Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[Belligerent Savant]

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BTW After seeing Jack's excess mortality figures I checked Australia's for the year.

Interesting and surprising.

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release

From Joe's link above, Re: Australia mortality rate for 2020 (compared to prior years):

[Belligerent Savant]

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A glimmer of sanity.

A judge has tentatively struck down Los Angeles County’s controversial ban on outdoor dining, calling it an abuse of emergency power and one that lacks “science, evidence or logic.”

In a Tuesday morning written ruling, L.A. County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant overturned the county’s ban on outdoor dining, which went into effect Nov. 25 following a sharp spike in coronavirus cases. The Real Deal obtained a copy of the “tentative” ruling. Chalfant has scheduled an afternoon hearing, which will confirm or change the 53-page ruling.

The outdoor dining ban has caused an uproar in the industry, and that spurred the lawsuit by the California Restaurant Association that led to the judge’s decision.

“The Restaurant Closure Order is an abuse of the department’s emergency powers, is not grounded in science, evidence, or logic, and should be adjudicated to be unenforceable as a matter of law,” Chalfant wrote.

“The department’s own data provide no support for the planned shutdown of outdoor restaurant operations,” Chalfant wrote. The judge noted that of the 204 locations identified by the county as having three or more confirmed Covid cases, fewer than ten percent are restaurants.

https://therealdeal.com/la/2020/12/08/j ... ining-ban/

[Belligerent Savant]

[conniption]

A 2 1/2 hour video well worth the time...

c-span

December 8, 2020
Medical Response to COVID-19

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard from medical professionals who advocate for alternative COVID-19 treatments and mitigation measures to those of the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and World Health Organization. Several of the doctors advocated for the use of the drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to treat patients and questioned the efficacy of masks, social distancing, and quarantining. After Ranking Member Gary Peters (D-MI) delivered his opening statement criticizing the hearing, no Democrats participated in the proceeding.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?507035-1/ ... e-covid-19

[Belligerent Savant]

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More on ivermectin, referenced above.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 4220302011

The FDA-approved drug ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro

Highlights
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Ivermectin is an inhibitor of the COVID-19 causative virus (SARS-CoV-2) in vitro.

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A single treatment able to effect ~5000-fold reduction in virus at 48 h in cell culture.

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Ivermectin is FDA-approved for parasitic infections, and therefore has a potential for repurposing.

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Ivermectin is widely available, due to its inclusion on the WHO model list of essential medicines.

Abstract

Although several clinical trials are now underway to test possible therapies, the worldwide response to the COVID-19 outbreak has been largely limited to monitoring/containment. We report here that Ivermectin, an FDA-approved anti-parasitic previously shown to have broad-spectrum anti-viral activity in vitro, is an inhibitor of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2), with a single addition to Vero-hSLAM cells 2 h post infection with SARS-CoV-2 able to effect ~5000-fold reduction in viral RNA at 48 h. Ivermectin therefore warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans.

[§ê¢rꆧ]

The CCP is pretty awful, but lockdowns and contact tracing *worked* for them...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/18/asia/wuh ... index.html




Partly, too, I think masks have been the polite thing to do when ill in Asian cultures for a long time now, none of this childish mask protesting like we have here.

IF we had done the work to contain this in the beginning, we'd be having a pool party too.

Even if we had done it half-assed, with out a narcissistic idiot-in-chief more concerned with his reelection than human life, we wouldn't be were we are now. And the worst is still to come this winter, I fear....

[dada]

The Jeff Wells tweet ignores the fact that any suicide is clearly caused by more than societal response to the virus. Obviously we aren't all killing ourselves. To reduce suicide like that, just to make it serve the latest argument on twitter, I think is ghoulish.

[Belligerent Savant]

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'Ghoulish' is an apt descriptor for the devastation leveled across populations due to excessive lockdown measures.
A tweet by a largely obscure Twitter handle hardly qualifies.

Regarding the comments by Secrets above:

If only we can pin blame on a single individual, party, or administration for our current malaise. This is simply far too short-sighted.

Multiple points of failure (or, more cynically, multiple points of intent, across a number of entities and organizations, both overt and covert) are responsible for our current circumstances.

Truly criminal how the impact of excessive lockdowns haven't been more broadly admonished.
The murmurings are getting louder, however:

“We Hadn’t Really Thought Through the Economic Impacts” ~ Melinda Gates


In a wide-ranging interview in the New York Times, Melinda Gates made the following remarkable statement: “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.” A cynic might observe that one is disinclined to think much about matters than do not affect one personally.

It’s a maddening statement, to be sure, as if “economics” is somehow a peripheral concern to the rest of human life and public health. The larger context of the interview reveals the statement to be even more confused. She is somehow under the impression that it is the pandemic and not the lockdowns that are the cause of the economic devastation that includes perhaps 30% of restaurants going under, among many other terrible effects.

She doesn’t say that outright but, like many articles in the mainstream press over this year, she very carefully crafts her words to avoid the crucial subject of lockdowns as the primary cause of economic disaster. It’s possible that she actually believes this virus is what tanked the world economy on its own but that is a completely unsustainable proposition.

Further, her comments provide a perfect illustration of the core problem all along: most of the people who have been advocating lockdowns in fact have no actual experience in managing pandemics. To many of these, Covid-19 became their new playground to try out an unprecedented experiment in social and economic management: shutting down travel, businesses, schools, churches, and issuing stay-at-home orders that smack of totalitarian impositions.

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There are plenty of specialists who have lived through pandemics in the past and managed them by maintaining essential social and economic functioning. A major case in point is Donald A. Henderson, who as head of the World Health Organization is given primary credit for the eradication of smallpox. He wrote as follows in 2006:

Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.

Melinda together with her husband Bill have been the major funding source for pro-lockdown efforts around the world, giving $500M since the pandemic began, but also funding a huge range of academic departments, labs, and media venues for many years, during which time they have both sounded the alarm in every possible interview about the coming pathogen. Their favored policy has been lockdown, as if to confuse a biological virus with a computer virus that merely needs to be blocked from hitting the hard drive.

We can look at how this disease traveled around the world and see that the countries who locked down first, they’re doing better. Many African countries saw it coming and locked it down early. Their replication rate just never got as high as many other countries. And that is a good thing.

While it is true that Africa is an odd outlier, the claim that this is due entirely to early lockdowns has no support. Those who have looked at the anomaly in Africa point to the very young population (just 3% are over 65), cross immunities with other coronaviruses as the main reason for the low death rate, and stronger overall immunities. Indeed, the demographics alone could account for nearly the whole of the mortality difference with Europe and the U.S. In addition, Melinda says here what Bill has said for years: the only solution to a virus is to suppress it and develop a vaccine – the previously untested experiment that has brought poverty, death, and despair to the entire world. Africa in particular was devastated by lockdowns.


It’s still a good thing that she is opening up to the New York Times so that we can gain better perspective on her outlook. There will be a reckoning in the coming year concerning why and how all this happened to us. There will be no chance of suppressing the reality of what has happened. Indeed the center-left press is already starting to admit what AIER has been saying since March 2020.

Consider this roundup from just the last several days:

What Has Lockdown Done to Us? By Drew Holden (New York Times):

Some researchers worry that the social isolation has inflicted damage to mental health that will outlast even the worst of the pandemic. We may not have a full accounting of the consequences for years to come….There will be significant long term consequences from school closures as well. About half of the country’s school districts held remote classes, either exclusively or partially, at the start of the year. This approach has meaningfully reduced educational quality, particularly for children of color.

These losses don’t even take into account the direct effects of the lockdowns on the economy. Small businesses have closed their doors at very high rates as the American economy sputtered in response to stay-at-home orders. One study estimates that 60 percent of the millions of jobs lost between January and April were a result of the lockdowns, not the virus itself. The economic uncertainty caused by unemployment comes with its own health risks….

These tragedies have become an ambient backdrop to everyday life: present but forgotten, real but ignored. Perhaps America has simply gotten comfortable ignoring the quiet suffering of others.

“The Problem With Underestimating How Much People Want to Be Together” by Julia Marcus (The Atlantic)

When a public-health approach isn’t producing the desired outcome, it’s time to try something different. Instead of yelling even louder about Christmas than about Thanksgiving, government officials, health professionals, and ordinary Americans alike might try this: Stop all the chastising. Remember that the public is fraying. And consider the possibility that when huge numbers of people indicate through their actions that seeing loved ones in person is nonnegotiable, they need practical ways to reduce risk that go beyond “Just say no.”


“Covid used as pretext to curtail civil rights around the world, finds report” (The Guardian)

The state of civil liberties around the world is bleak, according to a new study which found that 87% of the global population were living in nations deemed “closed”, “repressed” or “obstructed”…..A number of governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to curtail rights such as free speech, peaceful assembly and freedom of association, according to Civicus Monitor, an alliance of civil society groups which assessed 196 countries.

The parental burnout crisis has reached a tipping point by Anna North (Vox)

Lack of child care is likely a big reason more than 850,000 women dropped out of the workforce in September — more than in any other month on record except for this April, Covert reports. Overall, moms have borne a bigger share of the pandemic parenting burden than dads, with 80 percent of mothers of kids under 12 saying they are responsible for the majority of distance learning in their homes in one April survey. And single moms have been the hardest-hit of all: The share of unpartnered moms in the workforce dropped from 76.1 percent in September 2019 to 67.4 percent in September 2020, a significantly larger drop than those seen among partnered parents or single dads, according to a Pew analysis.

“Many aren’t buying public officials’ ‘stay-at-home’ message. Experts say there’s a better way” (Los Angeles Times)

Health officials are up against a fatigued public, as well as a number of people who don’t believe in the danger of the virus, (Dr. Monica) Gandhi said. But she is also part of a growing number of experts who think there’s a better way to engage those who do want to take the pandemic seriously — by taking a lesson from the public health strategy known as harm reduction.

https://www.aier.org/article/we-hadnt-r ... nda-gates/

Links to each of the above-cited articles can be found at the source.

[dada]

When feeling that the responses to the virus are excessive becomes the main focus, the underlying drivers of societal malaise are lost sight of and therefore left unaddressed. Maybe this stems from a sense of hopelessness and resignation when faced with complex issues. Or it could be that one just really doesn't want anything to change. Yesterday was not so great, but that is instantly forgotten when looking at the mirage of yesterday through a nostalgic haze. A longing to go back to an idealized recent past that never actually existed.

Say that the coming highly infectious superstrain of rabies was spreading right now. Those that catch it lierally behave like brain-eating zombies. We'd all agree lockdowns are for the best. We'd be forced to address things like the overwhelming feelings of emptiness that lead to suicide. We'd need to figure out ways to alleviate the sufferings of the suicidal in each unique case, so that any added strains of isolation don't create conditions that tip the suicidal individual over the edge.

[thrulookingglass]

It's not thhaatt deadly.

What a rotten philosophy.

Weep for the suicided do you?

Y'all accepted Orwellian oppression with little more than a board post as protest before. I don't live in Gaza. Go! Be free to purchase water futures! There's money to be had! Cash in! It's the fire sale of all time! So concerned with YOUR rights being infringed. Selfish. Capitalism is dead. Rotten beast that it was.

[Belligerent Savant]

Say that the coming highly infectious superstrain of rabies was spreading right now. Those that catch it lierally behave like brain-eating zombies.

But this is not the case. Not even close, not by a longshot. So any content beyond the quoted hypothetical isn't worthy of consideration.

What we ARE actually experiencing right now, collectively, are: lives, livelihoods, jobs and businesses -- almost exclusively targeting working classes and the poor, which by extension, involves many in minority communities -- being devastated due to LOCKDOWN measures for a virus with a high survival rate

There simply is no justification for it. A more balanced approach, especially now that we have a far better sense of what this virus is, and what it ISN'T, could/should have been implemented.

[dada]

Of course it isn't the case. But I won't belabor the point it was making.

[dada]

What we're seeing is the effect of the outmoded social structures and stale ideologies that have been giving us trouble for many years. The same old fundamental imbalances are naturally brought to the fore at a time like this.

[Joe Hillshoist]

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BTW After seeing Jack's excess mortality figures I checked Australia's for the year.

Interesting and surprising.

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release

From Joe's link above, Re: Australia mortality rate for 2020 (compared to prior years):

The one I looked at was the figure released at the end of winter (25/8), which is when things started returning to as normal as possible. Did you look at the individual figures/graphs?

Pretty much every cause of death was down across the entire period except for during the time COVID was at its most active across the entire country. There was a period where a number of COVID deaths occurred in mid winter but they don't show up on the stats the way I thought they might.

There are spikes for other conditions during the active COVID period too. Many of which were considered co mordibities for COVIDS so they may be related to the virus in the same way deaths attributed to covid but also as dependent on other comorbidities as it are attributed to COVID.

There appears to be a spike in deaths unrelated to COVID as well, around the time of the first lockdown. So that may actually be due to the lockdown.

Or maybe not. I dunno. Not making judgements on the basis I don't know enough to say.

And it doesn't include a proper analysis of the Victorian lockdown yet.

But ... and this is simplistic I agree ... it may turn out that responses to this virus lower the average death rate across a society in which case it may be the toll from this virus alone is higher than 250 or even 350K extra deaths this year.

Overall there is alot to unpack.

I was playing darts with friends last night, not social distancing well a little maybe, not wearing masks or anything, we did share some joints and vapes tho... (It was outside so its a relatively safe environment although there hasn't been a case of the virus in my local council area yet.)

Most of us haven't had our usual dose of yearly flus, colds and other annoying viruses. WE all put it down to social distancing to a point and people taking more care with their hygiene. This is the same stuff my grandparents and even parents used to bang on about endlessly when I was a kid. Was your hands after touching animals, your mouth or nose, before food ... etc etc. All stuff that came from the response to Spanish Flu 100 years ago. And we are thinking about our health more, not less, taking vitamin supplements (c and D) if we need them etc etc.

We are lucky here. Most of the Western World is struggling with this it seems.

Especially in the US where every response seems to be ridiculous or another rort.

[Joe Hillshoist]

What we're seeing is the effect of the outmoded social structures and stale ideologies that have been giving us trouble for many years. The same old fundamental imbalances are naturally brought to the fore at a time like this.

Yes.

The biggest sources of vectors of this virus in Australia has been people working in quarantine. Mostly in low paid jobs, across multiple sites. Most of these workers use public transport and have no back up financial situation. They are in a position where they have to do what they do to survive.

Pay them properly, give them the job and social security they need and suddenly we wouldn't have had anywhere near the trouble we had with it. Fucken late stage neo liberalism capitalism is a cancer on everyone.

BTW Actual competent leadership plays a massive role in a successful response to an emergency. Trump was so far from that its not funny.

Even Hilary Fucken Clinton would have done a better job with that side of this pandemic if she had been president. And I would probably have voted for Trump before her in 2016 if I had a gun to my head and had to pick one or the other.