesting. The third test was done forty-five minutes after the second. It was negative. These test were counted as three different people.

There is strong evidence that many of the covid test are giving a high rate of false positives. Why is this? Money is a factor here in the U.S. States receive money from the federal government for each case reported. The hospitals get a large sum of money for each hospitalized case.

Being a medical care giver, I have many friends who are doctors. Each of these doctors are concerned about the false reporting and inflated numbers. A doctor friend told me this week, he’s concerned about losing his practice because of the shutdown and regulations placed on his practice.

Summary

Yes, there are conspiracy theories running wild. I encourage you to look up the facts from news sources that are trust worthy. The mainstream news media has long proven that the information given to the public is to manipulate the population.

I encourage you to think for yourself. As my mother used to tell me, “God gave you a brain. Use it!”

In part two of this series, we will look at another area of 2020.