Posted on 05/26/2020 4:44:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
The headline reads, “Dr. Deborah Birx Puzzled by New Coronavirus Cases in Lockdown Cities like DC, LA, Chicago.” As we read on in this brief post, we find her saying, “I’ve asked the CDC, and the CDC is working with the local areas in Chicago, and this area and L.A. to really understand where are these new cases are coming from and what do we need to do to prevent them in the future.” Really?
Of course, Governor Cuomo was similarly “shocked” to learn that 66 percent of hospital admissions for coronavirus in New York City came from people who had stayed at home in response to his lockdown orders. Really?
The governor might be excused for his bafflement since he was listening to “experts.” In crass medical slang, an “expert” is just some “S.O.B. from out of town with slides.” In short, an expert is someone who has taken the time to organize his presentation, but the audience has no up-front way to assess the value of what the “expert” has to say unless it possesses a degree of expertise as well. Neither the president nor the governor have such independent knowledge. Both of these leaders are powerhouses in the political arena, but they’re way out of their depth in medicine. This means that it’s really easy to make an appeal to authority and take Fauci and Birx at face value.
When Cuomo and Birx discovered that the prescription failed, it was time to apply Einstein’s Maxim. “Insanity is doing something a second time and expecting a different answer.” You locked down, and it didn’t work. Perhaps you should listen to the Red Team this time. Uh… you didn’t wargame this? Really?
Of course, the answer was right in front of them (us) all the time. But the virology team that recommended the lockdown spent its career researching HIV/AIDS. That’s a blood-borne disease, while SARS CoV-2 is airborne. Blood-borne diseases are relatively easy to contain since their transmission is limited to well-defined risky behaviors. Airborne diseases aren’t so cooperative.
When the Diamond Princess was quarantined, almost four thousand healthy people were stuck in a closed environment with a few infected people. They were “locked down.” Sound familiar? Hmmm… When healthy people were stuck with infected people, they got sick. Overall, about 20 percent got the bug. That’s higher than NYC even now. So why would a couple of researchers who know so much about viruses miss this key point?
Epidemics aren’t about the details of protein coats, genomes, and binding sites. Those are what Fauci and Birx specialized in. But epidemics are about people getting infected and passing the infection on. By the time we started talking about lockdowns, we knew four salient facts. First, COVID-19 is a respiratory pathogen. While it can be passed by contact, it’s usually passed by droplet or aerosol. Second, it was already “in the wild.” That means that it has long since escaped containment. Third, as a coronavirus, it is easily neutralized by UV light, including sunlight. Fourth, it was primarily fatal in the sick and elderly population. The Kirkland, Washington nursing home disaster and Lombardy (Italy) had already made this very clear.
An epidemiologist would have looked at these basic facts and made a few recommendations. First, anyone known to be ill with COVID-19 should be isolated. This is the basic element of quarantine. You take sick people out of circulation. Next, you use standard infection control measures in taking care of them. This protects caregivers. Then you do “track and trace” to identify sources and new infections. This is Epidemiology 101. Fauci and Birx utterly failed this test.
The only public health step remaining was to make certain that the elderly and infirm, the only high-risk group, were protected. But you don’t do it by locking them up in closed spaces with poor ventilation. You don’t do as Governors Cuomo and Whitmer did by deliberately mixing ill patients with uninfected nursing home populations. That’s Diamond Princess déjà vu all over again.
NYC’s rent-controlled apartments have large numbers of elderly in rickety lodging that has poor to non-functioning ventilation and air filtration systems. If they’re locked down, someone has to bring them their groceries and medicines. Since the disease is in the wild, that guarantees that they will be exposed to the bug, and they’ll spread it to their neighbors.
Rather than preventing grandpa from taking his morning jaunt around the neighborhood, the lockdown put him in a virus incubator. Outside, playing dominoes with friends or watching the girls go by, he would be safe. But inside?
Grandma is no different. She needs to be able to walk to the neighborhood deli where she can talk with her friends from the old country. A cup of coffee on the sidewalk where air circulation whisks away any trace of the virus is good, not harmful. But the lockdown took away those safe places and substituted the worst of all possible worlds.
The lockdown was proposed by the “brightest minds,” who in fact were total idiots about practical epidemiology. They persisted in believing that a virus already in the wild could be contained by locking up the people who didn’t have it yet. The only way that could work was if everyone remained in solitary confinement with no food or water for 14 days. I think that just might have other effects that aren’t so good.
The brilliant Doctors Fauci and Birx proposed a “solution” that ran directly opposite to proven best practices. It ignored major facts already known and demonstrated. They persist in believing that they have acted in the best interests of America. Should we be surprised if they are baffled by the real world?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb uses the term Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI). A lot of over-educated people are just fools.
They are baffled because they are running out of gas as this situation is being contained and fixed. Our turn!!
This is stupid.
Nobody is “baffled”. It’s a new disease which behaves in some ways never seen before, my estimate is that it’s about 40% revealed what it does and how, with 60% remaining to be discovered, which should take 18-24 months and three or four rounds of human infections.
This is normal.
Possible.
Not the way to bet, IMO.
Not mentioned is that a large number of the non-nursing home deaths were in the projects, that is, NYC public housing. It’s one of the reasons the death rate among blacks was so much higher, since the majority of the residents of these housing projects are black.
The projects are huge, filthy, unventilated and overcrowded tubes of disease and crime. The city and state have done nothing for decades to improve them and get people out of them, and they are still doing nothing, even about curable problems such as sanitation.
Personally, I think the high risk folks (I’m 75) should be encouraged to continue safe practices and precautions. The rest of the population should return to their pre covid-19 life styles. Let herd inoculation have its way. Build their immunities natures way.
College-educated fools. They exist, but maybe don’t even know it.
Well done, Ted Noel.
Absolutely
Chinese spies still seeding the population?
Drs. Fauci and Birx, “don’t do something, just stand there.”
“shocked” to learn that 66 percent of hospital admissions for coronavirus in NYC came from people who had stayed at home lockdown orders..
Virus from public area was tracked into smallish living quarters via shoes from limited trips into the city wilderness to get food and supplies.
All of the silly recommended protective measures (like masks) never addressed the most logical contamination spread vector.
I can tell you, academia is ‘wall-to-wall’ populated with them.
Most can't tell time, can't hang on to keys/phones/purses/etc. without loosing them, can't write a grammatically correct sentence or punctuate it properly, can't work a door lock, can't address an envelope, CANNOT understand instructions with more than 4 words, etc.
I work with them on a daily basis....it's all true.
They are testing more, getting more active cases, and getting more antibody positives. Duh.
Stop making it a good thing for a city or state to have more cases, and there will be fewer cases.
Get tough or die.
Possibly then, we wouldn't have had to do this stupid "lockdown" (a gift to the Dems!)...
The only time I get out is when I ask our son to take me to Fort Campbell so I can go shopping for groceries at the Commissary. Because he can not go with me into the commissary as he does not have a military ID card he does most grocery shopping at Walmart. (I am handicapped and it is hard for me to walk. The other day I told him that the next time he's going to Walmart I want to go with him, as I feel like I am in prison. He used to say "I'm not going to drag you around" He finally let me go with him
Speaking of antibody testing.
Notice how news reports of results have dropped off the face of the earth the last two weeks?
There should be results of large scale testing in different areas coming out every other day.
Some people like to Party!
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