Guest Survey by Kip Hansen – 17 November 2020
When I am puzzled by something, I try to find out what’s really going on. Years ago, I wrote “What Are They Really Counting?”. The lessons in that essay are even more important today than they were when I penned it at the end of 2015. Many governments of the world have largely shut down their economies and issued edicts restricting the normal every-day activities of their citizens because of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the illness it causes – Covid-19. We are bombarded in the media with screaming headlines of “rising cases” like this:
The curious thing is that among all my family, friends, acquaintances and colleagues, I know of only two people who have been sick with/from (or even suspected) Covid-19 during the entire pandemic period. My wife has one extended family member who was sick, hospitalized for 24 hours out of extreme caution, in Spain. No one I ask knows anyone who is sick with/from Covid-19.
For those of you with little time or no patience:
[if that does not work, click here to take the survey]
There is one exception, we have a friend with a daughter who is a nurse in a dedicated Covid-ward in a local hospital. There have been some sick Covid-19 patients there. Some have even died:
This graph shows the daily Covid-19 deaths for my local county. There have been 87 deaths in the county with Covid-19 mentioned in any way on the death certificate. Since June 2020, there have been only 8 deaths from/with Covid. With a population of about 180,000. This gives my county an approximate generalized death rate of 48.3/100,000. Even if Covid-deaths continue at the current rate and rise to 105 by the end of the year – our annual country-wide Covid-death rate would be only 58/100,000. New York State as a whole has a Covid-death rate of 175/100,000. The death rate of NY State is over 3.6 times higher than in my county. For comparison, the annual death rate from cancers, nationally, is about 160/100,000.
Our local NPR station out of Albany, NY, which I will call “WDNC” for obvious reasons, read letters in today’s “Round Table” program from several readers, all of whom claimed that they didn’t know anyone who had been or was presently sick with Covid-19, however, they were sure that the apparent-President-elect would do the right thing by issuing orders for every citizen to “wear a mask”.
Previous to this, I thought it might be a quirk that among my friends and acquaintances, my family, my county that there weren’t any/many sick people. However, emailing a friend in Portugal revealed that she too didn’t know any sick people, but had heard that there were some in Texas. During a rather unpleasant visit to my dentist earlier today, neither the dentist or any or his staff knew anyone who had been or was sick with Covid-19.
My father was a doctor, I come from a medical family, I studied Pre-Med originally before switching majors, several times. I did humanitarian work in a third-world country where the threats of malaria, dengue and yellow fever were real everyday worries. I know there must be sick people – there are people dying, after all. A lot of people dying, seemingly, but . . . . Total Deaths in the U.S. are not higher than normal for this time of year, despite Covid 19 according to CDC mortality figures. (To see Total Deaths, you must download the .csv file from the GREEN LINK near the top of the page.) The CDC figures for New York State show the same thing – Total Deaths are running even with previous years – despite Covid-19. (Same link – select State instead of the default National. The .csv file is by week, so compare previous years by week numbers. Note: The most current weeks will be incorrect – too low — not fully reported yet – back at least three weeks.)
So, just to try to get a handle on the actuality of the Covid-19 pandemic, as experienced in the real world by readers here, I have created this little three-question survey – I will publish the results here once there are enough participants or in a week, which comes first.
[if that does not work, click here to take the survey]
The survey is only three questions, with dropdowns for your numerical answers. Very quick and easy. If you wish to contribute personal or local information, or anecdotes, use the comment section.
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Author’s Comment:
Covid-19 is not a hoax. It is not a fantasy. It is not simply made up.
However, the responses of our governments, in the United States, and in many other countries around the world have been far more harmful that the pandemic itself. History will replete with books recounting the horrors caused by the worldwide Covid Pandemic Panic.
One of the first to hit the stands is: “The Price of Panic : How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe” by Jay W. Richards, William M. Briggs and Douglas Axe. Available in hardback, e-book editions and in audible formats. I recommend it.
Keep following Watts Up With That to catch the survey results.
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My two teenagers had it. Didn’t know anything about it till after a week of the sniffles they couldn’t taste anything.
Nobody else in the household had had anything despite the poor hygiene and shared cups, leading us to believe we were exposed and had something in January when my wife had a terrible cold that lasted weeks.
Lots of acquaintances have had it, siblings, most of my elderly uncles and aunts, lots of people at work. And most cases very mild. I know of a small handful of hospitalizations and one death.
I also had “something” in January, but think it was the norovirus, which had been running rampant in our area. I felt like I got run over by a truck, and my scalp was sore (for me that’s an indication that I’m very sick). I didn’t feel like getting off the couch all day. Surprisingly, the next day I felt fine, but things tasted kind of strange that day.
littlepeaks – Sore scalp always meant the flu for me, along with knees aching, couch-ridden, truck runover feeling. Same symptoms ever since i was a kid, long before China had biowarfare labs.
Always thought norovirus was a GI, diarrheal-type disease.
I was running significantly short of breath in Aug-Sep time frame … felt like pneumonia, could hear bubbles pop on a full exhausting of the lungs … first noted the lack of bloodstream O2 when I tried mowing tall grass in the backyard and could not ‘breath’ enough to satisfy my need for O2 … had been bicycling since March, so had built up some additional lung capacity up to that point, then the C-19 hit … back to normal now. No shortage of lung capacity/O2 to blood now. Never seemed to have a lost of taste.
I think the wife and I had it in March, three week headache and six week recovery time. Could not stay warm or cool during the first three weeks. Both of tested negative for antibodies but the way we had it from what I here it that does not mean much, it looks like most of the testing is at best a guess. We both have bad lungs, thank God it did not settle in there, I did suck on the emergency inhaler more than normal during that time. GI track was touchy also. Though I had got back to the super lacteous/gluten intolerance problems again those clear after six weeks. Had far worse problem in August, something with 30% fatality rate, I was luck it was not a bad as it could have been. COVID no longer scares me, my other problem does!
Paul
Think, what did it do to the election
The media won the election with the C19 BS
The in person voted landslide for Trump.
We knew that politics and climate had become intermingled, but now it seems it is politics and health as well. The usual scare tactics from the media, all of whom saw this as a means of eliminating Trump rather than Covid, is my interpretation! Anything to destroy the world’s economy! Here in New Zealand, the timing was superb in aiding the election of a far-left government with daily television appearances by our very own Florence Nightingale, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Now we face the unpleasant medication!
My wife works in a hospital in the DFW (Texas) area – she can point you to the sick people. They are filling up the ER to the point that social distancing just doesn’t apply anymore. They are sometimes forming lines outside the ER doors. They are filling the hospital beds. According to my wife, it is now worse then last July at her hospital.
And the strangest thing is I would feel exactly as the author does without this external insight into what is going on. Nobody I directly know has contracted the disease (or at least know they have contracted the disease). I suspect the disease is mostly clustered around social groups that I am not a member of, but I do not doubt the disease is out there and spreading.
As a thought experiment, let’s say the disease eventually kills 1 in 600 people in the U.S. (that is less than 0.2%). I know about 30 people directly of which I would notice they are missing. So the chance of one of my direct associates/friends dying in this case is about 1 in 20 – and that assumes the deaths are spread evenly through the population, which isn’t likely. So while the number of deaths is staggering, it’s still a very small number of people considering the size of the population.
Robert of Texas
“I suspect the disease is mostly clustered around social groups that I am not a member of….”
You only have to look at the White House and how quickly and efficiently it has moved through there to see what happens what you drop your guard.
Simon,
TRUMP! and the White House staff virus cases started AFTER the Cleveland debate where MULTIPLE of the Debate Committee staff tested positive for the virus after the debate but BEFORE the TRUMP! team. A super spreader event surrounding the meetings setting up the debate, but only among those who met with the TRUMP! team.
No one who coordinated with the Biden team got the virus.
What a coincidink.
I know this because our great media reported on this, NOT!
Umm No… Trump got it (and the people around him) because they were carefree in their attitude to this highly infectious disease. He scoffed at those who wore masks (in particular Biden) and minimised the risks. In short he got bitten.
But I” humour you… who were these debate committee members who infected him?
I stated STAFF not committee members. Nice try. You don’t think the higher ups who planned the super spreader event would allow themselves to become infected, do you? It is always the foot soldiers who are put in harm’s way, not the leftist mucky-mucks.
Look it up. I put “Cleveland Debate Staff” in Google and it completed “test positive”. Just click, read and learn.
So Umm No. If it was all TRUMP!’s fault, why did the debate staff get sick? It was an intentional action meant to infect the TRUMP! team. The problem was the White House apparently did not have a “readiness” team preceding his staff taking swabs of all surfaces to which they would be exposed. If they had, they would have discovered the contamination purposely placed on surfaces to initiate the spread of the virus. Wearing a mask or “social distancing” does NOTHING to protect a person from surface contamination. So now we have the correlation of meetings at the Cleveland debate location and numerous people getting the virus.
As we know from leftist climate science, correlation = causation. The Cleveland debate facility was the source of the virus spreading into the TRUMP! staff AND the debate staff members.
Just cover your eyes and ears Simon, nothing to see or hear here!
So nothing to do with the RRR (Russian Roulette Rallies)he continually held against the advice of his staff, including the infamous Rose Garden event.
Read all about it….
https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/19/seeing-rose-garden-superspreader-convocation-as-a-never-event/
Of you can believe some BS about the Dirty Dems setting out to infect the poor guy. Still, if they were out to infect him, given his blindingly stupid carefree behaviour(including that of his trailer trash family) he was an easy target. Silly him I say.
Thanks Robert. After reading your comment, I went back to the survey, but considered all illness and all deaths among my family and close acquaintances over the last 6 months or so. My answers: 2, 1, 1. The death was an elderly women. My point is that in western countries we are fortunate not to experience a high death rate among our family and friends. Even with an epidemic, we may not know anyone who dies. Over my life, I can think of only one person I knew who died of influenza, and that was an 88 year old, after a serious operation. Apart from natural deaths due to old age, the highest cause of death among family and friends has been car accidents, followed by cancer.
Robert of Texas
“So while the number of deaths is staggering, it’s still a very small number of people considering the size of the population.”
That’s a very good observation. Kip’s survey may be of some scientific use, but probably more suited to one studying some variation of the ‘incredulity fallacy’ (the belief that a proposition must be false because it contradicts one’s personal experience), rather than one studying the spread rate of Covid 19.
Up until last week, I could say I only knew two people….me and my eye doctor I caught it from…..way back at the end of March first of April…no, I couldn’t get tested….the criteria was “have you been to a Chinese wh0re house in the past 2 weeks”….he went to the hosp and tested pos
…but I’m 100% sure…..that I’m 99% sure…it was what I had
Last week our neighbor went to the ER….couldn’t breath, coughing….she tested pos….and is the poster child….late 80’s, way over weight, diabetic…..kept her in ER one day…immediately started her on antibodies and remdesivir, maybe some other things I’m not sure…..second say she was out of intensive care…..4th day she called, said she was fine…..bored out of her mind…..and waiting on them to dismiss her
The part that I don’t understand are the voluntary drive-up/walk-in testing sites.
Why would any healthy person volunteer to go get tested? If you think about it, it makes no sense except in some very special cases.
– You can be negative today, but get exposed an hour later and be infected/positive the next day when you get the results from yesterday’s test telling you “negative.” A PCR test for a highly contagious respiratory virus is simply a snapshot of a moment in time. It says nothing about your status past that time point.
– The nasal swab PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 variously have reported specificities (false-positive rate) of between 2% to somewhat below 1%. Because of that, I have to laugh every time I read the local Tucson Pravda when they give the latest testing results from UofA students and faculty. It is usually something like “631 people were tested last week and 3 were found +ive with COVID.” I just laugh. That is probably mostly the FAR rearing its ugly statistical head, because they never come back and say if those 3 positives were retested and the results of that. I know that. I spent years doing RT-PCR work and I know how occasionally one sample out of dozens will go wrong, even sometimes controls where a microtube sample was supposed to be either + or – but wasn’t.
– If you are feeling ill with cold-like symptoms, getting in your car to go get tested it nuts. Just stay home. Tell those who’ve been around you they might have been exposed and to watch for symptoms. Because…. if you are sick go get tested and it confirms that what you already guessed, “Well congratulations,” you just put a small army of contact tracers onto your household and acquaintances including maybe that your barber/hair stylist you visited the day before, and anyone else you may have had a causal conversation with in the last 72 hours. Contact tracers from the local health authority who may demand all those contacts isolate for 2 weeks with a threat of legal enforcement if they refuse. Simply nuts for what is largely a cold virus.
It’s because people are following the narratives – they’ve been told that asymptomatic carriers are the new problem – same way their guilt-tripping everyone who’s not personally scared for themselves into obeying the new fascist dictators that used to be called governors.
The irony is the entire US Civil Rights movement that began in the 1940’s, that the Democrats today like to Crow about, was about stopping the civil rights abuses coming out of states and local governments almost exclusively run by Democrats. History repeats.
History repeats, yet we (collectively) never seem to learn.
Joel O’B ==> See this NY Times article — which everyone ignores:
Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.
Many of those positives are “not actionable”. Current standards produce tests on tiny tiny amounts of RNA — “the amount of genetic material in a patient’s sample would have to be 100-fold to 1,000-fold that of the current standard for the test to return a positive result — at least, one worth acting on..”
In the 8th grade we all took a TB test. I was the only one in my class to test positive.
Why? Because I’d had tubercular meningitis when I was 18 months old. I’ll test positive for the rest of my life.
How many of these positive Covid-19 tests are people that had it and recovered months ago before testing was widely available?
They may have just thought they had a cold (if even that) at the beginning of the hysteria.
I’m 66, still work in an essential job. I’ve never been tested. At the beginning of this mess, I had a couple of the symptoms of being sick. (The Covid-19 symptom list was pretty short back then.) I called in to work and was told to call the health department. I called and was cleared to go back to work. Since then they’ve added symptoms to the list. Those very same symptoms would put me in quarantine. Did I have it? I don’t know. But if I took a test tomorrow and it came back positive … do I have it or did I have it and recovered 6 months ago?
Even if I took a test and it came back negative, I’d have to stay in quarantine for 14 days.
“The Covid-19 symptom list was pretty short back then”
A few weeks ago I was at my local pharmacy picking up a script. LONG lines and chaos as they had just started to give out the flu shots. Nobody knew where to stand (social distancing), etc.
I had to wait and was right beside a poster about the flu shot. Listed TWENTY-SEVEN symptoms of COVID19 that you should be aware of so you can report any. Yeah, beyond fever (easy measurable) and “can’t breath lying down”…pretty much every other one was basically either “its getting cold out” (i.e., sniffles, sore throat, cough) or in my case, getting old (aches and pains, etc.).
I can understand an overabundance of caution, but c’mon, things have to MEAN something, or they mean nothing and people will tune out.
Somebody said Kroger was handing out gift certificates to people to be tested. So, there are some financial incentives to this.
Took the survey
An older couple good friends.
A shirt tail in-law that I know and would probably recognize.
An older couple at my son’s wedding that I wouldn’t recognize.
Like you I ask people if they know anyone, and so far zero.
Considering the reported rate of infection, a statistician should be able to say that a random U.S. citizen is likely to know of x number of cases among family friends & acquaintances.
Its big in the cities for sure. My nephew is in London and knows several elderly people who have died.
Out here not even in a village, I don’t know anyone locally who has died at all, or got it.
FWIW from my own personal circle of family/friends:
I do not know of a single friend who has/did have Covid. Zero.
Our 2nd daughter, her husband and their 1-year old daughter at the time contracted Covid through their daughter bringing it home from daycare. The three of them quarantined for 2 weeks. The baby had cold symptoms for about a week, but never overly sick. The son-in-law felt mildly ill for 2-3 days, but nothing that stopped him from normal daily life. Our daughter was sick for 2 weeks and as she described it, it felt like having a mild hangover from drinking the night before. All 3 have fully recovered and have dismissed it as nothing more than an annual flu. Life goes on for them and they laugh at the media continuing to portray the virus like it’s some out of control death wish.
Two weeks ago in Bavaria, they where wondering about the strong increase of positive tested people. Testing again they realised 58 out of 60 test were wrong positive.
In general, the complete charge of tests had to been retracted, but I didn’t read about.
Maybe no wonder the number of “infected” increases.
Corona breakdown in Bavaria: 58 out of 60 positive tests wrong – Munich
According to a newspaper report, a large Bavarian laboratory has produced a series of false positive results in corona tests.
This was noticed during inspections in a hospital in Taufkirchen / Vils in Upper Bavaria, reported the “Münchner Merkur” on Wednesday. There 58 out of 60 positive tests turned out to be false
I should add that I have an elderly relative, she’s 84 and has been locked up in her nursing home room for the last six months. Visiting her or taking her out to her vacation cottage for a weekend is out of the question.
I have been looking for the many media reports regarding the many — read: extraordinary, beyond typically seasonal volumes — Chi-Com flu cases, hospitalizations, deaths of the EMPLOYEES at:
[1] your local grocery stores;
[2] your local convenience stores;
[3] your local pharmacies;
[4] your local WalMarts, Home Depots and all the “Big Box” stores; and,
[5] etc. for all other services which are open and exposed to countless “general public” encounters.
And, by the way, where are the reports of the MASSIVE USA WUHAN SURGE — attributable to our election day encounters at the polling stations — since our in-person-election?
This also goes for the athletes — mostly on collegiate and professional levels — where I, for one, read every day, it seems, about another 2, 3, 4 or whatever, that have tested “positive”; however, so far, I have heard of “0” CASES which have actually been hospitalized, let alone, have died. [Thank God.]
One would think, in reading much of the media, that these massive numbers of frontline workers, with such disproportionately heavy and intense exposure, would be flooding the aid stations; with many even dying. Where are they? Do they exist?
Hmmm … maybe, I am just reading the wrong media sources, but, so far, since we here in the USA have been well into this pandemic, I have seen “0” such articles.
I recognize that I could be wrong on this assessment — hardly, do I read “everything” — so, certainly, I am open to receiving and reviewing links for the appropriate articles and overall info. TIA.
Looking at the data from Johns-Hopkins
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Their daily chart in the lower right corner displays the tabulated daily cases (as reported)
Accordingly, the data indicates
11-1 76k new cases
11-3 123k new cases (voting day)
11-4 102k new cases
11-5 125k new cases
11-6 124k new cases
11-7 128k new cases
11-8 109k new cases
11-9 119k new cases
11-10 140k new cases (7 days post voting)
11-11 143k new cases
11-12 160k new cases
11-13 177k new cases
11-14 166k new cases
The Johns-Hopkins data does appear to contain a jump in infection rate 7 days after voting
(Caveat) Depending on how accurate their data is
“athletes — mostly on collegiate and professional levels”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2020/11/15/masters-dustin-johnson-covid-19-augusta-national/6305601002/
It was just a month ago that Johnson spent 11 days by himself in a Las Vegas hotel room, quarantining after a positive COVID test. He had “very minor” COVID symptoms, he said.
“I felt like I had a cold. A little bit of a fever for maybe 36 hours. But after that, I felt fine. The worst part about it was the quarantining in the room for so long.”
or
Freddie Freeman goes from coronavirus to NL MVP after stellar 2020 season
https://sports.yahoo.com/freddie-freeman-goes-from-coronavirus-to-nl-mvp-after-stellar-2020-season-235241693.html
I live at the epicenter of the UK outbreak, well we recorded the earliest clusters locally, although it is likely it was present in the UK months before undetected.
My town has a population of 110,000 and is known for it’s high elderly population. Since the start of the year there have been 86 deaths with CV19 on the certificate, 1144 other deaths. So 7% of deaths had CV19, 78/100,000.
A large proportion of the deaths in the first wave were in care homes. The average age of death with CV19 in the UK is well over 80, it’s actually higher than the average age of death.
I know no one who had it/has it/died of it – or of anything else!
An interesting fact on the news today is that there are no excess deaths in London during the second wave, although there are in other areas of the country.
I’ve been asking the same question whenever I’m around someone new. Answer is nearly always no, or at worst, yes, but wasn’t a big deal. One distant relative of mine by marriage in the Philippines died from COVID, but she was a doctor and was repeatedly exposed in the early stages of the pandemic. An elderly cousin in the US had a very severe case, but recovered. That’s it. Nobody else in our fairly large, widely dispersed family even knows of other cases.
Navy Bob,
Exposure the inoculating dose certainly matters. Every research immunologist who has worked with infecting animal models with virus and bacteria pathogens to study a disease pathology understands that first hand.
15 years ago, back when I was doing mouse virus immunology experiments, we had to be very careful to give the correct and same amount of virus to all the mice in the test cage, because infecting with too much or too little virus (I was doing Vaccinia Virus at the time) would wildly skew the results from careless lack of ensuring the correct viral titer. It was very easy to give too much virus to a mouse and then it die while the rest got sick and recovered. It is very hard to study the memory immune response on a dead mouse.
Joel O’Bryan, interesting — I have been surprised by the general similarity in shape of a insecticide dose: probability of mortality graph and a (insect biocontrol) viral dose: mortality graph.
It seems (to casual onlooker) that nearly all the action occurs over two orders of magnitude or less.
Do mammal’s virus dose: mortality curves show a similar sort of behaviour?
To be fair, while I am regularly aware of people having the flu, I never recall anyone that I know dying from it…yet it kills some 40k people every year in the US.
I think that’s the point, the numbers appear big, but they need to be put in context.
Apparently getting on for 3 Million people die in the USA each year, 600K in the UK.
And remember that many people had flu shots. Was that ever recorded?
I know of two acquaintances with serious COVID complications.
Our across the street neighbor is an EMT, and was in the hospital for about a month [including over a week on a respirator] back in June. He tried going back to work in September, and ended up back in the hospital. Now on disability.
My wife’s ortho surgeon also was hospitalized in late spring, and seems to have had a personality/attitude change. She will be seeing a different surgeon for the other knee replacement.
If masks are so great, lock downs work, and social distancing is good then why are cases still occurring?
Death rates are significantly down since March, Is it because treatments are more effective or democrat governors quit putting infected people in nursing homes?
Many of the most susceptible have already been exposed, and since recovered or died is one hypothesis.
@Michael Jarosz. Maybe because a lot of people are refusing to wear masks, breaking lockdowns and not social distancing? Videos coming out of the USA appear to show large gatherings of unmasked people standing very close together. Are these faked?
Re social distancing, the experience has made me more aware of way personal space works, or doesn’t. Even with the best of intentions, it is hard to keep a distance from people, even strangers. A local cafe sells coffee through a slot in the door. There are painted marks on the footpath (sidewalk!) 1.5m apart to help people distance while waiting. Even so, people tend to drift together as they chat or as they pass to collect their coffee. Some individuals tend to move towards others unconsciously, even if constantly reminded! An opportunity for an interesting research project?
According to the CDC a couple of weeks ago, nearly 90% of people who caught The Corona recently habitually wore masks.
They don’t work to protect people, which is why The Narrative switched to ‘but they protect others from you.’ And they probably don’t even do that.
Muzzling the population is the goal, not protecting anyone from a disease they have a 99.75% chance of surviving.
I have never been concerned about catching the SARS CoV2 virus, but seeing all the people around me wearing masks – even outside – makes me a little nervous. Fear combined with uncertainty can be contagious. So I don’t wear a mask outside, but I do in stores and building lobbies. When I walk down the block without a mask, people veer off the sidewalk and walk in the street against on coming traffic. They are more likely to get killed by the crazy, too fast drivers than the virus! Ironic isn’t it?
As far as my susceptibility goes, I am 66 now and used to work in an active solid waste landfill for 16 years and then inspected asbestos contaminated sites and oil spill sites wreaking of petroleum volatile vapors. Nothing has killed me yet. It was much more of a danger working around the bulldozer and compactor operators at night at the landfill, than any other hazard. However, the operators were trained to watch to government monitors on the ground. I made sure to keep up good relations with all of the heavy equipment operators.
Aside, from all this, I was usually covered in a light dusting of leachate saturated dust from standing there monitoring the work. Even the inside of my monitoring SUV and my office had a veneer of this nasty dust. My colleagues worked under the same conditions. No one cared and we were never told to wear masks or respirators! The leachate, itself, was generated at the open work face as rain fell on the torn up garbage consisting of exposed baby and adult diapers, medical waste, rat poop, dead animals needing to be buried, household garbage, spent hypodermic needles, old smoke detectors with Americium still inside, urine from the equipment operators, and more!!!! I’m sure we all inhaled SARS, influenza, cold and other viruses, multitudes of bacteria species and maybe a few parisites. BUT!!!!! I only had a few colds while at the landfill in 16 years and no colds or anything during my latter 16 years of other environmental work. Go figure.
“Raphael Ketani November 17, 2020 at 11:55 am
I have never been concerned about catching the SARS CoV2 virus, but seeing all the people around me wearing masks – even outside – makes me a little nervous.”
It actually makes me laugh because it is completely ridiculous given the fact most of the face nappies are not medically, N95, rated. IIRC, I have seen only one person wearing a mask that had “N95” printed on it. Whether it was N95 rated or not I have no idea. I see many wear the “re-useable” types which are completely useless.
I have worked throughout the whole sc@m, using public transport, going to the shops etc etc. I do not know a single person who was infected and a lot of my family work in nursing including aged-care facilities.
What we were supposed to do was “flatten” the curve below what our hospitals and ICUs could handle. Instead, we implemented regulations and guidelines that suppressed cases far below that level. The lack of herd immunity is biting us in the butt now, especially in states which were not hit hard previously.
It’s great if you are isolated like New Zealand and can stave-off any influx of infections until vaccines are available. That isolation doesn’t exist here in the US.
Even in NZ they have to keep the rest of the world out until a large part of the population has been vaccinated with a successful vaccine. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, that is probably late 2021 to early 2022 (the SH summer after this one). How long can NZ economically stand to do that before the costs to mental health (suicides, alcoholism, domestic violence) and financial health of the entire country outweighs the potential of COVID deaths?
Joel
I wonder how effective NZ has been. I read an article yesterday that China was complaining that meat and its packaging from NZ was contaminated with the virus. If the claim is true, there may be a large number of asymptomatic cases in NZ that the government is unaware of.
Why would it take so long to vaccinate such a small number of people?
I really wish this site would stick to climate issues. Every time it veers off into other things — particularly politics — it looses credibility.
“looses credibility” Irony alert!
As if climate isn’t blatantly political?
This is the other side of the same coin.
Unless you can furnish a more plausible explanation.
There are a clear parallels between Climate Change Public policies being enacted and COVID-19 control policies.
COVID-19 lockdowns are decimating economies and lives but doing little to stop the infection outside of a few special cases like islands (NZ) where the population can isolate itself from the world. Lockdowns at best only slow the virus spread. Then when lockdowns ease, as they must, the virus cases spike again. Duh.
Climate Change policies are decimating energy affordability and thus compromising both current and future living standards for the general populations in both the industrialized countries and developing countries while doing little to nothing to slow emissions and their alleged role in global warming.
Both afflictions claim to have group of “science experts” that must be followed. Both while seemingly starting out justified, have each become little more than Trojan Horse commandeered by Elitists for a path to Global Socialism.
Meanwhile Communist Chinese, both the source of COVID-19 virus and delayed warnings to the West about its spread last December and the biggest CO2 emitter by far, plans its path to World Supremacy with the slow demise of the US and the West’s economies under COVID lockdowns and ruinous Climate energy policies. And with the slow demise of economic might, military might will follow.
Coincidence????
my book talks exactly about that
phonyclimatewar.com
@ur momisugly Don,
Why did you read it? Why did you comment? Why are your panties in a twist?
Don Jindra ==> Politics is defined as: “the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area”
The essay is very mildly political in any other sense.
“Don Jindra November 17, 2020 at 12:06 pm
I really wish this site would stick to climate issues.”
Have you read the about page?
I really wish this site would stick to climate issues. Every time it veers off into other things — particularly politics — it looses credibility
Hate to break it to you, Donny-boy, but “climate issues” are the number one most political thing this site covers. I’d say you loose all credibility by pretending that isn’t so, but that would falsely imply that you ever had any credibility to begin with. Go back under your bridge, concern trolls aren’t welcome in polite society.
The media blew it way up to make Trump look bad, IMHO. The media are grasping at straws.
There is high degree of exuberance here in the UK about supposedly 94.5% efficacy of newly launched Covid vaccine. I went to over to Wikipedia and looked it up. Company was established September 2010, i.e. 10 years ago.
It states: “As of November 2020, Moderna was valued at $35 billion, and while none of its drugs had been approved, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate was close to obtaining emergency use authorization. ….
In 2014, Moderna moved to focus on lower-margin vaccines, given that an mRNA vaccine – efficacy issues aside – will always stimulate a level of antibody development in subjects…
In March 2013, Moderna and AstraZeneca signed a five-year exclusive option agreement to discover, develop, and commercialize mRNA for treatments in the therapeutic areas of cardiovascular, metabolic and renal diseases, and selected targets for cancer. The agreement included a $240 million upfront payment to Moderna ….As of May 2020, only one candidate has passed Phase I trials….
In January 2014, Moderna and Alexion Pharmaceuticals entered a $125 million deal for orphan diseases in need of therapies….However, by 2017, the program with Alexion had been scrapped as the animal trials showed that Moderna’s treatment would never be safe enough for use in humans ….” , etc.
Then there is this
‘Bad Optics’ Or Something More? Moderna Executives’ Stock Sales Raise Concerns
“Taylor said Moderna’s stock-selling practices appear well outside the norm, and raise questions about the company’s internal controls to prevent insider trading. “On a scale of one to 10, one being less concerned and 10 being the most concerned,” said Daniel Taylor, an associate professor of accounting at the Wharton School, “this is an 11.”
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/04/908305074/bad-optics-or-something-more-moderna-executives-stock-sales-raise-concerns
Moderna should consider suing Wikipedia and NPR.org for casting doubt on activities of the company.
P.S Survey: 0,0,0
But it’s so exciting being alive in a historically notable time. That’s what’s driving it for the sheep populace.
I live on Vancouver Island in BC Canada,our health area has 8000,000+- population, these are the stats.
Death rate per 1000 population
All BC 0.08
VI 0.01
“Cases” per 1000 population
All BC 5.67
VI 0.43
Active cases per 1000 population
All BC 1.51
VI 0.08
Hospitalization per 1000 population
All BC 0.05
VI 0.00
ICU per 1000 population
All BC 0.01
VI 0.00
Last week we had an “outbreak”, 5 people of the local hospital staf tested positive, youy would have though the end of the world was nigh. The important point, which was played down, was that of the 5 only 2 were hospitalized.
We are living in a looney bin
Nope you’re living on a fairly isolated island similar to Hawaii. The Loony Bin of which you speak is the CONUS area directly south of you. It gets crazier the farther left you travel.
Kevin,
When it is not obvious why a person or government acts a certain way, look for unobvious reasons.
Case include past (e.g. viral fragments, antibodies), probable (e.g. symptoms), possible (e.g. proximity), and progressive (i.e. disease).
n.n ==> Correct — what they really count and what they report are entirely different things.
cases include the fast test….and it’s so inaccurate it’s worthless