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COVID-19: Nancy Pelosi Thanks COVID Victims for Their Sacrifice
Well, not actually. But Nancy Pelosi, in a cringe-inducing moment, did thank George Floyd for his sacrifice for justice. So why did I imagine her thanking Covid victims? Statistics from the CDC are showing a trend that may confirm that most, if not all, Covid deaths involved people who were on St. Peter’s short list for 2021-2022. John Hinderaker at PowerLine blog makes this point in his post, COVID IS NOW SAVING LIVES. Well, not really. It’s just that actual deaths in 2021 are falling below predicted deaths in the CDC model that it uses to track public health status.
So what does this mean? It means that Covid as a public health matter was never an existential threat, and the response to the pandemic was, has been, and continues to be an unjustifiable disaster for people — particularly children and young adults — whose lives were never going to be altered by a viral infection. (Yes, there are outliers, but outliers should never drive public policy.) The deaths, sad as they were and are, were incrementally deferrable but unavoidable. Funeral homes will have less work in 2021 than they did in 2020. But children and young adults have suffered and are suffering in many ways: delayed education, delayed employment, social isolation, etc. If there was a model for despair, we would clearly be above the line. And we don’t know yet what the long term consequences will be.
But we have some guesses, and here’s where Nancy’s thanks comes into play. We will not have 8 years of President Trump and 5 years of a (now lost) robust economy, economic progress for minorities, containment of China and other adversaries, and greater constitutional rectitude. We will have Progressive aggression agains liberty in pursuit of power. We will have confusion in children and young adults who will be told that “capitalism” and “racism” is the source of all their despair, not Progressive scheming.
Progressives are going to ride this horse full tilt. Paraphrasing the words of Winston Churchill — We are not at the end. We are not even at the beginning of the end. We are only at the end of the beginning. And our children and young people are being sacrificed. Nancy thanks you for it.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
I suspect Nancy thinks we owed our sacrifice to them. What’s a life, here and there, especially if we’re white?
They’ll also be told that they can go to a Planned Parenthood clinic and receive puberty blocking hormones to help them transition, while not having to tell their parents that they’re taking drugs that have not been approved by the FDA for this purpose. Remember all the fear-mongering about off label usage for hydroxychloroquine? Well, this is different of course.
Girls will also be told, much to their confusion, that biological males who identify as girls have the right to compete against them in sports, compete with them for college sports scholarships, and use the same locker rooms and shower facilities. The Biden administration would like to remind you girls to keep your discomfort and privacy concerns to yourselves.
As sad as each of those “accelerated deaths” was for those who deserved the last remaining days, months, and years they had been issued by The Big Guy, rational minds knew this to be the case long before the buffoons at the CDC “confirmed” anything:
…and I’m sure there are many more.
Great chart. More reason to hate the Imperial College, the CDC, the FDA, Big Pharma, CNN, …. How will the Great Barrington Directive be viewed by history.
I see that they are outlawing Math in Virginia. I guess an innumerate populace is part of the Build Back Better plan for a “Future Feudal Society”.
From the story. (emphasis added)
This is what some of us have been saying for over a year now. But, will those who are to blame, who should have had the best data, be held responsible?
In Michigan 2/3 of all deaths were in Long Term Care Facilities and a substantial portion of the rest probably had multiple comorbidities. And I am aware of other deaths, the result of individuals who did not take covid seriously and waited too long to seek treatment. Then, there are all the deaths caused by other illnesses, because people were afraid to seek treatment and/or diagnostic screening.
And what about all the victims that failed to get potentially life saving treatments for covid, because there were no long term studies available for a ‘novel’ virus that proofed their efficacy, some with decades of use, such that the side affects were well known, that had to be withheld out of an abundance of caution, even though they showed promise?
1)Killing off all the old people last year to temporarily improve our death rate this year is not a very good way to improve our stats. And that is only occurring b/c of the success of operation warpspeed. We would be facing another wave if we didn’t have the vaccine-Italy screwed up their vaccines and are having another surge in deaths-yes not as bad as the 1st 2 waves but still very painful. How many posts here on Ricochet last July & August claiming that COVID was over or almost over? We need to continue pushing vaccinations and to develop some better therapies (keep you eye on “single domain antibodies” and there is a tamiflu like drug in trials).
2) if you think that all that happened was something like an 78 year old died who was going to die next year (b/c the average life expectancy was 79) then you need remedial stats- b/c if you are 78 your life expectancy is much more than 1 year. Please do not run out such foolish tropes- it only reveals ignorance. Plus 78 year olds vote and the President is 78- so politically it’s a “no brainer” (and you can’t beat Joe at no brainer’s b/c he has decades of experience at not using his brain)
3) HCQ DOES NOT WORK-we have no really good therapy for COVID. Ivermectin will probably not work either (unfortunately, too much to ask for).
4) there is a 4-8 week lag in reporting deaths- so your recent data my be significantly off.
First, thank you @mimac for your comments. But let me address them
I think it is important to recall what I referred to as “over” last year — the pandemic had ceased to be something unknown and justifying extraordinary measures to protect our health care system from failing and our society coming apart. That was the purpose of the “lockdowns” and when the initial peak was reached, it was time to readjust our cost/benefit approach — just what President Trump was promoting. Would more people get sick and die? Yes, but there were other costs — others who got sick, emotionally or physically, and died — that needed to be considered. Techniques for managing illness were coming on line and should have been relied upon rather than mask theater, isolation and impoverishment/debt.
I don’t think that is the argument. Healthy seniors do not typically die from Covid. Ergo, the standard life expectancy argument is not what I am making. Most seniors who died (and will die) have some serious health problems.
No really good therapies? Seems like a lot a recoveries if the system is not working. Maybe not a single silver bullet, but results are results.
Chart is small, but the trend line is months old.
1)not singling you out- many have claimed victory too early- Cuomo of course being the #1 malefactor (also of note the media has claimed FAILURE way too early as well- look at Florida). It is clear the lockdowns have rapidly diminishing returns (and as time goes on exponentially increasing negative returns) and all too many blue state governors & teachers unions use them to further their power and interests. We need to get the economy back on track and employ the lowest cost methods to do so- so vaccines and where appropriate masks & social distancing. The data would seem to support reopening schools with probably 3’ distancing and masks at least initially or in places lagging in vaccination rates. The idea that we need masks (or avoid family get togethers-per Joe Biden) when everyone in a group is vaccinated is ridiculous. The vast majority of outside mask wearing is theater as is a lot of the surface cleaning. Excessive safetyism is as bad as complacency/denial-one we die poor & lonely (and for many overdosed) the other we die in a crowded hospital- or even worse we choose those deaths for others less fortunate then ourselves.
2) healthy seniors can easily be a misnomer since the majority of people over 55 have comorbidities (it is hard to separate out the risk d/t age from comorbidities since the overlap is huge). The risk definitely increases significantly after 55 with over 65 the jump is worse. 83K deaths in the 50-64 year old cohort is nothing to sneeze at (120K in 65-74 year olds). The severe cases I have seen in the under 60 age group have almost all been obese-but obesity is ~the norm in 50+ year olds where I live. And those patients have spent months on a ventilator and are still likely to not survive or to have significant permanent organ damage if they do survive.
3) people survive mainly d/t supportive therapy not anti-viral meds nor do we have a good handle on the management of the “cytokine storm” nor ARDS. We need to develop anti viral therapy &/or antibodies to treat COVID. As I mentioned single domain antibodies (or nanobodies) an intriguing possibility.
4) the trend line is only significantly below the UPPER bound of deaths for ~4 months so lacking good data the last 2 months makes the data inconclusive at this point. I expect it will stay down d/t vaccines but we don’t have proof yet.
if we get 50-70% of the population vaccinated we should be in good territory but we still need to work on getting better therapies. Prevention thru vaccine is preferable but there are those who cannot be vaccinated & we owe them a continued push to get good medical therapy- remdesivir and decadron aren’t acceptable IMHO.
I think that what is clear is that COVID-19 is only significantly lethal to the elderly and those with certain comorbidities like diabetes. Which is why the blanket shutdown approach only made public health authorities jobs more difficult. If we had focused on the vulnerable populations with government supported self-isolation and daily testing of those supporting these populations, the rest of us could have gotten through the virus achieving immunity sometime last fall, instead of grinding through multiple years of shutdown like Germany and Italy is going through right now.
Since 60%of the US adult population has comorbidities that increase the risk of COVID it probably isn’t feasible to just isolate those with comorbidities. Herd immunity acquired by infection is a FAILURE of the system – we never aim for herd immunity thru disease propagation in the population-we aim for herd immunity thru vaccines. Italy botched their vaccine programs- many EU nations wouldn’t adopt policies like operation warpspeed b/c of left wing political considerations and therefore are reaping a 3rd wave.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/60-percent-of-americans-have-underlying-condition-that-increases-covid19-risk
as a thought experiment- a big percentage of doctors& nurses have comorbidities- are you going isolate them and crater the medical system during an epidemic?
I don’t think governments should have forced anybody to isolate, that is a self-imposed decision. Quarantine of a known carrier is a different story, governments have long established powers in these areas.
In the end I just don’t agree that the measures taken during this pandemic are/were warranted.
As for vaccine vs. herd immunity, we are blessed to have been able to develop a vaccine as quickly as we did, but where would we be if there wasn’t the vaccine? Herd immunity would have to be the result. This virus is contagious enough that is no other way to eliminate the virus.
It was actually worse than isolation in some states, where actively infectious patients were moved from hospitals into long term care facilities, spreading covid, instead of protecting the most vulnerable.
What’s the argument against HCQ?
Not effective in well performed studies.
https://www.cochrane.org/news/chloroquine-or-hydroxychloroquine-useful-treating-people-covid-19-or-preventing-infection
That is almost interesting, but not quite.
From what I can gather, these scholars found 14 studies of HCQ, of which a full thirteen were not even trying to test the Risch HCQ treatment–HCQ, zinc, and some other stuff I can’t even remember at the moment.
And the remaining study, by Skipper et al, barely even glances in the direction of the Risch HCQ treatment. It does not do a well-performed study on it, only noting in passing that “Additional post hoc analyses showed that self-reported use of zinc or vitamin C in addition to hydroxychloroquine did not improve symptoms over use of hydroxychloroquine alone.”
Last summer, this was the most I could figure out:
1. In an emergency, a well-known malaria medication with some promising early reports makes a lot of sense on a cost/benefit analysis. (My doctor parents gave my siblings and me chloroquine for malaria prophylaxis, and I know it’s a safe drug for most people even better than I remember the taste of those enormous, bitter pills!)
2. All those reports from various doctors that people who took it as part of the Risch (or related) treatment(s) were getting better in large numbers count as evidence.
3. But we don’t have the best evidence unless we have big randomized studies drawing the same conclusions.
4. All the naysayers on the internet who tout the big (sometimes randomized) studies that don’t look at the Risch (or related) treatment(s) are failing entirely to rebut the efficacy of the HCQ treatment(s) actually touted by doctors.
I’m ready to denounce HCQ as a treatment for Covid if I hear of some big randomized studies that do look at the Risch treatment and find HCQ is no good.
And I’m ready to be more than just cautiously optimistic if I hear of some big randomized studies that do look at the Risch treatment and find HCQ is good.
I think b/c most of the smaller studies failed to show any benefit there is little enthusiasm to perform bigger trials- as an example:
HCQ + zinc doesn’t work : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7695238/
This is a randomized controlled study- there are a couple of observational studies that purported to show benefit from HCQ-zinc but they are observational & low quality. I believe more studies are nearing publication.
Zinc alone doesn’t work: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33576820/
There are correlation reports demonstrating that people who die from COVID have low levels of [name your favorite vitamin or mineral] but that doesn’t mean it is causal. Furthermore, there is research fatigue on HCQ b/c a vast amount of effort was wasted on what appears to be a useless therapy-
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/06/data-show-panic-and-disorganization-dominate-the-study-of-covid-19-drugs/
another problem is the HCQ proponents keep moving the ball after a well designed study disproves their assertions-“oh you need Azawhatever or Zinc or Vit D or Vit C or eye of newt and wing of bat”. It was always a big stretch mechanistically that HCQ would work and as of yet we have little reason to hope it will. It be nice to find something already out there that works but I would not bet on it. We got lucky with dexamethazone as it is.
What? They do all those big studies on HCQ treatments that no one was even talking about, but they don’t bother to do big studies on the ones people are talking about just because some smaller studies didn’t show benefit?
Did anyone say zinc alone does work? Keep in mind that I was referring to the Risch treatment–not HQC along, not zinc alone, and maybe not both alone.
Do you remember much about the Risch treatment? (Paging @misterbitcoin.) I think it was mainly four things: HCQ, zinc, an antibiotic, and early treatment.
You cite a study from Egypt–randomized, 96 patients, HCQ vs HCQ-plus-zinc, no major improvement for the latter category. I guess that counts for something, but I’m not sure how strongly it weighs against Risch’s views. (He himself cites a Brazil study of 636 patients, testing HCQ-plus-Zith. vs. neither, with strong results in favor of the treatment. I’m also not sure how strongly that one weighs in favor.)
I haven’t noticed anyone moving the ball, and I probably don’t care, unless Risch ever moved it. His treatment (including variations thereof) is the one I’m interested in–the only one I can recall ever being interested in. (I don’t recall anyone ever touting HCL by itself, actually–unless maybe in some out-of-context Trump clip replayed on a podcast.)
A couple of points:
1) the study in Egypt was 191 patients not 96 (96 was the treatment arm) and it is the only high quality study published on HCQ plus Zinc that is easily obtainable . Hopefully more will be published.
2) the Brazilian study cited by Risch was really VERY LOW quality- it was outpatient treatment started based on telemedicine (ie phone) for patients with “flu like” symptoms WITHOUT any COVID testing. They might have really have had a cold, flu, allergies, COVID- who knows. It wasn’t randomized and seems a good setup to generate spurious results with so many uncontrolled variables and weak design. More to your concerns it didn’t include Zinc. So throw it in the trash heap.
3) Many researchers will avoid AZT- many of the high quality studies show increased mortality when it is combined with HCQ. Heck, the randomized studies of HCQ alone show the infamous “trend towards” higher mortality in the HCQ treated patients as it is, while clearly not definitive it is worrisome.
Oh. Jolly good. My mistake.
Sure. Those seem like weaknesses.
By that reasoning, your zinc study didn’t include an antibiotic, so throw it in the trash heap. The Risch treatment is not just HCL + zinc.
Is AZT azithromycin? And which high-quality studies show increased mortality for HCQ or HCQ-plus-Zith.? Is some of it in that first link that looked at 14 studies?
?
What information do you have about Italy? According to the data at ourworldindata.org Italy has a little higher death rate than the EU as a whole, a slightly lower rate of new cases, and a vaccination rate that is slightly lower than the EU as a whole but slightly higher than Ireland’s for example. Why do you mention Italy in particular?
Ah, I suppose so. For at least one of those things.
Or maybe not. No detected difference in death plus “QT-interval prolongation” (something about arrhythmia, is it?) doesn’t sound like the same thing as increased mortality.
MiMac, I hope I’m not coming across as too combative or anything. I really am prepared (I think) either to upgrade my cautious optimism into something more enthusiastic or to denounce CHQ as (part of) a treatment for Covid if I hear of big randomized studies that look at the Risch treatment.
Unless I’m missing something, I still haven’t come across any. The studies you cite are looking at different treatments, from what I can tell. (If I’ve missed something negative, hopefully you can clear it up for me. I’ll try tagging @misterbitcoin again; he’s a Risch fan, as I recall, and might possibly remember something positive if I’ve missed or forgotten it.)
(I’m actually not even entirely sure we’re talking about the same thing. I’m interested in the Risch treatment, not in whether some other HCQ-related treatment has worked out or not.)
oSaint Augustine (View Comment):
I don’t think you come across as combative at all- I respect your tone and your manner of disagreement. Our culture has become very poor at tolerating honest differences of opinion & it bodes poorly for our future. Like the old saying you can disagree w/o being disagreeable.
I guess I made those edits in time!
Someone once said the problem with the internet is you can dash off a response almost instantaneously so you didn’t have time to really weight your thoughts-unlike the old days with pen & paper & snail mail- that took time (not to mention no anonymity). Less time- less filtering. George Washington’s great saying “when you are mad count to 10, if you are really mad count to 100”.