Category: Coronaplague

Many of us died and were resurrected (New York Times)

by philg

Avoid humans who are breathing and also those who aren’t breathing, says “The Coronavirus May Spread From Corpses, Scientists Report” (NYT, today):

Like a zombie in a horror film, the coronavirus can persist in the bodies of infected patients well after death, even spreading to others, according to two startling studies.

While transmission from corpses is not likely to be a major factor in the pandemic, bereaved family members should exercise caution, experts said.

Also of interest:

Up to 70 percent of those infected with Ebola die, compared with about 3 percent of those diagnosed with Covid-19.

“Most of Us Have Had Covid” (NYT, April 2022) says that 60 percent of us have had Covid-19 (almost any symptom plus a positive test = a diagnosis of Covid-19 according to UpToDate). So at least 6 million Americans have died from Covid-19 (333 million population times 60 percent times 3 percent). But only 1.1 million of us have died with an official Covid-19 tag. So roughly 5 million of us have died and been resurrected.

Maybe the answer is that the NYT is quoting the rate for deplorably unvaccinated people. But Sweden famously let the virus rage in 2020, before vaccines were available, sheltering only a small portion of the population (those in nursing homes), and 3 percent of Swedes did not die. (In fact, as noted recently, Sweden had a lower percentage of excess deaths than European nations that were celebrated for their virtuous lockdowns and mask orders.)

Is it time to thank Jesus for this miracle of resurrection?

Speaking of miracles and Christmas, here are some folks relying on cloth and simple surgical masks (per Dr. Fauci) to protect them against an aerosol virus after entering a crowded casino (Bellagio, December 12, 2022):

Note the subject who wears a full beard in order to ensure optimum sealing between mask and face. What was so important that these Covid-concerned folks were forced to enter the Bellagio, whose ventilation system does not even vent out the cigarette smoke much less the devious SARS-CoV-2 particles? Bears on Coke:

Related:

  • “Homelessness is linked to a higher risk of death from COVID in L.A. County, study shows” (UCLA, 12/14/2022): “256 COVID-related deaths among an estimated 52,000 people experiencing homelessness, or PEH, between January 1, 2020, and November 1, 2021.” In other words, in a population that had no practical way to avoid COVID-19 during the pre-vaccination period (no suburban bunker in which to retreat) and that had generally terrible health to begin with, 0.5% died
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COVID-19 half-time scores coming in

by philg

If humans and SARS-CoV-2 need to co-evolve, as my medical school professor friends said back in March 2020 when heaping scorn on lockdowns, school closures, and mask orders, we might be at half-time here, three years in.

The Swedish MD/PhDs agreed with the professors and, consequently, set up the country’s Give-the-Finger-to-the-Virus policy. At the time (Feb/March 2020), they said that their goal was to have the same death rate, by the time the dust settled in 2022, as other continental European nations. Did they succeed?

Our World in Data offers a cumulative deaths, compared to projections, statistic for the entire period of coronapanic (almost 3 years). This will capture COVID-19 deaths and also near-term deaths that were caused by lockdown, e.g., deaths from extra alcohol and drug abuse, from deferred medical care and screening tests, etc. It won’t capture the likely premature deaths of those of today’s children who lost 12-18 months of education, the expected premature deaths of those who were unemployed for a long period, the expected premature deaths of those who gained weight during the lockdowns, etc.

What do we see against the comparison group that the Swedes set up prior to the experiment being run? Sweden suffered 5 percent more deaths than expected during the three-year period. Austria had lockdowns, mask orders, and forced vaccination. They’re at 9 percent. Slovakia and Czech Republic were celebrated for their early and eager adoptions of forced masking. They’re at 19 percent and 9 percent. Germany, which won all kinds of praise for doing everything in a German manner? 5 percent. Infinitely rich neighboring Norway? 4 percent. K-12 education PISA test champion neighbor Finland? 5 percent.

How about the comparison group that the NYT set up? Ireland (5%), UK (10%), France (6%).

What about looking at some countries that weren’t part of the original experiment but might yet be interesting? Peru, which brought out the police and military to enforce lockdowns and masks… 41 percent. Spain, where you had to borrow the neighbor’s dog if you wanted to legally walk out of your apartment? 11 percent. Greece, which was celebrated for its Science-informed response to COVID-19? 11 percent. (“they approached this initial crisis in an exemplary manner. We should all consider following their lead of consistent messaging, evidence-based evaluation, and adherence to the scientific method.”; or give the finger to the virus and experience fewer than half as many excess deaths?) How about the U.S., where just over half of us were clean and tidy Followers of Science and where, for 2/3rds of the covered period, we have enjoyed the best and most competent Science-following government? After spending $20 trillion(?) and cowering in place for 1-2 years (in the states and cities that followed Science)…. we’re at 14 percent.

Caveat: these data are not age-adjusted, which is critical to do with a virus that targets the elderly (see this ranking of U.S. states for how much the needle can move, e.g., for a younger-than-average state such as California). The median age in Ireland is 5 years younger than Spain’s, with Sweden’s median age falling in the middle.

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Among the Covidians in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

by philg

A Los Angeles-to-Washington, D.C. helicopter trip started at PBI on a Sunday in November. Here are the Righteous preparing for a return flight to Boston after their optional vacation trip to South Florida.

When I arrived at LAX, I discovered that they’ve set up a Fall of Saigon-style area for everyone who wants to get out via taxi or Uber/Lyft. At 9:30 pm on a Sunday, the traffic was so heavy that it took my Uber about 25 minutes to go what Uber said would be a 5-minute 1-mile journey.

I was welcomed to the Redondo Beach Hotel in the distinct California style:

Even more upsetting, in a back corner of the hotel parking lot:

If you thought that people who were constantly surrounded by poisonous chemicals wouldn’t have time for coronapanic, you’d be mistaken. At the helicopter safety course, which includes an hour of simulated failures, each of which can easily turn into a real emergency:

The attendees, mostly beginner flight instructors, are typically men in their 20s and 30s (one pilot identifying as a “woman” was in our class of 30). Apparently they are at greater risk of being felled by COVID-19 (after failing to stand 6′ apart) than they are of being killed in a helicopter crash.

California taxpayers spent money on a Facebook ad encouraging me to get a COVID test:

At the Rite Aid, a reminder to keep injecting the 5-year-olds and also, some gluten-free rainbow wine.

They lock up stuff that wouldn’t be considered precious in most of the U.S.:

With no hurricanes, California’s beach towns have a lot more funky old stuff than do Florida beach towns, in which only the hardened and concrete survive:

Some more snapshots in our Redondo Beach neighborhood:

Conclusion: Los Angeles in the winter is awesome for people who don’t have to work (see Table 4 for how welfare spending power in CA compares to median-wage work). The mid-day weather is mild and sunny, which is of no value to those who are stuck in offices. It is dark and cold by the time the slaves are paroled from their plantations.

Let’s go to Reagan National Airport now. Here are some folks preparing for an optional vacation trip to Florida (PBI) over an extended Thanksgiving weekend. Counting airport transportation and TSA screening, it will take them half a day in crowded indoor public environments to get there. If they’d wanted to ensure a COVID-free experience, yet were unwilling to give up their vacation trip, they could have driven in one full day (14 hours door-to-door says The Google).

This is my favorite image. Eight people sitting in a row, all of them wearing various kinds of masks that have been proven ineffective against an aerosol virus.

Some apparently young/healthy people masked in the terminal:

A detail from the 8-in-a-row photo above:

Always a conundrum… our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters who choose to wear masks, but refuse to shave their beards. COVID-19 is a deadly threat, but not so deadly that anyone should pick up the Razor of Righteousness. Walking onto the crammed-to-capacity Airbus A320:

I didn’t get a video, unfortunately, but the two guys at the breakfast table next to me (they seemed to be traveling together and only one was wearing a mask prior to food arrival) insisted that the waitress remove the offensive items that she had delivered to their table: “We don’t use straws.”

Related:

  • “You May Be Early, but You’re Not Wrong: A Covid Reading List” (Nov 15): “Over the last few months, there’s been an avalanche of studies telling us that Covid poses a major threat to our health, our lives, and our sanity. The biggest risk now comes in the weeks and months after we recover. … There’s no permanent immunity from this virus. Each time we catch it, this virus attacks our hearts and minds. It weakens us. It tries to kill us. It imprints on us, so a future variant has a better shot next time.” (About half of Americans think as this author does, yet they won’t stay home. They’re voluntarily in crowded airports, airliners, theme parks, resort hotels, etc. SARS-CoV-2 has not changed substantially. The vaccines have a mediocre and temporary effect. Why are those who supported lockdowns in 2020 behaving differently than they did in 2020?)
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The protests against lockdowns in China: Why didn’t California pursue Zero COVID?

by philg

All of the U.S. media that previously celebrated lockdowns, school closures, forced masking, and forced vaccination are now highlighting the purported horrors of life in Zero COVID China. The apparent 180-degree change is justified by the idea that SARS-CoV-2 today is far less dangerous than it was in 2019. This is untrue according to Science: “Study suggests SARS-CoV-2 Omicron is as deadly as past variants” (May 2022). Sometimes the about-face is justified because vaccines are so effective, but “Covid Still Kills, but the Demographics of Its Victims Are Shifting” (KHN) shows that the reduction in death risk was at most 4X in the summer of 2022 and was trending down. (Remember that the vaccinated may have less to begin with because they’re more likely to be members of the laptop class. The reduction from the vaccine itself might be a factor of 2 at this point.) Why might the Righteous believe that COVID-19 is less dangerous than it was a few years ago? Because a human cannot be killed twice. Those who were most vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 are already dead. Yersinia pestis did not become less dangerous in 1354, but most people who could be killed by it had died in 1346-1353.

From state-sponsored NPR: “China’s lockdown protests and rising COVID leave Xi Jinping with ‘2 bad options'”.

My big question is why Gavin Newsom did not pursue Zero COVID in California. Gifted with the meekest and most compliant group of humans in the history of our planet, he failed to use the obvious tools of quarantine (which include welding torches for apartment houses!) to shut down COVID for at least a few years, as the Chinese have done. Californians pat themselves on the back for having an age-adjusted death rate of 270 per 100,000 compared to 292 in give-the-finger-to-the-virus Florida (full stats; remember that California is one of the youngest states due to the miracle of immigration and Florida has one of the highest percentages of elderly and therefore vulnerable). But given their zeal for fighting COVID, isn’t the correct comparison for California the 0.3 deaths per 100,000 in China?

Here’s an NPR article noting that lockdown can also kill, e.g., because humans cannot access non-COVID medical care:

This is the same enterprise that cheered when U.S. states made it illegal for physicians to continue providing non-emergency care! Even worse, by highlighting “Young Chinese”, they’re implying that people of different ages face different risk levels from SARS-CoV-2 infection and, therefore, a young person might want to reject experimental medicines that have received emergency use authorizations.

Nearly 100,000 Californians have died with a COVID-19 tag. Gavin Newsom could have saved all but 100 of these folks if he’d used Chinese techniques to achieve a Chinese COVID death rate. Lockdown governors such as Newsom have explicitly marked the cost of lockdowns, e.g., children denied an education, adults denied the opportunity to work or socialize, at $0. So there would have no cost to Californians from a Zero COVID program. Hawaii showed that it is not illegal for a U.S. state to restrict people coming in from the rest of the nation. Why didn’t Newsom do at least what Hawaii did and, preferably (under his expressed value system), what China did?

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Long COVID and California Worker’s Compensation

by philg

I was chatting with a guy who works at a Los Angeles-based manufacturer about the challenge of building back up to full production. “One issue is that if you got COVID at any time during the past two and a half years,” he said, “California assumes that you got it at work. Then if you say that you have Long COVID you will get years of Worker’s Compensation payments. Especially older workers were prone to making Long COVID Worker’s Comp claims. and, if you add up their Social Security, Worker’s Comp, and 401k, it wouldn’t make any sense for them to return to the factory.”

Fact check: this law firm says “with COVID-19, there is a rebuttable presumption of a workplace connection. An employer has the burden of proving that a claimant was not exposed to COVID-19 in the relation to their employment.”

Let’s look at the California labor force participation rate. California has one of the nation’s youngest populations (one reason the COVID-tagged death rate was lower than in some other states) and we’d therefore expect the labor force participation rate to be higher than the U.S. average. Yet it isn’t:

We see participation rising as women entered the labor market (70s and 80s) and then falling as women were offered the opportunity to earn cash via divorce litigation or simply having sex with a married dentist (state child support formulas guaranteeing profits were introduced around 1990; history and also “Divorce laws and the economic behavior of married couples” (Voena 2016)). Then we see the downward trend from all of the enhancements to the welfare state that started in 2009 (see Book Review: The Redistribution Recession for how Americans could find themselves in a higher-than-100-percent tax bracket as a consequence of means-tested programs, including mortgage relief). And right now we are bumping along at 62 percent in one of the best labor markets for workers in history. That’s the same as the national rate despite California being 1.5 years younger (median) than the U.S. overall.

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Ice Cube evaluates the Science

by philg

Back in the 20th century, a Ph.D. physicist in our lab at MIT introduced all of us to his favorite musical artists. Ice Cube was high on the list, especially for Death Certificate.

We can give thanks today for Ice Cube’s thoughtful analysis of the Covid vaccine Science. From the New York Post:

Last year, it was reported that Cube left the cast of Sony’s ”Oh Hell No“ after refusing the COVID-19 vaccine shot.

“I turned down a movie because I didn’t want to get the motherf–king jab,” Cube said on the podcast. “I turned down $9 million. I didn’t want get the jab. F–k that jab. F–k y’all for trying to make me get it. I don’t know how Hollywood feels about me right now.”

“Those motherf—ers didn’t give it to me because I wouldn’t get the shot. I didn’t turn it down. They just wouldn’t give it to me,” his expletive-filled rant continued. “The covid shot, the jab … I didn’t need it. I didn’t catch that shit at all. Nothing. F–k them. I didn’t need that s–t.”

Happy Thanksgiving Day to everyone! I trust and hope that all of you are following this MSNBC physician’s advice to refrain from gathering and instead sit alone watching Netflix (especially House of Cards featuring Kevin Spacey?):

Related:

  • Rammstein, another physics favorite (but they’re German so they can’t be included in our celebration of stealing a continent from the Native Americans)
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SARS-CoV-2 mindshare in New York

by philg

On our way back from Paris, we checked in at JFK and the TWA Hotel to see how COVID-19 was doing in terms of living in the heads of New Yorkers. I was quickly rewarded with the trifecta: outdoors, bearded, masked.

The Lockheed-turned bar is a lot of fun. Note the official encouragement for the drunken business travelers to break out in song during the flight (how may police agencies would be summoned if that happened today?). Also the barf bag reminder about the canine member of the household. Take a look at all of the cylinders that the flight engineer had to monitor.

The pool deck is directly across from a two-level Emirates A380 gate:

Wearing a mask is optional for workers, but quite a few still rely on the non-N95 mask rather than switching to a job that does not entail contact with the infected public:

(The $32 omelet is served without toast; Senior Management’s $20+ eggs came with toast… one piece.)

On the one hand, the folks who run the hotel want to help SARS-CoV-2 thrive by bringing people together in close physical proximity. On the other hand, they also remind visitors to “Stay Safe” by avoiding other humans. In-elevator screen:

What about on the web sites of New York institutions? COVID-19 gets mentioned directly below the menubar on the Whitney’s home page:

It’s the very first thing on the Metropolitan Museum’s home page:

If you don’t click the “x” to acknowledge, the message about masks will be present over every page that you visit.

What if you leave the city? Get your mask in the airport:

New York-based JetBlue reminds folks to “Keep a healthy distance” while deplaning. Note the Fall of Saigon-style conditions that were inevitable once the airline decided to sell 100 percent of the seats. In other words, COVID-19 is serious enough that a lot of warning should be displayed. But COVID-19 is not serious enough to refrain from cramming the airliners to the absolute maximum capacity.

That was the mid-October COVID mindshare situation in New York.

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Should we use the language of alcoholics to describe our COVID-19 vaccine status?

by philg

Alcoholics, at least in movies, like to say “I’m 5 years sober” or “I’m 8 months sober” or whatever, referring to their last drink that mean people would prohibit altogether.

We see some of the same behavior with the COVID-19 “shots”. Some people can’t stay away from CVS and get one needle stick after another while others are able to abstain for months or years and some brave peer-pressure-resistant souls are teetotalers (sad victims of the conspiracy theory that the immune system is capable of doing the job that it evolved to do). Would it be useful to adopt the language of alcoholics? Rochelle Walensky, our CDC Director, for example, when talking about her COVID-19 infection and then her rebound-after-Paxlovid COVID-19 illness could have said “I’m one month sober” (her mouse-tested bivalent COVID-19 “vaccine” shot was a month earlier).

Someone who was gulled into the first two could say “I’m 18 months sober”. A person who got the first booster, but refused to Follow the Science for #4 and #5 could say “I’m one year sober”.

Let’s look at a more recent example. Here’s the Biden Administration’s top FDA official on September 9 getting the shot that worked well for the mice (or at least didn’t kill any of them?):

Dr. Califf is “two months sober” today, which also happens to be the day that SARS-CoV-2 is hosting a regional event within Dr. Califf’s body. “FDA Commissioner Tests Positive for COVID-19; Experiencing Mild Symptoms” (fda.gov):

Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend while traveling on official agency business. He is up to date on vaccines against COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms.

Will the use of the phrase “mild symptoms” become an easy way to recognize the Followers of Science?

Readers: I like to follow Science so of course I’ve had 5 shots. That doesn’t mean I’m going to walk to CVS for the 6th, though. I can quit any time that I want.

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My new favorite Covidian

by philg

Here’s the kind of policy advisor that we’re missing in Florida:

This is an “Epidemiologist and federal disaster medicine team member” in Proudly Scientifically Governed Minneapolis (lockdowns and school closures followed by the martyrdom of George Floyd; pre-coronapanic the city’s police perpetrated the Killing of Justine Damond).

My big question after reading “If I were forced to be infected by either HIV or COVID, I would choose HIV without hesitation”: Why can’t he collect all three (including monkeypox)? Why is he forced to choose?

Readers: Where could Olesen go right now and get HIV, COVID, and monkeypox all in one evening? I’m thinking that it would have to be in New York City.

(My source for this tweet from the epidemiologist/Scientist is, of course, one of my medical professor friends. On seeing Fauci on TV in March 2020, and nothing that nobody on the planet could possibly have the knowledge that Fauci was claiming to possess, he predicted, “this guy is doing to do more damage to the public perception of science and medicine than anyone in the history of humanity.”)

In case the fired Twitter employees take this tweet with them, a screen shot:

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Joe Biden headlines a COVID Superspreader event in Florida

by philg

Joe Biden should be speaking soon at an indoor COVID Superspreader event that the Followers of Science have organized here in South Florida. From Florida Memorial University:

Note, especially, “this event is expected to reach attendance capacity.” In other words, by design there will be a packed gym of people spreading aerosol SARS-CoV-2 to each other.

What’s especially confusing about this is that there are so many outdoor venues in which as many or more people could be accommodated. It will be partly cloudy with temps in the low 80s this evening in Miami Gardens.

Remember that the headline speaker is the one whose order that Americans wear masks in airports would still be in effect if it had not been found unconstitutional. Mere months after the judge’s order he is encouraging people to crowd together with no masks?

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