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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
I really wish this site would stick to climate issues. Every time it veers off into other things — particularly politics — it looses credibility.
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.
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
Case include past (e.g. viral fragments, antibodies), probable (e.g. symptoms), possible (e.g. proximity), and progressive (i.e. disease).