Military COVID deaths were not Unusual

Post #1052

The U.S. Military mandated the COVID shot but you have to ask if it was known that, for the military, COVID was no worse than flu. It makes things “worse” if the disease is no worse than flu when you mandate experimental shots with no established safety. By November 2020, 130,000 active duty military had had COVID:

But there were less than 29 total COVID deaths by that time, because there were only 29 total COVID deaths by July 2021:

If there are 130,000 infections and less than 29 total deaths, then that means there are more than 4,483 cases for every death seen — but that happens to be extremely close to the cases-per-death found in adults under age 50 in the flu season of 2013/14:

Those 3,400 deaths from those 13.038 million symptomatic flu infections would work out to a death for every 3,180 symptomatic flu cases, making this flu season even worse than COVID. But a more conservative estimate would work in an estimated 16% asymptomatic case rate for flu, leading to numbers very close to those for COVID:

Cell D13 divides flu deaths into flu infections, finding a death for every 4,536 flu infections — awfully close to the military COVID death rate. The evidence suggests that COVID was not especially dangerous to the U.S. military, so that there was no special pleading which could be formed to justify a COVID shot mandate for them.

Reference

[130,000 COVID infections by November 2020] — Taylor KM, Ricks KM, Kuehnert PA, Eick-Cost AA, Scheckelhoff MR, Wiesen AR, Clements TL, Hu Z, Zak SE, Olschner SP, Herbert AS, Bazaco SL, Creppage KE, Fan MT, Sanchez JL. Seroprevalence as an Indicator of Undercounting of COVID-19 Cases in a Large Well-Described Cohort. AJPM Focus. 2023 Aug 15;2(4):100141. doi: 10.1016/j.focus.2023.100141. PMID: 37885754; PMCID: PMC10598697. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10598697/

[29 total COVID deaths by July 2021] — https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/11/24/vaccines-work-pentagon-says-as-surge-in-troop-covid-deaths-comes-to-a-halt/

[2013/14 flu season cases and deaths by age] — https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/flu/about/burden/2013-2014.html