Viral Notions

 

                                                                Viral Notions

Several opinions on the Virus:

 This seems as if it ought to be more controversial: yesterday the state of California implemented a COVID-19 “health equity” metric mandating that counties demonstrate that they are investing in “eliminating disparities in levels of transmission” affecting disadvantaged communities, or have already eliminated such disparities, as a condition of being allowed to reopen economic activity any further. Simply achieving a satisfactory overall low rate of transmission will not be enough.--Olson 

So the draconian limits in the society have to meet all sorts of unrelated elements before being removed.

As of Wednesday, some 3,700 medical and public-health scientists had signed the Great Barrington Declaration calling for a more balanced approach, which would allow “those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.” Donald Trump and most Republican governors would sign that declaration. Joe Biden and the Democrats would not, ever. If Mr. Biden wins—throwing in as well his intention to raise taxes amid the pandemic should Democrats gain control of the Senate—the return of the U.S. to economic and social normalcy is going to take a very, very long time.--Henninger. Why this is not more regarded is obscure to me; petitions signed by people with degrees is a coup de grace in climate arguments.

If we are missing 90% of cases in the U.S. and 95% in the world, this has obvious implications for the death risk from Covid—it is flu-like. And yet responsible news organizations and institutions like Johns Hopkins continue to invite their audiences to compare Covid’s death tally against a “confirmed” case count devoid of systematic meaning. This is the statistical equivalent of sampling subjects at the morgue and in kindergartens to estimate the fatality rate of people involved in car accidents. You will certainly find individuals who survived and didn’t survive car accidents, but your computed rate will be nonsense. I have news for Americans: All of our data about the prevalence and deadliness of the flu are estimates, except for pediatric deaths, which are actually counted. If, as we do with Covid, we relied on “confirmed” flu tests for how many are infected and what percentage die, we would be wildly and catastrophically misinformed about the flu’s real prevalence and its real deadliness.--Jenkins. Estimates? We are destroying the economy on a guess?

“The remedy for this self-imposed economic harakiri, this desperate and destructive attempt at self-harm that is governments’ pandemic response, is exactly that: end it. Abolish. Abandon. Cease and desist. Have governments get out of the way and individuals make choices of their own, choices adjusted to their own risks and risk tolerance – not a mindless one-size-fits-all solution that takes very little account of real people’s lives.” – Joakim Book.

And, just to stir the pot, there are cases of reinfection emerging.