Category: Coronaplague

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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Why isn’t Ron DeSantis dead?

by philg

It’s been a month since Team DeSantis began the Hurricane Ian rebuilding effort (“build back quickly” will not be the motto?). The hated tyrant, from a Democrat’s point of view, spent the week prior to the hurricane organizing an army of about 100,000 utility workers, soldiers, state workers (to clear roads and inspect bridges), etc. During all of this time Ron DeSantis was in close contact with other humans, many of whom were no doubt infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Here’s Ron with a taxpayer:

Neither of them is Following the Science with an N95 mask. There has been plenty of COVID-19 transmission outdoors and yet… no masks (and where is the hand sanitizer?):

Three days before the hurricane hit, “‘Make preparations now’: DeSantis urges vigilance as Ian poised to strike as major hurricane” (Tallahassee Democrat):

With a vast swath of Florida’s Gulf Coast facing the possibility of a direct strike from a major hurricane in the coming days, Gov. Ron DeSantis urged residents to finish making preparations and not focus too much on where the storm’s center currently is predicted to track, noting there still is significant uncertainty about its path.

“It’s important to point out to folks that the path of this is still uncertain,” DeSantis said Sunday during a press conference at the state Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee. “The impacts will be broad throughout the state of Florida. Don’t get too wedded to those cones where they” show the projected landfall location.

This turned out to be great advice, but what’s relevant for this post is that we see Ron DeSantis in a room full of people with… no masks (and no vaccine requirement either, since that would be illegal in Florida).

There is no evidence that the new bivalent vaccines protect against the currently circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2. In any case, it seems doubtful that Governor DeSantis would have had time to stop at CVS and then take two days off for the vaccine side effects. There is plenty of evidence that the old vaccines, which he might have gotten, do not protect against the currently circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2. Death with a COVID-19 tag is common among both the vaccinated, the vaccinated and boosted, and the vaccinated and boosted and boosted (and boosted?).

Unless we’ve been fed lies regarding SARS-CoV-2, how is it possible that Ron DeSantis has survived his contact with so many people in such a short time period? At a minimum, shouldn’t he be in bed with Long COVID?

Related:

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Why are advertisers allowed to claim that the latest COVID-19 shots are more effective?

by philg

CVS says “The bivalent vaccine provides added protection against COVID-19 and the Omicron variant”:

Let’s ignore the fact that the customer depicted got COVID a month later. My question is how CVS is allowed to make the claim regarding “added protection” for this emergency use authorized injection. Ordinarily, a company cannot make claims for a medicine without a fair amount of data. But it is way too soon to know if these new shots will reduce hospitalization and/or deaths compared the rate among those who got their 4th or 5th shot with the 2020 version. The tests that have been done look at antibodies in the blood and the effect on someone who is exposed to SARS-CoV-2 is unknown. Shouldn’t CVS be limited to saying “We hope that it will work better…”?

“New Covid Boosters Aren’t Better Than Old Ones, Study Finds” (Bloomberg, October 25):

Bivalent booster shots from Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. failed to raise levels of protective proteins called neutralizing antibodies against the dominant omicron strains any more than four doses of the original Covid vaccine, according to an early independent study on a small group of people.

Researchers at Columbia University and the University of Michigan compared levels of neutralizing antibodies in blood samples from 21 people who got a fourth shot of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech SE bivalent boosters against antibody levels in 19 people who got four shots of the original vaccines.

The results don’t mean that getting a bivalent shot has no benefit, and it will need to be confirmed in much larger studies.

The results also contrast sharply with an Oct. 13 press release from Pfizer and BioNTech touting “positive early data” from a clinical trial suggesting that its bivalent vaccine “is anticipated to provide better protection.” The statement was based on data collected from subjects in the first seven days after immunization, and the company has not yet released details.

I like the highlight text! Our assumption should always be that whatever is new and shiny in pharma will benefit us! (See also Bad Pharma.)

Screen shot in case the above tweet is memory-holed:

Who here wants to brag about getting his/her/zir/their bivalent booster?

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Why don’t Facebook profile picture frames offer “I got my 5th COVID-19 vaccine shot”?

by philg

Here’s a Facebook profile photo of a person in the San Francisco Bay Area software industry (UC Berkeley grad and former academic!) whom Facebook thinks would want to be friends with me:

Of course, it is good that he/she/ze/they got his/her/zir/their first COVID-19 vaccine shot. That’s something we can bond over. But if the purpose of these profile photos is to encourage people to comply with CDC instructions, no matter how absurd or in conflict with what the Science-following European technocrats have decided (e.g., no vaccines or boosters if you’re under 50 in Denmark), shouldn’t there be a frame for those who’ve gotten what is, I think, their 5th shot?

What’s in this person’s feed? Rage against “Judge Qannon” who is being too friendly to Donald Trump. A note about a female identifying Italian Prime Minister: “Sudden realization: Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy in 1922.” More about the aftermath of Joe Biden’s raid on Donald Trump’s house. Rage against the illegitimate Supreme Court: “For the record, four of the current court Justices (including the Chief) were nominated by Presidents who lost the popular vote. At least three were confirmed by a Senate majority that represented a minority of the US population. And it was THAT Court that decided that, hey, we don’t like a half-century of American jurisprudence.” Praise for the Inflation Reduction Act (timely, considering that my friends in Berkeley say they’re paying $7 per gallon for gasoline). More rage against Trump. Something about Matt Gaetz going to prison for having sex with “children” (age of consent in Science-following Maskachusetts is 16; were there cash-oriented ladies younger than 16 hanging around Matt Gaetz and getting paid to work?). Rage against the Supreme Court for allowing a state to impose a 15-week limit on abortion care for pregnant people. Excitement that a person identifying as a “woman” has an important job in the U.S. Navy. (answering the question Are women the new children?) COVID-19 statistics and how the vaccinated are impervious to death via SARS-CoV-2. Rage against “Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle for her unilateral decision to overturn the mask mandate.” (It is not always glorious when those who identify as female hold important jobs.)

How about a frame that says “I got my 5th booster and I’m as healthy as the Pfizer CEO“?

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