My wife and I had a couple of foreign exchange students live with us for a year. They have since returned home, and we still keep in touch with them. However, while they were here, we listened to them talk about COVID from their country’s perspective. I was full of melancholy as I heard the tones in their stories. They used the phrase, “back during COVID,” like you and I would say, “back when I was a kid.” COVID stole from their youth. They knew it. They knew they didn’t get the same opportunities their parents got. For these guys, even their first kiss with a girl was delayed by COVID! Listening to their stories is a part of our memory of our time with them.
A little over a month ago, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) stopped collecting COVID data from the hundred-plus countries that were sending it to them. I have kept this hyperlink in my “news” folder long enough to realize I must decide if it still belongs. Certainly, it was considered news. It changed the world more than anything that has happened since I was born about 60 years ago. They discontinued their resource center operations but left all their data in a public-facing format, just as they promised they would. The media placed this closure of data collection in the same category as the retirement of an old battleship going to drydock as a future tourist attraction. However, it isn’t just like an old ship with no life other than its history.
To start, this is some of the most objective and protected data the human race has ever collected, and there is justification that deserves a moment of consideration. JHU established itself as the global non-governmental leader, with that last distinction being very important. Around the world, educated people don’t trust the government to report what is happening. JHU’s role as a private and independent university, willing to take all incoming data from all governments without any duress to filter it, made this data meaningful. The “bad data” was not removed, as is often the case, and as some think probably happened. To this day, people still think all of the output from their data collection has been fudged by some government or big pharma to manipulate us. Did Elvis just reemerge, as well? JHU had no behavioral obligations to anyone in government. They weren’t family members to Fauci, the president, Chinese authorities, or EU officials. They were Public Health experts, MDs’, engineers, and security specialists who wanted to collect data, create outputs people were asking for, then make all that public-facing in case someone discovered they were wrong. That last distinction gave them global credibility.
Fortunately, our god is a god of measurement. Throughout history, he measures time, distance, height, weight, duration, age, etc. He also gave us a gift of pattern recognition that includes numbers. We remember songs after only a few notes, even if we haven’t heard the song in decades. We remember our street addresses from 50 years ago. All of this recall uses the mathematical and pattern recognition centers of the mind that are built into our identity as we were created.
We also remember the bad patterns, too. We remember the day of our parent’s death. Some of us still count our parent’s or grandparent’s age, even if they have been dead for years.
So, JHU stopped listening to new data. We had enough. There was a consensus that the pandemic, as a global phenomenon, was over, all opinions in and weighed.
Here is the output, unadulterated. In it, you will find yourself following creation and looking at the numbers and the patterns.
So, now that we are “done” with the data collection and all that is left is analysis, let’s hit some myths that linger. It is a sad moment to be an American as I see the number of people who still think these myths are credible and aren’t willing to unwind their own thinking. Since when are we scared of the truth?
Our world’s CIVOD database continues to exist not as a news source but now as a link to data, full of undiscovered observations. Hopefully, you are mature enough not to believe the myths and can do as your teachers instructed you over the years to look at the facts, by yourself and draw conclusions that stand up to the test of multiple reviewers.