He may be a bad thinker but he sure does know how to make fun of the Cloud People and their nonsense. It certainly gave me a much-needed chuckle.
Tag: coronavirus
Really Bad News for The Democrats and Drudge
Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and for the doom and gloomers that has happened. We just passed global COVID-19 peak death.
They can fake it for a while by conflating any death with COVID-19 deaths but even that will get hard to believe even for the people locked in blue states. When New Yorkers start seeing Floridians strolling around on beaches it’s gonna get to be a bit thick. From now on they’re just going to have to attack the President on the economy and he knows how to turn that to his advantage as he works to re-open and revitalize American industry. He’ll blame Nancy Pelosi for not approving unemployment and small business relief and she’ll fold like a cheap suit.
But what will Drudge do? All I can think of is some sort of cross over articles where sexbots infected with COVID-19 disguised as ventilators attack hospital workers like some sort of sleazy direct-to-video terminator plot line. Well Matt Drudge’s got to eat somehow.
33% of Those Tested in Chelsea MA Had COVID-19 Antibodies in Their Blood
Mass General Hospital performed random COVID-19 antibody testing in a suburban neighborhood of Boston (Chelsea, MA) and found that 1/3 of those tested were positive. Performing my patented back of the envelope calculations on statistics available from Massachusetts I find the following:
Massachusetts has a population of about seven million people. 1,404 Massachusetts residents have died from COVID-19 infection. Assuming that 33.3% of the state has been infected by the virus then the death rate from COVID-19 in Massachusetts is 0.06%. And that actually is in the range of deaths you’d expect from the normal flu.
Alright, let’s check the assumptions. Is Chelsea representative of Massachusetts as a whole? Probably not. It’s more densely populated than most parts of the state. So let’s do the calc again for Chelsea:
Chelsea has a population of about 40,000. people. 39 Chelsea residents have died from COVID-19 infection. Assuming that 33.3% of Chelsea has been infected by the virus then the death rate from COVID-19 in Chelsea is 0.29%. Now that is higher than the death rate for the normal flu, let’s say five times higher. But that’s a lot less scary than the extinction event they’ve making this thing out to be.
So, here is where we are. For most people who will “catch” the COVID-19 virus they will never know they had it. They’ll think their allergies or a cold gave them some symptoms for a day or two. For something like three people out of a thousand, mostly the elderly or the chronically ill, this virus will be a life or death struggle. If society wants to spare those people from risk they’ll need to be isolated. For everyone else we need to go on with our lives and get back to work so our taxes can pay for taking care of the vulnerable.
Opening Up America
I watched the press conference that previewed the President’s program to restart America. I must say it sounds a lot like my own take on how it should be done. The President allowed his three doctors to walk us through the medical criteria that would be used to determine when a particular state had reached the health thresholds needed to progress to the first, second and third stages of the process. One useful visual aid were three graphics that showed the United States over the last couple of months of the crisis with the states colored by the severity of the pandemic in each state. What was apparent was that most of the country is only lightly affected by the COVID-19 disease. And that in certain areas like the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana the caseloads and the infection rates are so low that it will be safe to proceed directly to the first stage of the reopening process. And the doctors used all the comforting scientific jargon about gating the progress and sentinel surveillance site testing to avoid a resurgence caused by asymptomatic cases mixed in with the unaffected.
And it was good to hear the President reassure the people in the hardest hit areas like New York and New Jersey that their states will be allowed to maintain the heightened shutdown they currently need but at the same time allow people in relatively unaffected areas to follow safe but much less restrictive protocols that will allow them to go back to work and normalize their lives again. The President stressed that the elderly and the infirm will be the focus of quarantine efforts going forward because these are the populations where ninety percent of the deaths are occurring.
And finally, I heard the President reiterating the need to provide relief to the small businesses and their employees who are the primary victims of the business shutdown that we currently have. He stressed that the end game is to get back to a point where a restaurant or a sports stadium will be able to serve its clientele as it was designed to, not half full or almost empty. Infrastructure projects were also mentioned and that is to the good too because those types of projects have a follow-on effect for the rest of the economy in the areas where they are located.
So, from all ways of looking at this announcement, it was a winning performance. It was scientific, authoritative and quantitative. It was practical, flexible and not some kind of one size fits all approach. It provided very good news for a large area of the country that is either moderately or minimally impacted by the virus, that things will be getting back to normal very soon. But it deprived the gloom and doomers in the northeast from accusing the President of ordering them into danger. That means the Governors in those areas will be responsible for making the difficult decision of when they will start transitioning their states back to much needed productivity. And they probably wish they could use the President as a scapegoat because the economies in those areas are being decimated and waiting for the crisis to be completely over before loosening the quarantine is probably impossible. So, the resurgences that are bound to occur during the loosening of quarantine are bound to be highlighted by the media. Well, let them work that out for themselves.
A very good press conference all in all and a good day for the country in its journey back to normalcy.
An Eventful Week in a Momentous Year
President Trump is a bold fellow. A while ago he was saying he wanted the lockdown to end on Easter. And predictably the media went ballistic. They weren’t going to allow the country to get better if they could help it. But President Trump isn’t easily discouraged so right after Easter he began hinting that things are going to change. And now we know that he’s going to start a rolling wave of openings. As he explained at his press conference yesterday the loosening of restrictions will begin first in the states that have not been overwhelmed by hospital cases. A strategy will be worked out with the Governors that allows for flexibility of conditions and timing.
And the President took time this week to hit back at some of the misinformation that the Democrats and the Media have been spreading at his expense. First off, he put to rest the alarmism that many had spread about many tens of thousands of additional ventilators that would be needed during the pandemic peak. He provided facts that showed that the actual usage of ventilators even in the hardest hit areas like New York City was at least a factor of ten lower than the estimates claimed by some alarmists like Mayor DeBlasio. President Trump pointed this out but also stated that the stockpile of ventilators now available would be useful as a strategic reserve.
Next, he reminded the audience that instead of the alarmist predictions of hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths from the virus the reality would be an order of magnitude lower at least.
And the President described upcoming meetings with industry, union and political leaders to address the financial damage that has already been done to workers and small businesses by the shutdowns. And he assured us that getting the economy going again and providing short term relief to the affected was one of his highest priorities. In connection with this he hinted that Congress will need to take additional action to make funds available to save many small businesses and families from bankruptcy.
And one of the more amusing meetings was a White House press conference where the President ran a video clip that featured the comments from a couple of months ago where medical experts for the networks condemned President Trump for stopping flights from China because the COVID-19 outbreak wouldn’t be important enough to warrant such a racist and xenophobic action. Now they constantly harp on how late he waited to take action on the virus. It’s as if they suffer from selective amnesia rather than shameless hypocrisy. And the clip finished off with various governors including partisan democrats like Andrew Cuomo thanking President Trump profusely for the assistance he has provided to the states.
All of this is just the public relations aspect of what is going on. President Trump is preparing for the most important action of his life. He needs to coordinate the action of fifty different Governors to make decisions that will involve life and death for their citizens. And all this while the Democrats and the Media will try to make any setback, any tragedy into a headline to punish the President and throw the election to that demented groper Biden. It takes a bold fellow to undertake this even if the media and the institutions were in his pocket. To do it with every power center in the world dead set against him is not boldness it’s fearless audacity. Bravo sir, bravo.
And Here’s a Nice Short Essay from Codevilla Calling Out the Health-Nazis
Watching the doctors tell us how and when we can resume our lives is more than a little galling. Trump will have to tread a fine line not to be accused of genocide by the medical elites. But I think he’s up to it. Nice overview by Codevilla. Just the right amount of outrage.
Matthew Peterson Over at the American Mind Has a Pretty Good Article About Leadership
It’s a little bit long for my taste but he hammers home the point that practical decision making about going forward in the present dilemma requires someone who can weigh the risks and steer a middle course between fear and recklessness. Bottom line something has to be done and it will take leadership and common sense to move forward.
Some Progress on the Lockdown
Now you folks may not know this but I am essential. Maybe not in respect to my blogging activities (although individuals of truly discerning taste could convince me otherwise if they tried) but relative to my other qualifications. I work in an essential industry that provides critical stuff. For the last three weeks or so I’ve only gone into work one day. But somehow, working from home I’ve been able to critically impact the essence of something or other. Or so I’m told.
But now word has come down that in a very few weeks I’ll be heading back to the salt mines. Not full time. We’ll be staggering our days at the plant on an every-other day basis (three days one week, two days the next week) which will allow us to stagger our seating arrangement and maintain enough space to prevent us from bumping into each other in the aisles. Also, we’ll be masked and bathed in hand sanitizer. It sounds wonderful until we bump into someone that’s not wearing a mask. People at this point shouldn’t be getting away with not wearing a mask, as there are lots of options to choose from and it benefits everyone’s safety.
Anyway, I take this as a sign that reality is starting to temper the paranoid risk aversion that has become like a mystery cult in most corporations. Apparently, productivity has plummeted to such an extent that corporate survival has finally overcome the fear of being sued for COVID-19 deaths in the workplace.
This is the first sign that normalcy is returning. Big corporations are the first to hear from the bureaucracy when things are about to happen. I take this to mean that we’ll start hearing about changes at the end of April. And it makes sense. Places like New York City will be the last places to end the quarantine. The density of the population and the high infection rates ensures that hospital cases will continue for months to come. But outside of the Northeast and the West Coast we can expect gradual easing on the quarantine requirements in May.
I fully expect nursing homes and assisted living facilities will maintain strict isolation to prevent the kind of deaths that occurred in Washington State at the nursing homes that were affected. And any other guidelines that the doctors can provide for truly at-risk people would be useful. But if you’re thirty-five years old and don’t have a chronic heart or lung condition or weigh three hundred pounds why do they have you sitting at home without a pay check to feed your family?
You can depend on the New York Times and CNN to declare President Trump a war criminal for letting us out of lockdown before the complete collapse of the economy and thereby threatening their election narrative. But he’s smart enough to do what needs doing. I expect he’ll run on restoring the economy to high performance and locking down the borders. And included in the border lockdown will be shutting down the air routes to China. It’s the smart thing to do and it will sell very well at election time. It will reinforce Biden’s crony links to China and resonate with anyone who has suffered because of the COVID-19 shutdowns.
So, hang in there my fellow prisoners. The jail break is coming soon so hurry up sharpening that shiv.
Finally Some Useful Data on COVID-19
An article in the Spectator gives us quantitative information on the infection and mortality rates for this virus. Anti-body testing in a hard hit town in Germany has some useful results:
“A team at the University of Bonn has tested a randomized sample of 1,000 residents of the town of Gangelt in the north-west of the country, one of the epicenters of the outbreak in Germany. The study found that two percent of the population currently had the virus and that 14 percent were carrying antibodies suggesting that they had already been infected — whether or not they experienced any symptoms. Eliminating an overlap between the two groups, the team concluded that 15 percent of the town have been infected with the virus.”
“Data from coronavirus deaths in Gangelt suggests an infection mortality rate of 0.37 percent, significantly below the 0.9 percent which Imperial College has estimated, or the 0.66 percent found in a revised study last week.”
Applying my patented back of the envelope calculation method that equals an expected death total for the United States of 183,000 people. If a normal flu death total for the United States is between thirty and fifty thousand lives a year then this thing is about five times deadlier than the flu.
But here’s the rub, eighty percent (80%) of those deaths are people over seventy years of age. By only isolating the retired population and the seriously ill and letting everyone else go back to work, we can reduce the number of deaths to a handful and still let the country get back to normal.
Let’s hope cooler heads prevail and the Health-Nazis don’t sentence us and our way of life to oblivion.
Holidays Interrupted
The recent lockdown has done a lot for bringing parents and children closer together. Lots of moms are reconnecting with their kids as daycare and schools have shut down. And that’s great. Maybe a few families will reconsider the value of a two-income lifestyle.
But for the extended family, things are quite a bit different. In my family Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas are gathering times when three and even four generations gather for a big meal and a long weekend or holiday to catch up with each other and reconnect with parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, nieces, grandchildren and grandparents. Everybody plays his role and we perform all the rituals we’ve come to expect. We repeat all the old stories but with new faces in the younger ranks and maybe an older face or two missing. We hear about who is graduating or going off to college or has a new job or is getting married. We try to keep the younger children from getting bored by playing cards or listening to their latest imaginary adventure. The older folks talk politics and world events. And everyone eats way too much and for a little while gets to feel much younger again.
Well, not this year. For the first time in several decades we can’t get together. I won’t be seeing my brothers and sister. I won’t even see my own children or their families. So, no grandkids, no babies. No fattening and delicious roast beasts or birds. Just a regular dinner, just me and Camera Girl. Very sad, very strange.
And I imagine this disruption is being replicated across the country in millions of families in every city and town. The upshot is that in addition to our jobs and our savings being thrown into disarray and possibly suffering a terrible economic recession we are also isolated and our normal relationships upended. No one wants to be the cause of someone getting terribly ill or even dying. And if you have extremely elderly parents in their late eighties or nineties it’s reasonable to say that for the sake of saving their lives, they should be kept isolated at least until we understand this disease a little better.
But now the Health-Nazis are starting to insinuate that we may have to go through this disruption again in the summer and then every year when a fresh seasonal mutant of the coronavirus is identified. Well, I’ve got news for them. Not me. I’m not in my eighties or even my seventies but even at my age there is a higher death rate than in the general population. I might catch it from a school age relation at a holiday dinner or get together. Well that’s too damn bad. I’m not going to allow this charade to go on after this first silliness is ended. Comes the Fourth of July I’m inviting everyone over for a barbecue and if that puts me in the hospital or sends me to my grave then at least I’ll have had some excellent steak and way too much pie and ice cream. And I’ll get a chance to see my children and their spouses and my grandsons and granddaughter swimming in the pool and eating hamburgers and watermelon on a hot summer evening.
Now understand, if this thing were a threat to the young then I would understand why caution would be needed. But it isn’t. It’s a disease of the old and the chronically ill. For those individuals, death is a real consideration without the COVID-19 pandemic. If I were someone who wanted to maximize my odds of living to be a hundred and twenty then I would probably live in a bubble and avoid all contact with the young and active. And for people of that mindset, isolation would be their own choice. But I’m not and I won’t. The authorities are going to have to come up with some better way to minimize the effects of this thing. My suggestion is to end air traffic to China. Apparently, that country has a never-ending supply of virulent respiratory diseases. We can’t afford to let hundreds of thousands of infected people shuttle between China and the West every Chinese New Year just because we don’t want to hurt their feelings.
So that’s my thought. I’ll get through this present phase without the consolation of enjoying the company of my extended family. We’ll do a video get together and share some time together as we eat our sad meals apart. But if they think I’m going to keep doing this in the future they are dead wrong.