Category: Coronaplague

“Why Does No One Ever Talk About Sweden Anymore?” (substack, 9/16/2021) has some interesting charts, all adjusted for population size. The virtuous and vaccinated Israelis are being mowed down by the coronavirus that they tried so desperately to hide from while the virus that raged among the never-locked-down, never-masked party-on Swedes is not a major cause of mortality:

What if we look at “cases” from our friendly neighborhood PCR machines?

Another interesting chart, comparing masked-and-periodically-shut Germany and off-the-scientific-reservation never-masked never-shut Sweden:

Excerpts from the author’s commentary:

One of the most consistently repeated trends of COVID has been the premature declarations of victory from areas with a perceived level of “success” in “controlling” the pandemic.

It’s happened in countries all over the world — Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Mongolia — just to name a few examples. They all have been praised for their ability to “control” the virus with masks and public health measures, only to then see cases invariably skyrocket.

“Experts” and the media declared Sweden was the world’s cautionary tale, a dangerous outlier who shunned The New Science™ of masks and lockdowns and stuck to established public health principles and pre-pandemic planning.

… It’s not about the actual results, it’s about following The Science™. Does it matter if The Science™ leads to more deaths? A higher “cost in lives?” Of course not! It only matters that the media approves or disapproves of what you decide to do.

The media’s depiction of Sweden’s results is an excellent illustration of their desire not to inform, but to coerce. They’re not functioning as simply messengers of information but activists, thoroughly consumed by a desire to force others to conform to their opinions.

They refuse to present information that counters the endless dictatorial mandates, instead promoting unquestioning compliance. Listen to us, do what you’re told and wear a mask, or it’s your fault if you get COVID and die. Listen to us and do what you’re told, or you’ll be labeled an “anti” and shunned from the acceptable society that “journalism” polices.

There will never be a reckoning or acceptance of fault on the part of the media, because they are incapable of correcting their preconceptions and admitting that The Science™ was wrong. They placed their unquestioning faith in experts having a level of competence that they simply do not possess.

The last point was made in the spring of 2020 by a medical school professor friend. He thought that the confident physicians and public health “scientists” going on TV and being quoted by the media were going to permanently damage the reputations of doctors and academics. My friend wasn’t sure what would happen with COVID-19, but he was 100 percent sure that the media-favorite and government-favorite figureheads for #Science were simply guessing (since the virus was new, general public mask orders were new, and lockdowns were new).

A recent example of confident explanation, “Oregon’s Covid-19 Wave Is at Its Worst Despite High Vaccination Rate” (WSJ, 9/3/2021):

Oregon has the 12th highest vaccination rate in the U.S., with 58% of all residents fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by the Mayo Clinic—but the intensive care units in Asante’s three hospitals are overflowing with Covid-19 patients. They can’t transfer elsewhere in the state because most Oregon hospitals are in a similar situation.

Health authorities in Oregon say the current Covid-19 wave—during which infection and hospitalization rates have hit new highs—is the result of uneven vaccination rates between urban and more-rural areas.

In Multnomah County, home to Portland, 67% of residents are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, in Jackson County, home to Medford, 51% of residents are fully vaccinated, and in the adjoining counties of Josephine and Douglas the rates are 46% and 43%, respectively.

In response, Gov. Kate Brown has ordered some of the strictest statewide restrictions currently in effect in the U.S. Residents must wear masks in most public settings, indoors or outdoors, and vaccines are mandatory for healthcare workers and teachers. The National Guard has been deployed to hospitals statewide. The state is hiring nurses and other medical professionals and sending them to hard hit areas like southern Oregon.

(The last point is consistent with what our Medical School 2020 author told me recently. The hospital where he is training is short-staffed because nurses can quit and make $100,000 in three months as “travelers”. The hospital is packed with COVID-19 patients currently, most of whom would likely do just as well at home with an oxygen bottle.)

Why is Oregon having a surge right now? It could simply be because the coronavirus didn’t thrive in the state before, leaving Oregon near the lowest on a list of states ranked by COVID-19 death rate and therefore there is less natural immunity in the population (for the same reason, no matter how boneheaded the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Maskachusetts are, there aren’t too many more people left in those states who can be killed by COVID-19). Why are these rural counties in Oregon suffering more than the righteous urban dwellers? It could be due to the difference in vaccination rate, as the state health experts confidently say, but it could also be because folks in the city were more likely to have been previously exposed. Apparently, it is difficult for reporters to find a “scientist” willing to say “I don’t know why.”

Lockdowns and school closures were advertised as being for the protection of children (as are the current measures limiting kids’ activities). How did Americans do in terms of protecting children from a virus that attacks the fat? “Steep BMI Increase for Kids, Teens During the Pandemic — Largest increases were among children with overweight/obesity” (MedPage Today, 9/16/2021):

Kids and teens’ rate of body mass index (BMI) increase almost doubled during the pandemic compared with prior years, and the percentage with obesity also increased, researchers found.

Among those ages 2 to 19 years, the monthly BMI increase rose from 0.052 (January 2018-February 2020) to 0.100 (March 2020-November 2020), reported Samantha Lange, MPH, of the CDC, and colleagues.

Moreover, the estimated proportion of those with obesity rose from 19.3% in August 2019 to 22.4% in August 2020, the authors wrote in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Do the credentialed geniuses at the CDC recommend fully reopening activities for children, encouraging them to participate by not requiring masks, etc.? Of course not!

“These efforts could include screening for BMI, food security, and other social determinants of health by health care providers; increased access to evidence-based pediatric weight management programs and food assistance resources; and state, community, and school efforts to facilitate healthy eating, physical activity, and chronic disease prevention,” Lange and co-authors wrote.

Why let kids in the frozen Northeast do indoor sports without masks this winter when instead they could be encouraged to consume more services from “health care providers”?

Related:

• their parents are also fat: “How Much Weight Did We Gain During Lockdowns? 2 Pounds a Month, Study Hints” (nytimes, March 22, 2021)

We wanted to get a Ring camera for our apartment in Florida. The crime rate in this neighborhood is low, but we have our golden retriever to protect! How worried about crime are Americans? The Ring indoor cam is back-ordered 7-9 weeks:

No problem then. Just pay extra for the indoor/outdoor version:

Unless the apocalypse is nigh, why are security cameras sold out?

Related:

• What home security cameras for impending collapse of Massachusetts? (April 2020)

Build downdraft paint booths for K-12 schools? (July 2020, here on this blog):

The technology for downdraft paint booths is highly advanced … Why not a system for schools in which (a) each classroom has its own HVAC system, (b) there are 8-12 outlets in the ceiling, and (c) there are 8-12 exhaust outlets in the floor? For maximum safety, the system would have no recirculation.

More than a year later, in Atlantic, “The Plan to Stop Every Respiratory Virus at Once” (9/7/2021):

The original dogma, you might remember, was that the novel coronavirus spread like the flu, through droplets that quickly fell out of the air.

A virus that lingers in the air is an uncomfortable and inconvenient revelation. Scientists who had pushed the WHO to recognize airborne transmission of COVID-19 last year told me they were baffled by the resistance they encountered, but they could see why their ideas were unwelcome. In those early days when masks were scarce, admitting that a virus was airborne meant admitting that our antivirus measures were not very effective. “We want to feel we’re in control. If something is transmitted through your contaminated hands touching your face, you control that,” Noakes said. “But if something’s transmitted through breathing the same air, that is very, very hard for an individual to manage.”

The WHO took until July 2020 to acknowledge that the coronavirus could spread through aerosols in the air. Even now, Morawska says, many public-health guidelines are stuck in a pre-airborne world. Where she lives in Australia, people are wearing face masks to walk down the street and then taking them off as soon as they sit down at restaurants, which are operating at full capacity. It’s like some kind of medieval ritual, she says, with no regard for how the virus actually spreads. In the restaurants, “there’s no ventilation,” she adds, which she knows because she’s the type of scientist who takes an air-quality meter to the restaurant.

(See “Australia has almost eliminated the coronavirus — by putting faith in science” (Washington Post, 11/5/2020)_

I guess Professor Morawska wouldn’t like the simplest science-based way to get schools back to normal operations:

(some responses to the above:

• “If they hold classes in a Walmart then schools can stay open”
• “The hardest part of 14 days to flatten the curve is the first 18 months.”
• “Possibly have the teacher come to their table to collect homework , so they can ask “menu ” questions….”

; Why is Kimberly’s idea “science-based”? The orders from governors that have reshaped U.S. society are purportedly science-based, including orders that restaurants can reopen at up to full capacity so long as masks are worn between the front door and the table. Therefore, by transitivity, Kimberly’s proposal for schools is equally science-based.)

If we have $trillions to spend fighting COVID-19, which we apparently do (though it is unclear why we wouldn’t instead spend the money on CO2 vacuums to deal with what our leading intellectual has called a “code red” threat to all of humanity from climate change), why wouldn’t we invest in ventilation?

COVID-19 is the world’s greatest source of cognitive dissonance. We are informed by the CDC that roughly 640,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. The same agency tells us that deaths are concentrated among those who are old enough to be collecting Social Security:

Roughly 80 percent of the deaths are 65+.

We are informed by our brightest science-following minds in the media that COVID-19 has been killing people whose best years were ahead of them. Maybe the median age of a death in Maskachusetts was 82, but, absent coronavirus, those 82-year-olds being killed would have lived to 92 and, thus, collected an additional 10 more years of Social Security checks.

What happens to a financial enterprise when the obligation to send 10 years of month checks to hundreds of thousands of people goes away? “Social Security trust funds now projected to run out of money sooner than expected due to Covid, Treasury says” (CNBC, August 31, 2021):

The Social Security trust fund most Americans rely on for their retirement will run out of money in 12 years, one year sooner than expected, according to an annual government report.

The circumstances, which were exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, threaten to shrink retirement payments and increase health-care costs for Americans in old age sooner than expected.

So… our minds are supposed to simultaneously hold the following truths:

1. COVID-19 kills mostly people old enough to be entitled to Social Security.
2. The average old person killed by COVID-19 was healthy enough to live for at least another 5-10 years.
3. Social Security will become insolvent as a result of not having to send checks to those killed by COVID-19.

Unless I am missing something obvious, the human mind is a wonderfully supple device!

Related:

• Sweden will have a lower death rate in 2020 than it had in 2010 (COVID-19 in Sweden, portrayed as a society-ending disaster by our media (including journalists in states such as MA and NY with much higher COVID-19 death rates than Sweden), apparently killed quite a few people who were on track to die in the near term from some other cause)
• COVID-19 is sure to kill you, but life insurance rates haven’t changed (COVID-19 in the U.S. has apparently killed hardly anyone who was healthy enough to pass a life insurance physical exam)