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Media Smears FL Gov. Ron DeSantis on COVID-19
Today the Orlando Sentinel reprinted an article published by the Tampa Sun Sentinel, a Democratic rag out of South Florida. The clear intent was to attack Gov. DeSantis’ management of COVID-19, and the result looked more like a smear campaign than a recitation of data. In fact, even when they listed information, they frequently qualified their message. I’ve divided their article into three areas: (1) anger over excluding “the experts”; (2) rejection of the MSM “facts”; and (3) dissatisfaction that DeSantis is using data that conflicts with the MSM.
To begin this review, the representatives of the universities and institutes in Florida are accusing DeSantis of playing politics:
‘The governor is a smart, educated guy,’ said Thomas Unnasch, co-director of the Center for Global Health and Infectious Disease Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa. ‘But he is a politically savvy guy. He is encouraging people who are of the opinion that the virus is not as severe and profound as others say it is and putting politics before science.’
I suspect that Dr. Unnasch is disappointed that he is not the expert being consulted. The fact that COVID is highly contagious but many fewer are now dying from it seems irrelevant to him.
Then there is the dismay over DeSantis’ consulting Scott Atlas, the former consultant on COVID to President Trump:
At the end of August, DeSantis invited Atlas on a tour of Florida. The two appeared at a series of news conferences, where DeSantis rattled off favorable statistics on the fight against the disease and Atlas backed the governor’s less-restrictive approach.
But Atlas’ statements have been widely panned by other scientists and drew a rebuke last month from the Stanford Faculty Senate, which adopted a resolution to ‘strongly condemn’ him for promoting a view on COVID-19 that ‘contradicts medical science.’ Atlas responded that he was ‘disappointed’ in the faculty resolution, saying, ‘My views in favor of the careful protection of our nation’s most vulnerable while safely re-opening society are far from contrary to science.’
Of course, the mainstream was furious that Atlas was being consulted since his medical specialty didn’t involve infectious disease. I guess that made him incapable of reviewing and assessing the data available on COVID-19.
An associate dean confirmed that DeSantis consulting Atlas was a political move:
‘Calling people in from out of state to be experts who are of your same mindset, you are controlling the narrative, and it’s politics not science,’ said Dr. Jay Wolfson, senior associate dean of the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine. ‘Florida is one of the top states in the nation for expertise to draw on. Unfortunately, at the state level, I’m afraid we are not being heard, and evidence-based data is not being used as far as decisions being made.’
When egos are at stake, trampling others’ reputations is one option for action.
* * * * *
When all else fails, using information that can’t be validated helps your arguments:
Although researchers have yet to establish the exact COVID death rate, there’s broad agreement it’s at least several times more lethal than the common seasonal flu. On average, the flu has killed between 10,000 to 60,000 Americans every year since 2010. So far this year, COVID has killed more than 272,000, according to dashboard run by Johns Hopkins University.
The fact that the regular reporting of flu deaths is far from concise doesn’t seem relevant to these authors. And there is also “broad agreement” that deaths on the data from COVID are difficult to define, since people often have co-morbidities; as a result, it’s very hard to discern if people are dying from COVID or with COVID.
The media is also happy to distort tweets that conflict with their agenda:
Piccolo retweeted an observation by Dr. James Todaro, an ophthalmologist who gained attention for promoting Trump’s favored COVID-19 policies, that read, ‘Wearing a mask outdoors is more ludicrous than wearing a seat belt in a car showroom.’
Experts say masks should be worn outside if it’s not possible to maintain a safe distance from people you aren’t normally near. ‘I would say that tweet is dangerous,’ said Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard University’ T.H. Chan School of Public Health. ‘Masks cut risk. I would call that a false tweet.’
Assistant Professor Mina conveniently assumed that Dr. Todaro was talking about people outdoors who are crowded into mobs of protests, and that he must be saying it was okay to go mask-less in that environment. Somehow I don’t think that was Dr. Todaro’s intention.
Finally, Gov. DeSantis called out the local “authorities” at this Nov. 30 news conference:
‘At some point you have to look at the observed experience about what’s happening,’ he said. ‘And I think there’s narratives like ‘lockdowns work.’ ‘And they don’t, if you look at the evidence, business closures, all this stuff, look at what just happened in Europe. France locked down, Switzerland didn’t—same viral curve, literally, no difference. So you focus on protecting vulnerable people. You provide the resources to our medical and hospitals as they need it.’
Those listening must have been miffed at the DeSantis insistence on actual facts.
* * * * *
Several local Florida governments are calling for masks indoors, and even outdoors (if people are unable to “socially distance.” They will continue to apply pressure on Gov. DeSantis to give in to their demands to make a statewide mandate. I don’t think he will.
They’ll just mandate their own restrictions, crippling businesses and burdening citizens.
Watch for it.
In a more recent video, the governor confirms that nursing home residents will be vaccinated first. DeSantis puts priority distribution of the vaccines to nursing home residents first, and then health providers.
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Published in Healthcare
The State now requires labs to report more about how they do the test: in particular, how many cycles it requires to get to a positive. (The more “cycles” the less of the virus is in the sample and the less “positive” the patient is. Hence, the report of a high % of false positives from no significant virus present in the sample.) This gives the specifics. A piece in PJ Media explains it further. I’m having trouble linking both.
https://www.flhealthsource.gov/files/Laboratory-Reporting-CT-Values-12032020.pdf
This is the PJMedia piece
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2020/12/07/florida-covid-19-policy-leads-the-nation-once-again-this-time-on-testing-n1195682
Finally!!!!!! They cite the NYT article I’ve been talking about since last summer.
There is intelligent life on the planet after all.
Wow.
This study should have been reported in huge headlines all over the country.
Thank you for posting this story.
And thank you Florida for the DeSantis administration.
I wouldn’t look for much publicity on this, except to attack DeSantis. It’s never been about health and the power/control dynamic is mighty. Do share amongst your friends and any you can shove it at tho – you never know who might finally get it. I know you’ve been doing that, but you know….
Too funny. I do wave this article around a lot. :-) :-) I cannot apologize for doing that. It’s so frustrating to not see it be taken seriously. :-)
At any rate, you’ve made my day. It looks like I can drop the banner now. DeSantis is doing a great job flying it on his horse. :-)
More seriously, it’s important because it means that almost all of our assumptions have been incorrect from the start. This study should have resulted in our rebooting our thinking about how this virus spreads, who is immune and who is not.
Fascinating, Jim. And frightening.
This study is so important because the researchers found that 90 percent of the tests were picking up only DNA from dead virus microorganisms.
That means that in 90 percent of the people tested, their immune system fended off the virus successfully. That 90 percent number would seem outlandish except that it does fit closely with the death statistics we see.
Acting on this important information means we redeploy our resources immediately. Protect the vulnerable and don’t worry about everyone else.
Had we acted on this last summer when we first had this information, the economic suffering and the deaths from loneliness and the other devastating consequences from our wrong public policies, lives would have been saved across the board. We would have had the money we needed to save the vulnerable, and the rest of America could have gone back to doing what it does best: living their normal lives in a thriving economy.
I am so excited to see DeSantis talking about this. But I think he needs a protection detail and all of our prayers. He is truly going against the mob.
Well, that is interesting. The lack of that reporting has been one of the scandals of this epidemic. Does the PJ Media article give any of the backstory as to where this breakthrough came from?
I should have read further to get the link to the PJ Media article. I see that Dr. Mina (whose advocacy of rapid, at-home, antigen tests I have been promoting every other chance I get) has had something to do with it.
Absolutely. This is the big secret and we may never find out the truth.
This is really helpful, @eodmom. Imagine taking positions that make common sense. Sheesh!
Doesn’t it make you furious, @marcin? All the needless suffering. I do hope DeSantis will be able to stand up against all of this.
Does PCR testing really test for a protein that is found only on covid? Or is it possible that it might be detecting proteins from even just the common cold coronavirus?
I have read that it is the latter; leftover dead RNA from your last cold can trigger a positive result.
I will have to get out my Virology book again but I think PCR (polymerase chain reaction) only works on nucleic acids. The virus is a messenger RNA virus, I think the first to be a major disease source but there has been a lot of work in the CBRN parts of the military on mRNA viruses as a CBRN weapons. (CBRN being Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_CBRN_School
Was this the first biowar example ? If so, it was pretty successful.
Some further info on PCR
https://discoverysedge.mayo.edu/2020/03/27/the-science-behind-the-test-for-the-covid-19-virus/
Interesting that PCR only works on DNA. I had forgotten that. Reverse transcriptase, the enzyme that explained AIDS, converts RNA to DNA.
The idea that people do not die from COVID &/or that hospitals are lying is really, really misinformed. First, I would like to know of such a hospital-because as a health professional I could whistleblow on them and make a fortune. Hospitals have a very strong disincentive to lie b/c of the real possibility of fines & an audit-and the audits are brutal. The idea that people do not die from COVID is silly-by such logic few people die of cancer, pneumonia or many other diseases b/c they really die b/c their heart stopped. When someone is shot they die from cardiorespiratory failure (ie exangination)-but we still list the cause of death as murder. COVID kills typically by ARDS- the end stage of severe lung inflammation-but we don’t list the cause of death as “inflammation”.
They’re certainly intended to be specific to Sars-Cov-2 and not so general as to detect any old coronavirus. They do detect fragments of RNA that are no longer capable of reproducing, but that’s a separate issue (and a very important issue).
I have all kinds of questions about the testing. (Testing is a thing for me, though not the medical kind.) What is the percentage of false positives? Do the tests discriminate between active cases and ones that have already been recovered from? Just what the hell does “suspected” mean? (That last is a phrase that the news droogs have been adding to “new.”)
Yes-the PCR test doesn’t pick up the coronaviruses that cause a “cold” (thought to be ~15% of the “common cold” cases)-https://fullfact.org/online/PCR-test-coronavirus/
The PCR might pick up RNA from “dead” viruses-ie you might test positive but no longer be infectious.
But if you had a cold from a coronaviruses it might protect your from a severe case of COVID. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/common-cold-coronaviruses-tied-to-less-severe-covid-19-cases-68146
Very good questions.