RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ccp-virus-us-hospitalizations-way-below-projections_3299284.html

While tens of thousands are hospitalized across the United States due to COVID-19, the numbers are a fraction of what experts predicted just a few days ago.

The main reason appears to be that the projections were already off the day they were released.

The model in question was published by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). It was repeatedly referenced by Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, during President Donald Trump’s daily press briefings on the pandemic.

On March 30, the model’s authors released a paper that warned that the country will need about 8,000 to 250,000 extra hospital beds to cope with the pandemic (pdf).

“Even with social distancing measures enacted and sustained, the peak demand for hospital services due to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely going to exceed capacity substantially,” they said. “Alongside the implementation and enforcement of social distancing measures, there is an urgent need to develop and implement plans to reduce non-COVID-19 demand for and temporarily increase capacity of health facilities.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/new_york_city_is_lying_about_chinese_virus_death_rates.html

The mass hysteria over COVID-19 in the U.S. is driven in large measure by misleading statistics and bad math about the disease’s body count.

Now that New York has become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, we are now regularly inundated on cable TV news with the latest pandemic statistics from the city.  The statistics grow gloomier by the hour.

These figures have frightened people into submission as state and local governments across America enact repressive measures they say are necessary to contain the virus or slow its proliferation. 

After doing everything in their power to oust President Donald Trump, journalists and others are now calling him a weakling for supposedly not doing enough, while they demand an unprecedented nationwide crackdown.

The problem starts with the fact that the highly influential statistics from the Big Apple paint a false picture of what is actually happening.

In New York City, the death of anyone who dies who tests positive for COVID-19 is counted as a coronavirus death.  This is the case even if the coronavirus failed to play a significant role in the person’s passing or illness. 

This calculus violates established scientific standards.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/careful_dispassionate_analysis_is_totally_lacking_in_coronavirus_panic.html

“Fauci is an infectious disease man, not a total picture man.  It’s his job to tell Trump what’s needed to stop this disease or to render its outcome more bearable.  It’s not his job to weigh the costs of the measure he recommends against the massive other harms those measures cause.  That task is the task of informed political authorities.”

When it comes to the coronavirus panic, what is needed now is a careful, dispassionate daily evaluation of the data.  It is indisputable that we are in the midst of a worldwide panic of unprecedented proportions.  When all is said and done, and understood, all the measures taken may indeed be seen as having been justified.  But I think that unlikely.

It’s critically important that if data emerge — about lethality and extent of probable population penetration — that suggest that the socially, economically, and medically crushing measures taken so far are excessive and unnecessary, we allow that data to propel changes in those measures.  We are going to be in deep trouble soon because of these measures, even if we stop or slow the virus. 

The panic is being fueled by irresponsible, uninformed, stupid, and sensationalized media coverage, along with politically motivated scare commentary.  I read somewhere, for example, that now New York has had more deaths from the Wuhan virus than from the 9/11 attacks.  So what?  New York may also have had more deaths during the same period than from 9/11 anyway, as a result of annual flu or from heart attacks and strokes.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/a_solution_to_covid19_is_in_sight.html

A solution to the COVID-19 epidemic is in sight.  It is the combo used by South Korea, where people are back at work, to successfully stem its COVID-19 outbreak.  It has three parts: (1) greatly expanded testing of those who could be infected and (2) effective treatment of the virus with a hydroxychloroquine-zinc cocktail, combined with (3) the product of American ingenuity: rapid development of vaccines. 

While these solutions might be thwarted by bureaucracy, progress is happening rapidly, and there are reasons why our collective Groundhog Day of staying at home every day while the economy falters and body counts grow could soon be over. 

Greatly Expanded Testing

Testing is one key.  South Korea did its testing for COVID-19 by setting up drive-through testing stations around the country.  Sufficient tests are now available in the United States to make testing widespread, but it isn’t happening.  During President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force press conference on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence and Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx discussed the problem:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: On the subject of testing, we have now completed more than 1.1 million tests around the country. We’re working very closely with governors around America to — to assist them in drive-through and community testing centers[.] …

Abbott Laboratories is actually going to be producing 50,000 tests a day and distributing those around America.  There’s already the machines in some 18,000 different locations around the country, and they’ve told us they have several thousand on the shelf now[.] …

We’re testing about 100,000 Americans a day.  That’ll continue to grow.  It’ll continue to accelerate[.] …

DR. BIRX: It is disappointing to me right now that we have about 500,000 capacity of Abbott tests that are not being utilized.  So they are out.  They’re in the states.  They’re not being run and not utilized.

Why aren’t the tests being utilized?  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are standing in the way.  On its website, the CDC has extremely restrictive criteria regarding who should be tested.  The only ones with high priority are:

Hospitalized patients.
Those who are in long-term care facilities with symptoms.
Those who are 65 years of age or older with symptoms.
Those with underlying conditions with symptoms.
First responders with symptoms.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/05/its-time-to-figure-out-which-businesses-can-reopen-first-and-how/amp/?utm_source=

How do we reopen after the coronavirus goes away? The mere question, in the middle of the pandemic, is fraught.

Anyone entertaining the idea that businesses should move toward reopening is shamed as caring more about the stock market than people dying. Any discussion of how to get people working again is met with people smugly screaming “stay home!” at each other.

I am staying home, along with my whole family. We’re collectively taking COVID-19 very seriously. We’ve been in self-quarantine since March 13 — before restaurants and bars in the city were shut down, before Mayor Bill de Blasio finally closed city schools and days before his last trip to the gym.

All that to note that I’m no COVID-truther who thinks this is no big deal — it’s a very big deal. But looking ahead, figuring out a way to get people back to work has to be permitted. In fact, it’s essential.

It’s hard not to notice that many of the people shrieking and shaming are still employed. What about all the people who don’t have any money coming in for their families? We need to figure out the path back for them.

Businesses can’t open tomorrow or next week. But how do we get our city working again?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bet-big-on-treatments-for-coronavirus-11586102963?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Some imagine that the coronavirus will run its tragic course in the spring, with the direst results avoided by intense social-distancing and other mitigation efforts, and then our lives can more or less return to normal in the summer.

But that isn’t realistic. Even if new cases start to stall in the summer heat, the virus will return in the fall, and so will fresh risk of large outbreaks and even a new epidemic. People will still be reluctant to crowd into stores, restaurants or arenas. Schools may remain closed. The public’s fears won’t relent simply because there are fewer new cases. We’ll be running an 80% economy.

The only way out is with technology. Aggressive surveillance and screening can help warn of new infection clusters that could turn into outbreaks, but that won’t be enough. A vaccine could beat the virus, but there won’t be one this year. The best near-term hope: an effective therapeutic drug. That would be transformative, and it’s plausible as soon as this summer. But the process will have to move faster.

Americans would have the confidence to return to work, even if the virus is still circulating in the fall, if they knew that a robust screening system is in place to identify and arrest new outbreaks and medication can significantly reduce the chance of becoming severely ill. Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, estimates that such a drug could restore at least $1 trillion in economic activity.