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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
75 and older: 1.3%
65-74: 0.52%
45-64: 0.16%
18-44: 0.017%
Under 18: 0.0%
Question #1: Why in the hell are schools and colleges closed?
Dirty Consciences, Pathetic Empty Lives
Hollywood famous people and the rich elite, who are the biggest polluters , the most flamboyant consumers of man-made goods, and contribute the most to the destruction of the planet's resources, are seeking cheap absolution by calling for "radical change in the world rather than "a return to normal" after the coronavirus lockdowns."
First off, they were never normal, and they would be whining and screaming like toddlers if they had to "radically change" and live like the rest of us. This is their anguished cry from a hollow soul that gobbled up everything and ended up with nothing of substance. These and others who scold us preach sacrifice, because in their own hearts, they know they have sacrificed and contributed very little. They gained fame and fortune, but it hasn't filled their God hole, so they mount their psychological projection podium and preach to those of us who don't need to hear it. Those of us living in the real world lead rich full lives working hard and sacrificing for ourselves and our families. Our pleasures are simple. They have no idea.
The Real Contagion
The polling continues to reflect the media narrative, and its easy to bash the president while applauding “the governors” and Dr Fauci. What specific actions has Fauci taken that were especially brilliant, saved lives or were heroically unique? Do people realize a blundering Governor Cuomo sent infected senior citizens into nursing homes and it ended up infecting and killing residents there?
“The opposition expressed by sizable majorities of Americans reflects other cautions and concerns revealed in the survey, including continuing fears among most people that they could become infected by the coronavirus, as well as a belief that the worst of the medical crisis is not yet over.”
Yes, you will become infected, and yes, the crisis will continue, if by that you mean people will continue to die. If you are under 65, you have little to worry about (those numbers at the beginning are based on known cases, not the entire population), and if you are a teenager, you have nothing to worry about.
Many Americans have been making trips to grocery stores and 56 percent say they are comfortable doing so. But 67 percent say they would be uncomfortable shopping at a retail clothing store, and 78 percent would be uncomfortable eating at a sit-down restaurant.
Illogical. What makes a clothing store more dangerous than the grocery store?
Gun stores are next, with 70 percent saying they should not be reopened, followed by barbershops and hair salons (69 percent opposed) and retail shops such as clothing stores (66 percent opposed) and golf courses (59 percent opposed).
More illogic. Golf courses??? How do four people socially distancing in an open field pose a threat to themselves or the public?
What makes a gun store, clothing store or restaurant more unsafe than a grocery store? You encounter the most touch surfaces and most people in a grocery store.
Media-Fomented Stupidity
What people are expressing, I think, is not a level of danger, but their risk calculation: They would risk going to the grocery store because they need food, but they would not risk going to a movie theater, and if stated like that, it is a logical calculation, but as usual, the Infotainment Media Complex makes a mushy hash of it.
Most disturbing is the mob rule in all of this: 70% of people are fearful, so they demand barber shops remain shuttered. If you’re fearful of a barber shop, stay away.
I'm guessing you know the answer to question #1 (children and young people can infect the elderly) so my question is, what is your question's rhetorical purpose?
ReplyDelete"if you are a teenager, you have nothing to worry about"
Not much, but not nothing. The anecdata are replete with tales of hospitalized young people.
"What people are expressing, I think, is not a level of danger, but their risk calculation"
I'm glad you said that. It's certainly more charitable to read it this way than it is to accuse them of spouting "illogic". I am, myself, trying to cultivate charity as a habit.
You can infect someone, so cower in your home? This isn't the 1300's black plague. We understand hygiene and how germs are spread and we can take precautions while getting on with working and living.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the actions and opinions are illogical, and it is fanned by an execrable Infotainment Media Complex.
I slogged through the media propaganda sludge and concluded "risk calculation," you agreed with me, so why the hell can't the educated morons who foist this crap on us say it?
People washed their hands in the middle ages and in 1919 too.
DeleteDidn't read the article, but it looks like they're survey results. Who knows what process the respondents went through?!
Actually, jez, people did not wash their hands in the middle ages, and hand washing by most citizenry in 1919 was by no means common.
DeleteHand washing today is far from universal, otherwise we would not have to have sign in every public restroom, even before the pandemic, telling the public to do it.
Delete@Jayhawk: I think the middle ages' reputation for filth is largely undeserved. But I can't tell whether you agree or not with SF that people today are wise enough and clean enough to contain the virus as we begin to return to normal levels of interaction -- what do you think?
DeleteA 0.017% of dying if you contract it, are damn good odds. I'd like to see that compared to other phenomena. Also, note that is 17 - 44 year olds. I bet those minuscule deaths skew towards the higher ages in that capacious cohort.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's the death rate per case, rather it's death rate per person. Expect the death rate to vary with the infection rate.
DeleteNo, jez, it means 1.7 people out of every 10,000 will die, and it does not vary with the infection rate. The infection rate varies with the testing rate, because it is the number of infections DETECTED, not the number which occur. The death rate is, obviously, the number which OCCUR. Undetected deaths happen, but in this social environment they are very rare.
DeleteIt's hard to measure, but there *is* a true infection rate, which is what I'm saying the death rate varies with.
DeleteJez: " rather it's death rate per person."
DeleteI think it's 1:1. One death per person. :)
Sure, but we don't all have to die in the same year!
DeleteThe engine of the US economy (and I suspect this may be true in the UK as well) is the small business owner. Now to shut down all these businesses, to preclude anyone working in the small business environment, is the epitome of malfeasance. I have the utmost respect for the lady in Dallas who kept her business open in violation of a court order so that her employees could remain on the active payroll. Despite the hateful rhetoric directed toward her by the leftist media, she reorganized her salon so that everyone has two-meters of space, she used hospital grade disinfectants to clean her store, she mandated everyone wear masks, and she insisted that everyone wash their hands upon entering and leaving her place of business. This woman was no follower; she was a leader.
ReplyDeleteI do understand discretion at a time when government and the press misled everyone into believing that C-19 was a pandemic of black plague proportions, but as we began to realize that none of the end of times predictions came to fruition, as people correctly realized that government and media engaged in fearmongering, it was time to push back against the chicken little’s and get on with their lives. I went to a barber yesterday. The place was spotless clean; every employee wore a mask, gloves, and every chair appropriately spaced.
But if we are intent on handing down indictments, then such must name the governors whose inept decisions to force recovering C-19 patients into elder-care facilities, the result of which was a mortality rate of up to 70% among the elder populations within those facilities. I am speaking now of Gov. Cuomo of NY, Gov. Wolf of PA, and Gov. Murphy of NJ. There are others, as well ... horrible, stupid men who deserve whatever anger and retribution befalls them.
"But if we are intent on handing down indictments,".
DeleteIs indictments a euphemism for public floggings?
The “international community,” whatever that is, has developed a definition of terrorism as being, "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes.”
ReplyDeleteWhile the acts committed by the media are not in themselves criminal, it seems to me that any act “intended to promote terror” should be defined as criminal, and there is no question that reporting by the media for some time has been “calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public” over a number of issues.
Consider promoting Kawasaki Syndrome, an autoimmune reaction in children which has been known for several decades and is diagnosed 2000-4000 times per year in the US, as a “rare but deadly Covid-19 related illness in children which can cause death.”
Kawasaki syndrome, if caught in early stage, is easily treated and has a prognosis of rapid recovery and no long term ill effects. When not caught early it becomes “multisystem inflammatory syndrome,” presumably caused by the Coronavirus exposure as much as four months earlier. It has caused 3 deaths nationwide and is therefor cause for major alarm, even panic.
Consider all networks promoting the testimony of an administrator fired by the CDC who is preaching a hysterical message forecasting the “darkest winter in modern history,” as if the words of an unhappy man, clearly frightened to the point of mental unbalance, should be used to guide the course of a nation of 330 million people.
The media, of course, says that he is a “courageous whistleblower” who was fired for disagreeing with a Covid-19 treatment protocol that “Trump promoted.” The weaknesses of their claim are that Trump did not actually promote the treatment in question, and that hundreds of others in the administration (Fauchi, anyone?) took a similar stand and did not get fired for it.
The media is supporting Fauchi, of course, in his claim that contracting the Coronavirus disease and recovering from it may not confer immunity, as if a person could recover from a viral illness without developing immunity. How would one do that? If you do not develop immunity, you remain sick. Recovery is caused by the development of immunity.
The list is almost endless of false narratives which the media is promoting in order to keep the public in a state of such abject terror that they will accept whatever methods government uses to destroy the free and open society which was once America.
from https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/14/huge-surge-children-kawasaki-like-disease-italys-coronavirus-epicentre-12701288/
Delete"Over the past five years only 19 children were admitted to hospital in Italy’s Bergamo province with symptoms resembling Kawasaki disease. But between February 18 and April 20 there were at least 10 cases, suggesting a 30-fold increase."
I can't speak for the tenor of American news, but I think it was worth doing a story on this. I hadn't heard of the syndome before, and as a parent I'm glad to have had my attention drawn to it.
From the Merck online medical library: "Without therapy, mortality may approach 1%, usually occurring within 6 wk of onset." How do those odds grab you?
"If you do not develop immunity, you remain sick. Recovery is caused by the development of immunity."
how many times have you had the common cold?
Italy's health care system is notoriously a shambles, and many children were undoubtedly treated under differing diagnoses.
DeleteThe mortality of 1% WITHOUT THERAPY seems to me like a disease that is incredibly UNWORTHY of headline news.
The common cold is caused by something called "rhinovirus," and there are several hundred of them, all of which cause what we call ""the common cold." No one gets the same cold two years running, and in fact I have not had any kind of cold in about ten years.
Similarly with flu. There are two basic flu viruses, each of which has dozens of variants. We have to develop a new vaccine each year because different ones circulate each year. No one gets the same flu from the same virus repeatedly.
Italy is a 1st world country, afaik it offers affordable, high quality care particularly in the north. What do you base your opinion on? But even if the Italians are misdiagnosing, why have they suddenly started diagnosing this particular disease so much since march?
Delete1% mortality is definitely a disease I want to be able to recognise and get treated. Less interesting if you aren't looking after children any more, but how familiar was kawasaki to you before the news coverage?
If you look into it, you'll find the immune system is far more nuanced and mysterious than you describe. What you have presented is a useful simplification, but "Reinfection of coronavirus is common, though the underlying reason is not clearly defined. It may be due to infection with closely related but different strains [51] or to a reduction in immunity over time [21]. Volunteers who are seropositive to coronavirus prior to intranasal challenge are not completely protected from symptom development [52]." (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0953620504000081)
[Corona virus in general, not cv19 in particular]
And what makes you think there's only going to be one serotype of cv19, anyway? I believe there're already 2 distinct strains at least. I know you're not impressed, but through the sequencing we can actually watch as it mutates into distinct strains.
Fearful of a disease that has 1% mortality WITHOUT TREATMENT, and essentially no risk whatever with simple, inexpensive, noninvasive treatment. You must be far too fearful to drive on Interstate highways. How do you get around?
DeleteMy discussion in immunity was with regard to a virus which you presently have, not to future variations and mutations.
If you have a virus and recover from it, you are then immune to it. Your argument that you may not be immune to future variants is irrelevant, because that is not what I claimed.
You may now have the last word, because I'm not taking this silly argument any farther.
Very well, I shall reply not to jayhawk, who isn't listening, but to anyone else who might be reading along. Simplified pop culture models of biological systems have value, but it is also important to keep some sense of those models' limitations and how complicated the actual systems really are.
DeleteJayhawk's argument, even in its present weakened form (original claim that Fauchi is an idiot or a fraud for suggesting that recovery from cv19 does not confer full immunity, was much stronger), is still contradicted by science. This is the point that is made in the review paper I quoted and linked: immunity even to the same strain of a Coronavirus is often incomplete, for reasons not understood. Read how volunteers were reinfected with the same strain of a coronavirus in an experimental setting.
Jayhawk is insisting that the immune system conform to his simplistic model. Unfortunately many of the complexities that his model glosses over are relevant to this public health emergency, and Fauchi understands this much better than he or I. I don't think he or anyone should be above criticism, but I don't think this is a serious one.
To be clear, I remain hopeful that recovery from CV19 does confer a useful degree of immunity, and it is a reasonable hypothesis that it will. But, it might not. It is not impossible that it won't.
DeleteMuch of the terror boils down to the visuals be presented. The thought of dying alone with the last sight one has on this earth is of people from outer space looking down on you has a chilling effect.
ReplyDeleteIts a very nasty death.
I will expand that slightly. Why is anything closed? In the beginning we old guys should have been given the choice to hunker down. Stores could have adjusted hours so seniors were alone for, sat an hour a day to shop. I would have been happy and the weasels in democrat states could be removed by special elections. After this little experiment, we again have proven that only half the country has a backbone.
ReplyDeleteWhy is anything closed?
DeleteTo kill the Trump economy.
To rest a remake the system.
But you knew that.
@Ed, Indeed.
Delete@ED +++
Deletethe overall recovery rate nation wide is 99.5%...
ReplyDeleteif a treatment for cancer reached a recovery rate of 99.5%, there would be celebrations and dancin in the street becau8se cancer has been cured.
but a recovery rate of only 99.5% for covid-19 is reason to con tinue the lock down and isolation of everybody except the eliets.
the pandemic is not out of control, the panic is.
Cannon, I think the difference is that cancer is rarely contagious and you seldom die within a few days, or weeks of getting it.
DeleteCancer also does not seem to be very preventable.
Covid on the other hand is 100% contagious and kills rapidly.
People are right to be concerned and to change how they live their lives out of an abundance of caution.
@dave there seems to be a lot of unwillingness to engage with the idea of contagion. so many of the analogies are based on a static level of risk.
DeleteBut the contagion, the exponential spread and the resulting dynamic risks are the defining aspects of this threat, not optional details. They cannot be overlooked.