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COVID-19: Case Closed
I think this will be the last post I do on this topic. The disease is not gone, nor is it likely to be gone no matter what we do. But we know enough now to say that it will not kill us off and that it is not of such societal severity to justify economic and social suicide. That makes it no longer a medical issue other than for the health care system and the afflicted. It remains primarily a political phenomenon now that must be dealt with in the same way all political policies are: through petitioning the government, the ballot, and the courts.
The chart above demonstrates the wisdom of a light touch of government in response to an epidemic. Let people know the best information and advice you can muster and then have them act accordingly. As in the US, Sweden suffered losses in their elderly and infirm population. But they did so without destroying their economy and their children’s future, And whether this has come about by “herd immunity” or whatever, the results are plain: the epidemic has lost any strength or vitality in Sweden. It is trending in that direction in the US as well, but California is determined to keep fear alive. The Governor has set totally irrational guidelines for reestablishing fundamental liberties. Others on Ricochet argue as to why this is, but the fundamental remains that it is wrong-headed to look for contagion when the consequences of contagion fall below the threshold for government concern.
Craig Medred, an independent journalist in Alaska, has posted periodically about COVID-19 and has added an additional chapter today:
As this was written, Our World in Data (a website maintained by the respected University of Oxford) was reporting a daily death rate in the widely-masked U.S. at 2.7 per million with the rate in little-masked Sweden at 0.01 per million.
Sweden has been much criticized for its approach to the pandemic. It asked Swedes to practice social distancing and refrain from large gatherings, especially indoors, but tried to maintain life as normal as much as possible.
The result was a daily eath rate that peaked at almost 10 people per million in mid-April. The U.S. rate peaked at 8.2 per million days later. Both then began falling.
The daily death rate in Sweden is still falling. The U.S. rate fell through early June and then began tracking upward.
The latest hope is that a vaccine can be developed to protect people. It is a wonderful hope, but it is increasingly looking like the world might be forced to live with this new virus as it has learned to live with the HIV virus that causes AIDS and others pathogens before that.
Where we find our comfort level between fear and some sort of acceptance of the new norm that it can’t kill us all only time will tell.
The real story will not be told for years, if ever. The sturm und drang of the epidemic is such that data collection has been rushed, haphazard, misinterpreted, and massaged to a point that there is little confidence in it. The latest salvo is the CDC report that only about 10,000 or the 160,000+ deaths “associated” with COVID-19 are due to the virus alone. This data is being suppressed insofar as the social media tech giants and media allies can do so. And yet the accuracy of this data and meaning is also suspect. The conclusion is based on death certificates solely listing COVID-19 as the cause of death versus most death certificates listing multiple disease processes along with COVID-19. Were these sole listings simply rushed? Are they credible? How does this number compare with the likely over-reporting on other certificates with people dying of unrelated causes but with confirmed infection? These are the things that must be examined carefully and thoughtfully by future researchers. But that is not going to happen in the near term. And it is in the near term that people’s lives and livelihoods are being destroyed.
And so it is that with imperfect data public decisions must be made. We are in the thrall of petit tyrants and the courts have thus far let us down. We thought we had a constitution that secured our liberty. We have found out how terribly naive we were. But worse, the petit tyrants have discovered something about us that does not bode well for the future: we do not vigorously assert our liberties. Yes, we act subversively whether it is in pool parties or house parties in the Hollywood hills. But we do not turn out like the progressive shock troops to assert our demands. The universe does not end with a bang, but with a whimper. The powers that be do not feel the prickle of fear that other tyrants have felt when the crowds of freedom-starved peoples came for them.
The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …[W]hat country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.
We are now in a political season. We must assert our liberty — if by no other means then by the ballot at least. Only favor politicians who favor liberty. COVID-19 is not our oppressor; it is only a tool of our oppressors.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
Absolutely right you are. We live under one of those petit tyrants, and we can hardly wait to leave the state today on our vacation. We both may end up taking voluntary “early” retirement (he is younger, I worked far past retirement age) due to the collapse of the aerospace industry. Yesterday was my last working day, and today, as expected, there was another big reduction in force. My former department, Production Control, lost three people. I don’t know about Purchasing yet.
If our petit tyrant had not forced businesses to be the “Mask Mandate Enforcers”, I would defy that mandate. But I do not want to hurt small businesses, who are already operating on the bleeding edge. Ray and I are very healthy, and I do not expect either of us to get the virus. No one I know has been affected either.
I am going to sign up as a poll worker for the coming general election, so I can keep an eye or two on the DemocRat election officials.
You know what they say in high-rise construction: it is not the that kills you, it is the sudden stop at the bottom. I have heard that an honest interpretation of the CDC data is that about half of the total died because of Covid and half died with Covid. Looking at the chart, it looks like we have 10 weeks or so until herd immunity (varies by state). In the end, this virus mutates to be just another cold-like virus and we stop changing our lives to avoid it. The vaccine comes too late, but they sell it anyway justified by false positive tests.
The over arching propaganda on the COVID Killer Pandemic is such that many people on local chat groups here in Lake County Calif want more restrictions, as 8 new cases every day are being recorded. (In a population of 89,000 people.)
Of course, many of these chat groups are made up of spouses of various “health” agencies, so their spouses are now flaunting more power and authority than ever.
And I am hearing that Newsom is aggrieved over the economic success of grocery stores in California, and is planning on major smack downs of such enterprises. He now wants each and every store to abide by a requirement that at no time will there be more than 50% occupancy of stated restrictions.
If he keeps going on at this rate, the only business and employment possibilities will be for people who are checking to see that his insane requirements are being met. (I have not vetted this yet, but the spouse was in a rant over it last night.)
Whether it is in population ethnic diversity or in the distribution patterns across factors such as economic status, population density, and general health and fitness, there are likely some significant differences that enable Sweden to have a better outcome here.
Thanks for all reporting on this @Rodin. I remember being fascinated at the very beginning about how one could trace the new cases based (usually) on some movement from a place with the virus to a place that hadn’t gotten it yet. I will caution that Sweden might have some horrible second or third wave. I doubt it very much and think they will end up being the ‘winners’ in this COVID race.
Oh please. Scandinavian countries have much cooler temperatures than we have here – so I don’t buy that theory at all. Cooler temps in the summer mean a more prevalent contagion possibility, with a stronger version of the COVID virus. So if anything, the differences should be in our favor, not theirs.
That same wording comes up with regards to HCQ possibilities: “Well people in this nation or that nation are much different than we are – they eat shishkabob more often – so we can’t think a medicine that works with them works with us.”
This is bizarre, as for decades, when America was still a leader in the world and would export doctors and medicine to places across the globe, no doctor ever said “I’m not wasting my time bringing antibiotics to women who have uterine infections as those people are different than we are, and our meds wouldn’t work.”
Speaking of meds, if we had not such serious hurdles to overcome for individuals to receive HCQ plus ASZ pac plus zinc, our overall fatality rate would most likely stand at 0.004%, or 4 out of every one hundred thousand people. Instead our fatality rate across the nation as a whole is 0.026%. If we want a lower fatality rate, lets start using cheap and effective meds that are vetted by their continual use, as HCQ and favipiravir have been.
Fauci is one person responsible for this difference in the fatality rate. He did the same damn thing in terms of AIDS patients.
The early activists re: that disease wanted bactrim approved, but Fauci went on and on about his “gold standard.” As result 17,000 people died while the very expensive AZT was being developed and tested.
His “gold standard” is about the money. Period
I forgot about this possibility. If Swedes have had ready access to that therapeutic treatment denied most Americans that would be a large part of the answer. I do reiterate, however, that every time I venture into the densely populated urban areas of the US, I see hordes of unhealthy and unfit people of all ages.
I agree. I think there is a combination of factors that lead to flare-ups within populations.
If is like the SARS virus of 2002 to 2004 and the Spanish flu, both of which took eighteen months to two years to burn out (attenuate sufficiently as to not make people deathly ill), then there is still a possibility of a second wave next fall and winter, both here and in Sweden.
In theory, if the herd immunity numbers kick in and light exposure leads to immunity, then by all rights New York City should have almost no cases this coming fall and winter. That would be great and would establish clearly how immunity is gained.
I will hope for the best, but a second deadly round won’t surprise me.
I also have some concerns about the long-term effects on kids. I hope the virus is as benign as we are assuming.
The ground we’ve gained and will not now lose is in the rapid testing that will enable us to keep this virus out of healthcare settings. That’s the ugly monster we’ve defeated now. :-)
The political problem is how do we find ways to provide cover for our politicians so they can end the nonsense. At the moment it looks very much like we took an enormous economic, social, psychological, and emotional hit for no reason. None of that stuff had any effect. [This study is impressive and worth a read.] That has to terrify a lot of governors. So we must continue with Mask & Shutdown Kabuki Theater to put off that day of reckoning, scare the masses and pretend we are actually effectively battling the bug (We are All in This Together, Gosh Darn It-And Saving Lives!) when on the whole, we probably shortened more lifespans than we preserved.
We need to provide cover for the ruling and expert classes. But how?
The truth is they screwed the pooch on this one by not adjusting by the end of March to the fact that (a) this bug was unusually selective about who it kills–it’s a bully that cowers and runs from healthy immune systems but beats the hell out of the weak; (b) it’s highly contagious, was already widespread and control measures short of an early paramilitary lockdown quarantine were never going to be noticeably effective so (c) by May at the latest we should have known to circle the PPE wagons around Granny, open the stores and schools, go Swedish in personal hygiene and awareness and ride it out.
But we continued everywhere with broadly ineffective, grossly costly policies.
Is there some way to do something like this: “Governor, we would like to have a mass rally and celebration of your leadership in this crisis, but gosh darn it, we can’t do it, what with all your orders and restrictions in place. But you say just the word and that mass gathering is as good as done.”
Whatever happens the “experts” can say “oh well, we were just trying to save lives“. That will be their get out of jail free card.
The death pattern from the bug is almost universal regardless of policy. The same slopes up and down in the same time interval. The northeast US states each have a pattern the same as European countries. The southern half of the US has a distinct, slightly different pattern. Look at graphs for states from Florida and Georgia across to California. Same case numbers pattern, same death pattern despite different policies and demographics.
As I look back over the last few months, our politicians acted really foolishly and many of us colluded with them. Instead of taking note of the most valuable information, they let themselves get buried in unproven theories and incomplete data. And because we were afraid, many of us went along. And as @oldbathos and @rodin, most of the drastic measures had disastrous results. What have we learned that we can use to influence the politicians not only in the months ahead, but the next time we’re struck with this kind of disaster?
I would take a positive approach:
“Thank you for going out on a limb under extremely uncertain circumstances, for taking a stand on behalf of all life including that of the frail elderly. Thanks to your efforts and those of the healthcare professionals and their staffs, we were able to meet this challenge that none of us asked for. You have saved countless lives.
The economy is an ecosystem, and we can’t remove parts of it (the travel and tourism industries, for example, or education) without harming the whole of it.
Let us now turn our attention to reviving the economy as a whole.”
One of the problems we will be up against now is that working from home has become a new fun way to earn money. Office workers love it, and they are more productive at home. That will make restarting the travel-related industries hard. I just read a report for boards of directors that tells them that these changes are permanent. Companies will have to figure out how to make them work. I wonder if the result will be a nation of independent contractors. That will upset the IRS, but it will please the ghost of Thomas Jefferson who envisioned us as a nation of independent farmers. :-)
There are a lot of industries that are rising such as second-home sales. Perhaps we just have to get through a difficult period while money shifts its course through different industries. Everything will be home based. That will be good for the home services industries. Perhaps that will make up for losses in the travel and hospitality industries.
There are some aspects of that study, especially the regression model, that I’d like to have critiqued by those who are more familiar with this stuff than I am. It did seem to include all the variables that I would want used. Maybe if the study gets submitted to a journal it will receive the critique it needs.
By the way, the biggest change we might see is a dramatic decline in deaths from flu-pneumonia (the flu itself almost never kills people) and pneumonia. Some of these infectious disease controls we have put in place in healthcare settings have been needed for a long time. :-)
Some politicians were not at all foolish.
Instead, they’ re in on the money angle of this illness. Here in Calif, Gavin Newsom purchased one billion dollars of masks, without running the business proposal through the state legislature at all. Then he mandated the wearing of masks for anyone entering any business or school campus.
I really do not think that in the over controlled places like WA and Calif, that we have any way to resist. The millions of dollars being used by various entities like The Clinton Global Initiative to have contact tracing drop down upon the public means that all the unemployed in Calif are going to try to get one of those 18 to 25 dollar an hour job. (And that is more money than they were making prior to the COVID crisis.)
The more restrictions governors impose, the more unemployed. Then there is a pool of people happy to be able to feed their families, even though the new jobs require a Stasi-style of behavior of ratting out one’s friends, families, neighbors and communities.
Given the handle of control Bill Gates has brought about through his 250 millions of dollars of “donations” to just about every “indie”, alt and normal media channels, and how those among us who are unaware of how slanted news reports are will continue to believe that we should all give up our rights until authorities deem that every last molecule of COVID contagion ceases to exist, I would say we are screwed.
Nothing will change until November 3. Then everything will change, and with the level of violence coming, the corona will be the least of everyone’s worries.
I looked at start dates for (a) lockdowns and (b) masks to see if there was any noticeable change in the trajectory of cases or of deaths and included some of those graphs here. It was only a crude eyeball test but I did not see anything of note.
The best argument in support of lockdowns I have seen is from @Mendel here on Ricochet. I have not seen any persuasive study in support of masks as a general policy.
I sent a letter to our local newspaper (published) saying we did what we had to do to flatten the curve, and we did it. Four months after the maximum deaths the last week of April, our city council is reinstating an emergency mask ordinance. I said, get rid of the masks and let people and businesses decide if they are required. Of course, some guy sent a letter pushing back, so I sent one in pushing back on him. Consider this:
Every man is a potential rapist. (feminists)
Every gun owner is a potential mass shooter. (gun haters)
Every black is a potential criminal. (white supremacists)
So, do we have to treat every citizen – left or right – as a potential Typhoid Mary and mandate mask-wearing nationwide forever?
Not only no, but hell no. We did our part earlier in the year, so we should ditch the masks and get back to normal. Yes, people will still die, but they are dying anyway. I wouldn’t want my death to contribute to the demise of college football . . .
Did they print this one?
They printed the first letter. Some guy wrote a lame rebuttal, and I sent a response in before we left for South Dakota. I guess I should check our local paper’s web site to see if it gets published. I didn’t include the bullet items in my post, though. Some people can’t handle the truth . . .
The fact that 9000 deaths were people without comorbidities means what exactly? How many people who die of the flu have comorbidities? Such as advanced age? We don’t say that they didn’t die of the flu. The vast majority of the 180,000 would still be alive if they hadn’t contracted the virus.
Does that include the motorcycle accident death that was recorded as a COVID-19 death? But seriously, your “vast majority” acknowledges that some (undetermined) number of individuals whose death was “associated” with COVID-19 were scheduled for a date with the grim reaper in almost any circumstance within a fairly short period of their recorded death. And that was part of my point about how little we know now that will take researchers studying the epidemic some years to fully describe. From a public policy standpoint the question was always going to be: how will those deaths affect our economy and social cohesion? Illnesses that disproportionately kill healthy children and young adults are a threat to our national future. Illnesses that disproportionately kill people in their greatest productive years are a threat to our national present. But illnesses that disproportionately kill our elderly and infirm are never a national security threat. That doesn’t mean you don’t do anything, but it does change your approach to idling young people and workers.
One of the most prescient (and scary) things I’ve read in a long time was Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking: Fast and Slow. In the book, he asserts that we live under the illusion that we are logical and analytical. The truth is that we are slaves to our emotions, and negative emotions are much more powerful than positive emotions. This basic truth is the source of both the mass hysteria we’re seeing in the streets and the mass hysteria over Covid-19.
He makes another interesting point about the nature of certainty. Oddly enough, the most certain among us are the people with the least amount of pertinent information. The truly ignorant know so little about the issue at hand that they can’t even get their arms around the sheer depth of knowledge that they don’t have. Well-informed people, ironically understand the depth and complexity of a serious problems so much that it humbles them and makes them cautious. This inversion of certainty creates a world where the Bill Deblasio’s of the world act with reckless abandon with utter confidence provided by their ignorance.
I read the book a few years back. I’m not certain about many things reported these days but I’m certain I’m on the better side of this debate. That sense of certainty held by those with scant pertinent information arises frequently among those whose life existence is essentially within a bubble in which their certainty is constantly replenished but with faulty information.
That’s not true
Life expectancy for nursing home resident is typically 14 months or less
It means they would not have died of Covid-19 had they not had that condition and that then means that Covid-19 is not the principal reason for their death, being elderly and infirm is that cause.
I’m old and I expect that will be the death me, probably sooner than later. Covid-19 might facilitate that event. So I try to avoid that to get a little more time.
Both my parents died young, in their forties. My mother was an otherwise healthy person who had a cerebral aneurysm and a few days later died of pneumonia. I know the cause of her death and it wasn’t pneumonia. Pneumonia killed her because of the diminished capability of her immune system. My father committed suicide by shooting himself. I know the cause of his death and it wasn’t the pistol shot. That was the method of his death. He was a physically healthy person whose psychological immune system failed.
@bobw is encouraged to explain how I am wrong.
And actually we don’t know what other conditions those 9,000 people had that contributed to their deaths.
It is true that COVID shortened those lives. But it raises the issue of the need for cold calculations about months/years of lives lost or saved. A policy that saves three nursing home residents for a total of 50 life-months but at a cost of 100’s of life-months from economic decline, depression, delayed medical services etc is bad policy. Period.
We keep imposing policies based on the fictions that (a) the bug could kill any of us (b) reducing the spread in the general population decreases the likelihood of infection in concentrations of the vulnerable. The first once is false. The second would only be true if any of these policies did significantly reduce the spread which they do not.
I could get killed in a car crash tomorrow. So clearly we must ban all cars.
That’s an overreaction. We only need to ban car crashes.