RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/covid-statistics-politics-other-means/

Statistics is the continuation of politics by other means, to misquote Clausewitz. One hundred and fifty years after the crushing of the revolutionary Paris Commune, historians still clash aggressively about the death toll. Was it as high as 40,000 or as low as 10,000?

It matters because the Paris Commune is a shibboleth, a great left-wing site of memory and martyrdom, made famous by Karl Marx’s pamphlet The Civil War in France. He presented the Paris Commune as the first great experiment in communist government. Its crushing by the army of the conservative Adolphe Thiers is depicted in left-wing folk memory as the ‘reactionary, repressive forces of capitalism’ ending an idyllic experiment in socialism. So for martyrdom’s sake it is better to put the number ‘slaughtered’ at 40,000 rather than 10,000. And historians go to great lengths to adduce statistical evidence in one direction or another.

In the 1960s demographers revealed that the Soviet government stopped publishing its statistics on life expectancy because they were not progressing as fast as in the West. Today Chinese GDP growth statistics are widely viewed as manipulated. COVID-19 pandemic statistics have inevitably become political too. As the Cambridge statistician Prof David Spiegelhalter wrote in the Guardian on April 30, ‘people are not so interested in the numbers themselves — they want to say why they are so high, and ascribe blame.’ And why do they want to ascribe blame? Because other political agendas have not been laid to rest.

And so COVID statistics are the continuation of politics by other means. The relish with which certain international media highlight the death toll in the US, for example, is a rather transparent attack on Donald Trump, especially when they fail to adjust deaths to 100,000 population.

The otherwise authoritative left-of-center French daily Le Monde for example refers to the United States ‘as the most affected [country] as much in number of deaths (67,682) as in cases (1.15 million)’ but fails to account for population, which puts the US around 10th in the world.

Don’t blame big pharma…blame the big stockholders in Gilead Bill -Gates and George Soros and their media pet Dr. Anthony Faulti………rsk

Gilead’s Remdesivir is getting a lot of praise from the NIH, while the much cheaper hydroxychloroquine is getting a cold reception. Wonder why.

When President Trump brought up hydroxychloroquine as a promising potential treatment for COVID-19, a huge upsurge of negative political publicity followed from it.  It was strange stuff, because up until then, the treatment, which had been safely used to treat malaria, lupus, and arthritis, had been seeing promising results for COVID-19, too.  Yet the condemnations from all sides poured for weeks.  It wasn’t just the political establishment blasting it; it seemed to be the medical establishment, too.  That raises questions as to whether financial interests might be involved here.

It started with the press engaging in its customary contrarianism against Trump when he called the treatment “promising.”  The logic was simple: If Trump liked it, then it had to be bad.

How’s this for a slanted headline and report from NPR, which ran on April 10?

COVID-19 Patients Given Unproven Drug In Texas Nursing Home In ‘Disconcerting’ Move

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200504074722.htm
Source:
Utrecht University
Summary:
Researchers report that they have identified a fully human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus from infecting cultured cells. The discovery is an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers at Utrecht University, Erasmus Medical Center and Harbour BioMed (HBM) today reported that they have identified a fully human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus from infecting cultured cells. The discovery, published online today in Nature Communications, is an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly across the globe infecting more than 3.3M people worldwide and killing more than 235,000 people so far.

“This research builds on the work our groups have done in the past on antibodies targeting the SARS-CoV that emerged in 2002/2003,” said Berend-Jan Bosch, Associate Professor, Research leader at Utrecht University, and co-lead author of the Nature Communications study. “Using this collection of SARS-CoV antibodies, we identified an antibody that also neutralizes infection of SARS-CoV-2 in cultured cells. Such a neutralizing antibody has potential to alter the course of infection in the infected host, support virus clearance or protect an uninfected individual that is exposed to the virus.”

https://nypost.com/2020/05/01/people-with-low-vitamin-d-levels-more-likely-to-die-from-coronavirus-study-finds/?

People with low levels of vitamin D may be more likely to die from the coronavirus, according to a preliminary study.

Researchers at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation Trust and the University of East Anglia in England compared the average vitamin D levels of 20 European countries with COVID-19 mortality rates — and found “significant relationships” between vitamin D levels and the number of deaths caused by this infection.

The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, notes sun-starved “Nordic” countries are among the most at risk.

“We believe that we can advise vitamin D supplementation to protect against SARS-CoV2 infection,” the researchers wrote.

The finding falls in line with previous research that suggests healthy vitamin D levels can reduce the risk of respiratory infections.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/02/who-invited-the-world-to-infect-america/

Hate the Chinese government if you wish, but hold your own government responsible for hollowing America out like a husk.

On March 31, the number of Americans dead from the Chinese coronavirus stood at 3,900! A mere month on, at the time of writing, and 63,801 Americans have perished.

American deaths by COVID-19 account for a quarter of the world’s, including those in the undeveloped world. To ignore this Third-World-like specter is to dismiss the dead and the dying. It’s tantamount to cancel culture.

China sucks. But if the United States must rely on the Chinese government to keep its citizens safe, then what kind of a Mickey Mouse country are we?

If the American people can be convinced by their government to saddle a foreign power with the responsibility for their existential welfare—what kind of people are we?

China didn’t force the traitors of the American economy to shift crucial production lines to its country and strand Americans without surgical and N-95 masks and medication; homegrown turncoats made that decision, all by their lonesome.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/02/coronavirus-flynn-and-epicureanism/

The prospect of death, Epicurus knew, upset many people. Hence he and his followers expended a great deal of effort trying to remove the sting, the fear, from the prospect of death.

I am weary, I confess, both of the CCP Virus—COVID-19 for all you budding epidemiologists out there—and the shameful case of General Michael Flynn (the shameful thing in his case being the Obama Administration’s effort to destroy him).

I am not sure how many pieces I have written about the former—probably a score—but by now it is clear that going forward there will be two main questions about the Chinese coronavirus crisis. The first is this: why did we commit social suicide for a virus whose hospitalization rates for those 65 years and older (as the CDC just admitted) are comparable to recent bad flu seasons, while the hospitalization for children for the Wuhan flu “are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates during recent influenza seasons”?

The second question is, what will our response be to the busybodies and bureaucrats whose policies destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth and put 30 million people out of work?

A friend of mine with a dark sense of humor speculates that the millions of face masks we’ve been saddled with might wind up repurposed as blindfolds. In any case, I suspect once the dust clears and people take note of the thousands of ventilators lining the doorways of businesses that have had to close their doors because of our insane overreaction, there will be a lot of anger abroad. Right now, Dr. Anthony Fauci seems to be riding high on a crest of public adulation. Look for that to come crashing down soon.

From Leon K.

Two of the most important medical members of the President s White House Task Force to combat Covid 19 Coronavirus are Dr Anthony Fauci of the NIH and Dr Robert Redfield of the CDC.

Few people are aware of the fact that the NIH and the CDC is each affiliated with a dedicated  federally-chartered charitable foundation which accepts donations from third parties  and funds some of the NIH and CDC activities. The donors to these foundations (or the “partners” with these foundations for targeted programs) are pharmaceutical companies, bio-science   companies, other foundations (e.g., Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation) and others.

There have been questions raised over the years about potential conflicts of interest between certain donors  to the foundations and the work of the NIH and the CDC. See attached article. While I would not question the integrity of either Dr Fauci or Dr Redfield, I find the absence of full public disclosure of these affiliations troubling.

This week during a White House session Dr Fauci was unusually upbeat about the preliminary results from trials involving the experimental  Gilead Science drug Remdesivir. I hope Dr Fauci s upbeat appraisal is justified but from my reading of the results of the study,  it appears that the benefits to the Remdesivir patients over the placebo patients was modest.

It should be noted that Gilead is a contributor to or partner with the charitable foundation which supports the NIH. Dr Fauci has not disclosed this fact at the White House session or at any other public White House press conference over the last few weeks. 

I’m guessing, but I bet you dollars-to-donuts that neither  Dr Vladimir Zelenko nor Dr Anthony Cardillo , front line physicians who are actively using a Hydroxychloroquin regimen in the battle against Covid 19 Coronavirus, are donors to these foundations.

READ:https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/us-lawmakers-want-nih-and-cdc-foundations-say-more-about-donors

U.S. lawmakers want NIH and CDC foundations to say more about donors

By Jeffrey MervisJun.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/28/with-states-re-opening-where-do-we-go-from-here/

With many states starting to reopen significant portions of civil society that were closed, it’s time to assess where we are and what should come next. Much of the commentary for the past month or so has revolved around widely varying assessments of the “real risk” from COVID-19. Opinions vary widely, to say the least.

Much of the argument has taken place in a rapidly evolving context which started with very little definitive knowledge. Unfortunately, many policymakers and much of the media cited epidemiological models created very early in the crisis and, declaring them authoritative, used them as the basis to justify mass shutdowns to “flatten the curve.”

When the dire predictions did not come to pass—a good thing—combatants on both sides dug into their positions. Those who had cited the studies generally have taken the position that the shutdowns worked and saved many lives. Those who oppose the shutdowns point to the fact that the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are much lower than the models predicted they would be with shutdowns in place, let alone without any shutdowns at all.

The good news is that with so much attention focused on this one problem, we are learning about this virus more quickly than humanity has ever learned about any disease ever before. What can be done to end the threat of this virus and create a model for addressing the next one? Because, you can rest assured, there will be a next one. Novel coronaviruses are going to be with us for a while. How did we get here and what should come next? Are shutdowns really going to be the new normal?

https://spectator.us/paranoid-style-covid-19-central-park-safetyism/

To grasp the urgency of lifting the ubiquitous economic shutdowns, visit New York City’s Central Park, ideally in the morning. At 5:45 am, it is occupied by maybe 100 runners and cyclists, spread over 843 acres. A large portion of these early-bird exercisers wear masks. Are they trying to protect anyone they might encounter from their own unsuspected coronavirus infection? Perhaps. But if you yourself run towards an oncoming runner on a vector that will keep you at least three yards away when you pass each other, he is likely to lunge sideways in terror if your face is not covered. The masked cyclists, who speed around the park’s inner road, apparently think that there are enough virus particles suspended in the billions of square feet of fresh air circulating across the park to enter their mucous membranes and to sicken them.

These are delusional beliefs, yet they demonstrate the degree of paranoia that has infected the population. Every day the lockdown continues, its implicit message that we are all going to die if we engage in normal life is reinforced. Polls show an increasing number of Americans opting to continue the economic quarantine indefinitely lest they be ‘unsafe’. The longer that belief is reinforced, the less likely it will be that consumers will patronize reopened restaurants or board airplanes in sufficient numbers to bring the economy back to life.

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

One of the left’s standard attacks on the President is that he doesn’t listen to the science!  Sadly, he did listen to the so-called experts who predicted wildly hyperbolic death and destruction and he agreed to the economic shutdown.  

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Niels Bohr  

The President surely realizes by now that he should have operated on his gut instincts which rarely fail him.  Dr. Fauci, for example, sees no patients.  He looks at computer models, all of which were wrong.  Dr. Birx probably has more hands-on experience, but she too recommended closing up the nation.  They were wrong.  

Governor Cuomo was wrong when he whined that he needed 40,000 ventilators and thousands more hospital beds. Trump provided everything he demanded, but they were not needed.  Cuomo has no common sense and sent Covid-positive patients into nursing homes rather than the Navy hospital ship or either of the two other Army-engineered field hospitals.  This one order caused the deaths of fragile elderly people.  Cuomo’s handling of the crisis in his city has been disastrous on every front.  His state was the least prepared for such an event after bragging that New York was ready.  It was not.