The Coronavirus - a virus from eating bats, an accident or something sinister gone wrong?

[swordfish]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/25/new-cases-of-the-coronavirus-are-falling-in-most-of-the-us.html

White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci warned members of Congress in late June that the U.S. might report more than 100,000 daily new cases of the virus “if this does not turn around.”

But months later, Fauci’s worst fears have not come to pass as daily new cases have steadily fallen across much of the U.S. While testing has declined in recent weeks, the number of new cases is falling faster than testing rates, indicating that at least some of the drop is real.

 

Epidemiologists credit a more unified health message in the U.S. that has more people following social distancing rules. They also say that keeping some businesses closed has helped slow the outbreak. And President Donald Trump started endorsing masks in late July, bringing the White House in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after months of resistance.

WATCH NOW

VIDEO03:20

Former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb on coronavirus plasma treatment

 

The number of daily new cases in the U.S. peaked on July 22 at about 70,000 new infections and have steadily fallen to about 42,600 per day, based on a seven-day average, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The percent of all tests coming back positive has also steadily fallen, from a high of 8.5% in late July to 6.2% this week, according to Hopkins data. That, along with the four weeks of sustained decline and the falling number of Covid-19 hospitalizations, has epidemiologists feeling more confident that the U.S. is finally getting a grip on its outbreak.

“The current plan — wearing a mask, watching your distance, washing your hands, supplemented by smart testing, according to the state plans, surge testing and extreme technical assistance by CDC as well as our craft teams — continues to yield results,” Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brett Giroir told reporters on a conference call last week.

 

 

 

 

But the country remains in a delicate spot, according to epidemiologists from some of the hardest-hit states in the country — Florida, Texas and Arizona. While new cases are falling by at least 5% in 31 states, they are still rising by at least as much in more than a dozen states, based on a seven-day average, according to Hopkins data.

 

"Yeahbut"

 

[swordfish]

Has anyone else seen the 6% figure from the CDC?  Only 6% of the deaths listed are listing Covid 19 as the sole cause of death.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR0dHV5Ma6WCmocTXNrikDVKFDKtec7WGV7EAgkO0nULKpYJ7vv_KxVRUZo

Comorbidities

Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups. 

 

I've seen the memes showing this data, but what does it actually mean?

 

 

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, swordfish said:

Has anyone else seen the 6% figure from the CDC?  Only 6% of the deaths listed are listing Covid 19 as the sole cause of death.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR0dHV5Ma6WCmocTXNrikDVKFDKtec7WGV7EAgkO0nULKpYJ7vv_KxVRUZo

Comorbidities

Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups. 

 

I've seen the memes showing this data, but what does it actually mean?

 

 

Good question.  Would these individuals have lived with these other conditions but it was covid-19 that tipped the scales so to speak?  Or did contracting covid-19 simply accelerate the inevitable? 

[Impartial_Observer]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Good question.  Would these individuals have lived with these other conditions but it was covid-19 that tipped the scales so to speak?  Or did contracting covid-19 simply accelerate the inevitable? 

About the same amount of disagreement among doctors as there is regarding the usefulness of mask in the general public. 

Several reports have shown overall deaths in the US the be down slightly vs recent years.

There are good lies, bad lies, and statistics.

[Howe]

Nobody dies from old age anymore. 

[swordfish]

I asked my HR gal this morning during my daily temperature check (been going on since early April) when will this end?  What is going to happen one morning when I walk in with my seasonal allergies and sniffling?  Will I need to get tested?  Will I have to quarantine for 14 days?  What if I catch a cold?  

[Bobref]

46 minutes ago, swordfish said:

I asked my HR gal this morning during my daily temperature check (been going on since early April) when will this end?  What is going to happen one morning when I walk in with my seasonal allergies and sniffling?  Will I need to get tested?  Will I have to quarantine for 14 days?  What if I catch a cold?  

Wait until the flu season starts in a couple of months. A real sh*t show in the making.

By the way, I’m sure your HR person would counsel you not to refer to her as a “gal.” 😉

Edited September 1, 2020 by Bobref

[Impartial_Observer]

1 hour ago, Bobref said:

By the way, I’m sure your HR person would counsel you not to refer to her as a “gal.” 😉

My daughter is in HR at Cummins, I assure you she’s been referred to in worse terms than “gal” 😉

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, Impartial_Observer said:

My daughter is in HR at Cummins, I assure you she’s been referred to in worse terms than “gal” 😉

Sound like quite the corporate culture they have there at Cummins.   Have they been sued much?

 

[Muda69]

Congress Would Like the CDC To Ruin Halloween

https://reason.com/2020/09/01/coronavirus-halloween-cdc-congress-fun/

Quote

On the one holiday of the year it's traditional to wear masks, Congress is nonetheless asking the CDC for coronavirus guidelines.

A bi-partisan group of 30 lawmakers wonder what protocols the little ghosts, goblins, and vampires should adhere to when—and if—they trick or treat. As The Hill reports:

"We are writing to ask you to update your Halloween safety guidance to include considerations related to COVID-19 so that Americans across the country know how to celebrate the Halloween season safely this year," the members, including Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) and Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), wrote to Redfield last week.

They want to know if kids should attend parties, or package treats for each other, or even participate in some kind of drive-by trick or treating.

"With the appropriate guidance from the CDC, Americans can celebrate Halloween throughout the month of October in ways that prioritize community safety and adhere to rigorous socially distancing requirements," the members wrote.

By the time you're prioritizing "rigorous" anything, you're generally not talking about a super-fun event. If I were to venture a guess, I'd bet that the CDC will recommend that this year, kids celebrate on Zoom with all the joy their parents have experienced in staff meetings these past six months.

Maybe the agency could recommend some new games, like, "Who can suck their mask in the farthest?" Or "Green scream!" where kids compete to see who can create the scariest green screen background (or who can wear enough green paint to blend in except for their eyes and mouth—kind of a cool idea). "Pin the tracer on the virus-infected contact" is another game the scientists might recommend, but apparently this is too hard even for grownups to play.

Halloween was actually ripe for some re-imagining. In recent years it has morphed from the traditional kids-have-the-run-of-the-neighborhood night into an orgy of infantilization, whereby adults walk or even drive their kids house to house, stunting any kind of independence and bravery that might have taken root on this one thrilling night.

This year, they have the perfect excuse to stay home, lock the doors and simply load the kids up with candy (or  in some households, fresh broccoli florets and kombucha). Boo. Hoo.

 

[Impartial_Observer]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Sound like quite the corporate culture they have there at Cummins.   Have they been sued much?

 

More specifically I was thinking about me. 
 

Large corporation, I’m sure they get sued all the time. 

[swordfish]

4 hours ago, Bobref said:

Wait until the flu season starts in a couple of months. A real sh*t show in the making.

By the way, I’m sure your HR person would counsel you not to refer to her as a “gal.” 😉

She is actually older than I, so she has told me "gal" is very acceptable.....

She also found humor a number of years back in the earlier days of my career when workplace harassment training was just starting to gain some ground when I thanked her for the talk us employees got by saying "I always thought harass was 2 words" ......Funny in 1998, not so much now.

[Howe]

 

[Muda69]

The CDC Is America's New Landlord

https://mises.org/power-market/cdc-americas-new-landlord

Quote

This is astonishing, even by 2020 standards.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, operating under the US Department of Health and Human Services, has asserted jurisdiction over private residential leases nationwide. It intends to curtail evictions until at least the end of the year, and in fact its new directive threatens federal criminal penalties against landlords who ignore tenant "declarations" made using CDC forms.

It is unclear, to put it mildly, exactly how this jurisdiction over private contracts and state/local courts flows even to Congress, much less an administrative agency acting on its own. One federal official justifies the bizarre and legally dubious action based on the CDC's broad charter to stop the spread of communicable diseases—a charter at which they've failed miserably with covid:

Congress has delegated broad authority to HHS, the Surgeon General and CDC, to take reasonable efforts to combat the spread of communicable diseases, and frankly I think it makes sense for those authorities abroad because we don't know for any given situation or scenario what steps will be needed to stop the spread. I think, in this particular order, the CDC has made a very compelling case that it is quite problematic at this particular time. It's focused on this particular pandemic, which is obviously the uniquely powerful grasp in the nation's entire history in terms of the effect it's had that for a bunch of reasons in particular, that the home has been sort of the focal point of people social distancing and building, sort of a safe space themselves over the past few months, and also the fact that if people get kicked out, they may end up in overcrowded congregated living facilities or homeless shelters, and that is a potential recipe for a big spread of COVID-19.

Thanks to the oft-criticized but in fact essential Zero Hedge for the nice bit of early and original reporting here—a full day before NPR, Bloomberg, et al.—and for details from a phone conference with CDC officials.

Again, this was announced without congressional input or approval and purely by administrative decree. At least the eviction and mortgage moratoriums in the CARES Act, passed by Congress in March, were enacted by politicians who face voters this fall. And while those earlier moratoriums may well be constitutionally suspect too, at least in times of sanity, they were limited to federally backed rentals and mortgages. The CDC's new action is much broader, applying conceivably to all private residential leases across the country.

The fallout from suspending rental contracts will be deep and long lasting. Many landlords will find their situations untenable and stop making mortgage and property tax payments. New rental housing stock will be depressed, as owners worry about the next suspension of rent payments now that the precedent has been set. After all, why wouldn't moratoriums happen again when the next pandemic or financial crisis hits? Rental housing units will drop in price as more landlords abandon the business—setting the stage for commercial and private equity buyers to grab units on the cheap from individuals and small owners. Ultimately, foreclosures, evictions, and tax sales will happen no matter what the federal government does. The likely outcome is bigger players owning more and more of the rental housing stock, consolidating the permanent renter class and adding to the rootlessness many Americans feel. Even the most modest home ownership creates skin in the game and encourages better neighborhoods, while areas dominated by rentals lack the same incentives for improvement. And the new owners of rental units will pass all the uncertainty, risks, and potential losses on to millions of Americans in the form of higher rents.

Even during the most turbulent periods in American history, including the Great Depression, World War II, and an 1880s tuberculosis outbreak which killed one in seven people, virtually no one expected the federal government to suspend rent. This action by the CDC, in response to a very manageable and retreating cold virus, is the kind of quietly unprecedented development we've come to expect this year. This is a watershed moment for the US: when you destroy trust in contract enforcement you create terrible ripple effects throughout society. Something this radical should not be rushed into place with such little forethought, especially when it amounts to buying votes in a national election. But of course in a managerial state we should expect just this type of shortsighted political consideration to prevail over good sense and justice.

The CDC wants to effectively vitiate contracts: when you tell one party that it need not perform and the other that it cannot sue for nonperformance, you radically alter the bargaining power of those parties. The contract they signed becomes nothing more than an aspirational document, a legislative (or administrative!) tool to be rewritten at the will of politicians. The effects of this moratorium undoubtedly will spill over in unforeseen ways as Americans get used to the idea that their financial obligations can be erased by state edict. The tremendous costs will be borne by all of us, because when contracts are not enforceable every transaction must account for much higher risks.

More destruction of the American economy.

 

[Muda69]

Pat Toomey on CDC Eviction Moratorium: 'The Legal Authority Is a Real Stretch'

 

https://reason.com/2020/09/03/pat-toomey-on-cdc-eviction-moratorium-the-legal-authority-is-a-real-stretch/

Quote

The Trump administration's new nationwide moratorium on evictions is attracting heated opposition from some Republicans in Congress, who say it is legally shaky and sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations.

"I think the legal authority is a real stretch," says Sen. Pat Toomey (R–Penn.). "I don't know what the limiting principle is."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which issued the moratorium on Tuesday, cites its authority under the Public Health Services Act to issue regulations to stop the interstate spread of disease. That argument doesn't impress Toomey.

"If the CDC has the authority to force landlords to effectively give away their product for free, I don't know where that ends," Toomey tells Reason. "Can General Motors be forced to give people cars unless they otherwise crowd into subways?"

Other congressional Republicans have raised similar concerns. Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) said on Twitter that the "CDC does not have the authority to do this. It's dangerous precedent and bad policy."

 

"Rental contracts are governed by state law. There is no federal authority to overturn them," tweeted Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.). "The CDC order is an affront to the rule of law, and an emasculation of every legislator in this country—state and federal."

In addition to the legal issues it raises, Toomey argues that the CDC's eviction moratorium is bad policy.

"There's not some mass wave of evictions going on," he argues. "It is in the interest of landlords to work out agreements with tenants going through difficult circumstances." A moratorium on evictions, he suggests, would encourage non-payment of rent and disincentivize deals between tenants and landlords.

According to data from Princeton University's Eviction Lab—which tracks eviction filings in select cities—evictions are currently below historic averages in almost every city, including in places where local and state eviction moratoriums have expired. Thus far, rent payment rates have remained pretty steady during the coronavirus pandemic and are only slightly below where they were last year.

The federal eviction moratorium does nothing to relieve tenants of the responsibility to pay rent, instead only limiting landlords' ability to evict tenants for non-payment. Housing advocates have argued that the moratorium is a half-measure that needs to be coupled with rental assistance to tenants. Not doing so, they argue, will leave renters vulnerable to eviction once months of back rent come do.

A $3.5 trillion relief package passed by the Democrat-controlled House in May included $100 billion in emergency rent relief.

Toomey thinks that assistance to renters isn't warranted given the relief measures that Congress has already enacted, including the $1,200 stimulus checks and the federal $600 unemployment bonus.

"I think we have to ask ourselves how much expansion of the welfare state, how many different layers, how many different programs are we going to do. When is it enough?" the senator says.

Toomey says that he has expressed his concerns about the federal government's eviction moratorium to senior administration officials. A legislative remedy isn't practical, Toomey argues, given that House would never sign off on a bill repealing an eviction moratorium.

Meanwhile, he worries that the effort sets a dangerous precedent.

"What future administration, what future president, certainly what future Democratic president is going to want to be accused of being less generous than Donald Trump?" asks Toomey. "Are we to expect that the standard response of the government to an economic downturn is an eviction moratorium? We've never done that before."

The CDC's eviction moratorium goes into effect Friday.

It's a slippery slope.  And the federal government will take power from individuals any way it can.

 

[Muda69]

School Calls Cops on 12-Year-Old Boy Who Held Toy Gun During Zoom Class: https://reason.com/2020/09/07/zoom-nerf-gun-school-cops-kid-isaiah-elliott/

Quote

Isaiah Elliott, a 12-year-old boy who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is fond of his neon green Nerf gun—which has the words "ZOMBIE HUNTER" written on it.

Last week, during a virtual classroom session, Elliott briefly picked up his toy gun, causing it to appear on screen for just a few seconds. This was noticed by his teacher, who promptly alerted the authorities. As a result, the police paid a visit to Elliott's home and the school suspended him for five days.

The teacher was fairly certain the gun was a toy, according to local news station KDVR. But instead of checking with the parents to assuage any doubts, the school went straight to the cops.

In a statement, the district explained that all school board policies would be enforced regardless of whether "we are in-person learning or distance learning."

"We take the safety of all our students and staff very seriously," said the district. "Safety is always our number one priority."

This explanation—we are just enforcing the policy equally—might make make more sense if the policy itself was logical, but deploying the police to deal with a nerf gun would have been ridiculous even if the incident took place in a physical classroom. The fact that the other students were, in this case, even further removed from the nonexistent danger just makes the situation even more ridiculous.

"For them to go as extreme as suspending him for five days, sending the police out, having the police threaten to press charges against him because they want to compare the virtual environment to the actual in-school environment is insane," said Dani Elliott, the boy's mother.

Another kid, an 11-year-old whose airsoft gun briefly appeared on screen during a Zoom class, was similarly suspended. There are many reasons to oppose virtual learning as the new default for American public K-12 education: Perhaps most importantly, it neglects school's vital role as a form of daycare. But the opportunity for the state to invite itself into the home and make trouble for hard-working parents and innocent children is also a serious concern.

There's one more wrinkle here: Unbeknownst to parents, Elliott's school had been recording the Zoom session. The school did say it would abandon this practice, though it makes little difference to Elliott's parents: They wisely decided to transfer him to a private or charter school.

Yep, if the state has the opportunity to come into an individual's home and enforce it's asinine zero-tolerance policies there you bet it will take it.  This story proves it.

 

[Muda69]

COVID Dystopia Comes To Melbourne: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/covid-dystopia-comes-to-melbourne/

Quote

It was the image that shocked Australia and soon went global. A pregnant woman, handcuffed in her own kitchen, in front of her children, as police officers seized every computer, tablet and cell phone in the house before frog-marching her off to the station.

It’s the treatment that Australians are used to seeing meted out to drug traffickers, suspected terrorists and child pornography rings. But in Zoe Lee Buhler’s case, her ‘crime’ was a Facebook post.

Zoe had tried to organise a protest against coronavirus restrictions in place in the state of Victoria. For this, she was charged with ‘incitement,’ and now faces a sentence of up to 15 years. She has been released on bail, and will go to court in January.

The most remarkable thing, though, is it’s taken until now for some sort of protest movement to emerge. Melbourne—Victoria’s capital city—has been under some form of lockdown since March. When the coronavirus first hit, the premiers governing Australia’s eight states and territories descended into a kind of unspoken competition to see who could take the ‘toughest action’ against the virus—that is, which leader could close the most businesses, destroy the most jobs, and stifle the most liberties in the name of being seen to be ‘doing something’ about the virus.

It was a contest that hard-left Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews won by a mile. Almost six months later, Melbourne is still under what is by far the strictest lockdown in Australia, and probably the world. At time of writing, a city-wide curfew applies between 8pm and 5am. Melburnians are permitted to leave the house for exercise for an hour a day and in groups of no more than two. You’re allowed to go out to get food as well, but only by yourself, and only once a day. The increasingly few people with jobs must carry a government-issued permit indicating that they’re allowed to go to work—and even then only if your job is deemed ‘essential’.

If this shatters your idea of Australia as a rugged, relaxed, irreverent wonderland, then I apologise. That Australia died long ago, to the extent it ever really existed at all. Australia has no First Amendment, and its political culture is closer to continental Europe than the U.S. Fundamental freedoms have been largely left to conventions inherited from the British. They have proved fragile, though nobody ever imagined that they would be this fragile.

The fact that Melbourne has allowed itself to be decimated in the name of the coronavirus is as predictable as it is heartbreaking. It’s a city a bit like San Francisco or Seattle—A beautiful, vibrant, dynamic metropolis that until now had among the best food, culture and nightlife in the world. But like America’s coastal cities, left-wing politics is a package deal—street art in aid of one asinine cause or another almost becomes part of the scenery.

Daniel Andrews knows this, and exploits it. Somewhere along the way, he picked up the playbook of Democrats who preside over dysfunction, poverty, crime and thinly-veiled corruption, and make up for it all by wheeling out some woke gimmick every so often—almost always involving vast sums of public money. The coronavirus has given him the best talking point of all: ‘The economy versus human life.’

It’s the recurring theme in Andrews’ interminable press conferences—daily sermons that are so theatrical and dishonest they would make Andrew Cuomo blush. Behind him always, a purple banner with the state government’s Orwellian coronavirus slogan, which can also be found plastered on billboards all over the city: Staying Apart Keeps Us Together. 

The media response is—with a few exceptions—fawning and uncritical, but it’s the only real check or balance we have: The state parliament has barely sat since March, and coronavirus restrictions have been made by executive fiat under dubious ’emergency powers.’

All that said, Andrews’ hitherto insurmountable hold on power is slipping. The lockdown has wrought enough joblessness, business closures and outright despair that people are starting to take notice. Even in the People’s Republic of Victoria, the mood is turning against the man now widely derided as ‘Chairman Dan’.

But in the meantime, Melbourne’s lockdowns continue. Andrews sought an extension for his emergency powers, which the parliament inexplicably gave him. And over the weekend, he announced a convoluted ‘roadmap to reopening’ which basically means that Melburnians will enter Australia’s sweltering summer under house arrest, and will be holding their Christmas dinners via Zoom.

It’s a cautionary tale, and then some. For the sake of a nasty strain of viral pneumonia, Victorians eagerly cashed in their freedoms for the promise of safety. In so doing, we have turned one of the greatest cities in the world to a dystopian hellscape with no end in sight.

 

[Muda69]

‘Door-To-Door Trick-Or-Treating Is Not Allowed’: LA County Releases Guidelines For Halloween: https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/09/08/los-angeles-county-halloween-no-trick-or-treating-covid-19/

Quote

No trick-or-treating, no parties, no carnivals and no festivals.

These are just a few of the Halloween traditions put on hold this year in the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“Door-to-door trick-or-treating is not allowed because it can be very difficult to maintain proper social distancing on porches and at front doors especially in neighborhoods that are popular with trick or treaters,” the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in its recently released guidelines. “‘Trunk-or-treating’ events where children go from car to car instead of door to door to receive treats are also not allowed.”

Gatherings or parties with non-household members are not permitted, even if held outdoors, and neither are carnivals, festivals, live entertainment or haunted house attractions.

So what can families do to safely celebrate the spooky holiday?

They can participate in online parties and contests, such as costume or pumpkin carving; car parades that comply with public health guidance for vehicle-based parades; Halloween movie nights at drive-in theaters; Halloween-themed meals at outdoor restaurants; Halloween-themed art installations at an outdoor museum; and decorating homes and yards with Halloween-themed decorations.

...

Online Halloween parties and contests?  Please.

If this level of control comes to my Indiana town they will have to pry the bowl from my hands in order to get to me to stop handing out candy.   Destroying an American tradition.

 

[swordfish]

[Muda69]

No, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Didn't Spawn 250,000 Coronavirus Cases: https://reason.com/2020/09/09/no-the-sturgis-motorcycle-rally-didnt-spawn-250000-coronavirus-cases/

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Here's what we were told: An August motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, helped spread COVID-19 to more than a quarter-million Americans, making it the root of about 20 percent of all new coronavirus cases in the U.S. last month. So said a new white paper from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, at least. And national news outlets ran with it.

"Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was 'superspreading event' that cost public health $12.2 billion," tweeted The Hill.

"The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held in South Dakota last month may have caused 250,000 new coronavirus cases," said NBC News.

"The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the 'worst-case scenarios' for superspreading occurred simultaneously," the researchers write in the new paper, titled "The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19."

Not so fast. Let's take a look at what they actually tracked and what's mere speculation.

According to South Dakota health officials, 124 new cases in the state—including one fatal case—were directly linked to the rally. Overall, COVID-19 cases linked to the Sturgis rally were reported in 11 states as of September 2, to a tune of at least 260 new cases, according to The Washington Post.

There very well may be more cases that have been linked to the early August event, but so far, that's only 260 confirmed cases—about 0.1 percent of the number the IZA paper offers.

To get to the astronomical number of cases allegedly spread because of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the researchers analyzed "anonymized cellphone data to track the smartphone pings from non-residents and movement of those before and after the event," notes Newsweek. "The study then linked those who attended and traveled back to their home states, and compared changes in coronavirus trends after the rally's conclusion."

Essentially, the researchers assumed that new spikes in cases in areas where people went post-rally must have been caused by those rally attendees, despite there being no particular evidence that this was the case. The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, failed to account for simultaneous happenings—like schools in South Dakota reopening, among other things—that could have contributed to coronavirus spread in some of the studied areas.

The researchers also assumed a $46,000 price tag for each person infected to calculate the $12.2 billion public health cost of the event—but this figure would only make sense if every person had a severe case requiring hospitalization.

The results of the IZA paper "do not align with what we know," South Dakota epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said at a Tuesday news briefing.

The IZA paper "isn't science; it's fiction," Gov. Kristi Noem (R) said.

It's also good election-time propaganda, apparently. Despite the dubious nature of the IZA study, a range of Democratic consultants and cheerleaders have been using it to condemn President Donald Trump.

 

[swordfish]

 

Governor Cuomo hasn't won any battles with Trump, so he wants to start another?

https://nypost.com/2020/09/09/andrew-cuomo-going-off-the-rails-under-the-stress-of-nys-pandemic-woes/

Andrew Cuomo going off the rails under the stress of NY’s pandemic woes

By Post Editorial Board

September 9, 2020 | 8:01pm | Updated

 

Enlarge Image

Gov. Andrew Cuomo went on an unhinged rant against President Trump on Tuesday.Matthew McDermott

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is now in full-on flailing mode, zig-zagging wildly in the wake of New York’s coronavirus horrors.

Sometimes he seizes on common sense — as he finally did Wednesday in announcing that, yes, indoor dining can resume in New York City (though not ’til month’s end). Yet he was ranting at length just the day before about why that reopening couldn’t happen.

And this follows his bizarre, and fully premeditated, claim that “Donald Trump caused the COVID outbreak in New York.” That’s right: “caused.”

This while Cuomo is demanding the moon when it comes to a federal bailout for the state.

For the record, “caused” boils down to the president not banning travel from Europe in time — even though Democrats kept calling those bans extreme back when Trump did it.

Cuomo’s Tuesday tirade also ran to his grudge over the prez’s cap on the federal government’s state and local income-tax deduction (a gripe that, as E.J. McMahon notes, isn’t remotely reality-based) as the gov fumed that Trump “is trying to kill New York City.”

Cuomo even claimed that Trump “admitted” triggering the outbreak, though an aide could show only that some Trump officials said folks initially underestimated COVID’s spread from Europe.

Make no mistake: Cuomo spent hours planning his unhinged harangue — taking the time to prep a series of slides such as the phony headline: “TRUMP TO CITY: DROP DEAD.”

OK, we get it: He hates being blamed for having ordered nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, which led to so many deaths in those facilities that he’s now too scared to release the true number. And he has no idea how to handle a state budget gap that was ballooning to the multibillions even before the pandemic and the lockdowns turned the red ink into a deluge to rival Niagara Falls.

So he’s playing to the countless New Yorkers who despise the president by pretending it’s all Trump’s fault. Heck, he’s now saying that if Trump won’t bail him out, he’ll “need” to raise taxes — even after repeatedly noting wealthy taxpayers will then flee. (You were right the first time, Gov.)

Let’s just hope that Cuomo’s indoor-dining turnaround is a sign that he’s found his center again.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by swordfish

[swordfish]

Let's not forget Nancy Pelosi in this story at the end of February of her visiting Chinatown in San Fran encouraging people to come on out.........."Everything is fine here, the city is on top of the situation"

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nancy-pelosi-visits-san-franciscos-chinatown-amid-coronavirus-concerns/2241075/?fbclid=IwAR2QBWNjq_jHZqbfrL5oyKkTxaV_G67cyp1JQIGtz6dSHsevwj2UOpfNwHE

 

 

 

 

 

[Alduflux]

On 8/31/2020 at 2:45 PM, Impartial_Observer said:

Several reports have shown overall deaths in the US the be down slightly vs recent years.

Can you provide links for this?

[Muda69]

Mandatory Covid-19 Vaccination Is Unethical and Unscientific

https://mises.org/wire/mandatory-covid-19-vaccination-unethical-and-unscientific

Quote

The post-covid-19 world is a surrealistic nightmare. Businesses have been shut down arbitrarily without any evidence that these shutdowns save any lives. Tens of millions of Americans have become unemployed due to these shutdowns. There are already demands for mandatory covid-19 vaccination even before a vaccine is available. “Make vaccines free, don’t allow religious or personal objections, and create disincentives for those who refuse vaccines shown to be safe and effective.” This is an empty statement, as any vaccine available will neither be 100 percent safe nor 100 percent effective. Based on the initial study of the Russian vaccine in a very limited number of patients, it is not even clear that the vaccine will be safer than the disease itself.

Justifications for Mandatory Vaccines

If a vaccine is 100 percent effective, there is no justification for mandatory vaccination. Anyone who wishes to be protected can voluntarily take the vaccine. It would not be possible for someone declining the vaccine to harm someone who voluntarily takes the vaccine. Any call for a mandatory vaccine is an explicit admission that the vaccine is not 100 percent effective.

If a vaccine were 0 percent effective, there would be no justification for anyone taking the vaccine. There must be some intermediate percentage of effectiveness that maximizes the utility of mandatory vaccination. As the vaccine becomes more effective, fewer people can possibly benefit from mandatory vaccination. As the vaccine becomes less effective, a lower percentage of people who could possibly benefit from mandatory vaccination will actually benefit.

Utility of mandatory vaccination requires that the vaccine be effective in some of those who would not voluntarily take it (conscripted helpers), that the vaccine be ineffective in some of those who would voluntarily take it (beneficiaries), and the stipulation that conscripted helpers interact with beneficiaries, that these interactions lead to extra infections despite other means of prevention, and that the extra infections result in serious illness or deaths. That is a lot of ifs. There is no way to know what this optimal effectiveness would be. There is no way to know how many coerced vaccinations are necessary to prevent one infection or to prevent one serious illness or death (number to treat). Given that the number to treat cannot possibly be known prior to vaccination, mandatory vaccination cannot be ethical even by utilitarian calculation.

Concerns about Efficacy

An ideal vaccine induces an immune response that neutralizes a pathogen. The immune response can be antibody or T-cell activity. Claims that a covid-19 vaccine will prevent infection are not precisely true. Immune responses are not like antimissile defenses that destroy the missile before it reaches the body. A better analogy for an ideal vaccine would be the inducement of an immune response that prevents invading pathogens from breaching a wall using siege ladders or battering rams. The immune defenses cannot act until triggered by the presence of the invading pathogen. An ideal vaccine can neutralize the pathogen before it enters tissue cells, replicates within the tissue cells, enters the blood, invades distant organs, and causes clinical disease or death. The process of neutralizing the virus is not instantaneous, so while the battle between immune defense and invading pathogen is taking place, the host is technically infected and theoretically can transmit the pathogen to others. The best that we can hope for is to prevent clinical disease, and to minimize the duration of time that the host can transmit the pathogen to others.

Studies of the Russian vaccine did not measure efficacy in terms of prevention of clinical disease. The measure of “efficacy” used was detection of antibody response to the vaccine antigen. But there is no guarantee that the presence of antibody will prevent infection, prevent clinical disease, or prevent death. There is no evidence that severe disease or death from covid-19 is due to the absence of antibody. Studies on immune response in patients with covid-19 show that patients with severe disease have higher antibody levels than patients with mild disease. There are concerns that cytokine storm, a consequence of too much immune response rather than too little immune response, may be an important cause of death in covid-19. Cytokine storm is a potential side effect of any vaccine. As usual, the devil is in the details.

Concerns about Safety

Advocates for mandatory vaccination always stipulate that the vaccine be safe. What is safe? No vaccine can possibly be 100 percent safe. The elephant in the room is always: How large is the risk? The Lancet's study on the Russian vaccine studied 76 subjects. There were 38 in the vaccine group and 38 in the control group. A study of this size would not be expected to detect a vaccine fatality rate of 1/50. Fever occurred in 100 percent of one subgroup (20 subjects) and 31/38 subjects receiving the Gam=COVID-Vac agent. The ages in the study ranged from 18–60. The mean age of the subgroups was 25–32 years of age. Given the low age of the participants and the high percentage of asymptomatic covid-19 cases in young patients, it is not clear that the vaccine was even safer than infection with the virus.

Several decades ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to eliminate tuberculosis from the United States. The plan was to test everyone with PPD and treat all the positive PPD patients with a drug called INH. This plan had to be stopped after fifty patients died from liver failure due to INH toxicity. The liver toxicity was missed by small-scale clinical trials but was discovered by the much-larger-scale public health program. Neither the CDC nor the Food and Drug Administration can know that a treatment or vaccine is safe. The more people are vaccinated, the more side effects will be discovered. This is a huge ethical problem for mandatory vaccination. If everyone is required to be vaccinated, there will be no control group for comparison of safety and efficacy.

Advocates of mandatory covid-19 vaccination assure the public that the vaccine will be safe. Why was it necessary for government to indemnify the vaccine manufacturers against any liability for their vaccine prior to production? This is a clear case where one should ignore what government says and watch what government does. Government clearly knows something that is not being disclosed to the public. This is the opposite of transparency, yet anyone who opposes vaccination is labeled as stupid, uniformed, or inadequately concerned about their elderly neighbors.

Catastrophic Tail Risks

Some risks are not known ahead of time. Some risks will not be manifest until years later. Consider a hypothetical situation where a vaccine causes sterility ten years later. There would be no way to detect this risk ahead of time. Imagine that all of humanity is vaccinated with this vaccine. Humanity would be wiped out when the last person dies. No matter how small the risk for an existential threat, why would humanity take this chance over something as ordinary as a bad flu? Rather than treating antivaxxers as a threat to civilization, we should be grateful that some people will always volunteer to be controls in our medical experiments by declining treatment.

Markets Offer the Best Solutions to Complex Problems

How efficacious will the vaccine be? How safe will the vaccine be? We don’t even have an American vaccine to assess, yet authorities are calling for mandatory American vaccination. Even when vaccine options are available, we will have limited information about efficacy and safety. There are no objective answers available about efficacy and safety, so how can objectively correct decisions be made balancing risks and benefits? Markets offer the best solutions to these subjective questions. Just as markets determine value by the process of price discovery, the balance between risk and benefit of a vaccine can only be determined by how many people are voluntarily willing to take the vaccine.

Conclusions

Vaccines are a wonderful hedge against the risks of contagious disease. We are fortunate to have vaccines as options. However, mandatory vaccination can never be justified. If a vaccine were clearly 100 percent efficacious and 100 percent safe, there would be no need for coercion; people would voluntarily line up to take the vaccine. Real vaccines are never 100 percent efficacious or 100 percent safe. Judgments about risk versus benefit can only be made by individuals facing the risk. People who decline vaccines are not stupid, nor are they misinformed, nor do they have callous disregard for their neighbors. Advocates of vaccines who are disappointed by the number of people willing to accept the vaccine should stop blaming those who decline and reevaluate their poor abilities of persuasion. Vaccine skeptics are necessary as controls in ongoing assessment of efficacy and safety. Vaccine skeptics are necessary as a hedge against catastrophic errors by experts.

 

[Muda69]

How Much Difference Do COVID-19 Lockdowns Make?

https://reason.com/2020/09/16/how-much-difference-do-covid-19-lockdowns-make/

Quote

The New York Times describes Sweden's approach to COVID-19, which has been notably less restrictive than the policies adopted by other European countries and the United States, as "disastrous" and "calamitous." By contrast, Scott Atlas, the physician and Hoover Institution fellow who is advising President Donald Trump on the epidemic, thinks Sweden's policy is "relatively rational" and "has been inappropriately criticized."

The sharp disagreement about Sweden is part of the wider debate about the cost-effectiveness of broad lockdowns as a strategy for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is premature to reach firm conclusions, the evidence so far suggests that Sweden is faring better than the United States, where governors tried to contain the virus by imposing sweeping social and economic restrictions.

Despite some early blunders (most conspicuously, the failure to adequately protect nursing home residents), Sweden generally has tried to protect people who are at highest risk of dying from COVID-19 while giving the rest of the population considerably more freedom than was allowed by the lockdowns that all but a few governors in the United States imposed last spring. That does not mean Swedes carried on as usual, since the government imposed some restrictions (including a ban on large public gatherings) and issued recommendations aimed at reducing virus transmission.

The consequences of that policy look bad if you compare Sweden to Denmark, Finland, and Norway, neighboring countries that have seen far fewer COVID-19 deaths per capita. Yet Sweden has a lower death rate than several European countries that imposed lockdowns, including Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the U.K.

The comparison between Sweden and the United States is especially striking. The per capita fatality rate in the U.S. recently surpassed Sweden's rate, and the gap is growing, since the cumulative death toll is rising much faster in the United States.

The seven-day average of daily deaths peaked around the same time last spring in both countries. Adjusted for population, the peak was higher in Sweden.

Since then, however, that average has fallen more precipitously in Sweden—by 99 percent since April 16, compared to 65 percent in the United States since April 21. The seven-day average of newly confirmed cases also has dropped sharply in Sweden, by nearly 80 percent since late June.

In the United States during the same period, daily new cases initially rose, an ascent that started a month and a half after states began lifting their lockdowns. The seven-day average peaked in late July and has since fallen by 46 percent.

Achieving herd immunity, which protects people in high-risk groups by making it less likely that they will encounter carriers, was never an official goal of Sweden's policy. But recent trends are consistent with the hypothesis that Sweden has achieved some measure of herd immunity through a combination of exposure to the COVID-19 virus, T-cell response fostered by prior exposure to other coronaviruses, and greater natural resistance among the remaining uninfected population.

In the United States, meanwhile, lockdowns, despite the huge costs they entailed, have not had any obvious payoff in terms of fewer COVID-19 deaths, although they may have changed the timing of those deaths. Perhaps the outcome would have been different if lockdowns had been imposed earlier or if they had been lifted later and more cautiously.

But perhaps not. In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper published last month, UCLA economist Andrew Atkeson and two other researchers, after looking at COVID-19 trends in 23 countries and 25 U.S. states that had seen more than 1,000 deaths from the disease by late July, found little evidence that variations in policy explain the course of the epidemic in different places.

Atkeson and his co-authors conclude that the role of legal restrictions "is likely overstated," saying their findings "raise doubt about the importance" of lockdowns in controlling the epidemic. It would not be the first time that people have exaggerated the potency of government action while ignoring everything else.