(My grandmother who died of the influenza in 1918
with her infant daughter)
"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
Sir,
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?
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.
james
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity Idiot
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 countries that are doing the worst mostly seem to be converging on something like 3,000 to 6000 deaths per 10 million population. I see this as a significant finding, in that it rules out extreme scenarios. For example, someone said today that without various social distancing and lockdowns the US would have over a million deaths.
But that would be about 30,000 deaths per ten million, which is way off of the top of the chart below. I’m sorry, but that is highly improbable.”
From https://wattsupwiththat.com/daily-coronavirus-covid-19-data-graph-page/#001
Good charts showing percentage as part of total population. Uses
logarithmic scale to show how exponential growth is slowing down. We seem to be aligned with most northern European countries excepting Germany. South Korea is almost off the chart low.
http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/05/covid-19-drug-for-outpatients-tested.html
“A clinical trial is underway at Stanford Medicine to determine whether a drug can keep people who’ve just tested positive for the coronavirus out of the hospital, help them recover faster and make them safer to be around in the meantime.
The researchers also want to know whether the drug stems viral shedding, which would reduce transmission to family members and the community.
The drug being looked at, interferon-lambda, is a manufactured form of a naturally occurring protein that’s been given in previous clinical trials to more than 3,000 people infected with hepatitis viruses.
“Its safety profile appears to be excellent,” said principal investigator…”
Don’t always worship Elon Musk’s POV, but he is taking a stand here with which I fully agree.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/11/elon-musk-states-he-will-reopen-tesla-factory-despite-unilateral-municipal-rules-if-anyone-is-arrested-i-ask-that-it-only-be-me/
Maybe he just wants an excuse to get out of Commie-fornia, or wants to stay, but beinf shut down is a no go. His attitude will be a help yo the little guys wanting to open up, with any luck.
A man I worked with said don’t ever marry a microbiologist, it’ll drive you crazy. He was married to one. Now that our country is basically being run be technocrats, I know what he means.
A Japanese study says 80% of people wearing masks reduces the spread of the infection significantly. Japans rate of infection is a fraction of the US. They wear masks and haven’t shut down the economy. The Chinese in S.F. Chinatown suffered few infections because they prepared for the outbreak early due to Chinese returning from Wuhan warnings about the outbreak and they wore masks. Some of the Chinese were harassed for wearing masks, which is a moronic reaction.
This has become a sort of “perfect storm”
The bureaucrats (Fauci, Birx, et. al.) enjoying their power trips and spotlight:
The “experts” who are more wrong than right.
The Democrat-media party whipping up the panic and getting another chance at Trump with maybe a bonus – the economy tanks and makes Trump’s re-election problematic.
And feeding all this BS – the lambs (baby sheep) of the population never looking at a number (fatality rate is < 2%, predominantly elderly with underlying health issues), just want mommy government to tell them what to do and how to live. I see dimwits riding around in a car wearing a mask.
Time to revisit the One Percent Doctrine, that allegedly Dick Cheney used to get us into the Iraq War. If there is a one per cent chance of something happening, treat it like a 100% chance.
The One Percent Doctrine is paralyzing government decision during this election year – one percent chance of a single person dying and somehow linked to Covid-19, and we shut 100% of everything down rather than take the risk.
Today’s equivalent of the Gordian Knot – just bust through it. Let the chips fall where they may, because we have finally reached the no good solutions stages of this argument. The only winners are the smug Nancy Pelosi’s until someone gets in her face and calls her on this.
Two battles to fight:
1. The virus itself – which is proving to be relatively benign in comparison
2. The all encompassing fear, blame and hysteria that “someone” is still stirring up for their own benefit, including those willing to let it control their lives.
We are in either a huge generational or societal shift right now – I suspect we are all too close to really see what is going on or why. But the shift was global and resonant. Historians a century from now will see it as clearly as we now see other major cultural shifts.
Hunter-gatherer to agrarian to industrial to digital information …to ???? Those shifts were obvious now, but what did they feel like when they were happening and life forever was evolving differently?
The real virus is the spread of disinformation. Local shelves are still devoid of paper towels and toilet paper – what ever was that connection? How do we live with this reversion to symbolic and totem behavior. If I have enough TP, I am safe?
Was it Alexander Graham Bell or Marconi who experienced the first wire or telephonic communication – what hath God wrought? Indeed. What hath the Digital Age of global communication wrought.
But we are not fighting land wars, we are now truly a small world, yet we have no unknown horizons to physically explore. There is no more mystery about the world, there are no more far away places with strange sounding names…… have we mourned yet what we lost forever, before we welcome what the new future will become.
(You wanted philosophy, a ramble of thoughts, John Merryman ….whither we goest next?) Yes, what if there is no vaccine. What if we revert to dealing with randomness and loss of control in our lives …. in our souls.
Is this in fact Baby Boomers finally facing mortality, which they are demanding we all share with them? They lived their lives as the Youth generation, the trend setter and their dominant demographics dragged us along with them for their entire lives – no matter what side of the boomer curve on resided. (War Baby far side myself).
Botttom line – far more than just a virus is going on. Any flu used to the “the old man’s friend” … now even “one more death” defines our global responses. From the grit of Invictus to this current demand for Invincibility.
No I don’t want to die yet, but where else am I going right now with just the turn of each calendar page.
Invictus
BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
How much will it cost to keep Joe Biden protected from the infection during the elections and after if he gets elected? Will he even be able to function when he can’t meet people face-to-face. He is 77 and will be 78 later this year. Trump is at least 73.
While the country is opening, the congress is voting to stay home and vote remotely! (https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/politics/house-remote-voting/index.html) Apparently, remote voting is needed because of “growing concerns … that the House’s prolonged absence from Washington has undercut” the ability of the legislature to function!
The 116th Congress is the oldest in history. Average age for Senators – 63, representatives – 58. Senators over 80 – 6; senators 70 and over – 28. Can these people represent their much younger constituents and carry out their duties? When the country opens, these people need to continue self-isolating.
Seems to me that all public officials over 70 should resign immediately. Special elections where needed can then be conducted Nov to elect a young congress representative of the age of the country and able to meet in person without seriously risking lives of its members.
This will set the right tone for country opening. As of right now, the elected officials representing the people are in hiding…
One common reason for an inability to produce a vaccine is when the virus mutates too quickly, so that this year’s vaccine (if one exists at all) is ineffective against next years virus strain.
If that is the case with covid-19 then you are never going to get a long-term herd immunity in a population; each year will bring a new strain and everything begins anew.
You can get close by developing a new vaccine every year (as with influenza) and promoting mass-vaccination, but it remains to be seen: as you said, a vaccine for covid-19 may elude science altogether.
There are now no good choices for the USA. Those countries that are thinking of restarting their economies are able to do so because
(a) they have reduced the rate of infection to very low levels while
(b) preparing themselves for aggressive testing and thorough back-tracing to contain the inevitable flare-ups.
Neither condition is true for the USA at this point in time.
Rarely do I hear two words in a row: “safe vaccine”. Instead, orthodoxy, this neo-Fundamentalism that has no place in genuine science, just assumes that vaccines are safe and effect.
Safe, effective vaccines are not the norm at all, regards influenza.
Effectiveness rates should be at least 90 percent, for someone getting a flu shot.
Rarely are they even 50 percent, according to CDC data.
And we’re constantly lectured, practically brow beaten to get flu shots, with MDs and CDC, and NIH, and WHO saying even at less than 50 percent effectiveness, we are supposedly better off, and “safer” getting the shot than not.
Vaccines are matter of faith, not science, for health care cartels.
RFK’s son is one of the few who demands safe, effective vaccines, and is deemed by the cartels and media lap dogs as deviant. Mocking him is in vogue. For daring to question the cartels, the vaccine syndicates, and for pointing out vaccines that kill people or make people sick — there is no liability, on the part of the vaccine makers.
A strain of influenza A appeared late in last year’s flu season, in Feb. 2019.
The vaccine used was worthless, a scandal actually, given its overall VE, vaccine effectiveness was [only] 5 percent, according to The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 221, Issue 1, 1 January 2020.
Influenza A(H3N2) clade 3C.3a, is that strain’s official name.
Influenza has been around many decades, killed more than a million, and health experts were, or claim to at least, to have been caught flat footed by the 3C.3a clade. And worse, reading the JID essay: they are just guessing at times, it appear.
The JID essay says: “Reasons for increased A(H3N2) activity due to clade 3C.3a during the 2018–2019 season in the United States are unclear; before this season, clade 3C.3a viruses had cocirculated at low levels with clade 3C.2a viruses since 2014.”
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/221/1/8/5609441
They did not know at the time the vaccine was worthless? and nine months later, in this paper, it remains unclear to the experts? I suspect one reason for this neoFundamentalist enforced orthodoxy and censorship running amok is precisely because the goal is not science, rather, it is uncritical acceptance of diktats. Put another way: WHO, CDC, Fauci, Gates, etc., are vaccine traffickers.
For some age groups, last year’s vaccine for this clade of influenza A was less than zero percent effective, which statistically just translate to zero. At least a placebo does not harm.
It may be controversial to say this, but the Salk vaccine, to eradicate poliovirus, was a boon for the middle classes and upper classes, who did not live in squalor, and, had better access to hygienic conditions, etc., and thus, did not build up a “herd immunity” to poliovirus, — in contradistinction to the poorer classes, who, though not totally immune, were at lower risk, much lower risk, having developed a herd immunity for this infectious disease owing to their environment.
When Jonas Salk developed a vaccine in the 1950s, how to test its effectiveness, VE, with children, was a bit of a perplexity, since middle class and wealthier parents would be more willing than poorer parents to consent to testing, since the disease was more prevalent among the middle and higher classes. The question was, how to conduct a double blind randomized experiment to demonstrate if it was effective vaccine for children.
“It was known that higher income parents would consent to treatment much more readily than lower income parents. Unfortunately, children from higher-income parents were much more vulnerable to polio than children from lower-income parents. Lower-income children lived in less hygienic conditions and were more often exposed to the polio virus. Hence, they developed a natural immunity.” [1999: Applied Statistics for Engineers and Scientists, p. 108; Joseph Petruccelli, Balgobin Nandram, Minghui Chen, Prentice Hall]
What is worse? at this point:
1] having no safe, effective, novelcoronavirus vaccine, or
2] having no safe, effective, Influenza A(H3N2) clade 3C.3a vaccine — yet pretend that we do, as is exactly what happened last year
At best, the rate we are going, “reopening” will go something like: they are pretending to protect public health and we are pretending to believe them.
If this is true, this best case scenario, as it were, then the entire public health cacophony become a reckless side-show, with no consensus, and more censorship — that has effect of actually making sure there won’t be consensus, since all competing perspectives won’t be permitted. Rather, only those that comport to a narrative that is not in the public interest at all. But is in the interest of various and sundry vaccine traffickers, World Health Organization comes to mind, among others.
Catch 22.
Also of note:
[[One theory of the origin of AIDS is that it developed from contaminated vaccines used in the world’s first mass immunization for polio. There are a number of reasons why this theory is plausible enough to be worthy of further investigation.]] This is according to research of Brian Martin, University of Wollongong, Australia, Professor of Social Sciences.
https://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd9-1.htm
No one knows, nor can anyone know, the side effects of new vaccines. It is at best a crap shot, a roll of the dice.
Up until this novel coronavirus, this seemed to be generally understood, thus, it was also understood that, to use a metaphor: one can never catch ones own shadow.
But that is exactly what this treadmill, that we are now on, is. [An added irony is that too many in this day and age of drug drugs drugs want to be high on something, or in some sort of full or semi stupor.]
Massachusetts Department of Public Health data as of May 12 says two interesting things:
1] “Deaths of ConfirmedCOVID-19 Cases 5,141”
2] “deaths following completed investigation” total 2,345. Of this total, 98.5 percent, or 2,309 had “underlying conditions”; 1.5 percent, or 36 deaths had no underling condition
[see page 13, https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-may-12-2020/download ]
So, here, we can be sure that about half the deaths have been investigated to determine exact cause of death. And only 36 deaths out of a population of more than 6 million people were directly caused by Sars Covid2 virus, the COVID-19 disease.
The increasing enforcement of an “orthodoxy” on scientific issues, exemplified by AVAAZ working hand in glove with Facebook, to ban and cancel a wide range of perspectives, to name just one egregious example of this, involving novel coronavirus content, exemplifies the un-seriousness of these pseudo scientists.
-30-
I watched an almost full length YouTube video of the interchange between Rand Paul and Fauchi, and then watched what NBC News showed of it on the evening news. It came across as two entirely different, contradictory conversations, which entirely reversed the gist of what transpired.
Unmentioned in Fauchi’s (and others’) dire predictions is that this is the SARS2 virus, successor to SARS of 2003. The symptoms are exactly the same, although mortality SARS2 is much lower. Remember what happened to SARS? We never found a cure or a vaccine. We never developed “herd immunity.” The virus just spontaneously died out after its “spring offensive.”
It never occurs to anyone that SARS2 might do what SARS1 did.
Democrats can do what they want, but guess what states are open and people are not afraid of coming out of their homes to vote…
Col. Lang, With the greatest respect, I strongly disagree. I also respect your willingness to risk yourself and family in support of the greater good. However, You and others are advocating “herd immunity” for the general population in order to “protect the economy”. I see it as the exact reverse; We need an economy with “herd immunity” to protect the population. You are saying that the community must sacrifice members to protect business, I am saying we must sacrifice businesses to protect people.
I will not address the obvious technical issue: if there is no vaccine, then by definition, there cannot be herd immunity.
Like it or not, we are NEVER, going back to the old economy, no matter how much money Mnuchin throws at it. It’s not worth protecting J.P. Morgan and suchlike anyway because they have long ago abandoned their roots in performing the productive allocation of capital. So you and I should risk our lives for the vampire squid? No way!
I am already seeing economic changes here and I’m sure there are the same in the U.S. as the economy changes to accommodate social distancing. IT companies are being run off their feet. Likewise courier and online shopping enablers, There are numerous restaurants and cafes turning into self service businesses. There must be others I don’t know about. Tradesmen are still busy, people are working from home. We are working out how to live with this virus and prosper. The losers are shopping malls and big retail chains, airlines, tourism, personal trainers, hairdressers, dog shampooing services. That’s right! The “productive” core of the economy, not. So what does the media highlight? Mom and Pop stores! Tell the effing economy to take a few hits! Not the people.
Furthermore on the streets you will hear renewed nationalism- no chinese imports, bringing back local manufacturing – and you are saying we should protect Walmart? That conduit of chinese crap?
Furthermore as I have pointed out before, a laissez faire policy risks destroying society because even if most infections are benign, the health system won’t cope with the millions of worried sick. Once that fails, you won’t have an economy, you’ll have dystopian anarchy. That means the fights over bags of rice thrown off the back of trucks, etc., that I’m sure you have seen yourself.
we have two lots screaming for help. The people and the economy. The economy is a human construct. Businesses are not human. We can rebuild the economy. We can’t rebuild a destroyed dystopian society.
I know the Democrats are game playing. I know we all distrust the government.
Fauci has said he is basing his advice on science. Social distancing is what? A 600 year old proven technique. …And he is wrong for advocating that? Don’t shoot the messenger.
What I’m far. more concerned about is the probability that China has calculated that an inwards looking, pampered, self absorbed, bunch of western snowflakes cannot effectively respond to a pandemic. Rand Paul dissing Fauci indicates the Chinese might be right. Trump is obviously fuming about China. That way leads to a hot war.
Realtors in SW Florida are expecting an slight increase in home sales this coming season, Nov to Apr. The way things are going it might be more like hordes of refugees.
We don’t need a vaccine, we have a cure: hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) + AZT + Zinc; a combination that is under $5 per treatment, has a 91% effectiveness rate at curing coronavirus, and can be used a prophylactic. Fauci himself said HCQ was effective against coronaviruses in 2005.
And Facui is not just some academic. He’s a stooge for Gates and those who want to use the virus to destroy Western society and replace it a Chinese model of totalitarian control.
David Lentini
I’ll put you down as undecided. (joke) I agree with you.
I couldn’t agree more. I feel like Anne Frank hiding out from the Nazi thugs in a small “secret annex” and wonder if it will all be for naught and I will end up in the Nazi furnaces for all my trouble.
Give us the chance to take our chances.
As for Pelosi and any Democrat who may vote for her idiotic spending plan, don’t forget what happened to Marie Antoinette when the starving masses rose up.
I was actually cheering when I heard Rand Paul yesterday.
walrus
The Economy is the sum total of all our activities, not just THE BUSINESSES. IMO you cannot reach a status of any kind of decent life unless the people are allowed to live as they wish. I don’t go out unless it cannot be avoided. Neither does SWMBO. This is not a kamikaze mission for us. I am going to cook up some nice swordfish for dinner. What do you think? Are there any Tasmanian Tigers left?
This might shine a little light:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/no_author/coronavirus-and-dodgy-death-numbers/
or as Upton Sinclair has observed: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
There are very sophisticated models and the paper mentioned below (Kissler, et al, in Science – URL given below) is 4+ weeks old, so surely out of date, but it is one that I have found useful. Consider the situation as a control system problem. The adjustable is distancing measures, which are adjustable both via guidelines and by geographic areas. The objective is to keep active case rates within an acceptable range. For instance, below 5 active per 10k population, one can ease up on distancing. Above 35 active per 10k pop, one can increase distancing, so that the time-lagged severe caseload does not overwhelm capacity of the health care system.
The result is that the caseload fluctuates. Health care system capacity can be increased, over time, with supplies, facilities, and skilled personnel. The criteria 5 and 35 can be determined from experience, and also considering the need to keep capacity to deal with other severe illnesses. In general though, the paper suggests that distancing may be required in the US on average between 25-75 percent of time.
Below is the link to the paper (open access). I will shut up and let you read. Take care, and best wishes. kr.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2020/04/14/science.abb5793.full.pdf
Col: Never has the agency problem been apparent, nor has the confirmation bias been so blatant.
Dr. Fauci thinks it is convincing if he says “I’m trying to save lives.” Well, taking away just about every freedom we have will also save lives. Unfortunately, living in a medico-authoritarian state where I need an internal passport to move around my own city and can be arrested for walking in public spaces is not a “life.”
If people like Fauci are confident enough to strip us of our freedoms, can we bill him for economic and emotional losses when his predictions turn out to be wrong? Who elected him? Can the Bill of Rights be shelved by an unelected doctor?
The slippery slope to killing the First Amendment goes from calling speech you reject “hate speech”; protests you oppose “assaults on the public health”; and citizen gatherings “criminal actions.”
I did not vote for this dystopia. Did anyone?
Totalitarianism is raising its ugly head, especially within many police departments and sheriff offices in California. However it is also occurring in Washington, Oregon, Nebraska, Colorado, where it seems that the states in question have democrat governors. Pushing citizens around, roughing them up if they dare to question the ‘authority of their police edicts’.
And when a police officer dares to question illegal orders, or orders of a totalitarian nature, he faces the loss of his job.
A Port of Seattle Police Officer has been placed on administrative leave after refusing to delete a viral video reminding police officers that they don’t have unlimited powers. “I have seen officers around the country enforcing tyrannical orders; I was hoping it was a minority of officers, anymore, I am not so sure,” said Officer Greg Anderson, a Special Forces veteran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXDTBl1FCWs
Further information regarding Officer Greg Anderson standing up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MralWdFoUzE
Col. Lang, I am pampered by SWMBO. She is a wonderful cook. I protect her from marauding wombats, kangaroos and parrots. She feeds me in return. We are immured on our forty acres. We are about a three hour drive from the capital, which is just about right.
Tonight was lamb casserole, tomorrow is yet to be decided. We are also blessed with very good local vineyards.
Restaurants and bars are hurting, as are BnB’s. I don’t think a ski season is possible – and we have already had tantalizing early snowfalls.
I’m thinking of getting out the fly rod and, though rusty, trying for some trout after chores.
Walrus,
“We are working out how to live with this virus and prosper. The losers are …..”
Those declared “non-essential” by governments. “Fauci has said he is basing his advice on science.” What science is it that allows governments to declare someone essential and able to work and another non-essential and ordered to be interned? Governors are effectivly saying -My power, my choice. Like a fetus non-essentials are immediately economicly expendable at a whim of a government official. How long until they are imprisoned by force?
” we are NEVER, going back to the old economy,”…”It’s not worth protecting J.P. Morgan and suchlike” “Furthermore on the streets you will hear renewed nationalism- no chinese imports,”
So, protecting China, her power, and her precious face, is essential?
“We can’t rebuild a destroyed dystopian society.”
When did Western civilization become dystopian, other than when the Western nations started importing all these communist ideas and allowing leftists to start imposing thier will on citizens, currently exemplified by governors doing so by executive order, most of which are unconstitutional?
It seems to me that from the safety of your secured estate you have a better civilization in mind and are promoting the policies that the left is using globally. The very ones that put Western civilization itself at risk.
walrus
IMO a man like you living in the country here under similar circumstance would also think that the destruction of the economy by isolating people from each other is acceptable.
As an aside, I attended grad school at a “research 1” university to study economics with a focus on healthcare delivery systems, when I was in my early 30s. I hadn’t been near a college campus for more than 10 years. This was in the 1990s.
The program I enrolled in was excellent. It very much prepared me for my career. However, I filled in some elective credits by taking a couple courses in the public health program. I thought that made sense. I wasn’t prepared for what was happening there.
It was almost all women and/or minorities. The material was simple and the students less than bright. Worse, all they could do was “rap” about the evils of imperialist United States, the evil of the “patriarchy”, the virtues of socialism and how socialism would work if evil imperialistic US would allow it to. The US was guilty of slavery. The US had destroyed the people and economies of Latin America and on and on. I had never heard any of that before. Of course now all of that has become common currency on the left. Anyhow, I presume many or most of these people went on to work in public health. Some of them dreamed of working for the CDC. Maybe public health careerists are different elsewhere, but I suspect not.
Being in the risky age cohort, I would rather take my chances with something more like the Swedish plan. Adapted to US customs and social provisions. We older folk should, at this stage in life, have learned something about protecting ourselves and what levels of risk we are personally comfortable with. With many being retired, it is easier for us to “distance” too.
Every easing and reopening will surely result in an increased rate of disease spread. There seems to be latitude for this in many parts of the country, as far as healthcare infrastructure being available. Is there an alternative to going back to work, and thus reopening?
It is a large and varied country. Clearly cities, more densely populated areas, are more endangered by runaway viral spread. Why not let local governments monitor local rates of hospitalization. If numbers start to rise too rapidly for healthcare facilities to manage, then raise local restrictions again until the rate subsides. Thus a few places may have to pulse reopenings – a little more, a little less, until the spread diminishes enough to maintain a manageable steady state.
Sooner or later, the disease has to percolate through much of the population, if we are to live with it in any reasonable, livable way. A substantial portion of the population is young and faces few serious consequences, and their immunities would buffer the exposure of the more vulnerable. Fauci himself has said that we will never be rid of it. That seems to be reserved for islands, like New Zealand.
What we can hope for the near future is better therapies to treat the disease and reduce its severity. Remdesivir already seems to help in severe cases, and, despite official US pronouncements, an hydroxychloroquine based therapy has been found mitigating in other countries, when given early. More and better mitigating therapies will be found.
Sweden’s only major outbreak has been in and around Stockholm. Their healthcare system has not been overwhelmed, which was supposed to be the goal of shutdowns.
Meanwhile, by letting the virus spread through the young, healthy population, Sweden estimates that 25% of the population has now had the virus. They expect that percentage to rise to near 50%, at least in Stockholm, within the next couple months. That may not be “herd immunity”, but it is enough to slow the spread and, consequently, the level of exposure that anyone faces, by a significant margin.
Sweden always said that it regarded this as a marathon not a sprint. They have been anticipating the long term. The lower the percentage of population that has been infected and thus carries any immunity, the faster the spread. Shutdown communities will be facing those low infection rates again, whenever they reopen. Sweden has addressed this by remaining carefully open, with voluntary distancing and restrictions on very large gatherings.
As for that favorite argument about “no evidence” whether covid produces protective antibodies, or how long the antibodies remain effective: It seems a reasonable assumption, until proven otherwise, that covid acts like almost every other pathogen in stimulating antibodies, which will provide immunity in the near term.
How long protective? How quickly will covid mutations re-empower the virus? Maybe we should take a chance on the likelihood that the antibodies will be useful, at least, until next flu season.
And then, what is it that vaccine advocates are always telling us about flu vaccines, which may not match well the current flu virus mutation? They say, even if it does not match, it will be close enough to help reduce the severity of any flu that we do contract. Why would this not be so, also, for a mutating covid virus? Maybe the corona virus will mutate enough to reinfect us in a few months, or a year, or a few years. But the antibodies we have could reduce severity. And isn’t it the occasional severity of the virus that creates the fear, not the non-hospitalized, milder manifestation?
Foreign Affairs actually has an intelligent discussion of the much maligned Swedish approach.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/sweden/2020-05-12/swedens-coronavirus-strategy-will-soon-be-worlds
Finally, all the covid statistics should separate out nursing home cases and deaths from the general population. It has become clear that shutdowns are just as inadequate as looser restrictions for protecting long term care facilities. There, the virus, once introduced, appears to race through, with frequently lethal results. Lumping numbers from these facilities into general population inflates overall statistics in a such a way that it could be labelled “deceptive” and “deliberately fearsome.”
Those who criticize Sweden tend to cite the fact that deaths in Swedish nursing homes account for 50% of Sweden’s deaths. They fail to mention that this figure of 50% of deaths occurring in long term care facilities, also, shows up in many shutdown areas, whenever one of those areas announces the number. Here in Texas, Austin claims 50% in LTC facilities, Dallas says 40%. Awhile ago, Cuomo claimed the same 50% for New York deaths. California, Maryland. That number keeps showing up. Until LTC facilities are given a separate category, monitoring the effectiveness of any particular strategy of resistance, for the general population, will lack serious coherence.
Now Texas, while loosening up general restrictions, is introducing new measures specifically for nursing homes, in an attempt to protect those people too. This seems a most reasonable approach.
Walrus,
Technocracy is always the excuse for the we know better than the plebes crew. This idea that a bureaucrat with a Ph.D from an Ivy League school is superior in knowledge and knows precisely how to turn the dials to the perfect setting has always proven to be a fallacy. This is not new.
IMO, they have been an unmitigated disaster from McNamara’s operations research team who went by quantification and analysis to the more recent Ph.Ds who run our central banks devoid of any common sense or sense of history. And now we have the medical Ph.Ds deciding complex social and economic questions again with no perspective. They all however have one trait – certitude even in the face of contrary evidence to their forecasts.
It is easy for those living with their paychecks showing up and the grocery aisles with produce to say lock it all down. Its another matter if your livelihood is tied to a hair salon, or a gym or a tattoo parlor. Would Dr. Fauci and the various state governors and legislators and city council members be willing to forgo their paycheck?
“Cowboy up! Grow a pair!”
Life saving advice?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8312771/Male-coronavirus-patients-low-testosterone-levels-likely-die-COVID-19.html
The media is aghast Trump and Pence are maskless. I bet they take hydroxychloroquine as a profilactic. Trump listens to his gut and not the experts.
I wear a mask at the grocery store but not when on my daily power walk (little old ladies with walkers zoom by me)and avoid close contact , or talking to neighbors while keeping a safe distance. People for the most part are polite and I’m a natural at anti-social distancing.
Diana Croissant — I’m sure we can all take a chance to take our chances. Invite friends over for dinner and hug them when they walk in the door. Don’t eat on the patio, eat in the dining room. Wear your mask when mandated but go to the grocery store every day! Don’t wear gloves when gassing up the car and throw out your hand sanitizer (or give it to a way too careful neighbor).
Take all the chances you want…no one is asking you to follow all the guidelines. Ditch the ones you can.
Number One protection – do not stick your own fingers into your own nose, mouth or eyes.
The rest of the barrier control demands are mainly window-dressing. Assume your fingers are always contaminated, regardless of whether it is the flu, colds or “covid”. Do not inoculate yourself with your own fingers.
“Don’t touch your face” is essentially meaningless advice – it is your own dirty fingers stuck into your own facial orifices that does the damage. Somehow this specific message continues to escape the general covid prevention messaging. Too crude? Too blunt – yes, it means no nose-picking which is the worst offender. Okay, that is crude.
Laura,
That’s not correct. More than one state or municipality is mandating these policies, otherwise you wouldn’t bother warning one not to eat on the patio. There are plenty of stasi wannabes willing to turn in noncomformants. It already happened to a friend, though his neighbor now thinks his own house might get hit by lightning next time. For the life of me I can’t understand why he came to such supposition.
Col. Lang,
I spent 18 months on unemployment two decades ago. That left me personally scarred. It is also one of the reasons I worked hard to arrange my finances and build a life outside the city. I also considered our children’s need for a place of greater safety – we made provisions to have all of them up here. Our kids are much more exposed than we are. One has a $2 million mortgage. Another is probably losing his job. Another has financial issues with an $800,000 apartment that is now worth half that. We are concerned for the grand children. We planned and worked very hard to put this place together at great cost. We could have instead had a ritzy apartment and a beach house.
My opinion on lockdown is not based on my personal position. It is based on a realization that there is much worse that can happen than an economic downturn. If the health system goes down people will panic – and that leads to death and destruction. I know for a fact that the Government here are watching supply chains very closely for this reason. Even where we are we know we have to work very hard to stay safe.
We are trying a “limited” opening strategy in the state this week, backed up with “ flying squads” of police and medicos to deal with the inevitable outbreaks. However the idiots among the population are already howling about this – invoking civil liberties and conflating forced vaccination, anti vaxx, 5G, Bill Gates and a new world order. They think they have a divine right to infect anyone they like. The Greeks were right – whom the gods wish to destroy……
In any case some of you are going to get your wish – lockdowns lifted; Fauci marginalized and ignored. Good luck with that. Tell us how it works.
As for the economy, I am delighted with some, but obviously not all, developments. The left wing inner city, green, latte drinkers are destroyed, as is the big box shopping mall model, as is the buying everything cheap from china model. We are seeing people buying local, buying frugally and wanting Australian made products. There is a renewed spirit of wanting self reliance – the exact reverse of globalism! New businesses are starting everywhere.
Best of luck to everyone.
walrus
This plague will not kill Australia but a total economic shutdown will do that
Professor Dolores Cahill, professor of Translational Science, University College Dublin, an international authority with a sparkling CV, interviewed on the Corona Virus. This is stunning! It’s a little over an hour long, but repays the time investment many times over.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR1BqZG2vdy_TRrRG_o_94CHkKrmc_qmwOs0_P28GVaAubv_MxKajHPvXvs&feature=share&v=Avc6_ftzk3w
Walrus,
“Invoking civil liberties”
How dare free men do that! Why think of the people who could get a bank to approve a $2 million dollar mortgage, or one on an $800,000 apartment. Priorities people, do what you are ordered, it’s for your own good. Listen to yourself, do you know how that all comes across?
For the naysayers of the COVID-19 risk, time for serious civil disobedience to DEMAND herd immunity. Why are the #covidresistance so meek? Get out there and DEMAND your rights! The tree of liberty needs to be watered with blood. We need leaders, not followers or whiners!
Aux Barricades!
I’ll stay home and watch this site and others. No FNN or MSDNC here.
Walrus,
Your’s is the most supremely geriatric perspective I’ve heard yet. People are more worried about the healthcare system than their finances? Who’s being selfish here?
Do you remember being young? Anyone age 15 – 40 (and more) wants to be out strutting what they got, doing the mating dance, being in the game, “hooking up”, getting it on. Very few of us are totally dedicated physically and/or emotionally to just one member of the opposite sex (not even going to get into the gay scene). You cannot repress that powerful biological urge. You can try and if you repress too much, it will express in some twisted form, like violence/riots, but express it will. That drive cuts across political lines; any artificial lines. It’s the most fundamental energy in human society.
How long do you think you can tell the single age 20 – 30 to masturbate to porn?
Upstater,
Elections! Prevent Russian interference, demand voter i.d.! Oh, look
squirelCA 25, how did that go from +6 D to +11 R in the middle of all this?Looks like the Tree of Liberty just needed some sunshine. Unlike the Wuhan flu, communism or corrupt cops, liberty thrives in shunshine.
Let’s not forget public health action (whether they used the same lingo or not) in resolving the epidemics of infectious diseases in Europe, including comprehensive sewage system, separating drinking water and effluent, universal vaccination; strict quarantaine requirement for TB (in US still mandatory intake of TB meds, if indicated, whether the patient likes it or not) & just general teachings about hygiene, that we take for granted now but was revolutionary in the Middle Ages. Especially don’t forget 40 day isolation period or quarantaine that Venetian copies from Arabs and the latter of course from the Persians 😉
I’m sorry if my perspective seems geriatric. I’m trying to be a realist here… Yes, I know about the mating urge. It isn’t going to stop. What I am trying to get across is the possibility of a tragic failure of imagination. Yes, the economy is hurting but the economy can be rebuilt even if we have to go back to barter. If the healthcare system goes down you won’t have an economy.
This has been the stuff of dystopian fiction for years but now we are living it, you want to say it can’t happen? You have 300 million people. What if you have 20 million sick at once? The health system won’t cope. There will be no medical treatment at any price. If that happens, all bets on maintaining a civil and orderly society are off. It won’t matter to me and the rest. of the old folk by then. We will already be dead. You will be trying to cope with sick kids, pregnancies, broken limbs and other afflictions of the young without medical help. You will very quickly find you are living in third world conditions – complete with gangs.
To put it another way, the economy can be resuscitated, a broken society cannot.
As for the libertarian view, I think we acknowledged a completely different mindset between countries. Certain American concepts are alien to us and so it seems some of ours are not understood by you. Nobody here fears totalitarianism. Our founders were criminals in a penal colony. Australians are not known for having much respect for rules and take a perverse delight in subverting them.
Best of luck. I hope everything works out OK for all of us.
walrus
There isn’t any evidence here that the health care system is going to break down.
“What if you have 20 million sick at once”?
Walrus, I don’t know. What if a giant killer asteroid hits the planet? What if volcanos start emerging and erupting under the world’s major cities?
20 million sick at once isn’t even close to a realistic concern. If that was going to happen, it would have already. There is nothing in the data to support such a possibility. Some geographies have people walking around at 20% infection rates based on random testing. If you’re going to become critically ill from the virus, it’s going to happen no matter what you do. Most who contract the virus and are under 70 years of age will not be even close to critically ill.
“You have 300 million people. What if you have 20 million sick at once? ”
We have 7 or 8 million people die every year. Forbidding cancer screenings and other medical procedures is going to kill a lot more people than Corona should this shutdown go on. But by all means the left should continue its ideological driven agenda. All the world can judge them on the evidence, which even a corrupt press is having a hard time covering up.
Walrus,
If we are living in a barter economy, then you won’t have a healthcare system delivering the kind of care that we do now. You won’t even have a system. Modern healthcare systems are the reflection of modern advanced economies, whether they are socialized or private. They run on $.
Fred and Eric,
I guess we are going to find out who is right. I am perplexed that we seem to have discarded science when the scientists give us an answer we don’t like.
To add to our woes, an epidemiologist acquaintance has just told me that even our limited easing of the lockdown won’t work and to enjoy and make use of the next two or three weeks before it is reimposed.
walrus
Science indicates that COVID-19 is rarely fatal for the great majority of the population. Let me know how this all works out for you.
Walrus,
“we seem to have discarded science when the scientists give us an answer we don’t like.”
I’ll leave Eric to repeat again all the incorrect statements from WHO, CDC, Fauci and a slew of others.
Is your epidemiologist acquaintance in the US? See data from Georgia, plus all the US states that did not shutdown. The facts are not backing up “the science” of the expert’s solution to this virus, they are simply discrediting the career experts. The political science from the left looks to be imploding. On a bright note the Democrats have found the WMD: Whitmer’s Middleclass Destruction. Which is precisely why she is seeing armed protesters in Lansing. I expect a false flag shooting in a day or two, especially since St. Aubry of the Joggers didn’t get any traction. Hopefully CA25 election results and even Senator Burr being forced to step down as Chairman of the Senate Intellegence Committee will calm a few folks, and warn off a few leftists, but I suspect the others will doubledown rather than lose political power for four more years.
Feel free to go back to your epidemiologist acquaintance and ask him how many people die of poverty every year and how many of the 10+million forced into poverty by executive orders are going to wind up dead, and perhaps the trade off of dead by virus verus dead by government policy should get looked at in something other than an overpaid academic’s research study.
“Navy spokesperson Cmdr. Myers Vasquez told CNN in a statement Thursday that “five TR Sailors who previously tested COVID positive and met rigorous recovery criteria have retested positive. The Navy recovery criteria exceeds all CDC guidelines.”
“The five Sailors developed influenza-like illness symptoms and executed their personal responsibility by reporting to medical for evaluation,” Vasquez said. “The Sailors were immediately removed from the ship and placed back in isolation, their close contacts were mapped, and they are receiving the required medical care.”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/politics/sailors-return-uss-roosevelt-test-positive/index.html
Fred,
Yes. Millions of people die each year, but at a relatively steady rate, not all at once. In any case, we will see.
“The app has tracked 15 different types of symptoms, together with a distinct pattern of “waxing and waning”. “I’ve studied 100 diseases. Covid is the strangest one I have seen in my medical career,” Spector says.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/weird-hell-professor-advent-calendar-covid-19-symptoms-paul-garner
walrus,
Yes, 7,000 to 8,000 a day, a rate not even seen in NYC with its corrupt incompetent leadership. Non-essential declarations mean no cancer screenings, amongst other procedures, are happening, which means more deaths to come, which the left will then blame on Trump.
“In any case, we will see.”
I think I would rephrase that as we’ll see whether an actual rebelion breaks out against these actions or the left stages a false flag first in an effort to discredit anyone in “The Resistance” – the non-pink hatted resistance.