May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Skepticism and critical thinking is not panacea, but can help to understand the world better
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.” President Dwight Eisenhower,
“Chance for Peace” speechApril 1953,
COVID-19 provided an interesting way for the USA population to pay the price for the militarism of its elite.
We can already can state the the US government reaction was subpar:
Both the federal and state governments (especially is the most densely populated areas such as NY metropolitan area failed to
act swiftly despite the expectation that the new virus would become a pandemic.
Both the federal and the USA government failed to adapt and change measures and their strategy as technology to fight the
virus as new facts became available. Failure to protect medical personnel is one of the most blatant blunders. The same is
true about protection of nursing homes, which became hotspots of infection.
The the federal government failed to properly provide for the poor and working poor. These people are forced to demand a
lifting of lock-downs in order to survive financially. Now it is clear that the epidemic disproportionally hit old and
poor.
As of April 25, 2020 the COVID-19 epidemic in the USA is over the peak and is on decline. Period of
exponential growth ended around March 22, 2020 and since then the acceleration is stably negative and now is around 8% a day ( 5
days average). This is a huge, four times drop from around 32% a day during the exponential phase.
Fearmongering graphs with absolute numbers is just a smoke screen over the fact that statistically COVID-19
did not exceeded the lethality a common seasonal flu (nobody is denying that virus pneumonia caused by COVID-19 is much worse then
bacterial pneumonia -- a common complication of ordinary seasonal flu). Fearmongering using absolute numbers is pretty
effective and a very nasty trick ( please note that average mortality in the USA is 8K a day (240K a month) and average number of
infected by seasonal flu in tens of millions; 0.8 million is just minuscule number in comparison), Emphasizing number of positive
case helps to create drama, but the only interesting figure is the number of hospitalization which Hopkins disinformators
conveniently omit. And inside the number of hospitalizations the number of severe cases (patients moved to ISU is also pretty
informative; none is provided )Also the default in right bottom square should be "daily cases" because "confirmed" is not only
uninformative, but represent pure fearmongering.
Unfortunately this silly,
alarmist and incompetently constructed web site became the reference site for the epidemic. It just scream: give me money
poor Pinocchio. Below is the simple spreadsheet that I constructed and that provide a little bit more clear picture of what is
happing since the beginning of the epidemic. From it is is clear that we are past peak and that the virus retreats in all metrics
(daily positive cases, daily death, daily hospitalization, daily ICU cases (ICU cases stabilized at around 14K total and change very
little from day today now), etc)
The USA handing of the coronarovirus epidemic is interesting by its unique mix of effects of neoliberalism and
incompetence of Trump administration (which was distracted in December and January by impeachment farce, thanks to Pelosi and
friends). Effects of neoliberalism with its offshoring on manufacturing, outsourcing of essential functions, and long
transcontinental "just-in-time" supply chains was especially drastic. The country with one trillion military budget had found itself
without masks without sanitizers and even without special goans. Navy leadership was caught without pants, and
Captain Crozier who raises alarm
about the epidemic on USS Theodor Roosevelt paid the price for reveling this sad fact.
Some idiotic race for ventilators also unfolded despite the fact that it was not clear if they are proper tool for treating
severe cases of COVID-19. Unconfirmed information exists that this is more like high altitude sickness due to depletion of
hemoglobin for which ventilator is useless, than malfunction of chest muscles or breathing regulation. In the latter case ( the case
of ARDS ) ventilator does help some small percentage of patients; most die anyway iether while on ventilator or soon after due to
mechanical damage to the lungs). Idiotic statement of governor Cuomo about NY need of 40K ventilators can be viewed as the pinnacle
of this "ventilator hoarding" epidemic.
As you would expect the performance of the
neoliberal state during epidemic can be anything but competent because "greed is good" and depreciation of solidarity does NOT fare
well at such times. Add to immanent to neoliberalism (aka casino capitalism) existence of largely parasitic class of financial
intermediaries (FIRE sector) which like intestinal worms weaken the social organism.
Another factor is the level of degeneration of neoliberal elite. The incompetence on many levels during this epidemic is a symptom of a morally-degenerate managerial
class (in especially its most parasitic forms represented by equity sharks such as Romney, the gallery of "banksters"
like Goldman Sachs "financial hackers", and vulture funds "titans" such as Paul Singer. Regulate corporate management (such as
in IBM or Boeing) also is perverted by MBS types and mostly concerted with self-enrichment by offshoring, outsourcing, cutting
the head count and using this instruments pushing up stock prices and getting outsized bonuses. People infected with neoliberal ideas have no sense of responsibility to anyone other than themselves.
The bank bailout in 2008
buried neoliberal ideology (the preachers of the neoliberal agenda suddenly found themselves without an audience) but also
exposed the level of hijacking of the state by financial oligarchy. It is hard to distinguish between incompetence and fraud.
Much that looks incompetent conceals fraud (stock buybacks, Boeing fiasco, etc). And note that Boeing moved its headquarters to
Chicago “to be more like GE”. Well they’ve destroyed the company to be more like the looters and liars and cheats. Along with GE
there are some other notable poster-children of how private enterprise has committed suicide through the wanton bloodletting of its
skilled employees (Boeing being a recent case-in-point).
The same phenomena can be found in universities, colleges where faculties are no longer bolstered by a strong bench of
tenured staff, contract and non-tenured hire-and-fire disposable staff are now the norm. No matter how many “systems” and “quality
functions” they put in place, experience matters.
The story of the USA reaction on the
emerging coronavirus pandemic can also be viewed as the case study of bureaucratic incompetence, when conflicting institutions and agenda paralyze
any efforts. Fauci slept completely the first two months and then start running from one news outlet to another crying Wolf!
Wolf!. Trump incompetence is only the tip of the iceberg. The whole Deep State proved to be too rigid to properly react
to the epidemic, because each measure looked too drastic and too damaging to neoliberal globalization, until it was late to implement it.
And then it was implemented anyway.
One effect of any large bureaucracy is that any rare oasis of reliable and timely information that exist is to be
suppressed. And this is not Trump fault, although his incompetence exaggerated the effect. This is iron logic of any large
bureaucracy.
What is interesting is that the epidemic is localized in few hot spots with the largest being New York metropolitan areas. So
governments could took measures immediately even without federal government prompting them. And that would be much better that
nationwide shutdown. And FBI and CIA have the local governments in pocket anyway (this is a national security state, not something
else after all). So where was the CIA boss when we
needed her ? Or she is just capable of running Russiagate gaslighting operation type of operations? CIA honchos used to have
audacity to launch the efforts to depose Trump. Can we believe that they can't bypass Trump when they need to?
One of the problems is that financialization and securitization of everything revealed during this epidemic is that has
effectively separated the managerial class in both private and public sector from knowledge and experience of actual logistics and
execution. Transferring securities with the push of a button is not the same as getting an industrial plant or phone center built,
trained, and running efficiently. Companies and organizations with a history of doing this well manage to lost that capability in
only a couple of years after financial shark CEO was installed (e.g. IBM, CDC, FEMA, numerous companies taken over by private equity
). They know the price of everything and the value of nothing
The rise of the FIRE sectors as a percentage of GDP has been obvious for a long time. And now the USA economy is over-financialized. All this has done is
with layer after layers of debt and interest payments to the detriment of the real economy. Financialization
creates a positive feedback loop. Every system with positive feedback loop will crash, sooner or later. Neoliberals worked really
hard to remove not just the negative feedback, but any traces of the negative feedback on financial sector. That makes
COVID-19 recession more serious then in other circumstances and requiring much large bailout of FIRE sector.
The idea that “never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence” (Hanlon's
razor - Wikipedia ) is not longer true. The neoliberal America has a lot of corruption. Some obviously stupid actions are
explainable for short term greed motives. That explains much of what we are seeing now.
CDC botched testing program during COVID-19 epidemic became a textbook example of bureaucratic incompetence. They do not do
competence in Washington. You need to start holding people responsible and that's impossible with the new neoliberal aristocracy
(financial oligarchy), which inherited all vices of the old but none of its virtues.
The virus epidemic which started in the USA in full force only in March (two month after the start of epidemic in China) will probably follow Chinese pattern. Which means the
time to the peak will be around two-three months (which means approximately in late April ot early May the epidemics might start subsiding.). The worst pandemic
going on in the US and around the world in not Covit-19, it is opioid pandemic, 53,000 died last year in the US from opioids abuse
alone.
And this is not just in the US it is a world wide problem.
The aggravating factors for the USA include amazing lack of discipline (especially for teenagers), ignorance, petty greed,
incompetence of the elite, and paradoxically widespread nutty religiousness (allowing religious services while keeping everybody on
quarantines is pretty strange to me.)
Extremes meet: Orthodox Jews and Christian conservatives behavior patterns during this epidemic were very similar to Muslims: the
funniest irony of it all is that while Iran has exacerbated coronavirus spread due to religious ignorance of population, similar
incidents happened in the
US too. Add to this the "American exceptionalism" which in reality is primitive nationalism, and neoliberalism with its deification of "free
markets" which prevent some necessary measures, and "Huston we have a problem"
IMHO any elite who is detached from the actual production process and engaged primarily in parasitic activities
(finance), is decadent.
Any elite who is detached from the actual production process and engaged primarily in parasitic activities
(finance), is decadent. In other words financialization of the economy means decadence of the elite
Pretty drastic measures taken by some states like NY, NJ, California and Washington (Currently New York Metropolital are is the epicenter of the
epidemics with around 50% of all positive test for coronavirus ) were compromised by religious nuttiness and "covidiots" a sizable
faction of younger population and students which went to Florida and other resorts during spring break despite warnings and then,
because universities were closed, brought infection to their communities. Some people considered losing a couple of thousand
dollar which they paid for cruise ship trip more valuable then their health and went to cruise ship tripe even after the incident
with Diamond Princess (the first bad news about passengers on the Diamond Princess came on Feb 4, 2020).
Till March 2e we saw typical for initial stages of any flu epidemic exponential increase of cases, with the number of
patient doubling in approx. three days but a very low number of critical cases and hospitalizations. Later the speed of
epidemics start slowing down and in April dropped to less then 10% a day.
The peak of the USA elidemic might happen somewere in late April, early May. Number of infections among medical personnel, another important
metric, are unavailable (worldometers.info)
It took the USA eight days to get from 100 cases to 1000 and another eight days to get from 1K to 10K. Some of the dynamics
can be explained the low availability of test kits -- this was the area where CDC royally screwed the US population
Unfortunately, the current atmosphere increasingly exhibits the characteristics of a collective panic—and that is always a poor basis
for intelligent policy decisions.
The neoliberal society with its twisted guiding philosophy of radical individualism and competition combined with a supremacist “that
could never happen here” attitude quickly falls into panicked chaos when reality kicks in and reveals the society’s underlying vulnerabilities.
Countries with weak social safety nets and an ideological opposition to social responsibility are extremely vulnerable to systemic breakdown
when their societies are hit with unexpected stress. That is what we see in the USA. This virus is revealing just how ineffective the
neoliberal social Darwinism (“every man for himself”) ethic (aka "neoliberal rationality") is and how deeply in denial and out
of touch with reality these societies are. Including first of all neoliberal politicians.
The for-profit health system in the USA is certainly is very efficient in raking in cash for insurance companies and big pharma.
But health care outcomes are mediocre at best and other countries do a far better job for far less money. The most basic needs of patients
and health care workers are often unmet. Health care workers complain they haven’t received proper training putting them in danger of
infection and do not have supplies to protect themselves even as they treat COVID-19 patients. And that's in richest country in the
world.
...system can’t provide enough hand sanitizer the governor of New York came up with a solution. Andrew Cuomo announced that
the state will produce hand sanitizer made by
prison labor .
We already are No.1. NYC is now world capital of coronavirus infections. The fact that the country with one trillion
military budget and 17 intelligence agencies was caught without pants for this epidemics is incredible. No plan for dealing with epidemic.
States improvise as epidemics unfold, often overreacting with disastrous for the economy results.
We definitely have "Coronavirus recession" now as the second stage of 2008 recession/stagnation. All neoliberal transformation of
the USA economy now had blow into our faces. Silicon Valley is partially guilty as the staunch promoter of neoliberalism and globalization
in the USA. I would jail a couple to "tech titans" just as a useful scapegoats, but only after banksters (especially NYC faction of
private equity sharks who destroyed the US healthcare). Renovation of Alcatraz for this purpose would be a very worthwhile project :-)
The USA might fare worse then China in this epidemic as there are a lot of overweight, deeply unhealthy people in the USA.
Many overweigh people are diabetic. Especially among African Americans, I sometimes
watch with amazement and horror how many barely walk and have difficulties getting out of the car. Especially all those 300+ pound women
and men.
For a country with one trillion military budget not having enough masks and ventilators and accepting help from China and Russia
is very humiliating. Level of bureaucratic incompetence demonstrated in this particular case is just staggering.
Now it is clear the healthcare system has military importance. What is worse is that as the USA is considered now "not capable to
adhere to signed treaties" there might be a new round of armed race in this particular area.
And in the USA healthcare is almost completely broken and taken over by private equity sharks. Only people with a good insurance are OK in this
environment (let's say top 20% or so). Most of the population are screwed up. Ambulance ride can cost you neat $5K even if you have
insurance, as most ambulances are conveniently "out of network" and are owned by Wall Street scum. Doctors here are not always trustworthy.
For example, dozens of cardiac surgeons landed in jail performing unnecessary operations of healthy patients. And for one caught, probably
tens exist that were not caught. Horrible stores abound. Inserting stents into healthy patients became a national hobby. Such a money
sucking insects in white gowns.
Many people are afraid to go to the hospital even in case of real emergencies, as they do not have health insurance. That includes
most of contractors. Because hospitals now are also owned by Wall Street scum. Financialization, as it is called. AKA Casino Capitalism.
Selling stocks, buying stocks, getting bonuses. Most readers probably know the game and participated in this game (as marks ;).
That means that those people will propagate virus and make the epidemic worse and much longer. In NJ not 100% of front
line staff of shops that still open still wearing masks (and almost nobody wear masks before March 20 or so). What is the value of quarantine
is such situation is very unclear to me. Also not all shops force visitors to disinfect hands on entry. This is another big no-no.
Some shops that enforce two meter policy inside create lines of hundred of people outside which probably serve better for the propagation
of the virus then presence inside the shop as the period of close infection is longer.
Frontline staff of still opened shops who do not wear masks will propagate virus and make the epidemic worse and much longer.
In NJ (No.2 state in the USA, as for the number of tested positive) not 100% of front line staff of shops that still open
still wearing masks (and almost nobody wear masks before March 20 or so).
What is the value of quarantine is such situation
is very unclear to me.
It is quite possible that the virus originated from the USA. There was so called "vaping pneumonia" epidemic int he USA in august
2019. Google "vaping pneumonia" -- it looks very similar to the COVID-19 virus pneumonia. Just a different category of affected:
mostly smokers of some nasty staff. And for some reason nobody made genomic analysis of this the pathogen in this illness, which raises
an important question: Is it different from COVID-19 or not?
I would like to state it again: the fact that the country with one trillion military budget was caught without pants for this epidemics
is incredible. And this is for a country with laboratories which store anthrax and other nasty staff. IMHO a large part of Pentagon
brass, all those "Pentagon perfumed princes" need to be replaced after this incident.
Not enough stockpiled masks (even regular surgical mask, to say nothing about N95 masks), no ventilators (or more correctly not enough),
no reserve production capacities to produce them, no plan how to deal with epidemics, some ad-hoc improvisations on state level. In
other words this country does not have ability to produce N95 masks in quantities needed even for hospital staff (and you be be
sure that in case of epidemic international supplies will not difficult to get.) Just a bunch of expensive and semi-useless F35 and
aircraft carriers to feed military industrial complex. BTW aircraft careers and submarines proved to be perfect places for the propagation
of this virus. Warships (like cruise ships) are for this virus like mosquitoes for malaria.
To add insult to injury this court jester Dr. Fauci, since 1984 the director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) slept over all January and woke up only in late February, crying Wolf,
Wolf. He should not only be dismissed but prosecuted for criminal negligence. This old hat should travel to China or Korea in Jan and
access the situation immediately because close ties between China and the USA in globalized economy. You do not need to have Ph.D to
understand the NYC and LA will be next after Wuhan.
On the positive side epidemic is slowing down in the USA from average increase of positive probes 34% a day to 24% a day. I calculated
some statistics and it is clear the danger is overblown and just enforcing wearing of masks in public places would do the job in this
particular case.
There are only slightly above 30K hospitalizations (read cases of virus pneumonia) in the USA so far. Statistically this is just
noise in comparison with seasonal flu (810K hospitalizations) but the virus pneumonia itself is very nasty (with fibrosis of lungs of
various degree as a common outcome), so this is not apple-to apple comparison. Flu mainly causes bacterial pneumonia.
The original reaction in the United States government to the corona outbreak was surprisingly casual. It is unclear what information
multiple intelligence agencies have had, because now they were engaged in efforts to save face and blame Trump administration and China
(U.S.
intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic ).
One of the most regrettable blunders was that the administration did not close access to senior care centers for visitors and some
of them which became the local centers of infection. As well as religious congregations. Some orthodox congregations and evangelical
congregations became hot spots for propagating infection. Is it so difficult to worship your God in masks ? Hand disinfection
was also not implemented.
Trump administration did absolutly nothing in January and February to rump up local production of masks and other clothing necessary
for medical personnel to fight infection. Medics, who are in most danger among all population groups, were not systematically
trained by Koreans (the USA has two month to do so). Proper protocols were not established. This was the major blunder of
Trump administration and the case of bureaucratic incompetence what will be studying in textbooks.
In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. Unfortunately,
we do not know if these measures
work. School closures, for example, may reduce transmission rates. But they may also backfire if children socialize anyhow, if school
closure leads children to spend more time with susceptible elderly family members, if children at home disrupt their parents ability
to work, and more. School closures may also diminish the chances of developing herd immunity in an age group that is spared serious
disease.
The USA government behaviour drastically changed in March 11 with Trump's surprise announcement of cancelling air travel from
EU countries for 30 days. Initially GB and Ireland were excluded, which provide for strangled travelers a "window" of escape. Later
they were added. Still all this was badly planned and caused major panic with ticket prices for the last flights from EU to the
USA skyrocketing to ten thousand dollars.
CDC blunders is another parts of the story of bureaucratic incompetence. CDC did not launch the training of medical personnel in
January to use protective gear, despite that the fact that the virus severely affected medical personnel in Wuhan.
There was no efforts to create "reasonable" safeguards in US airports, despite that fact that both are known centers of infections.
There were only very limited attempt to establish the screening and mandatory quarantine of passengers in airports, arriving from international
flights.
Looks like the USA government completely wasted the whole January February and met flaring up of infections in March unprepared.
And what is most important CDC botched the production and distribution of virus tests leaving the country without them till late March,
when testing can change nothing. Gin was out of the bottle.
It seems the CDC, NIH and the USA privatized health care system in general was caught flat-footed and didn't have any plan to execute.
Currently CDC does not even provide the information about how this particular virus spreads Look at this pitiful document (Transmission
of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) CDC)
The virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person.
Between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet).
Through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs.
Spread from contact with infected surfaces or objects
It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching
their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
And this is from organization with several billion dollars budget and specialized labs which theoretically should be able to
establish precisely how virus replicates in short order. And what are possible health effects for those who get severe and critical
cases but did not die.
At the same time Trump attempted to fight panic spread by neoliberal MSM as for mortality and that's probably the only positive
part of the government response (
Trump disputes World Health Organization death rate )
Asked about WHO's coronavirus fatality rate findings during an interview Wednesday, Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity: "Well,
I think the 3.4% is really a false number."
He added, "now, this is just my hunch ... based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of
people will have this, and it's very mild."
Trump later put the number at less than 1%.
Later events proved that he was right.
While some problems that the USA now experiencing with coronavirus are the direct or indirect result of blunders (like CDC blunder
with test kits; of overcrowding of returning passengers in airports on arrival from Europe after the fight ban), some are not.
Many things are rooted deeply in neoliberal globalization and perverted neoliberal rationality. Both make proper reaction to dangerous
epidemic almost impossible. So by-and-large the USA current problems were unavoidable.
Also in epidemics like in war mistakes are to be made. At the same time repeating Chinese mistakes was pain vanilla incompetence.
Classic bureaucratic incompetence, if you wish. While there are no perfect responses in the current environment (the availability of
a vaccine would change everything), the earlier government reacted, the slower the virus would spread.
But under neoliberal globalization any reaction like closing international travel and mandatory 14 days quarantine for arraval entails
severe economic disruption, and that means that the measures were postponed till it's to late for them to be affective while providing
the same level of economic disruption. Meanwhile large sectors of the economy, here and abroad, are nearly collapsing because
of fears about COVID-19 epidemics that are not entirely justified.
Watch the interviews below. Dr. Anthony Fauci who is the
head of the head of the
National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) This high level "medical diplomat" in his March interviews carefully avoid mentioning
that fact that CDC completely botched producing and distributing test kits and the government did nothing substantial to combat the
virus the whole February. And that he spept all january and February doing tnothing to prepere the county to the epidemic.
As the result the USA goverment was not able to provide adequate quantities of masks even to medical workers. Frontline personnel
in grocery shops, Wall Mart, etc still working the first half of March without masks. That makes a joke the fact that the USA was viewed
as a country best prepared to facing the pandemic:
Ever since the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014, which the Global Health Security Index calls
"a wake-up call," projects like this have been created to put better mechanisms in place for
future pandemics of all kinds; be they naturally occurring viruses or genetically engineered bioweapons.
The tests the Index was based on concerns whether countries have "functional, tested, proven capabilities
for stopping outbreaks at the source" which are then "regularly tested and shown to be functional
in exercises or real-world events." Pretty serious stuff, then.
Countries were assessed based on six criteria: “Prevention, Detection and Reporting, Rapid Response,
Health System, Compliance with International Norms, and Risk Environment.” Of those six, the US topped
the field in four, even scoring an almost perfect 98.2 in “Early Detection & Reporting.” (So
much for that.)
Overall, the US put the rest of the world to shame, scoring 83.5 out of a possible 100. In second place
was the United Kingdom, followed by the Netherlands, Australia and Canada. Italy is in 31st place overall,
and China is in 51st place. Most of the lowest scoring countries are small islands or African countries,
and Equatorial Guinea gets the wooden spoon. The full list and report can be viewed
here.
A comedy of errors
Being one of the richest countries in the world at the cutting edge of scientific innovation and medicine
should have gone some way towards making America pandemic-proof. So why, then, are they in such big trouble
now? The answer lies in their government’s poor decision-making from the very beginning, which has sent
them on the most dangerous of all possible paths.
They were
too slow to begin testing suspected cases, and when they did, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention
bungled the rollout. Their cases really began to spike around mid-March, but now that they have taken
the lead in confirmed cases outside of China, one feels that they will not look back. Just how bad the
situation could deteriorate in the US remains to be seen.
Most airports did not perform even elementary screening of arriving passengers. And the operation of returning the US citizens
from Europe after travel with EU countries was banned was also completely botched. All February the administration essentially was allowing
the flow infected passengers from Italy and France without screening and quarantine (two severely hit by COVID-19 countries with
large tourists flows from the USA) to spread the disease in the USA:
But there is some progress. With national emergency declared on Feb 13, FEMA's USD 50 billion is unlocked to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
FEMA is one of the few federal institutions which still works and works well.
Arrival of warm weather on Eastern Coast may significantly change the dynamic of epidemics, slow down infections and help NYC, which
is the most severe affected on this coast and the most densely populated area.
Measures for self-isolation of seniors that state like NY, NJ and California tries now, with all their shortcomings, is of
vital importance and it should have been done much earlier, because the USA has advantage of Chinese experience with this epidemic (which
it by-and-large ignored). This was not done. There should also be the prohibition of air trips and remove vacations (including cruise
ships) for this category of people. Violators they put their own life and lives of other people especially medical personnel in unnecessary
danger. Seniors are the major factor is overcrowding of intensive care beds in the hospitals. Trying to protect them from this
virus is probably the most important part of "flattening the curve" efforts.
The USA has a lower population density than other affected countries so outside of large cities like New York it is in much better
position to suppress the epidemics. Large parts of the country such as Texas already have warm weather which typically helps
to suppress such epidemics.
Globally COVID-19 is spreading more slowly then in the USA slowly: 69K cases on Feb 15 vs. 162K cases on March 15: in other words
the number of cases approx. doubled in one month period. Assuming that the next month will be same and then epidemic start to
subside replicating the shape of the curve before the peak, we will have globally around 162+324+162K=648K or something like half-million
cases total for this virus
The delay between the shutdown in Wuhan and a fall in new daily cases
was 12 days . That suggests that in two weeks from now (April 2) we will probably see a drop in the number of new cases
in the US. But that is not guaranteed.
The priority is to slow down the spread of the disease to lessen overcrowding of hospital beds with severe
cases.
At the same time there are multiple cases of selfish, reckless behaviour of a part of the population. Some young people from
closed schools and universities engage in travel as tickets and hotels are dirt cheap now. Those who carry the virus are spreading the
infection with them. Some people who are at risk are not wearing mask and engage in reckless behaviour disrespecting community
interests such as shopping using public transport or other encounters with large number of people. Years of neoliberalism brainwashing
("Greed is good", "shareholder value" mantra, glorification of unlimited predatory competition as in Latin saying "homo
homini lupus est") converted a large part of the US population into greedy and selfish animals, and while
such people concentrate in FIRE sector, other segment of population are also severely affected. The situation is especially
bad in NYC.
Years of neoliberalism brainwashing converted some part of the US population into greedy and selfish animals and this epidemic
and while such people concentrate in FIRE sector, other segment of population are also severely affected. Epidemic of hoarding
also had shown the ugly face of neoliberal rationality
in full grace. The situation is especially bad in NYC.
So far infections are clustered within families and friends of initially infected persons. For example, if wife is infected, the
husband and children typically became infected too. Common spreading centers are religious gatherings and conferences. The same danger
represents travelling with the infected person in public transport if he/she is not wearing a mask, or any other close and prolonged
contact. Most of initial US patients had recently visited Wuhan or attended meeting/conference were at least one infected person
was present. "Community spread" cases, where person was infected in transport or public places like grocery shops like on this
early state of epidemic are relatively rare.
The lower you are in the USA "wealth pyramid" the worse it is for you. Particularly for the elderly underclass.
Is the Chinese Government using the Corona outbreak as a cover for some other purpose?
Definitely. Iranian too. Related to trade war/sanctions I feel. The bottom line, everybody on top wins, in this game. Say….up
to 20 %. The rest are designated losers. Lower in the pyramid worse it is. The elderly underclass in particular. Good
gig…for some. So far works like charm.
Critique of the "flattening the curve" approach adopted by the USA
Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common
diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, etc that are not adequately treated. If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm
the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being
overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason
we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity.
One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long ockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy and society.
Hyping the threat by MSM already produced harding epidemic in the USA. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including
financial crisis.
At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.
In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the
infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.
The vast majority of this hecatomb would be people with limited life expectancies. That’s in contrast to 1918, when many young people
died.
We can discuss whether CODID-19 represents a pandemic or not, but hoarding epidemics in the USA is very real.
It also feels like a scam: there is no shortage of snake oil sellers who hope stoking such fears will make people buy more supplies.
The reality is that there is little point “preparing“ for the most catastrophic scenarios some of these people envision. As a species,
we live and die by our social world and infrastructure — and outside some minimal stocks (say two weeks supply of food in areas
affected by infection and which might be subject to quarantine (which are currently only two cities in the US.) Moreover,
it is difficult to predict what will be needed in the face of total catastrophe (Preparing
for Coronavirus to Strike the U.S. - Scientific American Blog Network ). You can't drink sanitizer and you need minimal amount of
it when you are outside of home. In all other cases regular soap is more effective against this virus, so hoarding sanitizer is
far from the best move you can make:
American Association for the Advancement of Science By Derek Lowe 4 March, 2020
Since this is going to be a post about the coronavirus, let's start off with this PSA: wash your hands. These viruses have
a lipid envelope that is crucial to their structure and function, and soaps and detergents are thus very effective at inactivating
them. It's fast, it's simple, and it's one of the more useful things that any individual can do under these conditions.
The real crisis scenarios we’re likely to encounter require cooperation and, crucially, “flattening the curve” of the crisis
which includes sharing not hoarding, so the more vulnerable (older folks) can fare better and our social world and the infrastructure
will be less stressed. For those who can do it that way that means switching to work from home and avoiding unnecessary travel
and meetings. Most think those days can be done via phone of via teleconferencing.
We do not need to contribute to the panic, and to panic buying isopropyl alcohol and hand sanitizers as if there no tomorrow.
From state to state, shelves at grocery stores are being emptied. Community after community is stocking up on essential goods as they
anticipate a very remote (or non-existent in many areas of the country ) possibility our of fears of forced China style
self-quarantine. In reality only retired persons in areas with active cases of infection need to self-quarantine as they are the
most vulnerable and can overwhelm hospitals. They generally should stay home, avoid direct contact with relatives and friends
(which are rare those days, anyway, so no big deal) , and do only rare shopping which should exclude all shopping for clothing, etc.
They need a lot of exposure to sun, vitamins, flesh air to boost the immune system. Abandoning bad habits like smoking would be
nice too. No or minimal visits to restaurants, entertainment centers like casino, or God forbid cruise ships or international
travel. For the sake of everyone else, they should prepare to stay home for a few weeks, while epidemic burns out in their neighborhood
and try their best not to be infected. This way they will reduce their own risks, but most importantly, they will reduce the burden
on health care and delivery infrastructure and allow frontline workers to reach and help the most vulnerable.
What does “flattening the curve” mean for the current COVID-19 threat facing us: the emerging pandemic of this human coronavirus?
Epidemiologists often talk about two important numbers: R0 or how infectious a disease might be, expressed as the number
of people that are infected by each person who’s been infected; and the case fatality ratio (CFR): the number of people
who die as a result of being infected. For example, an R0 of two means each infected person infects two people on average,
while a number less than one means the disease is likely dying out in the population. Some diseases are deadlier than others: the
average case fatality ratio for Ebola has been around 50 percent, for example, while the common cold is rarely deadly for otherwise
healthy individuals.
The infectiousness of a virus, for example, depends on how much we encounter one another; how well we quarantine individuals
who are ill; how often we wash our hands; whether those treating the ill have proper protective equipment; how healthy we are to
begin with—and such factors are all under our control. After active measures were implemented, the R0 for the 2003 SARS epidemic,
for example, went from around three, meaning each person infected three others, to 0.04. It was our response to SARS in 2003 that
made sure the disease died out from earth, with less than a thousand victims globally.
... ... ..
All of this means that the only path to flattening the curve for COVID-19 is community-wide isolation: the more people stay home,
the fewer people will catch the disease. The fewer people who catch the disease, the better hospitals can help those who do. Crowding
at hospitals doesn’t just threaten those with COVID-19; if emergency rooms are overwhelmed, more flu patients, too, will die because
of lack of treatment, for example.
But what we see in the USA is primitive and destructive hoarding epidemic. Toilet paper, sanitary wipes and sanitizers are in short
supply as stocks are being exhausted. As of March 3, 2020 a 250 ml (8 ounces) bottle of hand sanitizer on Amazon was $60 or so (while
its regular price is $2 or so ;-). This is not only ridiculous but it beats "socialist back market" prices.
Ana
I know someone who is the head of security in the SF Bay for a large big box membership store that all of us in the States
are familiar with. Their stores in the SF Bay area have been selling out of water, hand sanitizers, gloves, masks and other
similar cleaning supplies, along with boxed mac and cheese and similar long shelf life foods.
Their regional supply center that brings replacement supply in over night by semi trucks has not been able to refill it’s own
pallets from suppliers. He just texted me pics of local big box stores in the Bay with empty shelves and no back stock is available.
I can’t find info on sales of things like generators. I don’t care what soothing nonsense the TV and feds blather at us. People
are trying to get what they think they need to cope with serious disruption.
Ana in Sacramento.
P.S. By the way, I was one of the paper pushers who designed emergency response and business resumption plans for the State
of California. This event was never considered or planned for. I’m retired so it may have been added after I left.
The dynamic of the USA panic can be watched via Amazon prices for those items and as of March 7 the panic is still in full swing
(you can buy the same 250 ml(8 ounces) bottle for mere $35 ;-) . And they used to say that such hoarding behaviour is typical
only for socialism ;-).
And despite chaotic and botched containment of epidemic (CDC botched development and production of test kits so badly that the officials
responsible probably should be tried for criminal negligence ) the USA government managed already take several measures to slow down
the spread of the virus (please note that time is working against the virus -- warm weather in East cost will come in May or even earlier).
For example, starting Sunday, Feb. 2, the US citizens, permanent residents and immediate family who have visited China's Hubei province
undergo a mandatory 14 days quarantine. On Mar 11, Trump administration prohibited all flights from Europe firs exampling UK and
Ireland and later adding them.
On Mar 13 Trump has declared the coronavirus a US national emergency and offered $50 billion for support of state and local governments
to fight the virus with FEMA.
At the same time the US Fed has increased its public support of the global private banking system in amounts looking to total in
the trillions of dollars and our Congress Critters are setting up to re-authorize the Patriot Act suppression of human rights.
On March 15 CDC recommended that all gatherings of more than 50 people within the United States be canceled for the next 8 weeks.
The same day California ordered all bars and nightclubs to shut their doors, restaurants to cut the number of tables in half and
for millions of seniors and people with chronic health conditions to immediately “self-isolate” at home
(mercurynews.com)
As the coronavirus continues its rapid spread, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday afternoon issued an urgent call for all California,
restaurants to cut the number of tables in half and for millions of seniors and people with chronic health conditions to immediately
“self-isolate” at home.
Newsom’s unprecedented call for action is designed to slow the infection rate, especially among the most vulnerable. The governor
stopped short of asking eating establishments to shut their doors, saying the need for food service during the pandemic remained
vital.
“We need to prioritize our focus,” Newsom said during an hour-long press conference in Sacramento. “We are looking at this from
a very holistic perspective.”
It was unclear how long the self-quarantine for seniors should continue.
NYC closed all schools staring Monday, March 16, 2020. NJ followed the suit. Both states resorted to pretty drastic measures.
All schools, entertainment outlets such as bars, nightclubs and non-essential shops are closed in NY and NJ. Meetings over
50 people prohibited. Malls are also closes in some counties.
The CDC stunning failure to provide the coronavirus testing kits needed to control the spread of the outbreak is a national outrage.
Their incompetence threatens to increase the scope and prolong the duration of epidemics and contributes to troubles that now
the USA economy experience.
It is unlearn why the CDC failed to make mass production of test kits its top priority and who is responsible. But it is clear that
heads should roll (The Mercury News editorial,
South Korea is testing 20,000 people every day, thanks to a biotech firm that anticipated the threat in January. South Korea is
providing free tests for anyone a doctor deems necessary at more than 100 facilities across the nation. The result is that South
Korea is now seeing more recoveries than new cases.
Contrast that with the state of California, which has only 10 million fewer people than South Korea. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday
that the state has been provided with 8,227 testing kits from the CDC. But some of those kits did not contain all the chemicals needed
to administer them to Californians — a glaring failure given that it’s been nearly two months since the coronavirus outbreak began
in China.
Newsom compared it to “going to the store and purchasing a printer, but forgetting to purchase the ink. You need multiple components.”
All told, as of Friday [Mar13, 2020], California had conducted a total of only 1,573 tests at its 18 state test labs.
The problem stems from the CDC’s botched first effort to mass produce test kits, followed by delays in sending promised replacement
kits for several weeks.
“The incompetence has really exceeded what anyone would expect with the CDC,” Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard University,
told the New York Times. “This is not a difficult problem to solve in the world of viruses.”
Testing is crucial to slowing the spread of the disease because it allows those who are infected to be quarantined. Health officials
can then trace who they may have been in contact with and test and possibly quarantine those people.
It’s essential that Congress investigate what went wrong and take steps to prevent it from happening during the next inevitable infectious
disease threat. But that’s for another day. The focus now must be on taking steps to minimize further spread of coronavirus and its
impact on people and the economy.
The state is turning to its major hospitals and private labs for additional help. It’s possible that their testing sites could be
up and running in the next week. President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on Friday could also eliminate red tape and
speed the testing process.
Once upon a time, the United States was the global leader in fighting infectious diseases and serving as the provider for testing
kits to the world. Those days are long gone. The CDC must act to make up for its incompetence and take whatever steps necessary to
protect Americans against current and future outbreaks.
The CDC must also give clear direction on how hospitals can treat patients during this national emergency. It is not done. China
recommended three drugs that can help some patients. CDC does not provided any recommendations at all.
Abrupt announcement caused panic and airports on arrival became so overcrowded that they became epicenter of spreading the decease:
they manage to replicate the situation that was far worse that exists on cruise ships with many thousand of people.
Air conditioners are also known to circulate air-borne diseases such as Legionairre’s Disease, a potentially fatal infectious disease
that produces high fever and pneumonia. For efficiency air-conditioned on cruise ships, bases and airplanes mix fresh air with the already
circulated air and this is a concern. For example, some experts think that
in Diamond Princess cruise ship epidemic AC might help to spread the virus to all cabin
Currently there is no strong evidence to support the claim that the virus can be transmitted through the air conditioner recirculation.
It is believed to be spread mainly through droplets on close contact with infected person (less then 2m). In this case the mucus or
saliva of an infected person who sneezes or coughs can be inhaled and infect the person. This virus is likely to die when the
droplets dry up (Can
the coronavirus be spread through the air, Singapore News & Top Stories - The Straits Times):
Experts say if the virus could really survive even after the droplets carrying it have dried up, it would have spread through
the air as dust particles and potentially infected 10 times more people, which is not the case.
Last week, a Shanghai official, Mr Zeng Qun, said the virus could spread through aerosol transmission, or the mixing of the virus
with airborne liquid droplets.
This would allow the virus to linger in the air and infect those who inhale it, he said. Diseases that are known to spread
this way include tuberculosis, chicken pox and measles.
But an infectious diseases expert at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Mr Feng Luzhao, refuted this on Sunday,
stating that the droplets carrying the virus travel only about 1m to 2m and
do not stay suspended in the air. This is why you are unlikely to catch the virus through transient (or short-term) contact
such as on public transport.
Ultraviolet rays and heat from the sun can kill the virus as virus does not last long on fresh air in a sunny day. This is
true for all viruses. The likelihood of viral persistence outdoors is lower, as most studies indicate that viruses do not survive in
hot and humid environments. This refers to a temperature of over 30C and a humidity level of over 80 per cent.
Using humidifier at home and maintaining 50% humidity might help to protect you and family members.
Trump is a neoliberal to the core so he postponed invocation of the Defense Production Act (DPA). That did not stop him from
threatening toinvoke it, but people at the top understand that those threats are toothless. Trump has a chance to prove that
his is not complete stooge of Wall Street and financial oligarchy.
On March 28, 2020 he threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to force General Motors to
ramp up production of ventilators. He did did not actually invoked it due to the big business lobbying (including powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce) against the use of the emergency powers
(Trump, Biden and the Defense Production Act
- FactCheck.org):
Five days later, on March 18, Trump
invoked the Defense Production Act “just
in case we need it.” But Trump stopped short of implementing the act to force production of certain goods. Later that day,
Trump tweeted, “I only signed the Defense Production
Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no
need.”
... ... ...
In the following days, Trump said that he was reluctant to use the Defense Production Act to force corporations to make
products, likening such a move to “nationalizing
our businesses.”
This sucker does not even understand that nationalizing can be a temporary measure:
Trump, March 22: We’re a country not based on nationalizing our business. Call a person over in Venezuela;
ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out. Not too well. The concept of nationalizing our business is not a
good concept.
Trump, March 26: For the most part, the companies … We say, “We need this,” and they say, “Don’t bother.
We’re going to do it.” I mean, we — we’re dealing with Ford, General Motors, 3M. We’re dealing with great companies. They want to
do this. They want to do this. They’re doing things that — that frankly, they don’t need somebody to walk over there with a —
with a hammer and say, “Do it.” They are getting it done.
“Our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal
course,” Trump said in a statement. “GM was wasting time. Today’s action will help ensure the quick production of ventilators that
will save American lives.”
Trump also said the country “will be making over 100,000 pretty quickly.” States have warned of a dangerous shortage of the
breathing machines.
Trump also tapped White House aide Peter Navarro to coordinate policies enacted under the Korean War-era law that gives the
president broad authority to increase the manufacturing output of critical items in times of national emergency, including public
health crises.
“My order establishes that Peter will serve as national Defense Production Act policy coordinator for the federal government,”
Trump said Friday during a White House briefing. “That's a very important position. More important probably than it's almost ever
been in our country.”
All he did is a little bit ruffle GM brass feathers:
TheHill
“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump tweeted. “They said they were going to give
us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, “very quickly”. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top
dollar. Always a mess with Mary B. Invoke ‘P.’ ”
On Friday, before Trump invoked the DPA, Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, told
The Hill that the move would be unnecessary.
Because companies had already stepped up to address the country’s needs, Bradley said, the call for more DPA authority is like
a solution in search of a problem, adding, “Should we do something that won’t produce any positive effect just because we can say
we did it?”
On Friday, the Chamber also launched a tool that showcased corporate America’s robust contribution to combat the coronavirus
pandemic.
“When the issue of DPA comes up, it’s a question of would that allow us to do something that we couldn’t otherwise do?”
Bradley said Friday afternoon. “Or [would it] help us meet the needs, at least with respect to increasing production itself? The
answer is no.”
But by Friday evening, Trump signed a presidential memorandum placing at least some of GM’s production lines in the hands of
the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump’s order directed his administration to use “any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act to require
General Motors to accept, perform, and prioritize Federal contracts for ventilators.”
Companies are required to accept and prioritize contracts from the government and to prioritize “materials, services, and
facilities to promote the national defense or to maximize domestic energy supplies.” While this provision has historically been used
to ramp up military production, in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic the act will be used for medical supplies.
The second provision in the act provides financial measures, such as loans, loan guarantees, purchases, and purchase commitments,
to speed up the production of materials “needed to support national defense and homeland security procurement requirements.”
The act also addresses voluntary agreements – or what the government says is “an association of private interests, approved by
the Government to plan and coordinate actions in support of the national defense.” The proviso permits business competitors to work
together to plan and coordinate measures to increase the supply of materials.
Along with the three main provisions, the act also provides the government with the authority to obtain information from businesses,
authorizes establishment of the National Defense Executive Reserve, and a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States –
which works on the effects on national security of certain mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers related to foreign investment in
the U.S.
When the act is invoked it requires the administration to file an annual report to Congress on the impact of offsets on the defense
preparedness, industrial competitiveness, employment, and trade from the act.
According to
the Telegraph , Michael Levitt correctly predicted the initial trajectory of the pandemic,
but was ignored by now-disgraced Imperial College epidemiologist Niall Ferguson, whose warnings
were embraced by the UK government as justification for the lockdown, despite the fact that the
projections proved to be extremely flawed and dramatically overestimated the virus's potential
for devastation. As early as march, Levitt warned that Ferguson's projections had
over-estimated the potential death toll by "10 or 12 times".
Instead of helping the situation, Fergusons' projections created an unnecessary "panic
virus" which spread among global political leaders, Prof Levitt told the Telegraph.
Prof Levitt, a British-American-Israeli who shared the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2013
for the "development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems", has said for two
months that the planet will beat coronavirus faster than most other experts predict.
"I think lockdown saved no lives," said the scientist, who added that the Government
should have encouraged Britons to wear masks and adhere to other forms of social
distancing.
"I think it may have cost lives. It will have saved a few road accident lives - things
like that - but social damage - domestic abuse, divorces, alcoholism - has been extreme. And
then you have those who were not treated for other conditions."
Data from various studies has offered a mixed picture about the effectiveness of the
lockdowns. The number of cases and deaths has undoubtedly plunged in the US and across Europe
since strict lockdowns were almost universally enacted, but many wonder whether governments are
being overly cautious, perhaps to a dangerous degree.
Though his models have been vindicated by the passage of time, Levitt said his initial
concerns about Ferguson's models were largely ignored due to what he calls the "panic virus",
despite the fact that there's recent precedent for epidemiological models over-estimating the
impact of other outbreaks, including H1N1 and Ebola.
Having assessed the initial outbreak in China and from the infected Diamond Princess
cruise ship, he predicted by March 14 that the UK would lose around 50,000 lives. Prof
Ferguson's modelling that same week estimated up to 500,000 deaths without social distancing
measures.
"I think that the real virus was the panic virus," Prof Levitt told the Telegraph. "For
reasons that were not clear to me, I think the leaders panicked and the people panicked and I
think there was a huge lack of discussion..
The 73-year-old has no background as an epidemiologist, but he assessed the outbreak in
China and prepared a paper based on his own calculations. Most countries, he predicted, would
suffer a Covid-19 death rate worth around an extra month in excess deaths over the calendar
year.
"In Europe, I don't think that anything actually stopped the virus other than some kind of
burnout," he added. " There's a huge number of people who are asymptomatic so I would
seriously imagine that by the time lockdown was finally introduced in the UK the virus was
already widely spread. They could have just stayed open like Sweden by that stage and nothing
would have happened."
Professor Levitt has now analysed the data from 78 nations with more than 50 reported
cases of coronavirus. His investigations proved the virus was never going to achieve the type
of exponential growth that the researchers at Imperial were predicting at the same time.
At this point, Levitt believes the virus has reached a point of saturation across Europe and
parts of the US making lockdowns much less effective. At this point, they're probably causing
far more harm than benefit.
The virus "has saturated", he believes, across Europe. "I think the lockdown will cause
much more damage than the deaths saved," he added. "When I saw the briefing (from Prof
Ferguson) I was shocked. I had a run-in with him when I actually saw that Ferguson's death
rate was a year's worth - doubling the normal death rate. I saw that and said immediately
that's completely wrong. I think Ferguson over-estimated 10 or 12 times. We should have seen
from China that a virus never grows exponentially. From the very first case you see,
exponential growth actually slows down very dramatically.
"The problem with epidemiologists is that they feel their job is to frighten people into
lockdown, social distancing. So you say 'there's going to be a million deaths' and when there
are only 25,000 you say 'it's good you listened to my advice'. This happened with Ebola and
bird flu. It's just part of the madness."
Prof Levitt says the global evidence shows the virus fades in dry heat and in much of the
western world "there seems to be some kind of immunity". "The main worry I would have would
be in China," he said when asked about the prospect of a second outbreak. "I am 73 and I feel
very young," he added. "I don't care about the risk at all. As you get old the risk of dying
from disease is so high that this is the time to buy a motorcycle, go skiing!"
Even as the NYT and WaPo search for every shred of evidence to support the view that the
reopening in the US will lead to a second wave, they're finding that there's not nearly as much
as they'd hoped - which is why projections are their new favorite tool.
"It all points to social economic status and poverty," Gray Molina said.
This is probably true. It was one argument against shutting down economies so drastically.
This is less of a problem in the wealthier countries for the moment, but in a second or third
wave, you will probably see more deaths among the below 60s due to increasing poverty caused
by poorly managed lockdowns this time around.
"... "According to CDC, the disease of obesity affects about 78 million Americans 1 and the ASMBS estimates about 24 million have severe or morbid obesity." ..."
And the government botching of this crisis continues...
'How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?' The government's disease-fighting agency is
conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend
on to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states are doing the
same. https://tinyurl.com/y92ea59f
Nearly half of US states haven't contained their coronavirus outbreaks, a new study
finds https://tinyurl.com/yc72pd8t
And no, Sweden is not doing better...
Just 7.3% of Stockholm had Covid-19 antibodies by end of April, study shows
Official findings add to concerns about Sweden's laissez-faire strategy towards the
pandemic https://tinyurl.com/yahnmb3a
Finally, a large scale study on HCQ - 86,000 patients, with 15,000 receiving HCQ...
Blacks are *twice* as likely to get it as whites and Latinos. American Indians are *five
times* more likely to get it. They conclude the best indicator is poverty.
From The Lancet, a study of New York patients... Epidemiology, clinical course, and
outcomes of critically ill adults with COVID-19 in New York City: a prospective cohort study
https://tinyurl.com/yblmszsx
Between March 2 and April 1, 2020, 1150 adults were admitted to both hospitals with
laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, of which 257 (22%) were critically ill.
The median age of patients was 62 years (IQR 51–72), 171 (67%) were men. 212 (82%)
patients had at least one chronic illness, the most common of which were hypertension (162
[63%]) and diabetes (92 [36%]).
119 (46%) patients had obesity.
As of April 28, 2020, 101 (39%) patients had died and 94 (37%) remained
hospitalised.
203 (79%) patients received invasive mechanical ventilation for a median of 18 days (IQR
9–28), 170 (66%) of 257 patients received vasopressors and 79 (31%) received renal
replacement therapy.
The median time to in-hospital deterioration was 3 days (IQR 1–6).
In the multivariable Cox model, older age (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 1·31
[1·09–1·57] per 10-year increase), chronic cardiac disease (aHR
1·76 [1·08–2·86]), chronic pulmonary disease (aHR 2·94
[1·48–5·84]), higher concentrations of interleukin-6 (aHR 1·11
[95%CI 1·02–1·20] per decile increase), and higher concentrations of
D-dimer (aHR 1·10 [1·01–1·19] per decile increase) were
independently associated with in-hospital mortality.
Note: 36% had diabetes; 46% were fat. Like I've said before, "diabetes" is a code word for
"fat." And how many people in the US are fat and thus at risk? "According to CDC, the
disease of obesity affects about 78 million Americans 1 and the ASMBS estimates about 24
million have severe or morbid obesity."
So much for "let's just isolate the elderly"...so we can attend our baseball games this
summer and stuff ourselves with crap food...
New UnHerd interview up , this time
with Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford. From their summary:
It's the biggest question in the world right now: is Covid-19 a deadly disease that only
a small fraction of our populations have so far been exposed to? Or is it a much milder
pandemic that a large percentage of people have already encountered and is already on its
way out?
If Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College is the figurehead for the first opinion,
then Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, is
the representative of the second. Her group at Oxford produced a rival model to Ferguson's
back in March which speculated that as much as 50% of the population may already have been
infected and the true Infection Fatality Rate may be as low as 0.1%.
Since then, we have seen various antibody studies around the world indicating a
disappointingly small percentage of seroprevalence -- the percentage of the population has
the anti-Covid-19 antibody. It was starting to seem like Ferguson's view was the one closer
to the truth.
But, in her first major interview since the Oxford study was published in March,
Professor Gupta is only more convinced that her original opinion was correct.
As she sees it, the antibody studies, although useful, do not indicate the true level
of exposure or level of immunity. First, many of the antibody tests are "extremely
unreliable" and rely on hard-to-achieve representative groups. But more important, many
people who have been exposed to the virus will have other kinds of immunity that don't show
up on antibody tests -- either for genetic reasons or the result of pre-existing immunities
to related coronaviruses such as the common cold.
The implications of this are profound – it means that when we hear results from
antibody tests (such as a forthcoming official UK Government study) the percentage who test
positive for antibodies is not necessarily equal to the percentage who have immunity or
resistance to the virus. The true number could be much higher.
Observing the very similar patterns of the epidemic across countries around the world
has convinced Professor Gupta that it is this hidden immunity, more than lockdowns or
government interventions, that offers the best explanation of the Covid-19
progression:
"In almost every context we've seen the epidemic grow, turn around and die away --
almost like clockwork. Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet
what we've observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour which is highly consistent
with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the
build-up of immunity. I think that's a more parsimonious explanation than one which
requires in every country for lockdown (or various degrees of lockdown, including no
lockdown) to have had the same effect."
Asked what her updated estimate for the Infection Fatality Rate is, Professor Gupta
says, "I think that the epidemic has largely come and is on its way out in this country so
I think it would be definitely less than 1 in 1000 and probably closer to 1 in 10,000."
That would be somewhere between 0.1% and 0.01%.
If she is right, antibody tests are a poor measure of the true virus spread, and the
declining death rate Sweden and many other countries have seen this past month is from
immunity -- not measures -- lowering the effective reproduction number. Time will tell.
To summarise: corona infects less than 5-10% of people, more under ideal virus circumstances
in cold, dumpy ski resorts or in NY-London tenements. Among infected it kills about 1%,
almost all over 65, with those over 80 having a 10-20% chance of dying.
And they shut down the world, because ' corona '. This is a policy of 'do anything
to protect the old' even if it means enslaving the young, a gerontocracy that would be
unthinkable in the past.
It is dawning on even the most fanatical corona fans that the data won't change. Now we
hear about a 'second wave' – why only one more? Or that the restrictions stopped a
disaster – one of those 'what if' historical speculations. But the best one lately is
that ' we didn't know anything, nobody knew '.
Right, who knew? One can justify anything by embracing ignorance: "I know nothing, but
you must do what I say." This is one is better than WMDs, lier loans, or Putin personally
flipping votes in Michigan in 2016 West is really growing intellectually. I can't wait for
the next one
To summarise: corona infects less than 5-10% of people, more under ideal virus
circumstances in cold, dumpy ski resorts or in NY-London tenements
That is in 2-3 months since initial infections and it was enough to completely overwhelm
organized healthcare in some places and strain very hard in most places, then all those
loathed protective measures kick in and the spread slows because of it. If there were no such
any measures taken anywhere in the world growth would become explosively exponential very
soon and those 5% would increase tenfold.
A couple of thoughts (and apologize if they may be in some of the links you
mentioned):
While it's good to know what the "average" IFR is, IMO it's as important from a policy
point of view to know what the conditions in which it varies and how much (based on current
treatment options) it can vary by. Speaking purely statistically, a mean of 1% with a 95% CI
of 0.9-1.1% is significantly different from one of 1% with a 95% CI of 0.01% to 2%.
Here are some factors that we already know significantly impact
hospitalizations/mortality:
Inherent Factors:
– Age (easily the biggest known variable for impacting IFR, likely correlated with
immune system response)
– Gender (men more susceptible than women (around 30% more?)
– Co-morbidity (correlates with pre-existing damage to tissues throughout the body and
sensitivity of receptors/immune response)
– Prior coronavirus history (??? One paper claims that recent infection with
coronavirus that causes the common cold may offer cross-reactive antibodies to SARS-Cov-2
https://www.lji.org/news-events/news/post/first-detailed-analysis-of-immune-response-to-sars-cov-2-bodes-well-for-covid-19-vaccine-development/
)
– Blood groups (??? Contradictory/not fully vetted data claiming for example those with
ABO antigen type A more susceptible to infection progressing than type O, B, AB)
External Factors
– Early detection and treatment before severe symptoms
– Medical care availability
– Tailored treatment cocktails (evolving but reports that each country/region gaining
experience on identifying optimal treatment regimens depending on patient)
– Optimal use of ventilators (reports that though low blood oxygen is first presented,
automatic intubating may often make things worse)
– Lethality/Infectiousness of different strains (?? Non-peer reviewed studies claim for
example at least three major strains that differ in infectiousness/severity which are found
dominant in different regions.
There may be more (eg BCG vaccine (a theory I don't buy for reasons too long to go into
here); past use of nicotine etc; ethnic genotypes etc).
But the point is, based on even current, rapidly evolving knowledge, IFR varies widely
based on known/speculative factors, which should inform response policy from severity/types
of lockdowns/social restrictions to medical responses in addition to efforts to prevent
infection in the first place.
@AP The interesting
& important thing to note is that fatalities are heavily tied to the related factors of
pre-existing conditions and advanced age. For example:
With CQ/AZ/ZN available everywhere, the bulk of the economy could reopen immediately with
or without masks. Given that psychology is important, odds are mask wearing will make
the restart more effective. However, masks provide partial protection at most.
Let us talk about this again, basically, how much of international travel is really
necessary, the cheap labor travel? White pedos vacationing in Thailand? A lot of mass tourism
just leads to places like Queenstown, Kyoto, and Venice being trashed, driving the locals
out, and losing their local culture, and 95 percent of business travel are really junkets
that can be replaced by videoconferencing.
@james wilson Given
that the current crap state of Western culture is that responsibility of SJW millennials and
zoomer maybe it is they that should be sacrificed? How much will the world lose anyway? The
world was much better off before they came here. They are the ones who are responsible for
things going off the deep end the past decade or so. Look at how much better Star Trek the
next generation was compared to the crap now by JJ Abrams.
I liked very much the paper by the Berkeley physicists: Modi, Chirag, Vanessa Boehm, Simone
Ferraro, George Stein, and Uros Seljak. Epidemiologists and all kinds of statisticians could
learn from them how to write transparently. One of the reason there are so many papers
written poorly is that the authors often have to obfuscate as they do not really understand
what they are doing. People can be taught how to use statistical software packages like SAS,
SPSS, R w/o really understanding the underlying mathematical routines.
Millennial Millie investigates the deep conflicts of interest and connections Bill Gates has
with the coronavirus and his proposed 'vaccine' to cure the pandemic.
This is an interesting look at the situation in the military as related to the militaries
place in society. It is written in Marxist language of class struggle which is one way to
look at it. There does seem to be pressure for some sort of social reform.
Also similar things could be said about the working conditions of many of our 'essential
workers'
""It is a well-known feature of revolutionary history that the individual soldiers and
sailors who make up the armed forces can be affected by the overarching mood in society and
play a key role in the class struggle. The cramped quarters of Navy warships have been
likened to "floating factories," and given the proletarian background of most of their crews,
these conditions can breed a fierce class hatred.
Add a deadly virus to the already volatile mix, and the stage is set for a social
explosion.
On April 2, Thomas Modly, the then-Acting Secretary of the Navy, relieved Crozier of
command and ordered him removed from the vessel. An online video was posted of Crozier
leaving the vessel, with the Roosevelt's crew on deck cheering him and chanting his name. To
the rank and file, an officer standing up to leadership at such a high level to advocate on
their behalf is almost unheard of. Then, Modly, who previously sat on the Defense Business
Board of a $42 billion consulting firm, actually flew all the way out to Guam -- at a
reported cost of $243,000 -- to personally berate the crew, calling them "stupid," and
Captain Crozier "naïve." His profanity-laden rebuke was also leaked by members of the
crew.
Modly was defiantly heckled by the sailors, and after the subsequent public outcry, he
resigned on April 7. As of the writing of this article, there have been over 1,100 positive
cases of COVID-19 among the crew of the Roosevelt -- including Crozier himself. One crew
member, a junior enlisted sailor, has died. The crew continues to languish in port as
Crozier's dire prediction came true. This saga of higher-level commanders ignoring the
warnings of the people "on the ground" is all too familiar to the military rank and file.
Plummeting Morale, Rising Discontent
The public heckling of Thomas Modly was a significant event. No matter how unpopular the
leader, service members will almost always "sit there and take it," both out of a sense of
professionalism -- and out of fear of punishment. The response of the Roosevelt's crew
reflects a population on edge
In these conditions of dysfunction and discontent, military leaders are undoubtedly
haunted by the recent 45th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, which marked the defeat of the
US in Vietnam amid widespread mutinies and soldier resistance. In the course of that war, the
Pentagon documented half a million cases of desertion, and at least 900 incidents of
"fragging" -- the deliberate killing of officers by soldiers.
As a result, the Pentagon drew certain conclusions and the entire military was
restructured in an attempt to cut across a repeat of those events. The military is no longer
made up of conscripts, most combat missions are performed by special forces or drones, and
information is effectively sanitized and kept out of public view. And yet, despite these
measures, service member opposition to the current wars, has been on the rise, especially
among veterans.
In many cases, soldiers are recruited on the predatory basis of the "poverty draft," with
the promise of a stable income, housing, healthcare, education opportunities, and an escape
from the deprivations of capitalism. But the empty nature of these promises is revealed by
the rates of homelessness and mental illness among veterans.
According to a "Political Risk Outlook" published by the strategic consulting firm
Maplecroft, a quarter of the countries on the earth's surface experienced a surge in civil
unrest, mass protests, and revolutionary situations last year. The report summary concluded
by describing 2019 as the "new normal":"
The pent-up rage that has boiled over into street protests over the past year has caught
most governments by surprise. Policymakers across the globe have mostly reacted with limited
concessions and a clampdown by security forces, but without addressing the underlying causes.
However, even if tackled immediately, most of the grievances are deeply entrenched and would
take years to address. With this in mind, 2019 is unlikely to be a flash in the pan. The next
12 months are likely to yield more of the same, and companies and investors will have to
learn to adapt and live with this "new normal." "
"Grandma Killer" Cuomo Sent 4,300 Patients Back To Nursing Homes Despite Positive
COVID-19 Tests by Tyler Durden Fri, 05/22/2020 - 17:25 Earlier
this month, a reporter at one of NY Gov Andrew Cuomo's daily press briefings asked the governor
about reports that the state issued guidance calling for hospitals to return thousands of
patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 to nursing homes or long-term care facilities
where they lived.
Somehow, despite the horrifying notion that Cuomo deliberately sent patients back to nursing
homes where they unleashed some of the deadliest outbreaks in the country, the governor readily
owned up to the decision, and insisted public health officials believed this to be the best
option to prevent the patients from just hanging around the hospital.
With the benefit of hindsight, we now see that the hospital bed shortages that the US had
prepared for never came to pass. So, not only did this decision lead to thousands of deaths, it
was also totally unnecessary.
Because as the Associated Press reported Friday morning, an investigation discovered that
more than 4,000 nursing home patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 were returned to
their care facilities due to this state order.
More than 4,300 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York's already vulnerable
nursing homes under a controversial state directive that was ultimately scrapped amid
criticisms it was accelerating the nation's deadliest outbreaks, according to a count by The
Associated Press.
AP compiled its own tally to find out how many COVID-19 patients were discharged from
hospitals to nursing homes under the March 25 directive after New York's Health Department
declined to release its internal survey conducted two weeks ago. It says it is still
verifying data that was incomplete.
The issue has become a huge problem for Cuomo, who has been labeled "the grandma killer" by
critics. When confronted with the data by the AP, the state health department declined to
comment. One individual quoted by the AP called it "the single dumbest decision" made during
the response to the pandemic.
And guess what - this decision had nothing to do with President Trump. While Cuomo of course
tried to deflected criticism to the Trump administration by claiming that the decision stemmed
from federal guidance, the AP pointed out that "few states went as far as New York and
neighboring New Jersey, which has the second-most care home deaths, in discharging hospitalized
coronavirus patients to nursing homes. California followed suit but loosened its requirement
following intense criticism."
Whatever the full number, nursing home administrators, residents' advocates and relatives
say i t has added up to a big and indefensible problem for facilities that even Gov. Andrew
Cuomo -- the main proponent of the policy -- called "the optimum feeding ground for this
virus."
"It was the single dumbest decision anyone could make if they wanted to kill people,"
Daniel Arbeeny said of the directive, which prompted him to pull his 88-year-old father out
of a Brooklyn nursing home where more than 50 people have died. His father later died of
COVID-19 at home.
"This isn't rocket science," Arbeeny said. "We knew the most vulnerable - the elderly and
compromised - are in nursing homes and rehab centers."
Told of the AP's tally, the Health Department said late Thursday it "can't comment on data
we haven't had a chance to review, particularly while we're still validating our own
comprehensive survey of nursing homes admission and re-admission data in the middle of
responding to this global pandemic."
Cuomo didn't reverse the order until May 10. According to the directive, nursing homes could
"refuse" to take in the patients if they weren't "equipped" to handle them. But unsurprisingly,
no nursing homes did so - since this would be tantamount to admitting that the facilities
weren't safe .
Cuomo, a Democrat, on May 10 reversed the directive, which had been intended to help free
up hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases surged. But he continued to defend it this
week , saying he didn't believe it contributed to the more than 5,800 nursing and adult care
facility deaths in New York -- more than in any other state -- and that homes should have
spoken up if it was a problem.
"Any nursing home could just say, 'I can't handle a COVID person in my facility,'" he
said, although the March 25 order didn't specify how homes could refuse, saying that "no
resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the (nursing home) solely based" on
confirmed or suspected COVID-19.
Over a month later, on April 29, the Health Department clarified that homes should not
take any new residents if they were unable to meet their needs, including a checklist of
standards for coronavirus care and prevention.
And according to the AP, even the most well-equipped nursing homes in the state saw the
trickle of COVID patients turn into a flood that quickly overwhelmed their ability to cope.
Across the country, thousands of nursing home residents and staff have succumbed to the
illness.
Gurwin Jewish, a 460-bed home on Long Island, seemed well-prepared for the coronavirus in
early March, with movable walls to seal off hallways for the infected. But after the state
order, a trickle of recovering COVID-19 patients from local hospitals turned into a flood of
58 people.
More walls were put up, but other residents nonetheless began falling sick and dying. In
the end, 47 Gurwin residents died of confirmed or suspected COVID-19.
The state order "put staff and residents at great risk," CEO Stuart Almer said. "We can't
draw a straight line from bringing in someone positive to someone catching the disease, but
we're talking about elderly, fragile and vulnerable residents."
Nationally, over 35,500 people have died from coronavirus outbreaks at nursing homes and
long-term care facilities, about a third of the overall death toll, according to the AP's
running tally.
Bottom line: Irony of ironies, the most sanctimonious blue-state governors, who used every
conceivable pretext to bash President Trump, also allowed the largest numbers of vulnerable
patients to die because of what amounts to sheer bureaucratic idiocy.
The scandal has earned Cuomo a new nickname that has been heavily suppressed by the likes of
Google, Facebook and Twitter: The "Grandma Killer".
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing new criticism after the Associated Press reported Friday that a
state directive led to over 4,300 still recovering coronavirus patients being sent to New
York's "already vulnerable nursing homes."
"It was a death sentence," tweeted Daniel Choi, a doctor at
the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He called the directive
a "horrendous idea" and "definitely not something any doctor taking care of nursing home
patients would have signed off on."
The state health department
directive (pdf), issued March 25, barred nursing homes from requiring patients deemed
"medically stable" from being tested for Covid-19 prior to admission. Cuomo, a Democrat,
rescinded the order May 10, but not before thousands of infected patients likely entered
nursing homes and contributed to the coronavirus's spread.
The estimated number tallied by the AP amounts to what would have been a "big and
indefensible problem for facilities," the outlet reported.
From the AP :
"It was the single dumbest decision anyone could make if they wanted to kill people,"
Daniel Arbeeny said of the directive, which prompted him to pull his 88-year-old father out
of a Brooklyn nursing home where more than 50 people have died. His father later died of
Covid-19 at home.
"This isn't rocket science," Arbeeny said. "We knew the most vulnerable -- the elderly and
compromised -- are in nursing homes and rehab centers."
CBS New York reported
Friday that the conoravirus has taken the lives of almost 5% of nursing home residents in the
state, and this week the Cuomo tried to deflect blame for the directive.
"Why did the state do that with Covid patients in nursing homes?" asked Cuomo. "It's because
the state followed President Trump's CDC guidelines. So they should ask President Trump."
In an
op-ed at the Guardian on Wednesday questioning the recent accolades heaped on the New York
governor -- including suggestions that Cuomo run for president -- journalists Lyta Gold and
Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs magazine write that "Cuomo should be one of the most loathed
officials in America right now. "
Gold and Robinson argue that blame for New York's high death toll from the virus should sit
largely with Cuomo.
"Federal failures played a role, of course, but this tragedy was absolutely due, in part, to
decisions by the governor," they wrote, citing as examples his failure to take swift action,
delays in imposing social distancing measures, Medicaid cuts both before and after the start of
the pandemic, and his partnership with Silicon Valley billionaires to "reimagine
education."
"This is the problem: for too long, Democrats have measured their politicians by 'whether
they are better than Republicans,' wrote Gold and Robinson. "This sets the bar very low indeed,
and means that Democrats end up settling for incompetent and amoral leaders who betray
progressive values again and again."
But what about the snitches and the virtue signalers and the screamingly fearful faux
celebrities, and how can you be so cruel to the currently essential who if we re-open have to
return to being just another bunch of working stiffs. Have you not seen the vasty deep
outpouring of love and affection we are currently piling on the Nurse Ratcheds and Dr. Evils
of the world for their virtuous and self effacing tv commercials and the many glorious PSAs
with paeans and "we're all in this together" sophistries from various health insurance
companies and makers of very expensive symptom mollifiers?
I am sorry sir, but I must disagree. We must not only keep closed that which is currently
closed, we must use the power of the IC and the various state and federal militaries and
national guards to close down all the open and partially opened states and cities and towns
and farms and counties and any other political subdivisions of this great nation until we are
truly "all in this together".
Or
We could just open all of it, now.
If we did, we would be back to normal in about 60 days, some places would open with new
management, some folks would enjoy continued unemployment until they were called back.
I, personally, expect that except for Ca and NY the country will be reopen about 90 days
prior to the election.
The liberal media and legislators applied the 100% solution to 1% of the population, if that
much.
That was failed leadership; that was slavish "following orders". That was a loss of the
maxim "trust, but verify" maxim. This powerful legacy of the Reagan era, must be put back at
the forefront of any public decision process. Question authority needs repeating as well.
Our public education system failed us completely for too many decades. Teaching
generations of Americans to be critical of America, is not teaching them critical thinking
skills. We need to own up to that, from our local school boards on up.
These non-science , not thinking, hateful liberal media and politicians deserve the 100%
solution - 100% voted out of office in 2020. Liberal media and legislators must get a new
message. Voting and boycotting are the two primary tools we have. Some stunning upsets in
primary races are already occurring. It will be morning in America again.
But may we never forget why so many were so willing to shoot ourselves in the foot. For
what end purpose? Were we ever so collectively scared as a Nation in the past, that we were
willing destroy ourselves as we witnessed happening these past few money - no nuance, no
graduated response, no scalpel wiled with professional precision.
What happened to our true grit as Americans? How did we get into this devastatingly false
dichotomy - total submission or we are all going to die.
Will there be a post mortem examination of the corpse of our once vibrant nation? This
requires honest soul searching. I honestly don't think we have the tools to do this any
longer. I hope I am wrong. In fact I would be greatly comforted to be proven wrong.
Will current national leadership rise to this challenge? Or has the Black Swan yet to
arrive. Or do we start this soul-searching right here and right now, one by one. "Stronger
together". Will the Karens stop demanding we go through their menopause danger years with
them.
It is astonishing that no one is talking about the death profile from covid19 (or as it
should have been named - the Wuhan coronavirus). Over there in the UK, the median age of
death from covid is 83-84.
There has been a lot of talk about Children dying of covid. Only 2 (two) children under
the age of 10 have died from covid since it started and they probably had other conditions.
This is in a total population of 65million.
Fully 90% of the deaths from covid19 are in the ages of 65+ and that segment of the
population doesn't, by and large, participate in production in the economy (of goods or
services). While death is always sad and it will lead to grieving, we have to understand that
people always die, especially the old and infirm. Anyways, no one is suggesting that they
should be left to fend for themselves, the older people and those with conditions makes them
high risk should be isolated.
The UK closed the massive Nightingale hospitals that were set up to handle thousands of
patients. The one in London handled a total of 54 before shutting down. Clearly, we had
over-provisioned for the outbreak (as we should) but very clearly we are past the worst.
Please OPEN UP THE ECONOMY. And do it NOW. The deaths being avoided are not worth keeping
the economy shut down, not only in the UK but across the world.
People point towards the Spanish flu where most deaths happened in the 2nd wave. Well,
most of those deaths would not have happened had antibiotics been invented then. The deaths
were due to subsequent bacterial infections (usually pneumonia) after the virus weakened the
immune system.
We need to start going back to normal and we need to do it now!
Democrats - the Dream Killers. Meanwhile immigration is our strength, multi-national
corporations may operate, private businesses may not - "for the common good" as Deborah
Dingell, former GM lobbyist and now successor to John D's hold on power in Congress and the
DNC, likes to repeat daily on her FB stream of concousness - along with exhortations to
obedience.
"By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov.
Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into
poverty."
Poverty apparently doesn't kill anyone infected with this virus, but it sure is killing
our freedoms and thanks to Cuomo and Whitmer it has killed thousands in nursing homes. The
press is all praise for them, and tries to gin up stories about other governors, such as De
Santis of Florida, or ignores them, as they are going with the story in Georgia.
Sir,
I was a fence sitter/agnostic until the end of February or early March. Then there was enough
data in to be able to understand that the elderly needed to be protected and the rest of
should go about life as normal. When you first posted about panic, I wasn't seeing a panic as
I would define it. Then a few days later lockdowns were announced. You had the jump on that
one!
Just to summarize what I have been saying since the lockdown started, there are going to
be more deaths (and many more years of life lost) from all of the people not able and/or too
afraid to engage in regular healthcare services than there will be killed by the virus - and
from the effects of economic destruction.
The Mayor of Ithaca, NY - not a conservative by any means - made an appeal to Cuomo to
open the economy back up and to allow students to return to colleges. He says his college
town (includes Cornell U) had the best economy in all of NY up to the lockdown (lowest
unemployment, etc). Now he can't collect enough tax revenue to pay police and other public
servants.
And that's what I don't get about this scheme to establish a new [socialist] normal. How
do the socialists think they are going to generate revenues to pay for everything they want?
It's almost as if they don't understand economics 101. Will they turn on their limousine
faction and confiscate their wealth along with that of conservatives? Do they really imagine
that no one is going to fight back (I mean with votes, pitchforks, guns...whatever)? For that
matter, same goes for the non-scheming sincere useful science geek/idiots. They are supposed
to be engineer types, but where are the sober calculations of costs and benefits? What are
they thinking?
Re:
A lot of people die every day of a variety of causes. This virus is a reaper that culls the
population, eliminating the weak and the old. The great majority of healthy, productive
people survive infection with little or no apparent effect.
The last or only time this brushed me was with polio in Detroit in the 50's. Following
your "re-open the country, all of it" swimming pools and Belle Isle would never have been
closed would have remained open in August and September to allow nature to thin-out
Detroit's/the country's weakest.
Yeah, too bad about all those doctors and nurses dying. Easily replaced, I'm sure.
It's just math, folks. Epidemics are math...you can either go with the math or try to
change the equation and the outcome of the math. I, personally, would rather try to change
the equation.
"The greater good ..." How many doctors and nurses really? How many? You should remember
about me that I am accustomed to sacrificing people for the greater good. That is MY
professional deformation.
New York City is still getting hundreds of new cases and hospitalizations a day. How many
people will want to go to crowded indoor places? If there is social distancing with lots of
empty chairs and spaces, how many closed places could make any money if they opened?
There's been a lot of uncertainty and guesswork involved with this new virus and that will
continue. We came through the first round with some hotspots but most places doing OK. I
think we were right to shut down when we did and that we need to be careful in opening back
up. I still trust Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx.
Certainly it's time to start relaxing restrictions in most places. But we need to remember
that this is a new virus with many unknowns and that we are all vulnerable because there's no
proven ttestment that works, cure or vaccine.
I have to say that this crisis has taken on a symbolic importance for some. It has not for
me. I think this will lead to a lot more disagreement about what should be done in the
future, particularly if we have addition waves. That makes me feel uneasy -- very uneasy. I
am not assuming we're going to have a very effective vaccine within a year so we may be
living with this threat for a long time.
Eric, socialists in California have one standard answer when confronted with funding for
their schemes: They'll find the money. .
End of all practical discussion. When asked for details, they will invariably add .. "you
had money for the Vietnam war .... the military etc. Just use that money."
Only two decades of total socialism in this state has this done to our fiscal literacy.
"Just tax the rich" gets anything passed. Cruel fact in this state, the rich - just the top
1% in this state pay 50% of all state revenues. Only a handful of people pay half the
bills.
Should any of this top 1% leave, like Musk recently threatened, shock waves will reach the
state's executive suite. But this threat will fall on deaf ears in the state's Democrat
super-majority legislature.
Voters finally are catching on - they lost their livelihood due to government actions, but
government employees never missed a paycheck. How this translates at the ballot box remains
to be seen. Two Democrats getting recently tossed out is a good start, but is it a trend?
My own local city council yesterday just gave all SEIU employees a raise; while our entire
economy, much of it dependent on tourism, has been totally trashed. This is what a Democrat
one party state looks like.
"How do the socialists think they are going to generate revenues to pay for everything they
want?"
Eric,
Simple. Print money. As they've been doing since the GFC at scale. The added benefit is
that the biggest beneficiary of socialism - the titan of capitalism - Wall St - will get the
lion's share as they're getting now with the Wuhan virus lockdown. Average Joe peon should be
thankful they got $1,200.
Powell on 60 Minutes says there's no limit to the Fed printing money. He like Bernanke
loves to click Print on the keyboard. And no pesky Congressional authorization either. MOAR
& MOAR!!
It's feeling pretty normal here in SW Florida now, rumor is Jun 1st the bars will open up and
that makes it 100% normal. I know of at least 6 restaurants in Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda
that will not re-open. We go through the restaurant closings every year anyway, "Season"
ended early this year with the lock down. Memorial Day usually is when we get the closings.
But, they will reopen with new owners who have recently retired and "have always wanted to
own a restaurant" not understanding that the restaurant business is for the younger, just as
life is.
I feel awful when I see the little old ladies driving alone in their cars with their masks
on, victims of the MSM that are truly a national security threat.
Sir,
The fact of the Khmer Rouge and the mentality behind it (at bottom, same as Mao, same as
Stalin same others that brought death, destruction and misery to their societies) is another
reason to get back to normal in this country - and accept any casualties that might result.
This has become a war for the heart and soul of the country. Actually, it's a war for
everything; even material prosperity. Whatever the casualties might be in the short run, they
will be far less than the long run if we allow the Khmer Rouge to continue (which, of course,
is one of your key points).
One of my objectives on social media has been to try to gain insight into the Khmer Rouge
and young pioneer psychology. I can now recognize it when I see it; even when it tries to
disguise itself, but I truly don't understand such people. IMO it is some kind of twisted
spiritual illness that seeks dominance as it replaces God with themselves. That much I can
see. I guess it has to do with the battle between good and evil. Evil always seeks to control
and manipulate and disrespects the sanctity of each soul. It seeks to enslave and cut off
from freedom and recognition of divinity around each of us and in each of us. Its sycophants
are attracted to the sense of power; false as it may truly be.
Our natural capacity for threat perception and assessment is warped by the media's need to
generate headlines. The virus is a gift to them which they have enthusiastically embraced.
Most of us have a vanishing small chance of it killing us off, yet this single risk dominates
the public discourse to the exclusion of almost all else.
Social media is particularly insidious, the effects of which far too few are prepared to
counter. The feedback loops of hysteria it generates must be assessed as a threat in their
own right - to our ability to make sound judgments.
A destroyed economy is not a direct threat to any one individual's survival, but it's
collapse is an inevitable consequence if the lockdowns are allowed to continue. In this case
many will die and very many more will experience a great deal of misery. Sadly the headlines
carrying these stories will only come after it is far too late.
Turn off the Tee Vee news, treat social media 'news' with great skepticism and read the
opinions of people who see the bigger picture. You are in the right place for the last of
these.
Open it up-It never should of closed. What we have done is to prolong the inevitable. You
either get it or you don't but it is still here waiting for those cowering in their homes.
Prudent actions and awareness of your situation will get one through most of life's
events.
The next thing we will here is Oh Folks, get out there and enjoy the summer while you can as
it's coming back in the fall. No schools, Sheltering in Place, minimize the essentials, where
are those ships and tent hospitals, we need PPE, start the printing etc etc cause the vaccine
ain't ready Folks.
It will all be fine, don't worry. Keep in mind it has only taken a 100,000 out 330,000,000
a very low ratio.
The US government will issue 3 trillion $ of new debt in this quarter alone. The banks
will buy these bonds, then sell them back to the US Central Bank (that's called "quantitative
easing", the quoted article talks about the expectation that the central bank will announce a
new bond purchasing program soon because the current one is far too small to absorb all the
new debt), and the cycle repeats.
That's not sustainable, but that's the only plan that exists. If the shutdown of the
economy continues indefinitely, it will end in economic collapse by bankruptcy of the federal
government, or hyperinflation, which is really just a different way to reach the same painful
end point.
Same story here in Europe, just with the added complication that there are conflicts
between the different national governments of the Eurozone when the European Central Bank
does the very same thing.
You can open up the city when everyone starts to wear a
mask . Covid-19 is proving to be an airborne killer... which simplifies things
enormously. Consider it an instance of CBW. And of course the children's inflammatory
syndrome is just collateral damage.
Master Slacker--And now there is some evidence that the inflammatory syndrome is hitting
teenagers and young adults, too.
turocpolier--The numbers aren't comprehensive (or even good) on the national toll of
doctors and nurses and aides and CNAs, etc. in health care/hospitals. Too bad our government
can't get everyone to report in a uniform manner!!!! (Not that any other administration has
been successful with this either.) It certainly would be helpful in the middle of a novel
pandemic to know if we were going to have enough front line responders to stay in the
fight.
And I NEVER forget that you are a professional "sacrificer for the greater good." That is
why I appreciate what you have to say...it is a worthy perspective and not one that I default
to!
So "my body, my choice" is for abortion only now, because your fear is greater than my
rights? "stay home, stay safe" negates my need to wear a gag in your presence. I reccomend
Kevin Drum go out and drum up some antifa support for the socialist distancing policing. They
ought to be well rested and ready for some agit-prop and agent provocateur actions by
now.
A progressive organization of 23,000 physicians from across the U.S. demanded Thursday that
the American Hospital Association (AHA) divest completely from a dark-money lobbying group that
has spent millions combating Medicare for All and instead devote those financial resources to
the fight against Covid-19 and to better support for patients and healthcare workers.
Dr. Adam Gaffney, president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), said in a
statement that "the Covid-19 pandemic has stretched hospitals' resources to the limit, and the
AHA should not waste precious member hospitals' funds lobbying against universal health
coverage" as a member of the Partnership for America's Health Care Future (PFAHCF).
Because Medicare for All would provide a lifeline to hospitals in underserved areas that
have been hit hard by Covid-19, Gaffney argued, the AHA "cannot claim to represent hospitals
while also opposing a single-payer system that would keep struggling hospitals open." The AHA
represents around 5,000 hospitals and other healthcare providers in the U.S.
As Common Dreams
reported earlier this month, public health officials are accusing the Trump administration
of directing billions of dollars in Covid-19 hospital bailout funds to high-revenue providers
while restricting money to hospitals that serve low-income areas.
Tenet Healthcare, an investor-owned hospital company that has donated hundreds of
thousands to PFAHCF, has received $345 million in Covid-19 bailout funds, Axios
reported last month.
"The AHA should immediately leave the PFAHCF," Gaffney said, "and redirect that money to
supporting patients and frontline healthcare workers."
"As physicians, we can no longer tolerate a health system that puts profits ahead of
patients and public health," Gaffney added. "It's time for health professionals to hold
accountable the organizations that claim to represent us."
Formed in the summer of 2018 by an alliance of pharmaceutical, insurance, and hospital
lobbyists with the goal of countering the push for universal healthcare, PFAHCF's anti-Medicare
for All " army "
has grown rapidly since its founding, with the AHA joining the fray in 2019.
As The Interceptreported last
October, the for-profit hospital industry has played an "integral role" in the corporate fight
against single-payer.
If Nigerian hackers can steal that much money, Israel, Chinese, and Russian, intel agencies
probably are in the most Fed information systems doing what they want ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... officials in Washington State may have lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" to fraudsters filing bogus unemployment claim ..."
officials
in Washington State may have lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" to fraudsters filing bogus
unemployment claim s – all the way from Nigeria.
"America's Patchwork Pandemic Is Fraying Even Further" [
The Atlantic ]. "America spent much of April on a disquieting plateau, with every day
bringing about 30,000 new cases and about 2,000 new deaths .
This pattern exists because different states have experienced the coronavirus pandemic in
very different ways . The U.S. is dealing with a patchwork pandemic. The patchwork is not
static. Next month's hot spots will not be the same as last month's.
I spoke with two dozen experts who agreed that in the absence of a vaccine, the patchwork
will continue. Cities that thought the worst had passed may be hit anew. States that had lucky
escapes may find themselves less lucky. The future is uncertain, but Americans should expect
neither a swift return to normalcy nor a unified national experience, with an initial spring
wave, a summer lull, and a fall resurgence. "The talk of a second wave as if we've exited the
first doesn't capture what's really happening," says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. What's happening is not one crisis, but many
interconnected ones.
A patchwork was inevitable, especially when a pandemic unfolds over a nation as large as the
U.S. But the White House has intensified it by devolving responsibility to the states. There is
some sense to that. American public health works at a local level, delivered by more than 3,000
departments that serve specific cities, counties, tribes, and states. This decentralized system
is a strength: An epidemiologist in rural Minnesota knows the needs and vulnerabilities of her
community better than a federal official in Washington, D.C.
But in a pandemic, the actions of 50 uncoordinated states will be less than the sum of their
parts. Only the federal government has pockets deep enough to fund the extraordinary
public-health effort now needed. Only it can coordinate the production of medical supplies to
avoid local supply-chain choke points, and then ensure that said supplies are distributed
according to need, rather than influence
The pandemic patchwork exists because the U.S. is a patchwork to its core . New
outbreaks will continue to flare and fester unless the country makes a serious effort to
protect its most vulnerable citizens, recognizing that their risk is the result of societal
failures, not personal ones." • A must-read.
Andrew Cuomo may be the most popular
politician in the country. ... All of which is bizarre, because Cuomo should be one of the
most loathed officials in America right now. ProPublica
recently released a report outlining catastrophic missteps by Cuomo and the New York City
mayor, Bill de Blasio, which probably resulted in many thousands of needless coronavirus cases.
ProPublica offers some appalling numbers contrasting what happened in New York with the
outbreak in California. By mid-May, New York City alone had almost 20,000 deaths, while in San
Francisco there had been only 35, and New York state as a whole suffered 10 times as many
deaths as California.
Federal failures played a role, of course, but this tragedy was absolutely due, in part, to
decisions by the governor. Cuomo initially "reacted to De Blasio's idea for closing down New
York City with derision", saying it "was dangerous" and "served only to scare people". He said
the "seasonal flu was a graver worry". A spokesperson for Cuomo "refused to say if the governor
had ever read the state's pandemic plan". Later, Cuomo would blame the press, including the New
York Times for failing to say "Be careful, there's a virus in China that may be in the United
States?" even though the Times wrote nearly 500 stories on the
virus before the state acted. Experts told ProPublica that "had New York imposed its extreme
social distancing measures a week or two earlier, the death toll might have been cut by half or
more".
But delay was not the only screw-up. Elderly prisoners
have died of coronavirus because New York has failed to act on their medical parole
requests. As Business Insider documented:
"Testing was
slow . Nonprofit social-service agencies that serve the most vulnerable
couldn't get answers either . And medical experts like the former CDC director Tom Frieden
said 'so many deaths could have been prevented' had New York issued its stay-at-home order
just 'days earlier' than it did. On March 19, when New York's schools had already been
closed, Cuomo said 'in many ways, the fear is more dangerous than the virus.'"
The governor has failed to take responsibility for the obvious failures, consistently
blaming others and at one point even saying " governors
don't do pandemics ". (Actually, some governors just don't read their state's pandemic
plans.) But much of the press has ignored this, focusing instead on Cuomo's aesthetic
presentation: his poise during press conferences, his dramatic statements about "taking
responsibility" (even when he obviously hasn't), and his invisible good looks. ...
There's something disturbing about Cuomo being hailed as the hero of the pandemic when he
should rightly be one of the villains. As Business Insider notes, he is now only able to attain
praise for his actions because his earlier failures made those actions necessary. He's lauded
for addressing a problem that he himself partly caused. Of course, part of this is because
Donald Trump has
bungled the coronavirus response even more badly , so that Cuomo – by not being a
complete buffoon – looks like a capable statesman by contrast. But this is the problem:
for too long, Democrats have measured their politicians by "whether they are better than
Republicans". This sets the bar very low indeed, and means that Democrats end up settling for
incompetent and amoral leaders who betray progressive values again and again.
President Donald Trump told Republican senators during a private lunch Tuesday that he is willing to let expanded unemployment
benefits expire at the end of July, a decision that would
massively slash the incomes of tens of millions
of people who have lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 crisis.
The Washington Post
reported Tuesday that the president "privately expressed opposition to extending a weekly $600 boost in unemployment insurance
for laid-off workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic, according to three officials familiar with his remarks."
House Democrats passed legislation last week that would extend the beefed-up unemployment benefits through January of 2021 as
experts and government officials -- including Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell --
warn the
U.S. unemployment rate could soon reach 25%. The unemployment insurance boost under the CARES Act is set to expire on July 31, even
as many
people have yet to receive their first check.
"With nearly 1 in 5 Americans out of work, Donald Trump's plan is to cut off the boost to unemployment benefits and shower his
wealthy buddies with more tax cuts," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the architects of the unemployment insurance expansion,
toldHuffPost . "This is the worst economic crisis in 100 years and Donald Trump is doubling down on Herbert Hoover's economic
playbook and pushing workers to risk their health for his political benefit."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) -- who
declared earlier this month that Congress will only extend the boosted unemployment insurance "over our dead bodies" -- said
after the private lunch that Trump believes the benefits are "hurting the economic recovery." Graham was one of several Republican
senators who
opposed the initial expansion of unemployment benefits as too generous.
An
analysis
released last week by the Hamilton Project, an initiative of the Brookings Institution, found that expanded unemployment benefits
offset "roughly half of lost wages and salaries in April." Unemployment insurance has "been essential to families, and is vital for
keeping the economy from cratering further," the authors of the analysis noted.
Ernie Tedeschi, a former Treasury Department economist,
estimated that "come July 31, if the emergency
UI top-up isn't extended, unemployed workers will effectively get a pay cut of 50-75% overnight."
"It's increasingly looking like there won't be enough labor demand to hire them all back at that point," Tedeschi tweeted.
The latest Labor Department statistics showed that
more than 36 million
people in the U.S. have filed jobless claims since mid-March as mass layoffs continue in the absence of government action to
keep workers on company payrolls. Despite the grim numbers, the Post 's Jeff Stein reported Tuesday that the White House
is "
predicting a swift economic recovery " as it resists additional efforts to provide relief to frontline workers and the unemployed.
On top of rejecting an extension of enhanced unemployment insurance, Trump last month
publicly voiced opposition to another round of direct stimulus payments, instead advocating a cut to the tax that funds Social
Security and Medicare.
Demanding McDonald's prioritize public health and worker safety over profits, hundreds of
employees at the fast food chain
went on strike Wednesday, a day before the company was set to hold its annual shareholders'
meeting.
Instead of distributing dividends to its shareholders, the striking employees are calling
for the company to use its massive profits to pay for safety and financial protections for
workers, scores of whom have contracted Covid-19 in at least 16 states so far.
Employees and strike organizers at the fair wage advocacy group Fight for $15 are demanding
hazard pay during the pandemic of "$15X2," paid sick leave, sufficient protective gear for
workers, and company-wide policy of closing a restaurant for two weeks when an employee becomes
infected, with workers being fully paid.
The strike is taking place at stores in at least 20 cities. Fight for $15 and the SEIU,
which is also supporting the action, say it's the first nationwide coordinated effort targeting
the company since the coronavirus pandemic began in March.
The coerced economic "shutdowns" - enforced with fines, arrests, and revoked business
licenses - are not the natural outgrowth of a pandemic. They are the result of policy decisions
taken by politicians who have suspended constitutional institutions and legal recognition of
basic human rights. These politicians have instead imposed a new form of central planning based
on an unproven, theoretical set of ideas about police-enforced "social distancing."
None of that is being considered, however, since it is now fashionable to have governments
determine whether or not people may open their businesses or leave their homes. So far, the
strategy for dealing with the resulting economic collapse is no more sophisticated than
record-breaking
deficit spending , followed by debt monetization via money printing. In short, politicians,
bureaucrats, and their supporters have insisted a single policy goal -- ending the spread of a
disease -- be allowed to destroy all other values and considerations in society.
Has it even worked? Mounting evidence says no.
In The
Lancet , Swedish infectious disease clinician (and World Health Organization (WHO) advisor)
Johan Giesecke concluded:
It has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in
care homes - a population the lockdown was designed to protect. Neither does it decrease
mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the UK's experience with that of
other European countries.
At best, lockdowns push cases into the future, they do not lower total deaths. Gieseck
continues:
Measures to flatten the curve might have an effect, but a lockdown only pushes the severe
cases into the future -- it will not prevent them. Admittedly, countries have managed to slow
down spread so as not to overburden health-care systems, and, yes, effective drugs that save
lives might soon be developed, but this pandemic is swift, and those drugs have to be
developed, tested, and marketed quickly. Much hope is put in vaccines, but they will take
time, and with the unclear protective immunological response to infection, it is not certain
that vaccines will be very effective.
As a public policy measure, the lack of evidence that lockdowns work must be balanced with
the fact that we have already observed that economic destruction is costly in terms of human
life.
Yet in the public debate, lockdown enthusiasts insist that any deviation from the lockdown
will result in total deaths far exceeding those places where there are lockdowns. So far, there
is no evidence of this.
In a new study titled "Full Lockdown Policies in Western Europe Countries Have No Evident
Impacts on the COVID-19 Epidemic," author Thomas Meunier writes , "total deaths
numbers using pre-lockdown trends suggest that no lives were saved by this strategy, in
comparison with pre-lockdown, less restrictive, social distancing policies." That is, the "full
lockdown policies of France, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom haven't had the expected effects
in the evolution of the COVID-19 epidemic." 1
The premise here is not that voluntary "social distancing" has no effect. Rather, the
question is to whether "police-enforced home containment" works to limit the spread of disease.
Meunier concludes it does not.
The question the model set out to ask was whether lockdown states experience fewer
Covid-19 cases and deaths than social-distancing states, adjusted for all of the above
variables. The answer? No. The impact of state-response strategy on both my cases and deaths
measures was utterly insignificant. The "p-value" for the variable representing strategy was
0.94 when it was regressed against the deaths metric, which means there is a 94 per cent
chance that any relationship between the different measures and Covid-19 deaths was the
result of pure random chance.
Overall, however, the fact that good-sized regions from Utah to Sweden to much of East
Asia have avoided harsh lockdowns without being overrun by Covid-19 is notable.
Another study on lockdowns -- again, we're talking about forced business closures and
stay-at-home orders here -- is this study by researcher Lyman Stone at
the American Enterprise Institute. Stone notes that areas where lockdowns were imposed either
had already experienced a downward trend in deaths before the lockdown could have possibly
shown effects or showed the same trend as the year prior. In other words, lockdown advocates
have been taking credit for trends that had already been observed before lockdowns were forced
on the population.
Stone writes:
Here's the thing: there's no evidence of lockdowns working. If strict lockdowns actually
saved lives, I would be all for them, even if they had large economic costs. But the
scientific and medical case for strict lockdowns is paper-thin.
Experience increasingly suggests that a more targeted approach is better for those who
actually want to limit the spread of disease among the most vulnerable. The overwhelming
majority -- nearly 75 percent -- of deaths from COVID-19 occur in patients over sixty-five
years of age. Of those, approximately 90 percent have other underlying
conditions . Thus, limiting the spread of COVID-19 is most critical among those who are
already engaged with the healthcare system and are elderly. In the
US and Europe ,
more than half of COVID-19 deaths are occuring in nursing homes and similar institutions.
This is why Matt Ridley at The Spectator quite reasonably
observes that testing, not lockdowns, appears to be the key factor in limiting deaths from
COVID-19 . Those areas where testing is widespread have performed better:
Yet it is not obvious why testing would make a difference, especially to the death rate.
Testing does not cure the disease. Germany's strange achievement of a consistently low case
fatality rate seems baffling -- until you think through where most early cases were found: in
hospitals. By doing a lot more testing, countries like Germany might have partly kept the
virus from spreading within the healthcare system. Germany, Japan and Hong Kong had different
and more effective protocols in place from day one to prevent the virus spreading within care
homes and hospitals.
The horrible truth is that it now looks like in many of the early cases, the disease was
probably caught in hospitals and doctors' surgeries. That is where the virus kept returning,
in the lungs of sick people, and that is where the next person often caught it, including
plenty of healthcare workers. Many of these may not have realised they had it, or thought
they had a mild cold. They then gave it to yet more elderly patients who were in hospital for
other reasons, some of whom were sent back to care homes when the National Health Service
made space on the wards for the expected wave of coronavirus patients.
We could contrast this with the policies of Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, who mandated
that nursing homes accept new residents
without testing . This method nearly ensures that the disease will spread quickly among
those who are most likely to die from it.
Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo saw fit to impose police-enforced lockdowns on the entire
population of New York, ensuring economic ruin and ruined health for many non-COVID patients
who were then cut off from vital treatments. Yet, disturbingly, lockdown fetishists like Cuomo
are hailed as wise statesmen who "acted decisively" to prevent the spread of disease.
But this is the sort of regime we now live under. In the minds of many, it is better to
abolish human rights and consign millions to destitution in the name of pursuing trendy
unproven policies. The prolockdown party has even turned basic fundamentals of policy debate
upside down. As Stone notes:
At this point, the question I usually get is, "What's your evidence that lockdowns don't
work?"
It's a strange question. Why should I have to prove that lockdowns don't work? The burden
of proof is to show that they do work! If you're going to essentially cancel the civil
liberties of the entire population for a few weeks, you should probably have evidence that
the strategy will work. And there, lockdown advocates fail miserably, because they simply
don't have evidence.
With economic output crashing worldwide and unemployment soaring to Great Depression levels,
governments are already looking for a way out. Don't expect to hear any mea culpas from
politicians, but we can already see how governments are quickly moving toward a voluntary
social-distancing, nonlockdown strategy. This comes even after politicians and disease
"experts" have been insisting that
lockdowns must be imposed indefinitely until there's a vaccine .
The longer the lockdown-created economic destruction continues, the greater will be the
threat of social unrest and even economic free fall. The political reality is thst the current
situation cannot be sustained without threatening the regimes in power themselves. In an
article for Foreign Policy titled "
Sweden's Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World's ," authors Nils Karlson, Charlotta
Stern, and Daniel B. Klein suggest that regimes will be forced to retreat to a Swedish
model:
As the pain of national lockdowns grows intolerable and countries realize that managing --
rather than defeating -- the pandemic is the only realistic option, more and more of them
will begin to open up. Smart social distancing to keep health-care systems from being
overwhelmed, improved therapies for the afflicted, and better protections for at-risk groups
can help reduce the human toll. But at the end of the day, increased -- and ultimately, herd
-- immunity may be the only viable defense against the disease, so long as vulnerable groups
are protected along the way. Whatever marks Sweden deserves for managing the pandemic, other
nations are beginning to see that it is ahead of the curve.
Don't forget 'Covidiots'. The frontline-worker-lovin', government-narrative-believin'
social-distance welcomin' simpletons are endlessly inventive when it comes to coining
contemptuous nicknames for those who don't buy into their embrace of madness. I am happy to
be able to say I thought the virus was bogus from the first, and said so to anyone who
would listen.
That's too simplistic. You should agree that religious nuts who attend the church in large
groups despite the risk can and should be called "Covidiots". Because they are. And the
people who are trying to preserve their meager income generally should not.
Why religious nuts can't move to outdoors for the same purpose like first Chirstians did,
is unclear to me ;-). Not sure about Orthodox Jews, which is pretty closed sect in any case
so if they want to infect each other, be my guest.
The virus causes specific for it virus pneumonia which is no joke. People who recovered
still have fibroses in this lungs of different degree. That's why people who were
hospitalized with COVID-19 are ineligible to serve in US army. So for those unlucky who get
virus pneumonia that's a crippling disease. You can't deny this.
For around 15-20% of people over 65 infected with COVID-19 it means the death sentence --
they will never recover and either die in hospital or soon after. Men over 65 are two third
of those so for old men the risk can't be discounted.
So the question is what forms and length of quarantine was optimal, not whether it should
or should not be enforced. I doubt that you want to argue that night clubs should remain
open. Or that wearing masks in closed spaces is redundant (in open spaces they generally are
redundant, unless you are standing in line, etc)
You also need some timeout to collect the vital information about the disease using first
cases, enhance the protection of medical personnel, and access the level of actual risk to
the population and the economy (the USA generally wasted it and Trump was inapt; so the
effect of quarantine is more questionable for this particular country).
It was not that clear in March that the risk is generally low, although we can't deny that
Fauci and Co were caught without pants (or, for some sinister reason were intended to be
caught this way as if they waited until epidemic got to a certain point that masks something
else )
That does not excuse incompetence of Trump administration and very strange behaviors of
Fauci, who spent two months and then woke up and suddenly start crying Wolf, Wolf, but the
USA is very mysterious country and in no way Canadians can understand it
The Argument Against the Argument Against Facemasks
Resistance rooted in liberty clashes with the unalienable right of life https://tinyurl.com/yctjydmx
Masks help stop the spread of coronavirus – the science is simple and I'm one of 100
experts urging governors to require public mask-wearing https://tinyurl.com/yah8orzo
More than 80% of Americans support closing non-essential businesses. Support for limiting
restaurants, closing schools, canceling sporting and entertainment events, and group
gatherings exceeds 90%. A total of 94% strongly or somewhat approve asking people to stay
home and avoid gathering in groups; 92% support canceling major sports and entertainment
events; 91% approve closing K-12 schools; 91% approve limiting restaurants to carry-out
only; 83% approve closing businesses other than grocery stores and pharmacies. There are
some partisan differences on these items -- Republicans are somewhat less supportive, but
even among Republicans large majorities support all of these measures; and, as summarized
below, support is largely consistent across every state.
A bipartisan consensus opposes a rapid "reopening" of the economy. Only 7% support
immediate reopening of the economy, and the median respondent supports waiting four to six
weeks. There is a bipartisan consensus on waiting (89% of Republicans as compared to 96% of
Democrats opposed immediate re-opening), and Republicans support a somewhat faster
re-opening of the economy than Democrats, where the median Republican supports waiting two
to four weeks versus median Democrat six to eight weeks. As discussed below, even in those
Republican-led states which are moving toward re-opening, few people support reopening
immediately
Generally, Americans report adhering to social distancing, indicating that they had minimal
social interactions with people outside of their households. That said, 56% reported
encountering at least one person from outside of their home in the preceding 24 hours (and
7% reported encountering 10 or more persons); the survey did not contain information on the
circumstances of those encounters (e.g., was it at grocery stores? were the individuals
wearing masks?). Generally, there were not large differences with respect to age, gender,
race, income, partisanship or education. An exception was that Asian Americans were
substantially less likely to encounter other individuals, and more likely to avoid contact
with other people. There were significant racial differences reported in wearing face masks
outside of the home, with 51% of whites reporting following recommendations very closely,
along with 62% of Hispanics, 64% of African Americans, and 68% of Asian Americans. There
was also an age gradient in this regard, ranging from 50% face mask wearing for 18-24 year
olds to 60% of those aged 65 or higher. There were also partisan differences: 51% of
Republicans, compared to 64% for Democrats, reported wearing face masks outside the home.
I find the racial differences interesting, especially since in my observation fewer blacks
are wearing masks. However, since I was specifically looking at blacks (due to the
disproportionate number of blacks dying) in my walks, I may have under counted the number of
whites not wearing masks. Also I suspect it varies between cities, states and more suburban
or rural areas.
In any event, not enough people are wearing masks to re-open the economy - and we damn
sure don't have enough testing, tracing and isolating capability and probably won't until
September, according to one report I read.
A number of other interesting results. Check it out.
One of the key things to understand in thinking about the value of masks is the concept of
the viral dose. While it seem logical that a single viral particle hitting a person's
mouth, nose or eye could cause an infection, strong laboratory and empirical evidence says
that this is not the case -- it takes a big dose of virus to launch a case of Covid. This
happy fact means that masks for everyday use don't need to block 100% of pathogens in order
to prevent the disease from spreading. (Even the medical grade N95 masks don't block every
viral particle, but they block enough to protect the user, even when caring for patients
with known Covid-19.)
A simulation by De Kai and colleagues makes the case that masks are most effective if at
least 80% of people are using them. The figure below maps the rate of transmission with the
expected deaths from Covid-19 in a nation the size of the UK. According to the simulation,
social distancing alone without masking would lead to 1.16 million deaths by May 31st.
However, with 50% of the population masking, the projected death figure drops to 240,000.
With 80% masking, there are 60,000 deaths. If Professor De Kai's mind-blowing video (below)
doesn't convince you of the virtue of mask wearing, I just don't know what to tell you.
Video referenced above:
Visual simulations show why we all need to wear masks now #UniversalMasking #masks4all
#COVID19
42,341 views •Apr 26, 2020 https://tinyurl.com/yc89vf9c
The Argument Against the Argument Against Facemasks
Resistance rooted in liberty clashes with the unalienable right of life https://tinyurl.com/yctjydmx
Masks help stop the spread of coronavirus – the science is simple and I'm one of 100
experts urging governors to require public mask-wearing https://tinyurl.com/yah8orzo
More than 80% of Americans support closing non-essential businesses. Support for limiting
restaurants, closing schools, canceling sporting and entertainment events, and group
gatherings exceeds 90%. A total of 94% strongly or somewhat approve asking people to stay
home and avoid gathering in groups; 92% support canceling major sports and entertainment
events; 91% approve closing K-12 schools; 91% approve limiting restaurants to carry-out
only; 83% approve closing businesses other than grocery stores and pharmacies. There are
some partisan differences on these items -- Republicans are somewhat less supportive, but
even among Republicans large majorities support all of these measures; and, as summarized
below, support is largely consistent across every state.
A bipartisan consensus opposes a rapid "reopening" of the economy. Only 7% support
immediate reopening of the economy, and the median respondent supports waiting four to six
weeks. There is a bipartisan consensus on waiting (89% of Republicans as compared to 96% of
Democrats opposed immediate re-opening), and Republicans support a somewhat faster
re-opening of the economy than Democrats, where the median Republican supports waiting two
to four weeks versus median Democrat six to eight weeks. As discussed below, even in those
Republican-led states which are moving toward re-opening, few people support reopening
immediately
Generally, Americans report adhering to social distancing, indicating that they had minimal
social interactions with people outside of their households. That said, 56% reported
encountering at least one person from outside of their home in the preceding 24 hours (and
7% reported encountering 10 or more persons); the survey did not contain information on the
circumstances of those encounters (e.g., was it at grocery stores? were the individuals
wearing masks?). Generally, there were not large differences with respect to age, gender,
race, income, partisanship or education. An exception was that Asian Americans were
substantially less likely to encounter other individuals, and more likely to avoid contact
with other people. There were significant racial differences reported in wearing face masks
outside of the home, with 51% of whites reporting following recommendations very closely,
along with 62% of Hispanics, 64% of African Americans, and 68% of Asian Americans. There
was also an age gradient in this regard, ranging from 50% face mask wearing for 18-24 year
olds to 60% of those aged 65 or higher. There were also partisan differences: 51% of
Republicans, compared to 64% for Democrats, reported wearing face masks outside the home.
I find the racial differences interesting, especially since in my observation fewer blacks
are wearing masks. However, since I was specifically looking at blacks (due to the
disproportionate number of blacks dying) in my walks, I may have under counted the number of
whites not wearing masks. Also I suspect it varies between cities, states and more suburban
or rural areas.
In any event, not enough people are wearing masks to re-open the economy - and we damn
sure don't have enough testing, tracing and isolating capability and probably won't until
September, according to one report I read.
A number of other interesting results. Check it out.
There is a statistical possibility a vaccine comes out next year. But his possibility is
remote. The key here is that a vaccine must be tested to the exhaustion before being ok'd by
any government for mass use. Any mistake can result in a number of deaths that will make this
pandemic look like child's play. My opinion is that the NYT is feeding too much enthusiasm to
its readers.
The Moderna Vaccine the media is touting as a promising, miracle breakthrough that has only
been tested on a limited group of 45 people, aged 18 to 55 has Grade 3 adverse effects in 100
and 250 microgram dosage.
So they're going to lower dosage to 50 micrograms and test it on the 56 to 70 and over 70
age groups. What about the group most Americans are in: the KFC, McDonald's, IHOP group?
Fauci jumped the gun with the Moderna vaccine promotion.
Notable quotes:
"... Former Harvard Medical School professor and founder of the university's cancer and HIV/AIDS research departments, William Haseltine dared to speak out today about the high level of bullshit and damage that is being done to "trust" in "scientists" and even dared to break the one holy writ that shall go un-mentioned, throwing some shade a Dr.Fauci. ..."
"... But, but, but... the CNBC anchorette blubbered, "are you questioning Dr. Fauci who also said that this was encouraging news?" ..."
"... "Whether [Fauci] shaded what should should have been done, I think is an important question. He's obviously under enormous pressure for positive results but it was not the right thing to do if you can't see the data." ..."
"... The most recent example is Moderna's claim Monday of favorable results in its vaccine trial, which it announced without revealing any of the underlying data. The announcement added billions of dollars to the value of the company, with its shares jumping almost 20 percent. Many analysts believe it contributed to a 900-point gain in the Dow Jones industrial average. ..."
"... The Moderna announcement described a safety trial of its vaccine based on eight healthy participants. The claim was that in all eight people, the vaccine raised the levels of neutralizing antibodies equivalent to those found in convalescent serum of those who recovered from covid-19. What to make of that claim? Hard to say, because we have no sense of what those levels were. This is the equivalent of a chief executive of a public company announcing a favorable earnings report without supplying supporting financial data, which the Securities and Exchange Commission would never allow. ..."
"... There is a legitimate question regarding what Moderna's unsupported assertion means. The scientific and medical literature reports that some people who have recovered have little to no detectable neutralizing antibodies . There is even existing scientific literature that suggests it is possible neutralizing antibodies may not protect animals or humans from infection or reinfection by coronaviruses. ..."
"... The National Institutes of Health announced last month that the drug remdesivir offered a clear benefit to covid-19 patients with moderate disease, shortening the length of their hospital stay by several days. But did it really? Twenty days after the announcement, the supporting data has still not been published. Without the data, no doctor treating a patient can be sure they are doing the right thing. ..."
"... Another paper , published the same day, found that remdesivir had no measurable effect on patient survival or the amount of virus detectable in nasopharynx and lung secretions. What then should a practicing physician do? Follow the unsupported advice of a news announcement or a medical report published in a leading scientific journal? This is not an idle question: The NIH announcement triggered a global stampede for limited supplies of the drug. ..."
"... The media also bears responsibility. Asking experts to opine on unsubstantiated claims is not useful. Medicine and science are not matters of majority opinion; they are matters of fact supported by transparent data. This is the backbone of scientific progress and our only hope to end this pandemic. We can't give up on our standards now. ..."
At a moment in time when narrative-following "scientists" are lauded
like unquestionably omniscient supreme beings enabling dumb-as-a-rock-partisan-politicians to
play omnipotent overlords without fear of blowback, the world needs more people like William
Haseltine.
The last two weeks have seen markets and politicians jump exuberantly at the hope of every
press release from a biotech firm that proclaims one of their pet rabbits didn't die when they
fed it their latest DNA-reshaping test material (oh that is except if anyone dares say anything
positive about hydroxychloroquine but that is a topic for another discussion) as the fate of
global citizenry rests on a vaccine (and definitely not herd immunity, don't even mention
it).
Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy said it right - when did we shift from "flatten the curve,
flatten the curve, flatten the curve" to "we have to fund a cure or everyone's going to
die."
And so, that is where we find ourselves... Every talking head proclaiming the same malarkey
- we will re-open carefully, with PPE, and social distancing, and whetever else is mandated
from on-high "until we find a vaccine in 12-18 months" at which point the world will be made
whole again and Kumbaya...
All of which brings us back to the man of the day in our humble opinion.
Former Harvard Medical School professor and founder of the university's cancer and HIV/AIDS
research departments, William Haseltine dared to speak out today about the high level of
bullshit and damage that is being done to "trust" in "scientists" and even dared to break the
one holy writ that shall go un-mentioned, throwing some shade a Dr.Fauci.
Reflecting on Moderna's press release this week (which was immediately followed by massive
equity raises across numerous biotech firms and upgrades from the underwriters, surprise),
Haseltine said:
"If a CFO had tried to get away with such an opaque and data-less statement it would have
bee treated with derision and possibly an investigation."
The CNBC anchor desperately tried to guilt him into the official narrative of clinging to
any hope as long as it lifts stocks - no matter its utter bullshittiness - but Haseltine
destroyed her naive party line:
"we all know its an emergency, and in an emergency it's even more important to be clear on
what you know and what you do not know."
Moderna did not follow the process:
"you don't know what happened, we don't know what happened, there is no data."
But, but, but... the CNBC anchorette blubbered, "are you questioning Dr. Fauci who also said
that this was encouraging news?"
"Whether [Fauci] shaded what should should have been done, I think is an important
question. He's obviously under enormous pressure for positive results but it was not the
right thing to do if you can't see the data."
The full interview below is a must-watch by all who care about their freedom being
controlled by a narrative directed by fearmongering elites in the name of "science" when the
"science" is a) being ignored, b) being bastardized to meet a political need, c) being treated
as if handed down on high from the man himself, or d) being manipulated explicitly.
Faith in medicine and science is based on trust. But today, in the rush to share scientific
progress in combating covid-19, that trust is being undermined.
Private companies, governments and research institutes are holding news conferences to
report potential breakthroughs that cannot be verified. The results are always favorable, but
the full data on which the announcements are based are not immediately available for critical
review. This is "publication by press release," and it's damaging trust in the fundamental
methods of science and medicine at a time when we need it most.
The most recent example is Moderna's
claim Monday of favorable results in its vaccine trial, which it announced without
revealing any of the underlying data. The announcement added billions of dollars to the value
of the company, with its
shares jumping almost 20 percent. Many analysts believe it contributed to a
900-point gain in the Dow Jones industrial average.
The Moderna announcement described a safety trial of its vaccine based on eight healthy
participants. The claim was that in all eight people, the vaccine raised the levels of
neutralizing antibodies equivalent to those found in convalescent serum of those who recovered
from covid-19. What to make of that claim? Hard to say, because we have no sense of what those
levels were. This is the equivalent of a chief executive of a public company announcing a
favorable earnings report without supplying supporting financial data, which the Securities and
Exchange Commission would never allow.
There is a legitimate question regarding what Moderna's unsupported assertion means. The
scientific and medical literature reports that some people who have recovered have little to no
detectable neutralizing antibodies . There is even existing scientific literature that
suggests it is possible neutralizing antibodies may not protect animals or
humans from infection or reinfection by coronaviruses.
Such "publication by press release" seems to be a standard practice lately.
The National Institutes of Health
announced last month that the drug remdesivir offered a clear benefit to covid-19 patients
with moderate disease, shortening the length of their hospital stay by several days. But did it
really? Twenty days after the announcement, the supporting data has still not been published.
Without the data, no doctor treating a patient can be sure they are doing the right thing.
Another paper
, published the same day, found that remdesivir had no measurable effect on patient survival or
the amount of virus detectable in nasopharynx and lung secretions. What then should a
practicing physician do? Follow the unsupported advice of a news announcement or a medical
report published in a leading scientific journal? This is not an idle question: The NIH
announcement triggered a global stampede for
limited supplies of the drug.
The case is more nuanced for the vaccine developed by the Jenner Institute at Oxford
University, though the mileposts remain the same: It started with a public
pronouncement of favorable results from an early study, this time in monkeys, well before
any data was publicly released. An NIH scientist working on a trial of the Oxford vaccine gave
an interview to the New
York Times , claiming the drug was a success.
But the data, released as a prepublication version more than two weeks after the story ran,
didn't quite live up to the early claim. All of the vaccinated monkeys became infected when
introduced to the virus. Though there was some reduction in the amount of viral RNA detected in
the lungs, there was no reduction in the nasal secretions in the vaccinated monkeys. So the
positive result reported by the Oxford group turned out not to be protection from infection at
all, something most would agree is what a successful vaccine would do. Instead, it lowered only
the amount of virus recoverable from the vaccinated monkey's lung.
To the Jenner Institute's credit, it does warn visitors to its website
that there have been many false reports about the progress of its vaccine trial. Still, having
a scientist working on the trial paint preliminary results in such a positive manner without
having yet released the full data is cause for concern.
We all understand the need to share scientific and medical data as rapidly as possible in
this time of crisis. But a media announcement alone is not enough. There are ways to share the
data quickly and transparently: posting manuscripts before review or acceptance on publicly
available websites or working with journals to allow an early view. Publishing in this manner
allows doctors and scientists to reach their own conclusion, based on the evidence
available.
The media also bears responsibility. Asking experts to opine on unsubstantiated claims is
not useful. Medicine and science are not matters of majority opinion; they are matters of fact
supported by transparent data. This is the backbone of scientific progress and our only hope to
end this pandemic. We can't give up on our standards now.
* * *
So, by all means, trust in "science" but choose your "scientist" well...
Pure Evil, 13 minutes ago
It seems the more this hoax is exposed. The more Gates/Fauci appear as money grubbing
opportunist vaccine pushers the more the MSM and the government double down on the whole
false narrative.
hanekhw, 13 minutes ago
Look around at the moral climate and ask yourself if lying about everything for profit was
not required for success how can we stop it without pain, suffering and violence? There
really IS no free lunch and there never has been nor ever will be. We pay one way or another
but we ALL pay.
Enraged, 15 minutes ago
Fake media, fake Big Pharma, fake banksters, fake government, fake breasts, fake stock
"market", fake medical agencies, fake wars.
Assume they are 100% wrong unless there is substantial evidence they are correct, which
will be on very rare occasions.
Few things can be more annoying than answering the phone while you're in the middle of
something -- and then being greeted by a recording. If you receive a robocall trying to sell you something
(and you haven't given the caller your written permission), it's an illegal call. You should hang
up. Then, file a complaint with the
FTC and the National Do Not Call
Registry.
From phony positive Covid-19 test results to deceptive offers of financial relief, robocalls
have proliferated amid the pandemic, separating Americans from millions of precious dollars at
a time when few can afford to lose money.
One particularly nasty scam sees the target receive a text or phone call warning them
they've been exposed to the virus, tricking them into providing personal information while in a
state of panic. Another cruel variant dangles the possibility of virus-related financial relief
if they just give up their bank account details or wire the scammer a small " fee "
– a tempting prospect at a time when half of American workers are unlikely to see a
paycheck this month and upwards of 36 million have filed for unemployment since the pandemic
began. Phony treatments – in which the target orders a miracle cure, only to never
receive it – comprise some 22 percent of coronavirus-related robocalls, making them the
most common pandemic scam.
Even those who haven't been personally scammed by a robocaller
have experienced stress because of them, Provision found; 70 percent of millennials are
concerned a parent or grandparent will be preyed upon by the automated scammers, who frequently
impersonate government authorities like the Social Security Administration or the Internal
Revenue Service in order to con their targets out of bank account information or other personal
data. In fact, nearly two in five robocalls (39 percent) claim to be the SSA, with 38 percent
impersonating the IRS and 33 percent pretending to be debt collectors.
The Covid-19 scams are apparently quite effective, robbing Americans of over $13.4 million
of their hard-earned cash in the first three months of 2020 alone, according to the Federal
Trade Commission. That number doesn't include scams that haven't been discovered by their
victims, or those that go unreported to the FTC – meaning the real figure is likely much
higher.
Beware of fake contact tracers, N.J. officials warn.
New Jersey officials warned residents on Wednesday to be wary of fraudsters identifying
themselves as contact tracers in order to obtain financial information.
In recent weeks, as health departments have hired
legitimate tracers to track the spread of the coronavirus, fake tracers have been sending
people text messages looking for insurance information and bank account and social security
numbers, said Judith Persichilli, the state health commissioner.
Real contact tracers do not ask for such things, the state said.
A legitimate tracer will call, identify themselves as part of a local health department, and
explain to the person on the phone that they may have come into contact with someone who tested
positive for the virus.
Scams around the virus, unemployment benefits and stimulus checks have proliferated
nationwide , the authorities say.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy said "there is a special place in hell" for people who would scam
others during the pandemic.
Mr. Murphy also reported the state's daily virus fatalities: 168, bringing the overall death
toll to 10,747.
Stochastic" is simply defined as "randomly determined; having a random probability
distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely."
In other words, they begin with a presumption, and therein lies the FIRST error. Ferguson's
assumption was wrong, to begin with. Then this mode is so old, they recommend that it be run
only on a single CORE processor as if we were dealing with an old IBM XT.
Effectively, you start the program with what is called a "seed" number which is then used to
produce a random number. Most children's games begin this way. In fact, this is a version of
what you would be similar to the game SimCity where you create a city starting from scratch and
it simulates what might happen based upon the beginning presumption. There are numerous bugs in
the code and the documentation suggests to run it several times and take the average. This is
just unthinkable! A program should produce the same result with the same data from which it
begins. Therefore, there is no possible way this model would ever produce the same results. In
reality, this model produces completely different results even when beginning with the very
same starting seeds and parameters because of the attempt to also make the seed random. This is
not even as sophisticated as SimCity, which is really questionable. This is where the Imperial
College claims that the errors will vanish if you run it on an old system in the
single-threaded mode as if you were using a 1980s XT.
In programming, you run what is known as a regression-test, which is re-running a functional
and non-functional test to ensure that previously developed and tested software still performs
after a change. In market terminology, its called back-testing. In the most unprofessional
manner imaginable, the Imperial College code does not even have a regression-test structure.
They apparently attempted to but the extent of the random behavior caused by bugs in the code
to prevent that check? On April 4th, 2020, Imperial College noted:
" However, we haven't had the time to work out a scalable and maintainable way of running
the regression test in a way that allows a small amount of variation, but doesn't let the
figures drift over time."
This Ferguson Model is such a joke it is either an outright fraud, or it is the most inept
piece of programming I may have ever seen in my life. There is no valid test to warrant any
funding of Imperial College for providing ANY forecast based upon this model. This is the most
UNPROFESSIONAL operation perhaps in computer science. The entire team should be disbanded and
an independent team put in place to review the world of Neil Ferguson and he should NOT be
allowed to oversee any review of this model.
The only REASONABLE conclusion I can reach is that this has been deliberately used to
justify bogus forecasts intent for political activism, or I must accept that these academics
are totally incapable of even creating a theoretical model no less coding it as a programmer.
There seems to have been no independent review of Ferguson's work which is unimaginable!
A 15,000 line program is nothing. I will be glad to write a model like this in two weeks and
will only charge $1 million instead of $79 million. If you really want one to work globally, no
problem. It will take a bit more time and the price will be at a discount – only $50
million on sale – refunds not accepted as is the deal with Imperial College.
So just one more narrative about how the virus was so horrific, used to justify the
lockdowns, is shown to be utter bullshit. Remember "the immunity doesn't last, you can get
reinfected, the next time it's lethal"?
So, contrary to that, lots of people have immunity before they even get exposed to it.
From the common cold. So the idea that the corona immunity is a short term and unreliable
thing was just a bunch of uninformed blather, or worse, targeted and manipulative
narrative.
Fearmongering bullshit that is 95% wrong needs to get called out constantly.
Even in New York there was not the "catastrophic death count" that I see people writing
about as if it were true.
Hey! Let's talk about duct tape and plastic sheeting! Remember that idiotic bullshit scare
narrative?
"We have met the moment and we have prevailed," said President Donald Trump Monday, as he
supported the opening of the U.S. economy before the shutdown plunges us into a deep and
lasting depression.
Tuesday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases, made
clear to a Senate committee his contradictory views.
"If states reopen their economies too soon, there is a real risk that you may trigger an
outbreak that you may not be able to control," said Fauci. "My concern is that we will start to
see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks of the disease (and) the inevitable return of
infections."
Fauci is talking of the real possibility of a second and even more severe wave of the
pandemic this summer and fall, if we open too soon.
There is evidence to justify the fears of Fauci and Dr. Robert Redfield of the Centers for
Disease Control, who told the same Senate committee, "We are not out of the woods yet."
Yet, there is a case to be made for the risks that Trump and red state governors are taking
in opening up sooner.
The Washington Post daily graph of new deaths nationally has been showing a curve sloping
downward for a month from April's more than 2,000 a day. On no day yet this week did the U.S.
record 2,000 dead from the virus. On some days, there were fewer than 1,000.
The graph for new coronavirus cases, which was showing more than 30,000 a day in April, is
now closer to 25,000.
Also, hospitalizations and ICU occupancies are not as high as they were. Hospitals put up in
Central Park and the Javits Center seem not to have been needed. There was and is no shortage
of ventilators. The Navy hospital ships Comfort and Mercy are returning to their home
ports.
Also, not all states are suffering equally, nor are all communities in the hardest-hit
states. There have been three times as many COVID-19 cases in New Jersey as in Texas, though
New Jersey is a fraction of the size and has a fraction of the population of Texas.
There are twice as many cases in Massachusetts as in Florida, the nation's third-most
populous state with one of its highest percentages of retirees and elderly. There have been
five times as many cases in New York as in California.
It is the nursing homes filled with the elderly and ill that have proven to be the real
killing fields of this virus. According to The New York Times, one-third of all deaths from
COVID-19 have come among residents and staff of nursing homes. Beyond these are the meatpacking
plants and the prisons where social distancing is almost nonexistent.
Moreover, while Fauci and Redfield are specialists in epidemics, Trump's portfolio goes far
beyond that.
He is chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, responsible for the
security and defense of the nation. His portfolio is broader and deeper than those of Fauci and
Redfield.
ORDER IT NOW
In the first hours of the Normandy invasion, General Eisenhower must have been rightly
alarmed about the high U.S. casualties on Omaha Beach. But he also had to concern himself with
the failure to capture the Port of Caen to bring ashore the armor to stop any German
counterattack that might turn D-Day into another Anzio.
Ike could not worry about casualties alone.
According to The Washington Post, economists already project that 100,000 small businesses
have shuttered, never to reopen.
"(D)eeper and longer recessions can leave behind lasting damage to the productive capacity
of the economy," warned Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday. "Avoidable
household and business insolvencies can weigh on growth for years to come."
Ultimately, Fauci is not "The Decider" here. Trump is.
It is he who is accountable to the nation for weighing the losses, both human and material,
due to his decisions.
Fauci may be the best at what he does, but he is still only an adviser. As John F. Kennedy
said after the Bay of Pigs, it is the president who ultimately bears responsibility for what he
does and fails to do, while "the advisers may move on to new advice."
Believing he can do no more than his White House is now doing to contain the incidence of
cases, hospitalizations and deaths, Trump has decided his primary job is to prevent the nation
from a catastrophic economic collapse from which it might take years to recover.
The country is slowly moving in Trump's direction, slowly opening. And he will be
responsible for whether the policy succeeds or opens the floodgates to a second and worse wave,
should it come.
As Abraham Lincoln put his situation: "I mean to keep going. If the end brings me out all
right, then what is said against me won't matter. If I'm wrong, ten angels swearing I was right
won't make a difference."
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and
Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
Fauci says that, "My concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn
into outbreaks of the disease "
The problem with his statement is the first two words. A science advisor is supposed to
provide advice based knowledge and science. It is not part of his job description to voice
his feelings.
In this case, it doesn't matter who is "right" only one of them is POTUS! I get it that
Trumps perch on his seat is tenuous and exactly how much real control he has over the
government he supposedly heads is open to speculation, but at the end of the day Trump is
POTUS and this is no time to be thinking of political futures he must be focused on the
future of America.
We need not only an end to the lockdowns, but an end to the media campaign to demoralize
the country by hyping the non-event known as corona virus. It is all hype. when you get past
the spin and media blitz, there is nothing about this virus that would justify any kind of
response beyond your doctor testing you for covid along with the flu when you go to the
doctor with flu symptoms. That's it.
This is simply not the life altering virus that is being hyped. The enemy here is NOT the
virus, it is the (((elites))) who are trying to destroy us. It is time people it is time.
Gen. Flynn is the perfect example of how far these gov't agencies will go to protect a lie
and those frauds involved in the cover up/hoax. Trump was there target, the pathetic part of
all this is just how many republicans knew about the fraud before Trump did and did nothing
to protect him or Americans.
President Trump said Wednesday the coronavirus
crisis is worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Americans won't allow it to go on any
longer.
"I don't think people will stand for it," Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval
Office. "The country won't stand for it. It's not sustainable."
He said the pandemic "is worse than Pearl Harbor."
...Asked about soaring unemployment being a potential liability for him in an election year,
the president replied, "Nobody's blaming me for that. I built the greatest economy and I'm
going to rebuild it again. This was an artificially induced unemployment."
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is not
cited anywhere as an inventor or patent owner of the drug and has not authored any research
studying remdesivir.
While Fauci has also said that early trials of remdesivir on coronavirus patients are a
positive sign, he has also cautioned against prematurely celebrating.
"I was very serious when I said this was not the total answer by any means, but it's a very
important first step," Fauci said on April 30 about the NIH study on
remdesivir.
As remdesivir is wholly owned by Gilead Sciences, Fauci is not legally entitled to any
profits from remdesivir.
Fauci was
the director of NIAID during the 2013-14 Ebola outbreak and spearheaded the department's
research and response to the virus. NIAID supported research into a range of potential Ebola
treatments, including remdesivir, as
recently as December. That said, Fauci did not directly conduct this research; neither he
nor the NIH stand to profit from its results.
The National Institutes of Health confirmed that Fauci has not authored any studies on
remdesivir and does not own stock in any biomedical or pharmaceutical companies.
Owning financial assets in pharmaceutical firms like Gilead would also be required to be
publicly disclosed per the
agency's ethics policy .
Amidst the storm of controversy raised by the lab-origin theory of COVID-19 extolled by such
figures as Nobel prize winning virologist Luc Montagnier, bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, Sri
Lankan Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, an elaborate
project was undertaken under the nominal helm of NATURE Magazine in order to refute the claim
once and for all under the report 'The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2'
.
This project was led by a team of evolutionary virologists using a line of reasoning that
"random mutation can account for anything" and was parroted loudly and repeatedly by Fauci, WHO
officials and Bill Gates in order to shut down all uncomfortable discussion of the possible
laboratory origins of COVID-19 while also pushing for a global vaccine campaign. On April 18,
Dr. Fauci (whose close ties with Bill Gates, and Big Pharma have much to do with his control of
hundreds of billions of dollars of research money),
stated :
"There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly
qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as
they evolve. And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally
consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human."
I think at this moment, rife as it is with speculative arguments, confusion and
under-defined data, it is useful to remove oneself from the present and look for higher
reference points from which we can re-evaluate events now unfolding on the world stage.
"... Sara Cunial, the Member of Parliament for Rome denounced Bill Gates as a "vaccine criminal" and urged the Italian President to hand him over to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. ..."
"... In an extraordinary seven-minute speech met with wide applause, Sara Cunial, the Member of Parliament for Rome said that Italy had been subjected to a "Holy Inquisition of false science." ..."
Sara Cunial, the Member of Parliament for Rome denounced Bill Gates as a "vaccine criminal"
and urged the Italian President to hand him over to the International Criminal Court for crimes
against humanity.
She also exposed
Bill Gates' agenda in India and Africa, along with the plans to chip the human race through
the digital identification program ID2020.
In an extraordinary seven-minute speech met with wide applause, Sara Cunial, the Member of
Parliament for Rome said that Italy had been subjected to a "Holy Inquisition of false
science."
She roundly criticized the unnecessary lockdown imposed on her fellow Italians in the
service of a globalist agenda. She urged fellow political leaders to desist in any plans to
compel citizens to surrender themselves to compulsory COVID-19 vaccination at the hands of the
corrupt elite – whom she identified as the Deep State .
Below is the transcription of the full speech delivered to the Italian Parliament by Sara
Cunial, the Member of Parliament for Rome.
Hobbes said that absolute power does not come from an imposition from above but by the
choice of individuals who feel more protected renouncing to their own freedom and granting it
to a third party.
With this, you are going on anesthetizing the minds with corrupted Mass Media with
Amuchina (a brand of disinfectant promoted by Mass Media) and NLP, with words like "regime",
"to allow" and "to permit", to the point of allowing you to regulate our emotional ties and
feelings and certify our affects.
So, in this way, Phase 2 is nothing else than the persecution/continuation of Phase 1
– you just changed the name, as you did with the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). We
have understood people, for sure, don't die for the virus alone. So people will be allowed to
die and suffer, thanks to you and your laws, for misery and poverty. And, as in the "best"
regimes, the blame will be dropped only on citizens. You take away our freedom and say that
we looked for it. Divide et Impera (Divide and Rule).
It is our children who will lose more, who are 'raped souls', with the help of the
so-called "guarantor of their rights" and of CISMAI (Italian Coordination of Services against
Child Abuse). In this way, the right to school will be granted only with a bracelet to get
them used to probation, to get them used to slavery – involuntary treatment and to
virtual lager. All this in exchange for a push-scooter and a tablet. All to satisfy the
appetites of a financial capitalism whose driving force is the conflict of interest, conflict
well represented by the WHO, whose main financier is the well-known "philanthropist and
savior of the world" Bill Gates.
We all know it, now. Bill Gates, already in 2018, predicted a pandemic, simulated in
October 2019 at the "Event 201", together with Davos (Switzerland). For decades, Gates has
been working on Depopulation policy and dictatorial control plans on global politics, aiming
to obtain the primacy on agriculture, technology and energy.
Gates said, I quote exactly from his speech:
"If we do a good job on vaccines, health and reproduction, we can reduce the world
population by 10-15%. Only a genocide can save the world".
With his vaccines, Gates managed to sterilize millions of women in Africa. Gates
caused a polio epidemic that paralyzed 500,000 children in India and still today with
DTP, Gates causes more deaths than the disease itself. And he does the same with GMOs
designed by Monsanto and "generously donated" to needy populations. All this while he is
already thinking about distributing the quantum tattoo for vaccination recognition and mRNA
vaccines as tools for reprogramming our immune system. In addition, Gates also does business
with several multinationals that own 5G facilities in the USA.
On this table there is the entire Deep State in Italian sauce :
Sanofi, together with GlaxoSmithKline are friends of the Ranieri Guerra, Ricciardi, and of
the well-known virologist that we pay 2000 Euro every 10 minutes for the presentations on Rai
(Italian state TV. She's probably talking about Burioni). Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline sign
agreements with medical societies to indoctrinate future doctors, making fun of their
autonomy of judgment and their oath.
Hi-Tech multinationals, like the Roman Engineering which is friend of the noble Mantoan,
or Bending Spoons, of Pisano, which are there for control and manage our personal health
datas in agreement with the European Agenda ID2020 of electronic identification, which aims
to use mass vaccination to obtain a digital platform of digital ID. This is a continuation of
the transfer of data started by Renzi to IBM. Renzi, in 2016, gave a plus 30% to Gates Global
Fund.
On the Deep
State table there are the people of Aspen, like the Saxon Colao, who with his 4-pages
reports, paid 800 Euros/hour, with no scientific review, dictates its politics as a
Bilderberg general as he is, staying away from the battlefield. The list is long. Very long.
In the list there is also Mediatronic, by Arcuri and many more.
The Italian contribution to the International Alliance Against Coronavirus will be of 140
million Euros, of which 120 million Euros will be given to GAVI Alliance, the non-profit by
Gates Foundation. They are just a part of the 7.4 billion Euro fund by the EU to find a
vaccine against Coronavirus – vaccines which will be used as I said before.
No money, of course for serotherapy, which has the collateral effect of being super cheap.
No money for prevention, a real prevention, which includes our lifestyles, our food and our
relationship with the environment.
The real goal of all of this is total control. Absolute domination of human beings,
transformed into guinea pigs and slaves, violating sovereignty and free will. All this thanks
to tricks/hoax disguised as political compromises. While you rip up the Nuremberg code with
involuntary treatment, fines and deportation, facial recognition and intimidation, endorsed
by dogmatic scientism – protected by our "Multi-President" of the Republic who is real
cultural epidemic of this country.
We, with the people, will multiply the fires of resistance in a way that you won't be able
to repress all of us.
I ask you, President, to be the spokesperson and give an advice to our President Conte:
Dear Mr. President Conte, next time you receive a phone call from the philanthropist Bill
Gates forward it directly to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. If
you won't do this, tell us how we should define you, the "friend lawyer" who takes orders
from a criminal.
"If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, [the scientific
evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or
deliberately manipulated," Fauci said in an interview with National Geographic
"Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus]
evolved in nature and then jumped species," the U.S. government's leading epidemiologist
added.
His statements are in line with those set forth by the World Health Organization (WHO), a
United Nations agency that ratified on Monday that the coronavirus is of animal origin. "The
coronavirus circulates ancestrally between bats.
"That is something we know based on this virus's genetic sequence. What we need to
understand is which animal... was infected by bats and transmitted it to humans," the WHO
Emerging Diseases Department Director Maria Van Kerkhove said.
Demand Trump's incompetent, unqualified son-in-law be removed from the coronavirus
response team! #care2
https://t.co/TN8jpMIw2p
Nevertheless, Trump insists that the U.S. government has evidence that the virus was created
in a laboratory in Wuhan (China), something that the Intelligence Directorate also
rejected.
Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda?
On Tuesday morning, the U.S. president also reacted angrily to a video titled "Mourning In
America" produced by The Lincoln Project (LP), a conservative group opposed to Trump's
reelection which blames him for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic.
"There's mourning in America - and under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is
weaker, sicker, and poorer," the LP video points out and adds that the United States is on the
brink of a new Great Depression.
In response to the above, Trump released his discomfort by calling the Lincoln Project
members "losers."
Should everyone be wearing face masks? It's complicated.
Why
don't masks protect the wearer? Paul Glasziou, Professor of Medicine, Bond University and Chris Del Mar, Professor of
Public Health, Bond University, AU
also endorsed by epidemiologists in UK, CAD.
[.] There are several possible reasons why masks don't offer significant protection. First,
masks may not do much without eye protection. We know from animal and laboratory
experiments that influenza or other coronaviruses can enter the eyes and travel to the nose
and into the respiratory system.
While standard and special masks provide incomplete protection, special masks combined
with goggles appear to provide complete protection in laboratory experiments. However,
there are no studies in real-world situations measuring the results of combined mask and
eyewear.
The apparent minimal impact of wearing masks might also be because people didn't use
them properly. For example, one study found less than half of the participants wore them
"most of the time". People may also wear masks inappropriately, or touch a contaminated
part of the mask when removing it and transfer the virus to their hand, then their eyes and
thus to the nose.
Masks may also provide a false sense of security, meaning wearers might do riskier
things such as going into crowded spaces and places.[.]
Got goggles or a Visor? Eye protection is essential.
"... > How about we follow WHO's rule zero: test, test and test? ..."
"... Why the USA did not implemented entry/exist temperature checks (even at airports) I do not understand. The richest nation in the world has the government which is probably the most inept and disfunctional ..."
"... It looks like this is mainly the disease of megacities and industries with closely packed people (ships, meatpacking plants, Amazon warepuses) . And a large part of large cities infrastructure such as subways and air-conditioned building, hotels and shops are ideal environment for spreading of the virus. ..."
"... Another interesting feature of this virus is that it simply revealed how unhealthy the USA population generally is. For example, the epidemic of obesity now is tightly intermixed with the epidemic of COVID-19. Within the limits of the neoliberal social system very little can be done about it: for profit medicine makes is more fragile and create multiple avenue of abusing people. ..."
Do you understand that the current polymerase tests have 20-30% of false positives?
So if everybody in the USA is tested around 60-80 million people in the USA would be
deemed infected. I suspect that a very large percentage of "asymptomatics" are in reality
false positives.
We need to distinguish between the necessary measures and fearmongering. I suspect that in
the case of polymerase test the mantra "test, test, test" is close to the latter. This is s
rather expensive test and money probably can be better spend distributing masks to the
population. That would instantly give a larger effect. The simple measure that in the USA was
not done. Just for that Fauci should be fired and probably tried, IMHO.
The same is probably true with the distribution of oxymeters too: people with lows reading
need oxygen. As simple as that. That probably will cut hospitalizations in half.
My impression is that temperature and oxymeter testing might be a proxy for polymerase
testing and much cheaper: if oxygen saturation is less then 90% the person need to be
isolated/treated with oxygen
Why the USA did not implemented entry/exist temperature checks (even at airports) I do
not understand. The richest nation in the world has the government which is probably the most
inept and disfunctional
It looks like this is mainly the disease of megacities and industries with closely
packed people (ships, meatpacking plants, Amazon warepuses) . And a large part of large
cities infrastructure such as subways and air-conditioned building, hotels and shops are
ideal environment for spreading of the virus.
Even reasonable prophylactic measures do not work that well in large cities. Slums and
homeless are and will be hotspots.
Even at work enforcing prophylactic measures is non trivial. You need to change mask each
2 hours when you are working inside. How many people will do that ?
I think there is not way out other then clench your teeth and go forward adapting the
behavior as new information about the virus emerge.
For example individual supply of air in planes, trains and buses (which existed in old
planes and some buses ) might be an important psychological (and with better filters medical)
measure required.
Also Cruise ships "experiments" suggest that only around 20% of population is susceptible
to the virus. Even among Wuhan medics who started working with coronavirus patients without
wearing protective equipment only around half got the disease. The simplistic assumption that
100% of people is susceptible is just a myth propagated by fearmongers for fun and
profit.
Another interesting feature of this virus is that it simply revealed how unhealthy the USA
population generally is. For example, the epidemic of obesity now is tightly intermixed with
the epidemic of COVID-19. Within the limits of the neoliberal social system very little can
be done about it: for profit medicine makes is more fragile and create multiple avenue of
abusing people.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will be checking
passengers' temperatures at select airports next week.
People familiar with the matter told The
Wall Street Journal that additional details would be unveiled in the near term. The program
is expected to roll out at 12 airports next week and will cost $20 million to implement.
Thermal check fees will be waived for travelers and likely expensed to the federal
government.
The first message is that covid19 is terrifying, unique, an existential threat to the human
race.
This message is never sourced to much fact, because the facts about the virus don't really
support it. If it cites anything solid it's the appallingly sloppy and discredited Imperial
computer model, or some generic research into the pathology of severe infections or rare viral
syndromes, which it tries to spin as being unique to covid19, even though it is not. But mostly
it doesn't cite anything at all. Or really claim anything at all.
It just tells people to be afraid. Very afraid. Of death, of uncertainty, of the 'virus', of
other people, of 'fake news'.
The fear being encouraged is not rooted in facts, and is therefore impervious to
them.
2. 'THERE IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF '
The second message is that covid19 is actually pretty harmless and no big deal.
This message is rooted in a great deal of fact, because, as we have been pointing out since
day one, pretty much all the data coming out about this virus supports exactly this
conclusion.
No official body has ever denied this, and most of them readily admit it. Regularly and
unambiguously.
Here and here
and here and here .
Chris Whitty above is only one of many and this is not even his first go (see here ) at
explaining clearly that covid19 is only dangerous to a very very small minority of people, and
that most who get it will be just fine.
• Over the whole epidemic, even if there is no vaccine, a high proportion
will not get it.
• Of those who do, a significant proportion (exact number not yet clear)
have no symptoms.
• Of the symptomatic cases, the great majority (around 80%) a mild-
moderate disease.
• A minority have to go to hospital, most need only oxygen. The great
majority of these survive.
• A minority of those need ventilation.
• A minority of every agegroup sadly die with current treatment, but even
of the oldest group most do not.
[T]he great majority of people will not die from this and I'll just repeat something I
said right at the beginning because I think it's worth reinforcing :
Most people, a significant proportion of people, will not get this virus at all, at any
point of the epidemic which is going to go on for a long period of time.
Of those who do, some of them will get the virus without even knowing it, they will have
the virus with no symptoms at all, asymptomatic carriage, and we know that happens.
Of those who get symptoms, the great majority, probably 80%, will have a mild or
moderate disease. Might be bad enough for them to have to go to bed for a few days, not bad
enough for them to have to go to the doctor.
An unfortunate minority will have to go as far as hospital, but the majority of those
will just need oxygen and will then leave hospital.
And then a minority of those will end up having to go to severe end critical care and
some of those sadly will die.
But that's a minority, it's 1% or possibly even less than 1% overall.
And even in the highest risk group this is significantly less than 20%, ie. the great
majority of people, even the very highest groups, if they catch this virus, will not
die.
And I really wanted to make that point really clearly
Yes, Ken Garoo @26, the fearmongers have blood on their hands, not just in the UK, and this
is a massive life-and-death crisis. More evidence, from another unimpeachable source various
MoA stalwarts will now have to claim is a hack:
"...According to a stark report published in Lancet Global Health journal on Wednesday,
almost 1.2 million children could die in the next six months due to the disruption to health
services and food supplies caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
"The modelling, by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and
Unicef, found that child mortality rates could rise by as much as 45 per cent due to
coronavirus-related disruptions, while maternal deaths could increase by almost 39 per
cent.
"Dr [Stefan Peterson, chief of health at UNICEF] said these figures were in part a
reflection of stringent restrictions in much of the world that prevent people leaving their
homes without documentation, preventing them from accessing essential health care services.
...
"...Covid is not a children's disease. Yes there are rare instances and we see them
publicised across the media. But pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, death in childbirth, these
are the reasons we will see deaths rise."
The reason NYC appears to be such an outlier could be a combination of all the possible
reasons PO mentions – bad healthcare system; runaway spread in nursing homes that maybe
weren't being run very well in the first place and were employing people on low wages or
contracts so they were forced to work long hours and ended up being exposed to large viral
loads and were passing the disease from one person to the next – plus reasons
particular to NYC itself as a large city (poor communities densely packed in sub-standard
housing with little or no access to the most up-to-date and accurate information on COVID-19,
and unable to practise the hygiene and social distancing measures needed to stop transmission
of the virus; air pollution issues).
Some mainstream news media reports I have seen state many poor communities in the US have
particular issues with obtaining necessary healthcare because (a) they have experienced
discrimination (racial, religious, whatever) in the past from hospitals or clinics and are
reluctant to go again, so they delay and delay until their situation becomes critical; and
(b) they have no medical insurance so again they delay seeking help. The situation in NYC
does seem to be the result of myriad factors, some particular to the city itself, others
particular to NYC because it is a large city with dense population clusters in particular
neighbourhoods with problems of discrimination that impact on their health, and still others
that are general, all of them having an impact on one another.
A significant factor, embarrassing to us Americans, is the link between obesity and its
related health issues to the fatality rate of the virus. Bluntly put, obese people appear
much more likely to succumb to the virus. If Russia has a significantly lower rate of
obesity, it would only be logical that they would also have a significantly lower rate of
mortality. I have not seen this factor mentioned in the blizzard of discussion on the
difference in death rates between NCY and Moscow.
But obesity is not nearly so prevalent in the UK as it is in the USA, and it is clearing them
out like nobody's business – their death rate is significantly higher than Russia's.
The UK, also, follows a practice of assigning the death to COVID-19 if the patient dies even
if obvious underlying conditions are present, and it may have a similar financial system in
place, in which the hospital receives a payout if a patient is deemed to be suffering from
COVID-19, and a much larger payment if the patient has to be put on a ventilator.
Let's say lower obesity, generally better fitness, more effective planning, better medical
response and possibly other factors (e.g. TB vaccination) could explain the difference.
Tp support the foregoing, differences in mortality between racial group is generally
attributed to differences in the level of obesity and related health issues so general levels
of obesity is a factor, perhaps a major factor. It may be a little morbid but it would be
interesting to understand the correlation between obesity and Covid-19 deaths in the US, UK
and Russia.
Absolutely the case that the US and the UK authorities have an enormous financial interest
in exaggerating the mortality rate for short term gain and long term sustainable profit
through massive and likely unnecessary vaccination programs of hundreds of millions of people
generating $10 of billions revenue. And it would almost be a certainty that a new deadly
virus will pop up at a rate that match the available capacity of Big Pharma to crank out new"
life saving" medicines. To be clear, Big Pharma is only one of the nefarious groups
benefitting from a public cowering in fear.
I read somewhere years ago that Big Pharma's long term goal is to have every American on a
prescription drug(s) from cradle to grave. And Big Data wants every American to be enslaved
by their smart phones and social media. Bastards.
Hurrah! I have my blogroll back! I'm just starting to build it. At some point in the frequent
rollouts of new WordPress features, they added a 'WP Admin' button, which gives access to the
'Links' page and allowed me to eliminate those irritating default links, as well as add new
ones. So, I'm just getting started, but among the must-sees I stumbled across while starting
out with links I knew I wanted to add right away are one discussing the coronavirus (haven't
even read all of it myself yet) at Club Orlov;
and a great article, very much on point with this post, at Irrussianality, detailing the
absolutely flabbergasting Joint Statement on the Anniversary of the End of the Second World
War, on the USA's State Department website. The Nazis get one mention – the rest is
non-stop Russia is evil.
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/joint-statement-on-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-end-of-the-second-world-war/
I'm not sure what Dmitry Orlov does for a living, but if he is exclusively a writer when he's
not sailing around, I suppose he is entitled to charge a fee for his product, and I have
found it consistently excellent and well-sourced, much like John Helmer's work (although that
is still free). Orlov's blog is only $2.50 a month at the basic level of subscriber, and
that's cheap enough for me. I encourage readers to subscribe at the same level, because it's
an excellent resource. In this case, I had just skipped over it very quickly, because I
wanted to add it to the blogroll. I read the first couple of paragraphs, divined that it was
not only about the coronavirus, but vindicated many of my own beliefs, and went elsewhere to
add another site. I did not notice until I came back to it that it was now
subscription-only.
So I'll copy a few salient points for everyone, and they can judge for themselves if they
are willing to pay a couple of bucks for that kind of content. It was not all about the
coronavirus – it started out about that, and sort of segued into the precarious
position the USA is now in economically. So that's why it may look like two different posts;
I am just excerpting at random: the entire post is much too long to copy. Presuming you have
read as much of the post as was already included as a teaser before it became
subscriber-only
"First, let's handle the question of vaccination. There is a measles vaccine, yet it
kills 140,000 a year. There is a pneumococcus vaccine, yet it kills between 2 and 2.5 million
a year. There is a hepatitis B vaccine, yet it kills 140,000. There is a tetanus vaccine, yet
it kills 89,000 annually. There is a rotavirus vaccine, yet it kills 800,000. There is a HPV
vaccine, yet it kills 250,000. There is a tuberculosis vaccine, yet it kills 1.5 million.
There is an influenza vaccine, yet it kills 650,000 to 1 million a year. None of these are
considered pandemics, cause entire economies to be shut down, or call for any extraordinary
measures at all.
And then there is the novel coronavirus which has killed 218,187 people to date (the
vast majority of them very old and/or very sick) -- and this is considered to be a problem to
be solved with all possible haste. Some infectious disease experts have suggested that the
entire populace may be required to shelter in place until a vaccine becomes available.
Meanwhile, deaths from the novel coronavirus largely fit within the usual mortality of the
flu season. The northern hemisphere winter was warmer than usual, and some of the elderly and
sick people who would have been killed off by any of the usual influenza viruses (including
other coronaviruses) during any of the previous three flu seasons were claimed by the novel
coronavirus.
But even this is uncertain because it is unclear whether these 218,187 deaths were
actually caused by the coronavirus or whether the coronavirus just happened to be present in
their bodies at the time of death. Furthermore, a lot of people were diagnosed as suffering
from this coronavirus based on symptoms which are not too different from those caused by
other viral agents. Lastly, the vast majority of those who have died from it had what are
called comorbidities. Elderly immunocompromised morbidly obese diabetics with high blood
pressure, cancer and other potential fatal ailments have been particularly susceptible. If
you discard all fatal cases with comorbidities and only consider young healthy people, then
the number of deaths where the new coronavirus is obviously the root cause may turn out to be
as low as zero.
Confirmed novel coronavirus cases number less than 3,147,626 worldwide, which is 0.04%
of the world's population. This barely adds up to a cough and a sneeze. As this virus has
spread throughout the world the increase in cases has slowed, but the number of confirmed
cases could yet double or even triple, adding up to as much as three coughs and three
sneezes. But then the World Health Organization enters the fray. The WHO makes gratuitous use
of appellations such as "world" and "health" but is actually a semi-private entity lavishly
financed by Bill Gates and Big Pharma, which is owned by a handful of highly inbred
oligarchic entities that include Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital Group, Morgan Stanley, Goldman
Sachs, Northern Trust and State Street, which in turn own each other in various convoluted
ways. WHO's main function is to scare people into getting vaccinated and accepting expensive
drug regimens (barely half of which do any good at all), thus funneling resources toward Big
Pharma.
The World Health Organization establishes thresholds to determine whether to declare an
influenza epidemic that range between 2.5% and 5%. The novel coronavirus misses the mark by a
thousand-fold, yet the WHO has declared it to be the cause of a global pandemic. If this
seems like an extreme overreaction, that is because this is an extreme overreaction. Some
conspiratorially-minded people may surmise that this is a conspiracy, but it isn't. It is yet
another blatant attempt to confiscate a chunk of the world's wealth by requiring it to buy
something worthless, just like this same set of medical/financial interests did with the
relatively worthless Tamiflu antiviral medication during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic of
2009-10 which caused a mere 18,036 deaths worldwide. This is a specific group pursuing its
own group interests."
Then he went into how the Chinese and the Russians are respectively manipulating the
coronavirus in their own countries for their own ends
"The Chinese have taken the novel coronavirus outbreak as a chance to train for
repelling a biological warfare attack. To argue that this coronavirus is indeed the agent of
a biowarfare attack is to argue for something extremely stupid because it just isn't
effective as a biowarfare agent. It's almost as bad as Novichok, which was touted as being
able to wipe out entire armies but only managed to sicken five people and kill just one of
them. It doesn't matter whether this coronavirus leaked out of a dead bat or a biowarfare
lab, or both -- it just isn't any good as a weapon. But the Chinese government imposed
extreme, unprecedented controls over much of the population and the economy. The Russians
followed suit, with the difference that while the Chinese saw these extreme measures as
temporary, setting up makeshift hospitals, the Russians seized on them as a chance to
fundamentally upgrade the entire health care system, setting it up to effectively handle any
future biological warfare attacks.
In doing so, the Chinese and the Russians pursued different goals. The Chinese need to
find a way to stop shipping actual physical manufactured goods to the US in exchange for
pieces of paper or promises to pay, all of which are about to become worthless, without
triggering a dangerous escalation. The need to do so with all necessary haste became obvious
in mid-August of 2019, when it turned out that banks were no longer willing to accept US
Treasury debt instruments as collateral for overnight loans. These were supposedly the safest
investments in the world that made up the world's largest and most liquid financial market --
until it turned out that they weren't that at all."
And on the American economy
"There are two important global processes which, while they will affect the US
particularly severely, go far beyond its geographic confines. One is the still relatively
gradual process of dethroning the US dollar from its position of dominance. Until the
coronavirus pandemic disrupted much of the global economy, most of its participants were
interested in preserving some measure of stability to the dollar system. But now that trade
has already been disrupted, an opening has been created to dump the dollar without
necessarily causing economic damage significantly worse than already exists. The actions of
the Federal Reserve, which is in the process of monetizing a large proportion of existing US
government debt and virtually all of the new debt being issued to cover the ever-growing
budget deficit, are undermining the dollar as well. Although the term "debt monetization" is
being used to describe what's happening, issuing currency with which to buy up worthless
promissory notes stretches the definition of "debt" beyond any reasonable limit, while
"monetization" is far too dignified a term for such a desperate delaying tactic. As a
consequence, some analysts do not see US dollar-based global financial system holding up too
far beyond this year.
The other process is the rapid transition of the US from the world's largest producer
of oil to one of the smallest, because the fracking bonanza has largely run its course. It
has never really made any money, since fracked oil is, for technological reasons, always too
expensive to sustain economic growth. And now, with an economic depression setting in,
economies at a standstill and oil futures trading in the negative territory (where market
participants are willing to pay producers to get out of having take delivery of the oil when
the contract matures) the fracking industry is going bankrupt, production is falling, and in
less than a year it is likely to be down by as much as 70%. At that point, any attempt at
economic recovery in the US will involve having to start importing large quantities of oil
from a world supply that, with the exception of fracked oil from the US, hasn't expanded much
since 2005."
My view is that despite this being all highly disruptive, it will prepare us all for the
inevitable outbreak of a truly deadly virus that will also kill the young and healthy too
(hopefully not cats). The world is becoming ever more globalized, transmission chains and
time seriously shortened. There will be no escape even on the periphery. A biological version
of Neville Shute's On the Beach.
Handling this well (in future) is eminently doable without even losing a (metaphorical)
bollock. It is basic stuff and really shouldn't be 'a thing.' The WHO is a redirection
nothing burger for those who are responsible for the abrogation of national competence.
Decisions are still taken at the national level, no? The WHO is a spokesbody and therein it
does have a role to play. It is neither free from political inteference or influence just
like every other international organization.
Fortunately, Asia has shown the common-sense that we in the old world have lost through
our own arrogance and self-importance. We should be humiliated, but we are not. We're too
busy blaming others.
This CoVid-19 outbreak has provided everyone with a crystal clear warning of precisely how
incompetent many nation states are over basic provision of health and pandemic planning in
the 21st Century. This isn't 1918. Things are supposed to have moved on a bit but it has
exposed the ideology of cuts, penny-pinching and not-give-a-f/kery over common-sense by those
elected (by us) to provide responsible government. They've been warned multiple times about
the risks, not to mention the series of other outbreaks in this century. Still, they're
rather more interested in squeaking out ever leaner efficiencies to maximize
profit.
I'm not worried about the planet, we'll knock ourselves off first.
My initial feeling was that the initial reaction of Putin, Trump and Johnson was to let the
thing burn itself out and maybe put the effort into looking after the most at risk. The
Imperial College thing seems to be the reason why Trump and Johnson went to lockdown and that
left me puzzled why Putin did. Orlov's piece gave me the idea that maybe, after talking to
Xi, Putin decided to use it as a test of Russia's ability to handle a bioattack. Notice that
Russia is actually building specialised hospitals around the country rather than just (as in
the West) temporarily re-purposing large facilities. We'll probably never know but it's a
thought I will keep in the Maybe File.
Agreed; I could think of no good reason for it, and consequently Orlov's speculation came as
a revelation. Again, it's only speculation on his part, but it does make sense and fits with
the Sino-Russian concept of every experience being a teachable moment, to be wrung for such
lessons as it may yield.
It is fairly well-known that Johnson's initial plan was to go for herd immunity and just
say bollocks to social distancing, but something caused him to abruptly reverse himself after
the UK had already started a pretty respectable infection curve. I'm not familiar with the
'Imperial College thing'; could you enlighten me? I do know that impatience at being shut in
with no job is increasingly unpopular with people everywhere it prevails, and governments are
having a harder time keeping the lid on. I can only imagine it is the same for Putin's
government.
I see; thanks for that. I remember reading mentions of a study which forecast incredible
death tolls, but didn't realize that was it. Well, no way they could have done anything else,
in the face of that – 2.2 million deaths in the US, and more than half a million in the
UK.
I don't suppose they will ever be called to account for their fearmongering quackery. To
nobody's surprise, I'm sure, the Imperial College receives generous grants from the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation, the most recent in March of this year – just shy of $80
Million, to develop a new tool for malaria control and elimination in sub-Saharan Africa.
Nor was that the only one, by a long chalk; 80 donations between 2006 and 2018. This
website does ask that a disclaimer be included that the data are preliminary; final
development is not expected to be achieved until 2022. But at first glance, it looks like the
full amount will run into quite a few decimal places.
An under-reported fact in the US is the abundance of empty ICUs and now a surplus of
ventilators. A nearby city is laying off 2,500 medical personnel for lack of work (presumably
mobilized for the pandemic).
IIRC, a local story blew the whistle on a staged waiting line for Covid-19 testing; most
of the people in line (including medical volunteers who had nothing to do) were asked to to
stand in line to provide video footage for a network news team.
Yes, that's correct: Cherry Health, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The article points out that
Cherry Health stands to lose millions as a result of the crisis.
Ha, ha!! Dear God. Well, I hope he doesn't lose his tasty bit on the side over this –
he'll probably top himself. She looks quite yummy. But it's always the same, innit? Those who
make up the rules get a great kick out of it, but feel free to disregard them themselves as
soon as they get in the way.
Makes one wonder if the virus response is being managed at some level to cull the old and
frail to reduce health care costs. The obvious vulnerability of nursing home residents
combined with the apparent lack of resources specifically devoted to protecting those
individuals suggests high level scheming in that regard.
It was only a few months ago that we exceptional people were told that masks were useless
and unneeded (except for health care workers who desperately needed them for
self-protection). It is likely that policy lead to a rapid spread in the vulnerable
population.
It is remarkable how quickly the "masks are useless" directive has been officially
forgotten. Now, it's all about how China allowed us to mishandle the situation.
I would think not, only because no apparent effort has been made to ensure infection of the
homeless in their cardboard cities, and wipe them out. Here, as I have mentioned before,
Mayor Helps has given them a city park to use as their own squalid state, constantly refers
to them tenderly as 'our most vulnerable', and provides them no end of services, all for free
on the taxpayer. If your ambitions are modest, there is no real incentive to work.
If it were all part of a diabolical plan, you would think that plan would allow for taking
out the 'useless eaters' among the poor and helpless, as well as the old.
It certainly looks that way but such a plot requires a competence that our political elites
(at least in the UK) just don't have. Unfortunately, we're led by the shallow, ignorant and
inexperienced who responded to a serious health problem with blind panic. It's common sense
that a virus, which is particularly dangerous for the elderly, shouldn't be let out to play
in care homes; that steps should have been taken to protect the vulnerable rather than
putting everyone under house arrest while destroying their livelihoods. But common sense is a
bit like common courtesy, not actually that common when you get right down to it.
Professor Neil Ferguson (he of the 500,000 deaths forecast) and his Imperial College team
have a dire track record of forecasting in previous health crises, consistently wrong by an
order of magnitude. Yet it seems that no-one in government or our once highly competent civil
service had either the skills or time to query his forecasting model and the assumptions he
made. The fact that he broke the lockdown, introduced as a result of his forecast, in order
to dally with his mistress, does kind of suggest he doesn't believe in his own figures.
Yes, it sounds as if you are right. I suppose one reason it looks like a well-managed
conspiracy is that it was such a startlingly stupid thing to do – it's difficult to
imagine people would willingly cause such destruction without the slightest look to the
future.
Johnson is an idiot, but his first instinct – or apparently so, I suppose it might
have been just paralysis – was the correct one; proceed as normal, no reason to believe
this is the Black Death.
It's almost like the 'pandemic' is just an excuse for something, and the rest is just going
through the motions.
On relaxation of restrictions, it's mostly a game of feeling for the level of restriction
the public will tolerate, because it is so grateful for the degree of freedom allowed it. I
imagine when stores are opened, they're going to want Soviet-style lineups outside,
social-distancing 6 feet apart, because only 50 people are allowed inside at any one time. So
they can social-distance inside as well, as if that were somehow an effective
contagious-virus countermeasure, the way grocery stores are now. And 50 seems to be the magic
number no matter the size of the store, except for kiosks which are only allowed to serve one
person inside at a time.
The local pizza hotspot, Romeo's, seems to be doing a land-office business, and is
probably making money. They only serve take-out now, no inside service, so they only have to
pay the cooks and perhaps two counter-service persons; no waitresses or waiters or busboys.
And the line outside frequently is about a quarter-mile. But they still have to pay their
rent based on the size of the building, which is wasteful – look for perhaps quite a
few businesses switching to take-out only in the course of time, and renting smaller
premises. Because of course The Authorities are going to want social-distancing inside
restaurants as well as we emerge, to preserve the illusion that they knew what they were
about.
Case in point. America has a surveillance state but it refuses to use it to save lives.
Instead, it uses it to save Wall Street and protect the extractive elite from any TRUE REAL
threat. I relish the notion of this virus running rampant across America until it ravages,
and decimates actually, the Praetorian Guard Class, the managerial class if you will, that
licks the ass of the extractive elite for some bread crust, discarded steak fat and a Tesla.
I want to see them truly suffer for their sins.
After weeks cooped up at home following governors' orders to contain the coronavirus
outbreak, U.S. residents appear eager to get moving again. As more states began to relax
restrictions, about 25 million more people ventured outside their homes on an average day
last week than during the preceding six weeks, a New York Times analysis of cellphone
data found .
In nearly every part of the country, the share of people staying home dropped, in some
places by nearly 11 percentage points.
As the death toll from this pandemic rises in America with no end in sight, Wall Street,
as reflected in the DJIA, doesn't even blink and actually cheers. It doesn't get any sicker
than that. Wall Street sees the carnage as an opportunity to make more profit off of death
and the extractive elite see it as an opportunity to concentrate wealth even further and rid
the world of burdensome useless eaters. It's sick. It's sadistic. It's malevolent. It's evil.
It's our reality.
I certainly don't think that people should be coerced back to work if they don't want to,
though I do think we need to end these lockdowns as soon as possible. What we need is more
clear public messaging, from the government: making it clear to people that this disease
isn't actually that dangerous and that unless they are in an at risk group they really have
very little to be concerned about. Cards should be sent out with green, red, amber marking
where people can fill it out with their BMI, their underlying health conditions, chronic
diseases etc. and this will give them a picture for whether or not they and their household
is actually at risk.
People are talking about this disease like its the black death; as though it threatens
everyone and kills indiscriminately. This way of talking has created a completely unfounded
mass hysteria in the population. We are talking about a disease which has a case fatality
rate of 0.3% (according to the most detailed serological studies, such as the one carried out
in Gangelt) so it's a little more deadly than the flu. Of course, it will be a significant
killer for the next couple of years – but so is influenza, and nobody panics like this
and announces crackers lockdowns during a bad flu season.
Part of the problem has been the medias failure to adequately contextualise the data they
are presenting, so people just hear a large number of deaths and don't know what to make of
that number. Reporters need to be more clear about the fact that 800,000 people die every
year in the UK and that deviations of 5% on either side of this are not uncommon. We need to
be reminded that at 43,000 the number of excess deaths in the UK is about the same as the
number of excess deaths during the 2014/15 flu season – and still falls short of the
number of excess deaths during the 2017/18 flu season (excess deaths then were around
50,000). That context allows people to make sense of the data they read about without
panicking – how scared were you of going to work during the 17/18 flu season? Most
people probably didn't even notice.
The other problem is that the government has completely failed to give a serious
explanation for the lockdown to the public. They are spouting rubbish about "save lives"
without actually explaining why the lockdown would "save lives". As a result the public have
been given the wrong impression that just extending the lockdown on and on will save lives.
This is nonsense. Eventually the lockdown will be lifted and then the same people who would
have died before would die a bit later – so no lives would be saved apart from for a
few months. There are two explanations that could have been given for why we were
implementing the lockdown. Firstly, it could be to ensure that hospitals don't get overfilled
as happened in Wuhan and Northern Italy. If that was the aim, then a short lockdown (or a
local lockdown in London and some of the other cities with severe outbreaks) would have been
sufficient. It has been clear for at least the last three weeks that the government has
overestimated ICU needs, most hospitals around the country – including the Nightingale
in London – are completely empty. There are no more concerns about shortages of
ventilators as it is now clear they are not actually a good way to treat most cases. If there
is another severe outbreak in another city in the UK we can always just announce a small
local lockdown of that city. Secondly, it could be argued that lockdowns save lives because
they give us time to build up a testing capactiy so we can trace down cases and stop really
severe outbreaks from happening; but at 500,000 or so tests per week the UK is now testing a
lot of people and has the capacity to test even more. Apart from that I can't really think of
any other reason why a lockdown would "save lives".
So, no I don't think we should coerce people to go back to work. But once people are given
accurate information and this hysteria calms down, people will just go back to their lives as
normal. No coercion will be needed.
Posted by: fairleft | May 14 2020 0:35 utc | 253 So because you didn't read the word
"healthy" in my description of the truth about Covid-19 (which I note you do not deny),
you've stupidly decided I'm a troll.
No, you've been pushing this "only the elderly are at risk" *crap* since forever. *Of
course* healthy people are at limited risk. That's been known since almost day one from
China. As soon as the first statistics came out, we knew that *most* people don't die from
it.
What you *deliberately* have ignored and continue to ignore is the number of people who
*are* at risk from re-opening the economy too soon. I have cited the *millions* of people who
are at risk several times in these threads. The numbers aren't hard to find. And every expert
who has written about risk factors since the first statistics came out have pointed that
out.
But it doesn't fit your agenda, so you ignore it.
"And I'm not writing about Amerikkka moron."
Nice try. You were referring to the Galbraith piece in the top post which is explicitly
referring to the US. Moron.
Typical troll behavior. Deflect, deny, make counter accusations, continually re-assert the
same positions no matter how many times they are debunked.
Why b hasn't kicked your ass to the curb is beyond me. Few people here are posting more
nonsense than you - and you have even less actual evidence.
In Germany a huge scandal is growing. I'm surprised that this didn't emerge here yet (as far
as I can see).
An official in the Ministry for Interior has blown the whistle. After trying to forward a
study about the effect of the lockdown measures to his superiors, including Minister for
Interior Horst Seehofer, and being ignored, he leaked the study to a non-mainstream online
magazine. The study has reached the mainstream meanwhile.
Stephan Kohn (who was fired immediately of course) assesses the German reaction as
"Fehlalarm" (false alarm), claims that the lockdown has charged/will charge many more deaths
than the virus itself. It was a grotesque overreaction, not only in Germany, but in many
other countries.
I will just take one point, which the majority here, AFAICS, has never taken into account:
collateral damage. In Germany, in March/April 2020, 90% of important, in part life-saving
operations have not been conducted because the beds were reserved for the expected giant
Corona wave that didn't arrive. This means between 1,5 Million and 2,5 Million people are
affected, and it is only a matter of statistics how many lives have been lost or shortened
due to the delayed operations. Cohn estimates between 5000 and 125000 premature deaths which
easily outweigh the 7000 Corona deaths.
And this is just one point.
Like so many virologists, he says Corona is not worse than a strong flu.
"... In light of such a history of distrust – the president who'd promised to not only shutter the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison but also end the seemingly eternal wars in the Middle East had not only failed to deliver on those promises, but actually launched several new wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan – it's no surprise Americans are reluctant to embrace the Trump administration's Covid-19 narrative. ..."
"... Like the fabled boy who cried wolf, it doesn't matter if the emergency is real this time – the government has simply worn out its welcome by making demands on false pretenses. ..."
Just over a third of Americans trust President Donald Trump's information about the
Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new poll. But given decades of crises mishandled by the
government, the only surprise is that it isn't lower. A CNN poll showing that just 36 percent
of Americans trust Trump for reliable information about the coronavirus was held up
triumphantly by the president's critics on Tuesday as proof his credibility is circling the
drain. But it's more likely to be the fallout not just from Trump, but from the two preceding
presidential administrations' misrepresentation of crises, that has created epidemic levels of
distrust among the people.
Trump's own approval rating is hovering around 45 percent, according to the poll, conducted
by CNN in conjunction with SSRS and released on Tuesday. While it's been presented as a
scathing mass rejection of Trump, the same pollsters are actually seeing an uptick in support
for the president – the approval rating last month stood at 44 percent, and the previous
month's was 43. But Americans can't be faulted for distrusting the Trump administration's
narratives, given prior presidents' tendencies toward crying wolf in ways that have invariably
left the American people worse off.
The last time Washington tried to mobilize the US with the threat of an invisible enemy was
during George W. Bush's 'War on Terror' after the September 11 attacks. While it soon became
apparent that the many deaths that occurred on that day had nothing to do with the subsequent
US invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq, it was too late by the time Americans found out they
had been lied to. Not only had the Afghan government willingly offered up Osama bin Laden, but
Saddam Hussein was found to have had no 'weapons of mass destruction', and the entire narrative
was the concoction of a secretive entity that had been set up to create a casus belli for war
with Iraq despite the facts.
Bush's approval ratings declined
steadily following 9/11, as the nation was forced into one war after another on false
pretenses. At his lowest point, just 25 percent of Americans trusted him. The 'invisible enemy'
of terrorism – supposedly lurking around every corner and requiring Americans to
practically disrobe at entrances to airports – had lost its luster, and Bush's poor
handling of real-life crises like Hurricane Katrina put the final nail in the coffin of his
credibility.
While Barack Obama entered office on a high note with a promise of " hope and
change ," his approval rating also plunged quickly – especially when he refused to
stand in the way of the wildly unpopular 2008 'Wall Street bailout' –
sinking to 41 percent in 2011 as Americans grew restive after years of recession with no
change in sight. By 2014, 70 percent of
respondents to an MSNBC poll stated the country was headed in the wrong direction, with 80
percent singling out the political system as the primary culprit. Congress enjoyed an
appallingly low 14 percent approval rating.
In light of such a history of distrust – the president who'd promised to not only
shutter the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison but also end the seemingly eternal wars in the
Middle East had not only failed to deliver on those promises, but actually launched several new
wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan – it's no surprise Americans are reluctant
to embrace the Trump administration's Covid-19 narrative.
Another invisible enemy that requires
them to sacrifice their livelihoods – a
third of Americans couldn't pay their rent last month, while even the paltry $1,200
stimulus checks supposedly heading to 130 million Americans have apparently not reached
half their intended recipients yet – is reminding Americans of what happened last
time they were told to put aside their real-life concerns and fall in line behind a narrative
that turned out to be false.
Like the fabled boy who cried wolf, it doesn't matter if the
emergency is real this time – the government has simply worn out its welcome by making
demands on false pretenses.
Less than a day after he whined during his daily press briefing about having the worst
mortality rate from the virus in the country (he doesn't), NJ Gov Phil Murphy has on Wednesday
seemingly taken a major u-turn, moving ahead with a plan to partially reopen the state on
Monday after pledging to wait for more testing.
Specifically, the state will allow construction workers and more 'non-essential' retail
workers to report to work, with shoppers able to shop via 'curbside' pickup.
Data shows that we are ready to begin to restart our economy. From the peak:
📉New hospitalizations down 2/3
📉Total hospitalizations down nearly 1/2
📉Patients in ICU are down
📉Patients on ventilators down
📉Positive cases down nearly 70%
📉Deaths have decreased more than 1/3 pic.twitter.com/CAl0kK31DC
The coronavirus reminds us that the gap between what we think we know and what we
actually do know is enormous.
Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response
coordinator, shows off charts with members of the coronavirus task force during a briefing in
response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the
White House on Tuesday, March 31, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The
Washington Post via Getty Images)
May 13, 2020
|
12:01 am
Matt
Purple St. Louis Federal Reserve watchers, rejoice! And yes, I'm talking to both of you. The St.
Louis Fed is freshly relevant this week thanks to a paper it
published back in 2007 that examined the economic effects of the 1918 Spanish flu. Drawing
on old newspaper articles, local surveys, and other studies -- national data back then was
scarce -- the report found that the damage done to businesses by the outbreak was both severe
and short-lived. The impact on the next generation, however, was longer-lasting. Those in utero
during the pandemic went on to attain less education and lower incomes than had previous
generations.
What we wouldn't give for that kind of glimpse from the future today. The coronavirus has
killed hundreds of thousands while sledgehammering the economy, leaving close to a quarter of
working-age Americans either unemployed or
underemployed. And we still have no idea how it will end. It may be that this recession is
similar to the one in 1918, cutting deeply but easing rapidly. Or it may be that we're in for
another lost decade of stubborn unemployment and stagnant growth. It may be that the virus is
seen off this summer, remembered as a frightening but ultimately brief ordeal. Or it may be
that it lurks into the autumn, whereupon it comes roaring back.
We don't know, and we hate that we don't know. Consequently a cottage industry has sprung up
around our uncertainty, hawking models, projections, expert opinions. These things have valid
scientific purposes, of course, but thrown down the rabbit hole of our popular discourse,
they've taken on a kind of hysterical clairvoyance, supposedly able to tell us what's coming
and how we should respond. With climate change, we grew accustomed to the idea that scientists
could see into the future. Now we're demanding they do the same with the coronavirus. That's
despite the fact that so far, none of these projections have demonstrated any greater
predictive ability than your average call to Miss Cleo.
Take the government's official death toll projections. Back in January, the White House was
largely complacent over the coronavirus, with President Trump comparing it to the seasonal flu
and his health secretary
saying that Americans need "not worry for their own safety." Then in late March, the
pendulum swung towards apocalypse. Actually, the White House said,
200,000 Americans could die. Two weeks later, the death toll projection fell
to a far rosier 60,000 , and the country breathed a sigh of relief ahead of Easter weekend.
Then the projections ticked upwards yet again. Today, IHME, the White House's principal
modeler, predicts that 147,000 Americans will be killed
by August 4.
Some of the issue here may be the choice of models. IHME has been
criticized by epidemiologists , as have the Imperial College modelers in Britain (who have
lately been distracted by, er, more
extracurricular activities ). But the bigger problem is best summed up in a quote
to Politico by the head of IHME, explaining why his organization's projections
were so wrong. "We had presumed, perhaps naively," he said, "that given the magnitude of the
epidemic, most states would stick to their social distancing until the end of May." In other
words, the models are premised on assumptions that can be scrambled by real-world events,
whether political decisions or acts of God or the caprices of the virus itself. They aren't
showing us the future so much as extrapolating off of a snapshot, one that can easily change.
Yet we treat them as practically mystic. "200,000 could die!!" scream the headlines, with
"could" ever the weasel word.
We don't just do this with the death toll. On the economy, too, we seem hopelessly confused.
Here's a smattering of headlines from the past two months: "Unemployment rate could exceed 20%
by June, top White House adviser says." "Economists see uneven jobs recovery, high U.S.
unemployment through 2021." "Top JPMorgan investment advisor: It will take '10 to 12 years' for
U.S. employment levels to return." "The coronavirus recession will be deeper and faster than
the financial crisis." "Economists say quick rebound from recession is unlikely." "Trump's
baseless claim that a recession would be deadlier than the coronavirus." "U.N. warns economic
downturn could kill hundreds of thousands of children in 2020."
Stare into this blurry puddle long enough and you might conclude that no one has any idea
what the hell they're talking about. Or you might fall back on your own biases, choosing to
believe stories that buttress your political beliefs and speak to your own personal
circumstances. Either way, this kind of confusion can have long-reaching effects. Consider, for
example, a new study that was released last week, which found that there could be 75,000
so-called deaths of despair -- meaning suicides and drug and alcohol overdoses -- as a
result of the coronavirus recession. It called to mind another
social science finding , one of the most consequential of the last decade: that life
expectancy among less educated, middle-aged, white Americans was declining, driven primarily by
those deaths of despair.
That claim, courtesy of researchers Anne Case and Angus Deaton , made
its way around the internet. It fed into the narrative of the populist right and Donald Trump.
It provided an empirical grounding for "American carnage." But wait: a less noticed study a
year later, which took Case's and Deaton's data and adjusted for age, found a more mixed
picture. According to research from
Columbia University , while middle-aged white women had indeed seen increased mortality
rates, middle-aged white men had reversed this trend back in 2005. And then came another study, in the
American Journal of Public Health , that challenged the very concept of "deaths of
despair," warning that "the gap between deaths of despair as a claim and deaths of despair as a
rigorously tested scientific concept is wide."
There is a Grand Canyon-sized gap between what we think we know and what we actually know.
How to navigate this chasm? Two maxims can help.
The first comes from Friedrich Hayek: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to
men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." Hayek was concerned
with what he called the "fatal conceit," which he defined as the belief "that man is able to
shape the world around him according to his wishes." We might add a corollary: that man is able
to anticipate the world around him according to his wishes. Because knowledge is
complex and dispersed, Hayek argued, no one can ever marshal enough of it to centrally plan an
economy. Likewise even a sophisticated model can't have enough data to foresee how a pandemic
will play out. There are simply too many variables, drawing on too many areas of life.
The second maxim comes from a very different source: John Dickinson, perhaps our most
conservative founding father. "Experience must be our only guide," Dickinson said. "Reason may
mislead us." Of course, by reason, he didn't mean vast computer algorithms struggling to track
contagion across seven continents; he was thinking of 18th-century rationalism, which he
contrasted with the more reliable yardstick of historical experience. While what seemed
philosophically sound in the abstract could be tainted by personal bias or disconnected from
real life, precedent was far more settled. How something had worked in the past was a good
indication of how it would work in the future.
Unfortunately we have very little precedent when it comes to the coronavirus, though the
Spanish flu can perhaps offer some clues. The 1918 influenza, like the current pandemic, began
in the spring, only to enter a second wave in the fall that killed more people than the first.
A third wave then began that winter and stretched into the summer of 1919. That's chilling, yet
there's good news too: the recession that followed was short and quickly blossomed into the
1920s, one of the most dizzying economic expansions in our history.
So top hats and flapper dresses all around? Who knows? It's called the novel coronavirus for
a reason. The awful truth is that we have very little idea how long this will go on and how it
will ultimately turn out. And the reason for that is that we know so very much less than we
think we do.
"Paul's challenge encapsulates the debate between elected officials eager to open up businesses and willing to accept the risk
that more people will die, and public health experts committed to lowering infection rates and keeping the public as safe as possible.
" People are hurting and we're destroying our country ," Paul told reporters outside the hearing room. "We've got to open up business
we got to let people vote, and we're not going to live in a perfect world without infectious disease, we're still going to have it,
but we got to open the economy and that's the number one message I have."
The Kentucky senator, an opthamologist, told Fauci he didn't believe there would be a surge in cases if schools opened, which
is not what public health experts say. Paul dismissed predictive models of the virus. "The history of this, when we look back, will
be of wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction ," Paul said.
Paul then targeted Fauci personally: "As much as I respect you Dr. Fauci, I don't think you're the end-all, I don't think you're
the one person that gets to make the decision . We can listen to your advice. But there are people on the other side saying there
won't be a surge and we can safely open the economy." CNBC
--------------
IMO, there may or may not be an effective vaccine developed against COVID-19. Some virus bugs are never countered effectively
by vaccines. There are no vaccines for the common cold, the Spanish Influenza of 1918, and many other virus strains. Some diseases
must burn themselves out in a population by establishing herd immunity. Bubonic Plague is a bacterial infection, but the same thing
was true of it. It ravaged Europe, but eventually the fire of infection burned out in Europe and those of us who are descended from
Europeans are the descendants of the herd survivors.
COVID-19 is nothing like the Black Death or the Spanish Influenza in lethality except for the old and infirm. Suck it up, people!
Cowboy up! Grow a pair! Fauci is a techno dweeb who would keep the US shut down economically until the survivors of COVID-19 would
be living in a post-apocalyptic world of small communities living in poverty, a dystopian nightmare.
Rand Paul is also a doctor, and a survivor of the disease.
The Democrats are having a good time playing with Trump while the country burns to the ground economically.
Biden? Pelosi? Juan Williams? Northam? You want them? If you do, and you want to hunker down until the country dies, well then,
Bless You! You will deserve what you get.
SWMBO and I, and the doggies are unlikely to be here to share your pain. pl
LA County apparently wants to extend the lockdown by another 3 months. This is just insane!
Old guys like me could hang out more at the ranch but the youth need to be out and about.
There's no perfect risk-free scenario as you point out. Unfortunately we have cultivated a nanny state of big government and
big business that are quite rapacious in reality. Has any state actually passed legislation to enforce lockdowns? These are just
executive orders at the state and local levels. It would appear that these orders suspends the constitution? I'm surprised no
one has yet challenged these orders in state and federal courts.
We sure are an afraid lot. What happened to the derring-do?
maybe they could do a special ufc - wrestling type show with paul and fauci.. the american public seem very keen on this sort
of thing and would eat it up..
can someone explain how herd immunity works?? i've never heard of people being referred to as a herd... i missed that in school..
BTW, notice how Ukraine has vanished from the national conversation.
Who needs to keep yapping about how Trump let down (one faction in) Ukraine when they can blame him for the economic calamity
which, in point of fact, is due to the vast overreaction that has been pushed by the media and Dem politicians.
For example, failing to point out that New York has unique demographics, which directly and conclusively led to its high hospitalization
and fatality rate.
A key point the media doesn't adequately emphasize, IMO, is the sharpness of the dependency on age.
In Virginia, there have been, to date, roughly 900 deaths attributed to the virus.
Of those deaths, over half were to people over 80.
Roughly one quarter were people in their 70s.
About 15% were people on their 60s.
Less than 10% were people under 60.
There were ZERO deaths of people under 20.
To see a bar chart which shows the exact numbers, visit https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/
Then click on "Demographics", then set "Select Measure" to "Deaths".
"public health experts"
These folks appear to be expert only at guaranteeing thier jobs. The backpedaling, double speak and out right fraud is beyond
shameless. I notice we aren't talking about the Georgia death count any longer but St. Travoon of the skittles accolyte. This
thing is over but for NYC and the politicians in the democratic death traps being governed by fools. Ordering infected elderly
patients back to nursing homes, which experts advised that to Cuomo and Whitmer? Suicide, drug overdoses, those deaths don't count?
"Biden? Pelosi? Juan Williams? Northam? You want them?" No, nor Whitmer nor Newsom. If we get them I won't be around much longer
than your doggies and I'm much younger than you and SWMBO.
I think a big part of the problem is the total lack of any deeper philosophic debate, as part of a normal social functioning.
People want answers not truths, so there are plenty of politicians and priests, but philosophy is neutered and left to the back
alleys of academia.
We are linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, in which there is this organic interplay
between competition and cooperation, as well as public and private functions of society, etc. So when we impose this goal oriented
model on those facts of life, we end up with a bunch of absolutist ideologs running the world and using the other side as boogymen
to rally their cultists. Rather than appreciating such interplay is fundamental to life.
When we have such a fundamentally primitive understanding of how reality functions, having nuanced discussion of life and death
issues is not possible.
The people won't stand for Fausti's nonsense, nor the Democrats'. They will just open their businesses and local governments -
especially county level - will allow it. Already happening in PA. Heck even some states are doing it. As counties and states open
up, the populations of those that do not will become increasingly agitated and begin to break "the rules". There will be a ripple
effect. The cowards and social media magnates and leftists will call them names and wave fingers at them, but the people won't
care. Actually they will continue to open with even more fervor just to give give these "elites" the finger.
As always, the socialist/dictator class ignores human nature and believes people can be programmed. As always, they are wrong.
People are no longer buying the models and case rates BS, etc. that the "scientists" put out there. Geekery ain't cutting it any
more.
Hopefully, this will all occur peacefully with the socialists/dictators just throwing up their hands. If they double down,
then the tree of liberty gets watered. Probably the outcome that needs to happen, terrible as it is. Right now Pelosi is trying
to develop a plan to bribe the people into staying locked down and vote democrat. It will fail.
LA County apparently wants to extend the lockdown by another 3 months. This is just insane!
Old guys like me could hang out more at the ranch but the youth need to be out and about.
There's no perfect risk-free scenario as you point out. Unfortunately we have cultivated a nanny state of big government and
big business that are quite rapacious in reality. Has any state actually passed legislation to enforce lockdowns? These are just
executive orders at the state and local levels. It would appear that these orders suspends the constitution? I'm surprised no
one has yet challenged these orders in state and federal courts.
We sure are an afraid lot. What happened to the derring-do?
maybe they could do a special ufc - wrestling type show with paul and fauci.. the american public seem very keen on this sort
of thing and would eat it up..
can someone explain how herd immunity works?? i've never heard of people being referred to as a herd... i missed that in school..
BTW, notice how Ukraine has vanished from the national conversation.
Who needs to keep yapping about how Trump let down (one faction in) Ukraine when they can blame him for the economic calamity
which, in point of fact, is due to the vast overreaction that has been pushed by the media and Dem politicians.
For example, failing to point out that New York has unique demographics, which directly and conclusively led to its high hospitalization
and fatality rate.
A key point the media doesn't adequately emphasize, IMO, is the sharpness of the dependency on age.
In Virginia, there have been, to date, roughly 900 deaths attributed to the virus.
Of those deaths, over half were to people over 80.
Roughly one quarter were people in their 70s.
About 15% were people on their 60s.
Less than 10% were people under 60.
There were ZERO deaths of people under 20.
To see a bar chart which shows the exact numbers, visit https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/
Then click on "Demographics", then set "Select Measure" to "Deaths".
"public health experts"
These folks appear to be expert only at guaranteeing thier jobs. The backpedaling, double speak and out right fraud is beyond
shameless. I notice we aren't talking about the Georgia death count any longer but St. Travoon of the skittles accolyte. This
thing is over but for NYC and the politicians in the democratic death traps being governed by fools. Ordering infected elderly
patients back to nursing homes, which experts advised that to Cuomo and Whitmer? Suicide, drug overdoses, those deaths don't count?
"Biden? Pelosi? Juan Williams? Northam? You want them?" No, nor Whitmer nor Newsom. If we get them I won't be around much longer
than your doggies and I'm much younger than you and SWMBO.
I think a big part of the problem is the total lack of any deeper philosophic debate, as part of a normal social functioning.
People want answers not truths, so there are plenty of politicians and priests, but philosophy is neutered and left to the back
alleys of academia.
We are linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, in which there is this organic interplay
between competition and cooperation, as well as public and private functions of society, etc. So when we impose this goal oriented
model on those facts of life, we end up with a bunch of absolutist ideologs running the world and using the other side as boogymen
to rally their cultists. Rather than appreciating such interplay is fundamental to life.
When we have such a fundamentally primitive understanding of how reality functions, having nuanced discussion of life and death
issues is not possible.
The people won't stand for Fausti's nonsense, nor the Democrats'. They will just open their businesses and local governments -
especially county level - will allow it. Already happening in PA. Heck even some states are doing it. As counties and states open
up, the populations of those that do not will become increasingly agitated and begin to break "the rules". There will be a ripple
effect. The cowards and social media magnates and leftists will call them names and wave fingers at them, but the people won't
care. Actually they will continue to open with even more fervor just to give give these "elites" the finger.
As always, the socialist/dictator class ignores human nature and believes people can be programmed. As always, they are wrong.
People are no longer buying the models and case rates BS, etc. that the "scientists" put out there. Geekery ain't cutting it any
more.
Hopefully, this will all occur peacefully with the socialists/dictators just throwing up their hands. If they double down,
then the tree of liberty gets watered. Probably the outcome that needs to happen, terrible as it is. Right now Pelosi is trying
to develop a plan to bribe the people into staying locked down and vote democrat. It will fail.
"... The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem "essential" has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus , that created this catastrophe. And the consequences in much of the world will be more horrible than in America. ..."
"... That would be enough to characterize the worldwide lockdown as a deathly error. But there is much more. If global GDP declines by 5%, another 147 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. ..."
"... Foreign Policy magazine reports that, according to the International Monetary Fund, the global economy will shrink by 3% in 2020, marking the biggest downturn since the Great Depression, and the U.S., the eurozone and Japan will contract by 5.9%, 7.5% and 5.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, across South Asia, as of a month ago, tens of millions were already "struggling to put food on the table." Again, all because of the lockdowns, not the virus. ..."
The idea that the worldwide lockdown of virtually every country other than Sweden may have
been an enormous mistake strikes many - including world leaders; most scientists, especially
health officials, doctors and epidemiologists; those who work in major news media; opinion
writers in those media; and the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who put their
faith in these people - as so preposterous as to be immoral.
Timothy Egan of The New York Times described Republicans who wish to enable their states to
open up as "the party of death."
That's the way it is today on planet Earth, where deceit, cowardice and immaturity now
dominate almost all societies because the elites are deceitful, cowardly and immature.
But for those open to reading thoughts they may differ with, here is the case for why the
worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has
ever made. And for those intellectually challenged by the English language and/or logic,
"mistake" and "evil" are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery,
communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive
evils are committed by evil people.
The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem
"essential" has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression of the
1930s. It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus , that created this catastrophe. And the
consequences in much of the world will be more horrible than in America.
The United Nations World Food Programme, or the WFP, states that by the end of the year,
more than 260 million people will face starvation -- double last year's figures. According to
WFP director David Beasley on April 21:
"We could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries...
There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic
impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself " (italics added).
That would be enough to characterize the worldwide lockdown as a deathly error. But there is
much more. If global GDP declines by 5%, another 147 million people could be plunged into
extreme poverty, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Foreign Policy magazine reports that, according to the International Monetary Fund, the
global economy will shrink by 3% in 2020, marking the biggest downturn since the Great
Depression, and the U.S., the eurozone and Japan will contract by 5.9%, 7.5% and 5.2%,
respectively. Meanwhile, across South Asia, as of a month ago, tens of millions were already
"struggling to put food on the table." Again, all because of the lockdowns, not the virus.
In one particularly incomprehensible act, the government of India, a poor country of 1.3
billion people, locked down its people. As Quartz India reported on April 22, "Coronavirus has
killed only around 700 Indians a small number still compared to the 450,000 TB and 10,000-odd
malaria deaths recorded every year."
One of the thousands of unpaid garment workers protesting the lockdown in Bangladesh
understands the situation better than almost any health official in the world:
"We are starving. If we don't have food in our stomach, what's the use of observing this
lockdown?"
But concern for that Bangladeshi worker among the world's elites seems nonexistent.
The lockdown is " possibly even more catastrophic (than the virus) in its outcome : the
collapse of global food-supply systems and widespread human starvation" (italics added).
That was published in the left-wing The Nation, which, nevertheless, enthusiastically
supports lockdowns. But the American left cares as much about the millions of non-Americans
reduced to hunger and starvation because of the lockdown as it does about the people of upstate
New York who have no incomes, despite the minuscule number of coronavirus deaths there. Or
about the citizens of Oregon, whose governor has just announced the state will remain locked
down until July 6. As of this writing, a total of 109 people have died of the coronavirus in
Oregon.
An example of how disinterested the left is in worldwide suffering is made abundantly clear
in a front-page "prayer" by a left-wing Christian in the current issue of The Nation: "May we
who are merely inconvenienced remember those whose lives are at stake."
"Merely inconvenienced" is how the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a Protestant minister and
president of the North Carolina NAACP, describes the tens of millions of Americans rendered
destitute, not to mention the hundreds of millions around the world rendered not only penniless
but hungry. The truth is, like most of the elites, it is Barber who is "merely inconvenienced."
Indeed, the American battle today is between the merely inconvenienced and the rest of
America.
Michael Levitt, professor of structural biology at Stanford Medical School and winner of the
2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, recently stated, "There is no doubt in my mind that when we come
to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge
factor."
To the left, anyone who questions the lockdown is driven by preference for money over lives.
Typical of the left's moral shallowness is this headline on Salon this week:
"It's Time To Reject the Gods of Commerce: America Is a Society, Not an 'Economy,'" with
the subhead reading, "America Is About People, Not Profit Margins."
And, of course, to smug editors and writers of The Atlantic, in article after repetitive
article, the fault lies not with the lockdown but with President Donald Trump. The most popular
article in The Atlantic this week is titled "The Rest of the World Is Laughing at Trump." The
elites can afford to laugh at whatever they want. Meanwhile, the less fortunate -- that is,
most people -- are crying.
So-called immunity passports would bring back the worst civil liberties abuses of the past
and result in a crime wave. Credit: M.Moira/Shutterstock
May 13, 2020
|
12:01 am
Bill
Wirtz The coronavirus lockdown drags on, yet only a few fringe fanatics (and France, but I
repeat myself) support continuing complete shutdowns of the world's economies. However, even
those countries that have opted to end forced quarantines still present a range of worrying
responses. One of these ongoing debates surrounds the so-called "Corona apps," with which
authorities intend to track and trace the movements of their own citizens. In Poland, the
government is
mandating that those infected with COVID-19 install an app and use it to send a selfie on a
regular basis. If they do not comply, they face a visit from the law enforcement.
The nightmarish infringements on civil liberties are set to continue with "immunity
passports." The German Robert Koch Institute, along with other researchers and blood donation
services, is
working on a large-scale study to establish immunity in COVID-19 patients. Those found to
have built immunity, either because they've already had the disease or through antibody
testing, could be issued paperwork that exempts them from lockdown restrictions.
CNN's medical analyst Saju Mathew counts himself as convinced by the concept, and quotes a
noted beacon of human freedom to back it up: "In China, for example, QR codes have been used to
loosen restrictions in Wuhan, where the pandemic originated. People assessed to be healthy have
been given a green QR code, indicating they can travel within the province."
From a law enforcement level, the existence of immunity passports would extend indefinitely
the practice of questioning citizens without reasonable suspicion at any time. "Papers please"
wouldn't be experienced only because one is crossing a border, but merely because one is
outside. If you were worried about rogue police abusing power before, wait until stop and frisk
becomes the norm all across the United States, at any time of the day.
In the United Kingdom, Professor Peter Openshaw, a member of the government's new and
emerging respiratory virus threats advisory group,
told The Guardian that "people granted the passports would have to be kept under
close observation to ensure they were not becoming reinfected." In practice, this would amount
to daily identification checkpoints and mandatory home visits. Any pretense of individual
liberty and fundamental rights would go out the window.
But beyond that, on a more practical level, the measure would be inoperable.
In a scientific brief published at the end of April , the World Health Organization (WHO)
-- known to be warm on authoritarian measures such as those used by China -- preliminarily
rejected the idea of these passports. Current antibody tests, the WHO warned, could confuse
immunity with one of the six existing coronaviruses, four of which cause the common cold. The
WHO also noted that such paperwork would give citizens the impression that they do not need to
abide by social distancing guidelines, giving them a false sense of security. Professor
Openshaw adds that immunity passports would incentivize people to try and deliberately catch
coronavirus, which could end up overwhelming the health sector, exactly the scenario that the
lockdowns are meant to prevent.
There's also a massive opportunity for crime under such a proposal. In 2015,
50 million travel documents were either lost or stolen. In 2014, the UK recorded a five-year high of
counterfeit passport seizures. Fake passports fuel organized crime and have long been available
on the black market. Immunity passports would be far more valuable, since they would grant not
just the ability to go to other countries, but other basic freedoms of movement, going into
shops or meeting friends. The idea that people would pay a pretty price for their freedom would
be an understatement. In turn, the government could only react to such a flood of false
documentation by becoming more authoritarian, casting us into yet another spiral of increasing
state control.
There is no instance in which the systematic control of citizens has not ended in police
abuse, or plain and simple authoritarianism. There is a genuine fear about the coronavirus.
That said, we cannot allow such fear to rid us completely of our fundamental rights. States of
emergency were and are designed to be temporary, and in that, to be short.
If the debate is over whether to radically overturn the Bill of Rights and human rights
conventions, then let us have that debate. Let us talk about rewriting the rules, instead of
just plain ignoring them.
Bill Wirtz comments on European politics and policy in English, French, and German. His
work has appeared in Newsweek , the Washington Examiner , CityAM, Le Monde
, Le Figaro , and Die Welt .
The Current Situation in the United States: May 2020
James K. Galbraith
Two weeks ago week the US death toll from Covid-19 exceeded that of US soldiers in
Vietnam, 1955-1974. On May 1 the one-day toll reached a new high, greater than that in New York
City on September 11, 2001. Meanwhile economic output has collapsed and over thirty million
Americans had filed unemployment claims as of April 30, 2020. On the public health front,
testing remains inadequate, contact tracing non-existent, treatment options appear stalled and
millions remain uninsured. The federal bailouts have worked well in one way only: to spur a
modest revival of stocks and to forestall massive defaults on bonds.
The failures of the public health system border on sabotage. Test kits were available
from the WHO in January; the US elected not to use them. The first production of tests from the
CDC was botched. Testing was deliberately limited as community transmission grew, so that the
virus escaped from early containment that might have been possible. Lockdowns and quarantines
came late, were poorly organized and weakly enforced. Supplies of PPE were not allocated to
hospitals and health care providers according to need; the Defense Production Act was not
deployed in timely and effective manner to ramp up home production; no effective federal system
to manage international medical supply chains exists to this day. While some firms have no
doubt done their best, reports of profiteering and scams are rampant.
The push to reopen the economy is a further mark of failure. As food supply workers
were not properly protected, unacceptable levels of sickness and workplace contamination have
occurred, notably in meat. Food banks are in crisis, while milk, eggs and other perishables are
wasted. State governments facing fiscal catastrophe press businesses to reopen on terms that
cannot be profitable, because capacity is constrained for health reasons. The openings are
calculated to force workers off of unemployment insurance, which can be revoked if they decline
to return to risky jobs. Many smaller businesses are deciding not to reopen; they will face
bankruptcy instead and disappear. Although evictions and foreclosures are technically deferred,
many landlords have ignored this and in any event rent, mortgages, utility bills and other
debts continue to accrue.
Models of the pandemic now openly predict infections rising further as lockdowns are
relaxed, to the point of testing the capacity of health care systems even in parts of the
country not yet severely affected. Whether this will happen or not is not yet clear; the public
may continue, as a general rule, to practice safe contact behavior, and if the transmission
rates hold below 1, as they presently are estimated to be in almost all of the American states , the pandemic may continue to
decline. But if the models are borne out, death rates will rise by many multiples of their
current values. These events are projected to lead to further lock-downs on a rolling basis,
until such time as a vaccine or therapy is available. There is no guarantee of
either.
Even if the pandemic is now contained the economy will not revert to "normal." The
United States is a premier producer of energy, aerospace, advanced information technologies and
financial services. It assembles many million automobiles, appliances and other consumer
durable goods every year. The oil sector has suffered a price collapse and borders now on mass
bankruptcy; when fracking wells are capped they will sand up and become very costly to reopen,
so the US energy-based economic expansion is over. Airplanes are lined up in parking spaces; no
new civilian passenger airliners will be needed indefinitely. Households who are either
unemployed or working from home (and therefore not commuting) or that face deferred rent and
mortgages will not soon be in the market for new cars; in any event the old ones will last
longer as they are being driven much less. As office buildings remain empty, new ones will not
be built. Similarly for retail stores, already driven to the wall by on-line ordering and
deliveries. The banking sector is on the hook for energy loans gone bad, and for household
debts, and for corporate loans that will be at risk once the bailout money runs low. The debts
built up during the pandemic will be defaulted in many cases, ruining credit for the households
affected. All of which foretells a long depression even under the best foreseeable public
health conditions. A cycle of infections and lock-downs will make all of this that much
worse.
There is an illusion about, that the recent prosperity can be revived by "reopening." But
many industries – aircraft, airlines, hotels, automobiles, appliances, commercial
construction, energy – will definitely shrink, whatever happens now and no matter how
much money they receive. The bailouts were a measure predicated on the idea that these
industries were facing just a temporary interruption. But it is difficult to see how
bankruptcies and liquidations can be avoided if there is no revival in the demand for product.
And large-scale production relies on interlinked supply-chains, so that if a single major
producer (for example one of the majors in the automotive sector) fails, there is a risk of
cascading liquidations (for example in auto parts), making operations difficult – perhaps
impossible – for the survivors. In these industries the supply chains and subcontractors
are much larger in the aggregate than the assembly operations of the final production firm.
Higher education, a large sector in America, faces a crisis of high costs, collapsing
enrollments and the actual alternative of cheap on-line instruction in many fields. This was
already in the works for demographic reasons, and is now being accelerated by the loss of
household wealth. Health care, ten times larger, also faces financial difficulties as millions
are losing their insurance and – for the moment anyway – as accidents, other
infectious diseases and such are down, depriving doctors and hospitals of reimbursements.
Service industries from restaurants to retailers cannot function profitably at one-quarter of
capacity; bars, nightclubs, and most sporting venues cannot reopen at all.
Federal decision-making has failed at every level. In the executive branch, it has
been at best a complex of incompetence, denial, and political motivation. At worst,
decisions were taken and are still being taken in full knowledge of the projected death rates
and potential for private profiteering, both in the medical sector and in the larger financial
economy. It is known that some private speculators made over three hundred billion dollars
shorting the stock market before the February collapse, and that some Members of Congress sold
their holdings based on information provided in intelligence briefings. Congressional action
has been slow, marred by politics, lobbies, regional rivalries, poor judgment and a
misdiagnosis of the economic issues, as Congress reached for legislative models used in past
business downturns, especially the crisis of 2007-2009, which had no quarantine or other public
health component.
The specific policies implemented were plagued by problems. To calculate payments
under the first CARES Act, the IRS had to use filings from tax year 2018, and also ran into
printing bottlenecks for paper checks that had to be mailed to those without direct deposit.
Unemployment insurance benefits were made relatively generous, and the state unemployment
insurance web-sites could not handle the crush, so they crashed, leaving many without the
ability to access the program. Instead of simple wage replacement (which would have protected
health insurance and union membership) the Small Business Administration issued rules that
appeared unusable for many firms, banks gave preference to favored clients, and in the first
round also the money soon ran out. In short, the effort to save the economy by pouring money
into it through conventional channels was inadequate, ill-considered, inefficient, and in some
respects corrupt. The best that may be said is that it was much better than doing nothing at
all.
As events progress, the usual pattern of property sales and purchases cannot proceed. So
property values will collapse, leaving millions of homeowners without equity; as this happens,
mass foreclosures and property seizures are inevitable under the present legal rules. Predatory
private investors will buy distressed assets at firesale prices and the American population
will revert, largely to renter status. For those with means, private tutors and doctors will
remain available; the others will manage as they can. Needless to say, depression, despair,
drug abuse and suicide will prevail.
Or maybe they won't . In the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, it was possible
– barely possible, but possible – to shift the blame from the bankers to the
victims, from those who built a massively fraudulent financial system to those who took out the
loans that they could not repay. But there was no viral element, no public health trigger, to
that crisis. This one is different. Every development described above is a consequence, direct
or indirect, of the coronavirus. Those who were laid off, and who went home, and who broke the
transmission of the disease, did their part, just as health-care professionals and grocery
clerks did theirs. Their legal case for relief remains weak. But the moral case is strong and
the economic case is beyond dispute. Even the incumbent Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, a
foreclosure-predator of the first water after 2008, has stated that
the economic crisis "is no fault of American business, it is no fault of American workers, it
is the fault of a virus." This is true but it does not mean that things will return to the past
if the virus can be made to go away.
To move forward, first of all, debts incurred before and during the pandemic will
have to be written down. The energy sector and transport sectors will have to be rebuilt, based
far more on renewables and sources other than oil. A large share of basic industries –
especially in the health sector – will have to be repatriated so that basic sufficiency
exists in this country. Millions of people will be needed to monitor and support public health;
jobs for them must be organized and funded by the government. State and local governments will
have to be federally-funded, in substantial part, to provide basic public services. New and
sustainable housing must be built, in new community structures. High speed broadband must be
provided to all. A new financing model – cooperative, with public support – will be
required to re-establish small businesses. Local, decentralized cultural and sporting venues
will have to replace mass-based experiences; these too will require cooperative structures and
public support. In short, the only way out, remotely acceptable to the population at large,
will require a comprehensive restructuring of the economy on a cooperative foundation, with the
government stepping up to guaranteed funding, employment, and public investments.
Disaster capitalism is being tried, and the worst case is now the likely case. But there is
a scale beyond which disaster capitalism cannot go. At a certain point, the carnage becomes too
great to neglect, impossible to avoid and lethal to overlook. At a certain point, ordinary
people will stand up and refuse to be bullied any more. That point has not quite arrived; we
are still in the mind-set of "getting back to normal," even as the pandemic continues. The
contradiction between normality and public health is on people's minds; the impossibility of
returning to the previous abnormal-normal has not yet settled in. It will, in due course. At
that point, the question of alternatives will have to be faced.
>Patient #1 was a 35 year old male who presented at a Seattle (WA) clinic on Jan 15, 2020
A month later Fauci was still proclaiming in public that the evil virus was less of a
problem than the annual influenza. Someplace there is a video of Fauci saying this, right
around Feb 15.
I can not understand how even complete incompetents manage to make exactly the wrong
decision at every opportunity. In the UK there was a policy to send elderly patients, both
suspected and known to have the virus, to care homes, without even warning the care home
people. Supposedly it was to make room for corona patients who were even sicker than the ones
going into care homes. This is straight-up criminal negligence.
The governor -- who himself has described nursing homes as a "feeding frenzy'' for the
deadly coronavirus -- said that the facilities can't challenge a state regulation
forcing them to admit patients with the contagion .
The CEO of a hard-hit Brooklyn nursing home, where 55 patients have died from the
coronavirus, told The Post last week that he'd been warning state Health Department
officials for weeks he had staffing and equipment issues -- yet received little help.
"There is no way for us to prevent the spread under these conditions,'' the head of the
Cobble Hill Health Center, Donny Tuchman, wrote in an e-mail to the department on April
8.
He said he asked to move some patients to the makeshift wards at Manhattan's Javits
Center and aboard the city-docked USNS Comfort amid the pandemic, only to be told those two
spots were receiving only patients from hospitals.
"I made specific requests to transfer patients, and it didn't happen,'' Tuchman told The
Post. "There weren't options."
Deliberate policy decisions have killed and continue to kill people. That is perfectly
clear, even while the origins of the virus and the intent of decisions are hiding in the
muck. Will relatives of the dead just accept this as "an act of god", or will they come to
understand these events as "acts of dear leaders"?
For two months Dear Leaders have claimed that destroying the economy, house arrest, and no
care home visitors are for the express purpose of protecting ... care home residents. But
most of the dead were care home residents, along with plenty of their care workers.
Yes it sounds melodramatic but I keep seeing black-and-white images of people being herded
into shower rooms in order to get showered with Zyklon B. Please tell me why we are not
witnessing state-sanctioned murder.
"... Paul, who also has a medical degree, called for "a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what's best for our economy," questioning Fauci's support for a prolonged economic shutdown during a Senate hearing on the government's coronavirus response on Tuesday. ..."
"... With all due respect I don't think you're the end-all, I don't think you're the one person who gets to make a decision. ..."
"... "I hope that people who are predicting doom and gloom and saying oh we can't do this there's going to be a surge will admit they're wrong if there isn't a surge," the senator continued, calling for the Trump administration to listen to experts who disagreed with the "doom and gloom" predictions of Fauci and his ilk. ..."
"... Paul added that continuing the lockdown would widen the class divide, explaining that if children are kept out of school for months on end, then "the poor and underprivileged kids who don't have a parent that's able to teach them at home aren't going to be able to learn for a full year." He also said that the catastrophic narrative painting Covid-19 as a killer necessitating mass shutdowns had gotten started with "wrong prediction after wrong prediction," starting with the British scientist Neil Ferguson's apocalyptic forecasts – even as the British scientist had been meeting secretly with his mistress in violation of the lockdown he'd been championing. ..."
Republican Senator Rand Paul has challenged National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases director Dr Anthony Fauci on the nation's Covid-19 policy, suggesting the US is
waiting too long to reopen. Paul, who also has a medical degree, called for "a little bit of
humility in our belief that we know what's best for our economy," questioning Fauci's support
for a prolonged economic shutdown during a Senate hearing on the government's coronavirus
response on Tuesday.
Sen. Paul argues school decisions should be made district by district, tells Dr. Fauci: "I
don't think you're the end all."Fauci: "I'm a scientist... I think we better be careful if we
are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects."
pic.twitter.com/dIjXwkM5AU
With all due respect I don't think you're the end-all, I don't think you're the one
person who gets to make a decision.
"I hope that people who are predicting doom and gloom and saying oh we can't do this
there's going to be a surge will admit they're wrong if there isn't a surge," the senator
continued, calling for the Trump administration to listen to experts who disagreed with the
"doom and gloom" predictions of Fauci and his ilk.
" In rural states, we never really reached any sort of pandemic levels in Kentucky and
other states ," Paul pointed out, even as he acknowledged that " New England " had
been hit hard by the virus. " We have less deaths in Kentucky than we have in an average flu
season. "
" We don't know everything about this virus ," Fauci countered, challenging that
children in some parts of the country were turning up with " a very strange inflammatory
syndrome " similar to Kawasaki syndrome.
" You're right in the numbers that children do much much better .but I am very careful,
and hopefully humble, in knowing that I don't know everything about this disease, and that's
why I'm very reserved in making broad predictions ," Fauci continued.
Paul added that continuing the lockdown would widen the class divide, explaining that if
children are kept out of school for months on end, then "the poor and underprivileged kids who
don't have a parent that's able to teach them at home aren't going to be able to learn for a
full year." He also said that the catastrophic narrative painting Covid-19 as a killer
necessitating mass shutdowns had gotten started with "wrong prediction after wrong prediction,"
starting with the British scientist Neil Ferguson's apocalyptic forecasts – even as the
British scientist had been meeting secretly with his mistress in violation of the lockdown he'd
been championing.
Fauci's supporters took to social media to slam his opponent, noting that Paul had gone to
the Senate gym while infected with the coronavirus and perhaps infected others. They also cited
high numbers of Covid-19 cases in Paul's home county of Warren County, Kentucky.
Watching Republicans cheer on Rand Paul "taking on" Dr. Fauci almost perfectly
characterizes the anti-intellectual, anti-reason, anti-fact, and frankly degenerate state of
the Republican Party.
Warren County, Kentucky – where Rand Paul lives – has more COVID-19 cases per
capita than 51 of the 67 counties in New England states.Senator Paul is wrong and the
ignorant message he is peddling is dangerous. There is no special immunity to this virus
based on where you live. https://t.co/l9u5RBYR2J
Rand Paul absolutely destroys Dr. Fraudci. "I don't think you're the end all. I don't
think you're the one person who gets to make the decision." pic.twitter.com/nvljuGAy5u
Federal 'social distancing' guidelines were lifted at the end of April, but hotspots like
New York and California have extended their economic shutdowns as lesser-hit states have begun
to relax restrictions.
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"... X22 Report Fauci's Connections To Wuhan Ready To Be Exposed - Episode 2171c ..."
"... I don't remember Fauci ever apologizing his remarks concerning - you don't need to worry, you don't need masks - masks are bad, the virus can't be spread easily, his models predicting millions would die in the US. ..."
"The history of this when we look back will be wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction... As much as I
respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don't think you're the end all, I don't think you're the one person that gets to make a decision,"
said Paul - who added that we need to "observe with an open eye what happened in Sweden, where the kids kept going to school."
"The mortality per capita in Sweden is actually less than France, less than Italy, less than Spain, less than Belgium,
less than the Netherlands, about the same as Switzerland. But basically I don't think there's anybody arguing that what
happened in Sweden is an unacceptable result. I think people are intrigued by it, and we should be."
"I don't think any of us are certain when we do all these modelings - there have been more people wrong with modeling
than right. We're opening up a lot of economies around the US, and I hope that people who are predicting doom and gloom
and saying 'oh, we can't do this, there's going to be a surge' - will admit when there isn't a surge."
Watch:
Sen. Rand Paul:
"The history of this when we look back will be wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction... As much as I
respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don't think you're the end all, I don't think you're the one person that gets to make a decision."
pic.twitter.com/SP9T638y2B
Fauci responded, (25 seconds in below), saying "Sen. Paul, I have never made myself out to be the end-all & only voice of this.
I'm a scientist, a physician, and a public health official."
He then offered a 'but, the children!' argument - latching onto Paul's comment that we don't know everything
about the virus, and that "we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children."
"Because the more and more we learn - we're seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn't see from the studies in
China. Or in Europe. For example, right now children presenting with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory symdrome,
very similar to Kawasaki syndrome. I think we better be careful that we are not cavalier in thinking that children are not immune
to the deleterious effects.
"I never made myself to be out the end all.
I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official.
I give advice according to the best scientific evidence. "
I have not promoted the
#FireFauci movement.
I've defended him.
But now...
Fauci responded to a factual-based inquiry by @RandPaul w/an egregious
allusion to some mystery Kawasaki-like disease & tripled-down on his aversion to a 2020-21 school session.
Why isn't anyone asking directly about the 'gain of function' studies that NIH was doing on the US prior to outsourcing the
experiments to Wuhan and illegally funding it via the NIH....why is there a need to lockdown 300m people for a relative small
number of deaths which in turn are focused on the elderly with prior illnesses...what is the relationship betwe3n the CDC and
the European CDC... does the European CDC pay European hospitals for every diagnosis and every ventilator use.... its all BS...hopefully
people are beginning to smell a rat and through these bums out....
Al Agent, 3 minutes ago
True. Fauci wasn't elected to make policy; in fact, he wasn't elected at all! He was employed to advise on what happens under
different scenarios. Trump's economic advisors weren't elected to make policy; in fact, they weren't elected at all! They are
employed to advise on what happens under different scenarios.
Congress and The President decide on policy. They were elected to do that.
Templar X, 16 minutes ago
There will never be a vaccine for COVID-19 which is safe, effective, and worthwhile.
The fastest a vaccine has ever been developed in the past was four years after the first appearance of a new infectious disease.
Four years from now people will either have herd immunity or they will be dead.
Within a year or two, the COVID-19 virus will likely mutate itself to death, or it will weaken and become no worse than a regular
flu virus.
COVID-19 is, apparently, less harmful to people under 65 years of age and those with no underlying health conditions, which,
of course, is also true of the common flu.
theWHTMANN, 32 minutes ago
How come no one asks Fauci straight to his face regarding all the deaths that will happen because of the lockdown (missed surgeries,
suicide, famine, et al.). What is this con man's response? He doesn't care? What if non-COVID deaths because of the lockdown are
3x or 4x the COVID deaths? What then? Does anyone ask this fool Fauci whether he will take responsibility for anything?
mrpc, 30 minutes ago
Like Fauci says himself, in the interview, he gives advice. He doesn't make the decisions.
sun tzu, 34 minutes ago (Edited)
Where's the carnage in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina from reopening? I see no massive surge in the hospitals
or deaths. The only carnage I see is in the nursing homes in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts all states run by Democrats
PerilouseTimes, 8 minutes ago
I made an appointment for a procedure this week and had to go in for covid pretesting today. It was my second test in three
months. I worked with and personally interacted with, people that tested positive for covid in mid March. I was unusually sick
in January and have talked to many others that was strange sick in January as well. After speaking with the health professionals
and the people I know in and around this, I am convinced that this is all a load of ****. I had covid in Jan, and so did many
of the others I worked with. The nurse I just talked to said to me that her and her family along with many people that she is
testing was convinced that they had it between Dec. and Feb. I'm in GA and it is long past time to get this show on the road.
Those experiments were going on in the United States until 2014. They were Dr. Anthony Fauci's projects. President Obama
ordered that to stop because they had a lot of lab escape problems in 2014 from three different labs
Instead of stopping as he was ordered, Fauci moved those operations to the Wuhan lab in China and continued to do those
experiments right up until the time that the coronavirus [pandemic occurred]. In fact, [infectious disease expert] Ian Lipkin
was doing those experiments over there when [COVID-19] exploded. And I'll tell you exactly what happened because it's very
suspicious."
---ZerooreZ---, 56 minutes ago
I am genuinely impressed with the American spirit, that everything covid related has happened at double the speed in the USA
compared to the UK - you were the last to get this thing and seem to be the first to open back up (well done!). I guess because
you guys have lived with guns your whole lives, you are braver than the average UK citizen who literally have been the most obedient
and most scared bunch I have experienced. People literally throw themselves off the pavements into the road to avoid someone walking
the other way, they would rather be
I don't remember Fauci ever apologizing his remarks concerning - you don't need to worry, you don't need masks - masks are
bad, the virus can't be spread easily, his models predicting millions would die in the US.
Newsweek reveals that as recently as last year, the US funded scientists at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology in 'gain of function' research on bat coronaviruses.
The source of that funding? The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease,
headed by.....(drumroll please)....Dr Anthony Fauci, lead medical expert for America's Covid-19
task force.
President Donald Trump's legal counsel, Rudy Giuliani, in a recent chat on "The Cats
Roundtable" on New York AM 970 radio, suggested a good U.S. attorney general move about
now would be to investigate key members of the past Barack Obama administration on the
Wuhan, China, laboratory, to see what they knew and when they knew it.
And then he mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci specifically.
And then he accused the prior Team Obama of sending $3.7 million to the lab in 2014
-- at a time when that same Team Obama had banned the funding of any lab that was
involved in virus experimentation.
And then he named Fauci as the guy who gave the money to the Wuhan Institute of
Virology.
Ouch. Politically speaking, the perception of one of this administration's loudest
voices on the coronavirus front -- the one calling for shutdowns and shut-ins and
contact tracing-slash-government-tracking of American citizens -- well, it doesn't look
good to have him tied financially to Wuhan.
Giuliani, as RedState noted, said this:
"Back in 2014, the Obama administration prohibited the U.S. from giving money to
any laboratory, including in the U.S., that was fooling around with these viruses.
Prohibited. Despite that, Dr. Fauci gave $3.7 million to the Wuhan laboratory.
And then even after the State Department issued reports about how unsafe that
laboratory was, and how suspicious they were in the way they were developing a virus
that could be transmitted to humans, we never pulled that money."
Giuliani said if he were attorney general, he'd open an investigation.
It's a common refrain: We have bubble-wrapped the world . Americans in particular are
obsessed with "safety." The simplest way to get any law passed in America, be it a zoning law
or a sweeping reform of the intelligence community, is to invoke a simple sentence: "A kid
might get hurt."
Almost no one is opposed to reasonable efforts at making the world a safer place. But the
operating word here is "reasonable." Banning lawn darts ,
for example, rather than just telling people that they can be dangerous when used by
unsupervised children, is a perfect example of a craving for safety gone too far.
Beyond the realm of legislation, this has begun to infect our very culture. Think of things
like
"trigger warnings" and "safe
spaces." These are part of broader cultural trends in search of a kind of "emotional
safety" – a purported right to never be disturbed or offended by anything. This is by no
means confined to the sphere of academia, but is also in our popular culture, both in "
extremely
online " and more mainstream variants.
Why are Americans so obsessed with safety? What is the endgame of those who would bubble
wrap the world, both physically and emotionally? Perhaps most importantly, what can we do to
turn back the tide and reclaim our culture of self-reliance , mental toughness , and giving one
another the benefit of the doubt so that we don't "bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for
absolute security," as President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about
?
Coddling and Splintering: The Transformation of the American Mind
There is an interesting phenomenon involved in coddling: Australian psychologist Nick Haskam
first coined the term "concept creep." Basically, this means that terms are often elastic and
expand past the point of meaning. Take, for example, the concept of "trauma." This used to have a very
limited meaning. However, "trauma" quickly became expanded to mean even slight physical or
emotional harm or discomfort. Thus the increasing belief among the far left that words can be
"violence" – not "violent," mind you, but actual, literal violence.
In the other direction, the
definition of "hero" has been expanded to mean just about anything. Every teacher,
firefighter and police officer is now considered a "hero." This isn't to downplay or minimize
the importance of these roles in our society. It's simply to point out that "hero" just doesn't
mean what it used to 100 or even 30 years ago.
Once this expansion of a term occurs, there is never any kind of retraction. Trauma now
means just about anything, and violence will soon be expanded to include lawful, peaceful
speech that one disapproves of. Once this happens, there will be no going back. In the words of
Sam Harris :
"We (as a society) have to be committed to defending free speech however impolitic, or
unpopular, or even wrong because defending that is the only barrier to violence. That's
because the only way we can influence one another short of physical violence is through
speech, through communicating ideas. The moment you say certain ideas can't be communicated
you create a circumstance where people have no alternative but to go hands on you."
It is extremely dangerous to begin labelling everything as violence for reasons of free
speech, but perhaps even more dangerous is the notion that when anything is violence, nothing
is violence. Redefining words as "violence" means that we have little recourse for when actual
violence occurs.
The Coddling of the American Mind notes some other concepts that are important as we speak
of America's obsession with "safety" above all else. First, that coddling combined with
splintering means that people's political views are much more like fanatical religious views
than anything. They don't see themselves as having to debate ideas or seek common ground.
Rather, the opposing side and its proponents are seen as "dangerous" and must be discredited at
all costs. It is worth noting that this is much more common among the left than the right or
the center, which has now become more the place where "live and let live" types congregate.
The problem with this goes beyond simply being irritated by irrational people barking at you
or at someone else: There is an entire generation of people who are seriously lacking in
critical thinking
skills . They think that labelling people and name-calling are excuses for a reasoned
argument. In the words of Voltaire, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you
commit atrocities."
These problems are hardly confined to political radicalism or academia. Indeed, the
corporate sector is no stranger to this kind of safety obsession. There is the phenomenon of
"woke capital," where the corporations find the latest celebrity cause-du-jour and use it as a
marketing strategy.
There is currently an extreme risk aversion in management science. Companies will now do
basically anything to avoid "a kid getting hurt" or someone's delicate sensibilities being
offended.
Education from kindergarten up to the universities is increasingly about teaching doctrines
and ideology, rather than critical thinking and problem solving skills. All of this is a
dangerous admixture that combines the full weight of the academic, cultural and business elites
in this country. And its consequences are far reaching.
Trigger Warnings and Safe
Spaces
For those unaware, a "trigger warning" is a person's advisory that disturbing content is
going to be posted. However, in an example of concept creep, the meaning of "disturbing" has
become expanded to mean, well, just about anything that might offend a leftist. It is also
sometimes known as a "content warning," "TW" or "CW."
A similar concept is that of a "safe space." What used to be a term used for a place where
people in actual danger of physical harm could express themselves, a "safe space" now means a
place where there is no room for disagreement or questions because language is literally
violence.
Bernie
Sanders: An Emergency Response to the
Democrats
join with Trump in bipartisan push for
US nursing home catastrophe: Increasing numbers of
'Immediate danger': Half of world's workforce could
Coronavirus pandemic is 'ACCELERATING,'
The
Decade