Category: Coronaplague

From state-sponsored media (NPR) yesterday, “CDC Director Fears ‘Impending Doom’ If U.S. Opens Too Quickly”:

In an emotional plea during the White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing on Monday, the CDC chief, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, described a feeling of “impending doom.”

The cause of her concern? A rising number of coronavirus cases in the United States. The most recent seven-day average is just below 60,000 cases per day – a 10% increase compared with the previous week.

Hospitalizations are up, too: about 4,800 admissions per day over the last week, up from an average 4,600 per day in the previous seven-day period. And deaths, which tend to lag cases and hospitalizations, have also begun to rise: increasing nearly 3%, to a seven-day average of about 1,000 per day.

I wonder which states she could be talking about?

“We’re in the life and death race with a virus that is spreading quickly, with cases rising again,” Biden said at the White House on Monday afternoon. “New variants are spreading and sadly some of the reckless behavior we’ve seen on television over the past few weeks means more cases are to come in the weeks ahead.”

Our greatest scientist:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, agreed. “If we open up completely now, that is premature, given the level of infection” currently seen in the U.S., Fauci said. He added that even as the warm weather gives us the urge “to just cut loose, we’ve just got to hang in there a bit longer.” The likely reason for the uptick in cases, he said, is that states are opening up too quickly.

At first glance, a forecast of impending doom makes sense. However bad things were in the past, they can only get worse. Sweden gave the finger to the coronavirus and now only 99.87 percent of Swedes remain alive (see also Sweden will have a lower death rate in 2020 than it had in 2010). But the virus that killed 0.13 percent of Swedes attacked a population that was initially uninfected and unvaccinated. The doomsayer’s own agency estimates that roughly half of Americans have already had COVID-19. And the NPR article says that most of the Americans who are potentially vulnerable to dying from COVID-19 have already been vaccinated:

Among seniors, 73% have now received at least their first dose. Among all U.S. adults, 36% have received at least one dose. And more than 50 million Americans – nearly one in five adults — are fully vaccinated.

The CDC says that the vaccines are 90 percent effective (new paper). The CDC says that COVID-19 is “involved” in deaths primarily among those 65 and over:

(Biology students should note that #Science says it is “All Sexes” and not “Both Sexes”.)

How do we combine all of the above into “impending doom”? We have immunity from infection + immunity among the older/vulnerable from vaccines + #science saying that vaccines are 90% effective = doom.

Less dramatically, how can all of the above combine to yield the rising hospitalization and death rates described in the article?

Related… the CDC itself says that the vaccines don’t work well enough to exempt the vaccinated from COVID-19 testing on returning to the U.S.:

(Maybe the fear of letting a vaccinated, yet COVID-19-positive, person into a country that has more than 60,000 new “cases” (positive PCR tests) is that the traveler will bring a radical variant to our shores? But if the variant is truly radical, wouldn’t a standard PCR test come back negative anyway?)

And from our science-following leader, “Biden Pushes Mask Mandate as C.D.C. Director Warns of ‘Impending Doom’” (NYT):

President Biden, facing a rise in coronavirus cases around the country, called on Monday for governors and mayors to reinstate mask mandates as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of “impending doom” from a potential fourth surge of the pandemic.

Masks worked for the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Slovakia, so they will make all the difference here…

If the forecast of “doom” has you rethinking your migration-via-Cirrus-or-Bonanza… “Psaki: Biden, Harris fly private, don’t need to follow CDC travel suggestions” (New York Post, yesterday):

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris don’t need to worry about flouting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations against nonessential travel, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

The reason: They both fly private.

Psaki made the comments after being asked at her daily press briefing about the commander-in-chief’s recent trips amid continued advisories from the health agency against traveling — even if fully vaccinated.

“I would say that the president travels, as does the vice president, on a private plane. That is the purview of every president and vice president throughout American history,” the press secretary said of Air Force One and Two.

So it is a pretty bad doom, but it likely won’t be bad for those who fly private! (see The social justice of coronashutdowns)

Related:

• “Two-thirds of global disease experts believe coronavirus variants will make vaccines ineffective within ONE YEAR” (from the Journal of Postal Studies): Surveyors interviewed 77 epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists about coronavirus vaccines. A total of 66.2% said they believe that within one year, mutations of the virus will render vaccines ineffective. Of that group, 18.2% said they believed it would occur within six months and 32.5% said within nine months.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the Slovenian government ordering residents to wear face masks. From Wikipedia:

From 29 March, wearing a face mask, even one made at home, or equivalents such as scarves that cover the mouth and nose, is mandatory along with protective gloves; the decree stipulates that masks and gloves need to be worn in indoor public spaces. As of 15 October 2020 face masks or equivalent face coverings are required everywhere in public spaces (including outdoors) for any of the statistical regions designated as “red” (more than 140 confirmed infected per 100k population)

American say-gooders had good things to say about Slovenia. From Vox, May 5, 2020:

It seems like some countries have figured out not only how to flatten their coronavirus curves, but also how to send them plunging downward. From Slovenia to Jordan to Iceland, governments took early action to impose lockdowns, test and trace thousands of people, isolate the sick, encourage social distancing and preventive measures like mask wearing, and communicate honestly with the public. In effect, they followed the prescribed playbook for such a pandemic, and — surprise, surprise — it worked.

(Note that the WHO’s prescribed playbook for a pandemic, prior to 2020, explicitly said “do not wear masks or close borders unless you’re an island”)

Its success mainly stems from an aggressive early lockdown, quarantines of sick people, and generous government spending.

What Slovenia has shown, then, is that aggressive government action and intervention can help keep people from spreading the disease. Even by the government’s own numbers, it could do more testing, but for now, the current measures appear to be working.

How has a year of science-informed “aggressive government action” worked out? Slovenia is #3 on the leaderboard of countries ranked by COVID-19 death rate. Only Belgium and the Czech Republic (masked since March 18, 2020) have had a larger percentage of the population killed by COVID-19.

Our government is impressed enough by these statistics to use our hard-earned tax dollars to buy Facebook ads. From March 16:

The Golf Hotel Mokrice Castle near Brežice:

Related:

• Slovenian border barrier (folks in Slovenia follow science, but fail to recognize how much wealthier a country can become via low-skill migration)
• Pipistrel, a world leader in aviation innovation (including electric airplanes), based in Slovenia
• Melania Trump, the country’s most famous export

“Lessons From Slovakia—Where Leaders Wear Masks: The country’s politicians led by example, helping it flatten its curve.” (Atlantic):

In March, when the severity of the coronavirus pandemic was becoming clear but many of the world’s leading nations had yet to formulate a response to it, one country was springing into action. Within 10 days of identifying its first case, it went into lockdown: Its borders were sealed, schools and restaurants were closed, and face masks were made mandatory in public places, with some of the country’s most visible public figures, including its president and prime minister, sporting them to set an example.

The country in question? Slovakia, the nation with the lowest per-capita death rate in all of Europe, and the one that on Friday recorded its first day of no new cases since March.

When this pandemic ends, and when the reckoning over how the world responded invariably begins, Slovakia will likely be among those highlighted as a success story, whereas the United States—which was supposed to be the country best prepared for such a crisis—will be remembered as among those that suffered the worst. How Slovakia was able to flatten its curve comes down to more than just quick decision making and the widespread adoption of face masks. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned from Slovakia is of the value of leading from the front.

Let’s check the scoreboard in the COVID Olympics:

Slovakia has suffered a slightly higher death rate than the U.S. Czech Republic is #1 and they’re mentioned in the same Atlantic article:

That signal from the top in Slovakia helped set the tone for the second factor: the widespread adoption of face masks. Despite often-conflicting advice about the efficacy of masks, Slovakia was among the first countries worldwide (and the second in Europe, after the Czech Republic) to make them mandatory in public spaces. This decision put it at odds with the World Health Organization, which has so far held off on advising people to wear masks in public.

The picture in Slovakia has now changed—but its leaders are still proceeding with caution and leading by example. “Hopefully things will go back to normal,” Čaputová told two park-goers last week, both of whom were wearing face masks. But if they don’t, and if a second wave appears, she added: “We will be better prepared. We will be able to mitigate the impact.”

(see also WHO guidance on pandemics then and now)

Who was to blame for the U.S. being on track (according to #Science) to have a much higher death rate than the science-following Slovakians?

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have both refused to wear face masks…

Speaking of Trump, who #DeniedScience by ordering vaccines that the experts said wouldn’t be ready for 2-3 years (although maybe the experts were right, since the vaccines are not actually “approved”? see We love our children so much we will give them an investigational vaccine)… Slovakia is at 15 vaccine shots per 100 people right now (the European average) while the U.S. is at 40.

• the Swedish MD/PhD who said, in April 2020, that the hyperactive (or “hyperinactive” depending on how you look at it) countries like Slovakia wouldn’t end up with a dramatically different death rate than no-mask, no-lockdown Sweden’s. Chart below.

“How Much Weight Did We Gain During Lockdowns? 2 Pounds a Month, Study Hints” (New York Times):

… a very small study using objective measures — weight measurements from Bluetooth-connected smart scales — suggests that adults under shelter-in-place orders gained more than half a pound every 10 days.

That translates to nearly two pounds a month, said Dr. Gregory M. Marcus, senior author of the research letter, published on Monday in the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open. Americans who kept up their lockdown habits could easily have gained 20 pounds over the course of a year, he added.

Many of these people were losing weight before shelter-in-place orders were issued in their states, Dr. Marcus noted. “It’s reasonable to assume these individuals are more engaged with their health in general, and more disciplined and on top of things,” he said. “That suggests we could be underestimating — that this is the tip of the iceberg.”

Rachel Dolezal could be included as Black:

3.5 percent identified as Black or African-American; about 3 percent identified as Asian-American.

What was the precise mechanism by which we went from fat to obese?

An earlier study by U.C.S.F. researchers looked at daily step counts, as tracked by smartphones, among nearly half a million people in nearly 200 countries. The number of steps people took declined by 27 percent a month after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.

The concern about exercise also extends to children, who are known to pack on unhealthy pounds during the summer recess months when they are not in school. The risk is even greater for Hispanic and Black children than for white children, said Andrew G. Rundle, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, author of a recent paper that expressed concern that school closings would exacerbate existing racial health disparities.

Of course, here in Maskachusetts schools for white children are generally open while schools for Black/Hispanic children are generally closed (see Competitive white suburban parents quite happy about school shutdown).

My own recent efforts to diet with hushpuppies at Southern Soul Barbeque, a short walk from KSSI (St. Simons Island, Georgia, which also has an on-field hotel).

But why walk or waddle when you can drive? This car from Avis had ample horsepower (485, which is more than 2X the engine in a Cirrus SR20) for accelerating even the heaviest American into a low Earth orbit.

(There is no surer way to feel stupid than driving a Dodge Charger around a sleepy golf resort! It might have been smarter to take a crew car from the FBO.)

The coronavirus will never make it through our layers of blubber!

Related:

• Faith in the Church of Shutdown not shaken by weight gain
• Weight Gain 4000 (South Park): “Follow your dream. You can reach your goals. I’m living proof.”
• If you’re virtuously vaccinated… one free donut per day for the rest of 2021 from Krispy Kreme
• Public health, American-style: Donuts at the vaccine clinic