@thepeg Can you point me to the information on in fact what on earth is the Pasteur Protocol? It may be true that in the past you needed to isolate and cultivate bacteria in order to identify them but that is rarely the case these days as you now have technologies that don't require them. I have been a data scientist/bioinformatician working with genomics and high throughput sequencing data for the last decade so I really need some more than a conspiracy documentary to believe in any of what you have just posted.
You also mention incorrectly that they test for any corona virus which again is definitely not true, they use a PCR method that relies on unique parts of the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 which have been selected to be unique to the virus by genome comparison with other coronavirus. Here is the link for the protocol you can you are interested which also mentions the specificity of the test versus other "flu" like viruses.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-so...-institut-pasteur-paris.pdf?sfvrsn=3662fcb6_2
@
Rorschach can you share with us the data that supports that coronavirus is less deadly than influenza? To me, it just seems like you don't really understand the problem here. The issue here was never the death rate of the virus, which I am afraid is still higher than influenza currently estimated around 0.5-0.7%, although with the caveat that estimating accurately is difficult. Of the ones that recover from severe illness the damage done to their lugs is also going to likely affect them long term
But in any case, the problem comes from a novel virus which is highly infectious being exposed to a complete "naive" population, i.e. a population without any known resistance to it. That poses 2 main problems if you let the virus run free too many people will get infected simultaneously putting pressure on the healthcare system and more people will get the disease so more people will die. Hence lockdown measures to control the spread, that also has another advantage as we are likely much better at treating the disease now than at the beginning as more information about what works and what doesn't comes to light.
As for excess deaths, it is difficult to compare data that far back as medicine and treatment have massively changed and improved over the last 20 years. This year does indeed shows an excess death superior to the average of the last 5 years, although has already been mentioned so did 17/18 although over a broader period. It is also pretty difficult to compare the data has this year has been a specially one due to the lockdown, but there is no denying the existence of a late peak on the winter season which correlates to the arrival of COVID-19. The lockdown itself also likely reduced the number of deaths through the normal flu, traffic accidents, injuries and so on but also likely increased deaths related to lack of treatment so it's true effect on excess deaths is difficult to measure.