Divemedic

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 58 people in the U.S. between ages 0-24 have died from COVID-19 as of May 6. As tragic as that is, for comparison, 250 people in the same age group have died this year from pneumonia and 126 from the flu, but our nation doesn’t close down those non-COVID cases. As I have been saying, fear is contagious:

This panic illustrates the real hazard with nCOV 19. The real hazard is fear induced panic, and the people demanding that the government (or the medical field) do something. It doesn’t matter if the something that is being done is actually effective- just that they are doing something. We see this all of the time, which is the reason why we have to suffer through the Kabuki Theater of security everywhere.

Over 92% of the people who have died in the US are over the age of 65, and more than half live in nursing homes. When I pointed this out over at Aesop’s place, he resorted to emotional argument:

What’s your point? Are older people expendable by fiat? Where is that principle in the Constitution, state law, or common law…? Should we also crash test cars with old people? Use them to clear minefields?

We can argue and quibble over things like infection rate and death rate, but the numbers aren’t there. Ignoring projections, which are as accurate as the ones declaring Hillary would be President, or that Hurricane Dorian was going to wipe out the state of Florida, the real numbers have been less than scary.

The entire US has had about 1.3 million confirmed cases and 82,200 deaths. A six percent fatality rate would be rough, but remember that the total confirmed cases is not a valid number.

New York metro area was hit the hardest with 490,000 cases and 36,000 deaths to date, which represent more than a third of all cases and nearly half of all Wuhan related deaths for the entire country. In fact, DNA sequencing of the virus has shown that New York was the source of most of the infections in the US.

During crucial weeks in March, New York’s political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start. And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, as the disease was already spreading widely within the country. Just as the restrictions are pointless now.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have been, and remain, a staunch advocate for taking the Wuhan virus seriously. In that same discussion, I said:

If you want to debate whether or not shutting down the economy is a wise method of preventing the spread of the virus, that’s one thing, but denying the existence or deadly nature of it is pure bullshit.

It’s time to have that discussion. The facts are showing us a few things:

1. New York caught the brunt of it, with other major cities seeing a lot of cases, but there appears to be some reasons for that related to population density.
2. Nursing homes also appear to be a focus, probably because of the fragile population and the fact that they are so close to each other. 
3. The younger a person is, the safer they are. 

No one should accept this lockdown as “the new normal.” Even New York City is not having many new cases lately. At its peak, the virus was claiming 800 lives a day in New York City alone, but the last few days show that the danger is receding. On Monday, the entire state of New York had 410 deaths. The data we have at this time simply doesn’t warrant maintaining a total lockdown. Of course, the pandemic is a fluid situation and things could change for better or worse in the coming months. Aesop, who is advocating an indefinite lockdown, has this to say:

Flattening the spread of COVID-19 using lockdowns allows health systems to cope with the disease, which then permits a resumption of economic activity. In this sense, there is no trade-off between saving lives and saving livelihoods. 

He is wrong, because there is, of course, a trade-off. The Wuhan virus has caused a lockdown of most of the countries that drive the world economy. The projection is for the world economy to recede by 3%, down from 6.3% annual growth. In other words, the global economy shrank ten percent from its pre-lockdown levels. This means a cumulative loss of over $9 trillion over the next two years.

It is easy for those in the health professions, those who are essential, and others who don’t need to work to sit there and demand that everyone else starve so they can continue to live in their homes in fear of getting a virus with a survival rate of at least 95%.

Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, said

The decision to reopen schools cannot be made based solely on trying to prevent transmission. I think we have to take a holistic view of the impact of school closures on kids and our families. I do worry at some point, the accumulated harms from the measures may exceed the harm to the kids from the virus.

The same goes for the rest of the country, not just the schools. We can’t let the cure be worse than the disease. If people don’t speak up and demand that the country reopen, that’s likely what will happen — regardless if a resurgence of the virus takes place or not. The stark reality is that the Wuhan virus may be with us indefinitely, just like the seasonal flu, and we must adapt to it rather than revamping the entire U.S. economy.

Perhaps the lockdown can be lifted, beginning with the sparsely populated counties and states. We could restrict access to nursing homes and hospitals, with screening of visitors. What the country should do is offer people a choice: For those who are afraid to be exposed, those people should stay home.

The rest of us need to get back to work.

Sound reasonable? If so, contact your local school officials today.

Note:

The problem with Aesop and his blog is that he has gotten a boner for every deadly disease outbreak for the better part of a decade. When Ebola came to the US in 2014, the guy was practically salivating at the thought of the disease killing thousands. He has this macabre fascination with disease that we see here in Florida with people who get excited every time a hurricane comes within a thousand miles of the state.

Inmates in California are getting Wuhan on purpose so they can be released from jail. 

In order for a statistical analysis of a set of numbers to take place, there are a few things that must be done.
The data set must be random. If it isn’t, you suffer from selection bias. For example, if all of a person’s friends tell them that they were going to vote for HRC, they would have been surprised that Trump won the election. This is because their sample wasn’t random.

The sample must also be large enough to be significant. When measuring a large data set or population, like a workforce, you don’t always need to collect information from every member of that population – a sample does the job just as well. The trick is to determine the right size for a sample to be accurate. Using proportion and standard deviation methods, you are able to accurately determine the right sample size you need to make your data collection statistically significant.

When studying a new, untested variable in a population, your proportion equations might need to rely on certain assumptions. However, these assumptions might be completely inaccurate. This error is then passed along to your sample size determination and then onto the rest of your statistical data analysis.

That is what is happening now to statistical analysis of Wuhan virus numbers. We have a data set that tells us how many people had the disease at the time of testing. There are a couple of assumptions there that are making those numbers worthless.

• We didn’t test people at all before we were aware of the Wuhan virus. So we have no idea how many people had it, or what the outcome of their case was. 
• The people who were tested at first were only tested if they had been travelling to certain countries, so people who had the disease and had not traveled recently were not part of the data set. 
• The people who were tested didn’t have the Wuhan V on the day they were tested. That doesn’t mean that had not already had it months before, nor does it mean that they didn’t get it days or weeks later. 

The state of Florida thinks that since they have tested a large percentage of the state that they can predict what will happen. The numbers we have now cannot be used for a statistical analysis because they are not random. We are also assuming that the people who tested negative didn’t get it later, and didn’t have it earlier. This makes it impossible to determine the CFR.

I just saw this. There are concentration camps in Tennessee for COVID quarantine?

I was taking a look at this, and realized how effective it can be for defense. Just another tool to use in non permissive environments.

Yesterday, the FDA made a major announcement. They have banned all self service food dispensing. This one order will cause at least 100,000 people to lose their jobs.

Help customers maintain good infection control and social distancing by:

• Discontinuing operations, such as salad bars, buffets, and beverage service stations that require customers to use common utensils or dispensers.   

• Finding ways to encourage spacing between customers while in line for service or check out in accordance with the applicable State or local requirements.

• Discouraging customers from bringing pets — except service animals — into stores or waiting areas.

This is going to have wide ranging effects across the entire country, and has already put at least two nationwide restaurant chains out of business. Garden Fresh restaurants has announced that it will be closing its 97 SouPlantation  locations and its 97 Sweet Tomatoes locations as a result of the FDA’s order.

• This will affect drink stations in fast food locations like Subway, McDonald’s, WaWa, Racetrack, 7-eleven, and others. 
• It means an end to companies like Golden Corral, Sizzler, CiCi’s, along with every Chinese and Indian food buffet in the country. 
• Other companies will have to change their business: PizzaHut’s lunch buffet is gone, and along with it is Chevy’s salsa bar, and this also kills the salad bar in every restaurant. 
• Casinos will have to get rid of their buffets. (I will miss these. The buffets in Las Vegas and Biloxi are outstanding.)
• Hotels that offer free breakfast are also gone, as is the common use coffee pot. 

All of this despite the fact that there is no evidence that this was a common source for COVID infections, and not one word about the New York subway system.

The order doesn’t stop there. Even though there is not one shred of evidence that animals transmitted COVID, they are saying that only service animals are allowed in restaurants. If this were really being done to halt COVID, then why even allow service animals? Even arguing that animals are a health hazard and service animals are a necessary risk, there is no system in place to ensure that the animal really is a service animal.

It seems like every government agency is using the Wuhan virus to expand their reach. “Let no crisis go to waste,” indeed.

There is a video running around social media where a woman claiming to be a virology researcher is claiming that the entire vaccine system is fabricated by big pharmaceutical companies to purposely make people sick. She claims that she discovered that the COVID pandemic has been manufactured by Dr Fauci and the US government. She has made a documentary referring to it as the “Plandemic.”

The woman who made this video has been well known among anti-vaxxers and has now turned her attention to COVID. Many of my right leaning friends have latched on to this BS and are claiming that the entire COVID pandemic has been manufactured,

The woman who is at the center of this was discredited, jailed, and bankrupt, having to work as a Las Vegas bartender. She claims that she was jailed for discovering that AIDS was a manufactured crisis. Let me post some links to a few facts:

Heavy did a piece on her. I include this because there are links in the article to court cases, bot because Heavy is a primary source.

The supposed miracle breakthrough that she discovered? The one she claims got her thrown in jail? Well, that study was retracted after being discredited in a most embarrassing way. The NY TImes covers that here.  It turns out that she was jailed for stealing (and co-opting others to steal) materials from the University of Nevada.

You can find the history of her retractions here.

She trumpets being published in the magazine Science, but that same magazine later retracted her article after nine different laboratories were unable to replicate her results. They reported on her again here. 

The Chicago Tribune did a story on her discrediting here.

So after posting all of that information, this is a typical response that I get:

I get that you can post things from ‘Heavy.com ‘ and the garbage Tribune. And I respect that you have different views than I do, but allow me to respectfully disagree on this one. I BELIEVE her. She has the most calm, rational testimony I have seen in a long time. There is a REASON they are constantly removing her video. There is a REASON they issued a Gag order. I already thought Fauci was a quack. He has made Millions, and killed Millions. Nothing will change my mind on this. I just hope she isn’t eliminated like the Chinese doctor was a couple days ago. Hope you have a great day my friend. 

The people on the right, especially the quack antivax people are arguing against evidence and against reason to the point where they say that NOTHING can change their mind. I just can’t deal with all of the conspiracy theory people who see Illuminati in every world event.

My son was livestreaming reports from NYC in an attempt to help his medical friends learn from his experiences in treating COVID. He was hoping that he could save lives by letting people see what worked or didn’t work. He had to stop because too many people were accusing him of being a part of the “Plandemic” and saying that he was a crisis actor.

I normally do not delete any comments, even those that disagree with my position. However, since the conspiracy anti vaxxers are publicly stating that they have abandoned reason, anyone who posts on this page a comment that makes an accusation of any conspiracy with regards to COVID or references any sort of a “Plandemic” without a link to a primary source or valid scientific study will have their comments deleted without warning. If you want to post that shit without a valid source to back you up, do it on someone else’s blog.

Any studies that involve Judy Mikovits or Andrew Wakefield will not be accepted. Both of those researchers have been repeatedly discredited.

EDITED To add: User  “Wayne” has insisted on continuing to post antivax horseshit, even after the above notes AND having his first post deleted. He instead decided to continue his diatribe abd then accuse me of trying to have a “monopoly.” My blog, my rules.

Because I have had to delete multiple posts from this guy, comments for this post are locked.