Our current condition
I am COVID weary. I am tired of being restricted regarding where I can go and when I can go there, but politicians can do as the damn well please. I am tired of being cooped up and I am tired of the constant changes by the CDC regarding what works and what doesn’t to help COVID prevention. I have read four separate scientific studies on masks not to mention a half dozen articles by individual scientists. Bottom line is medical grade masks work. Beyond that there is little consensus. Here is a quote from the New England Journal of Medicine. “We know that wearing a mask outside human health care facilities offers little, if any protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes).” They go on to make the point that cloth masks are not effective and people typically do not wear properly fitted masks anyway. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372. And I am tired of so called experts, and some not so expert, constantly changing their minds about the prevention protocol dujour. By the way, who is the “public health department” that controls my every move? What does he look like? Let me talk to him/her. What is the expertise of the DPH other than to listen to the same “experts” we listen to?
The Data
Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that COVID-19 is not a serious disease. It is. I know people personally who have had it. They got sick. Some got really sick. But by now we should know more. We have lots of data that can give us some pretty specific guidance. First of all, we need to distinguish between COVID cases and COVID infections. For instance in the Santa Clara California study they found that 50,000 people had been infected but only 1,000 COVID infections. It is called seroprevalence. Out of 82 studies throughout the world the fatality rate was .2%. This matches the Santa Clara study. This data came from a panel discussion with Jay Bhattacharya, Professor Medicine at Stanford University, at the Hillsdale College Free Market Forum. https://www.Imprimis.hillsdale.edu/sensible-compassionate-anti-covid-strategy/
Recently Genevieve Briand, the assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Johns Hopkins University published an article in the Johns Hopkins Newsletter. The article was the result of an analysis she did on COVID19 deaths in the U.S. This analysis was a fairly straight forward statistical analysis and the data is publicly available. The article however has already been removed from the John Hopkins website but is available at Archive.org. She makes the point that “the significance of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths can be fully understood only through comparison to the number of total deaths in the United States. Brand goes on to say that “Surprisingly, the death of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly effects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.”
“The reason we have higher numbers of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals rather than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals.” She goes on to say that “These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.” If you look at her data from Sept. thru Oct. death rates at all ages in the U.S. have remained constant. There has been no spike in overall death rates.
No wonder the CDC and Johns Hopkins have taken down the link to her article. Best case Briand’s study makes them look asleep at the wheel. Worst case it makes them look incompetent. If COVID deaths are at 267,302 but overall deaths are essentially static then Briand either needs to find a new profession or there are real problems with the data we are asked to rely on.
Personally, I believe that bureaucrats, politicians and most of the experts do not know what to do with this disease so they just say “shut it down”. This has proven to be reckless and deadly plan as we have experienced in hospitals and nursing homes. It has created human petri dishes. Part of the problem is that the models experts have relied upon have consistently been wrong but they continue to just revise the models with the same faulty assumptions. Five states account for 41.3% of all deaths as of 12/1/20. Deaths amongst those 75+ years of age account for 43.3%. If you add in those 65+ you now account for over 58% of all deaths. We know that children just don’t get the disease. Well okay, .2% may get it. None die. So just with this data it seems like you or me should be able to come up with a fairly reasonable and convincing plan to control the disease over the next 4-6 months. Be careful in these states, be extra cautious if you are 65+ and don’t go to a nursing home if at all possible. Otherwise enjoy life.
The CDC - Just another bureaucracy
As of this writing the CDC has announced that it is reducing the recommended quarantine days, for people testing negative but exposed, to 7 days. They also now suspect that there are as many as 50 million people who have COVID-19 antibodies and expect the virus may have been around for much longer than previously thought. This just goes to show how little the CDC knows about COVID and how unpredictable they have been in their response. The public will continue to have less faith in the experts from the top down. If in fact death rates continue to fall it will be all over for the CDC and public health officials. This may not be the best thing for the public but it may be inevitable.
This makes me more tired just writing about it. Please can’t we just wear our masks, social distance and move on with our lives?
I'm late in reading this one! I sense a "breaking out" of the Covid weary a year later--and with the vaccine. Hope THIS movement continues to grow.
It is attributed to Mark Twain: There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Since that was so last century: There are lies, outrageous lies and scientific experts. Couple that with George Orwell's timeless 1984 slogans, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength, and you have the perfect political storm--Politicians and Scientific Experts taking us for a ride with power as their goals.