Covid-19: Are we following the science?

American Thinker ^ | 03/21/2021 | Terry Paulding

[SeekAndFind]

I’m a cynic. Always questioning, never happy with simple answers. Always watching what is going on, asking “why?” When it comes to COVID, I’ve had more questions than there are real answers.

I currently have two main quarrels with our approach to COVID. One, masks. I live in sunny California. It’s the first day of spring. My farmers market requires masks, and I can’t help but wonder, walking around outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine, why?

They don’t work, we know that. I breathe and my glasses fog up. Clearly, air is getting in and out. If it weren’t, I’d be dead. One commenter on MeWe made a good observation: He lays sheetrock and, when he takes his heavy-duty mask off, there’s always fine white bits around his nose. Do you think the virus is as large as those fine bits? Nah!

My neighbors walk around by themselves, or with their dog, or ride bikes, with a mask or two shoved over their faces. Really? I’m sure many are immunized now. They seem to be sticking younger and younger people around here.

As Rand Paul pointed out, once you’ve had the virus, or you’ve been immunized against it, you are no longer going to give it to someone else, nor will you get it from others. So, what’s the point? The mask is simply a symbol of our submission.

Quarrel number two is with mindless mass vaccination.

Sometimes, you have to string together the headlines, because they show up in random places at different times. One that says big Pharma is making, and will continue to make, a fortune on the COVID vaccine. Another says that Dr. Fauci (or is it Dr. Faust?) wants to start giving it to babies.

[SeekAndFind]

Here's the bottom line on drug trials, as quoted from Healthline.com:

Clinical trials and their individual phases are a very important part of clinical research. They allow the safety and effectiveness of new drugs or treatments to be properly assessed before being approved for use in the general public.

Most drug trials follow a set pattern that takes years. They are administered cautiously and are double-blind, placebo-controlled, phased studies. This “drug trial” is clearly not being administered with caution; it’s clearly not following protocol.

COVID is a virus where the vast majority of the deaths didn’t have to happen in the first place but were caused, instead, by mismanagement (putting sick people in nursing homes for one) and by not using all available means in treating it. There have always been remedies that worked against this virus, something discovered fairly early in the game but ignored. At least one – hydroxychloroquine, was often withheld because Trump suggested it.

[DoodleBob]

SCIENCE IS NOT MATH.

There was a most excellent article posted on how "settled science" wasn't so settled, wherein:

seems that Earth has been misplaced. According to a new map of the Milky Way galaxy, the Solar System's position isn't where we thought it was. Not only is it closer to the galactic centre - and the supermassive hole therein, Sagittarius A* - it's orbiting at a faster clip.

It further noted other "errors" in SCIENCE:

A good recent example of this is the red giant star Betelgeuse, which turned out to be closer to Earth than previous measurements suggested. This means that it's neither as large nor as bright as we thought. Another is the object CK Vulpeculae, a star that exploded 350 years ago. It's actually much farther away, which means that the explosion was brighter and more energetic, and requires a new explanation, since previous analyses were performed under the assumption it was relatively low energy.

[Steely Tom]

We’re following the political science.

[minnesota_bound]

We have been had.

Visualized: the World’s Deadliest Pandemics by Population Impact
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-deadliest-pandemics-by-population-impact

Masks do not block viruses.

CDC Covid-19 Survival Rates as of 10/2020
Age 0-19 — 99.997%
Age 20-49 — 99.98%
Age 50-69 — 99.5%
Age 70+ — 94.6%

Pandemic Death Toll by % of Population Year of Population Estimate
Black Death 51.0% 1300
Plague of Justinian 19.1% 500
Smallpox 12.1% 1500
Antonine Plague 2.6% 200
Spanish Flu 2.5% 1919
The Third Plague 1.0% 1850
HIV/AIDS 0.7% 1981
COVID-19 0.03% 2021 (as of March 15)

[monkeyshine]

Social Distance Zapper - Delivers 4.5 Volt Zap to Safe Space Invaders!

[Secret Agent Man]

Not real science

We are folowing fearporn science

Or pseudo science

Or politicized science

But not real science. And not the movie Real Science. Thats just for laughs.

[Grampa Dave]

Visualized: the World’s Deadliest Pandemics by Population Impact

CDC Covid-19 Survival Rates as of 10/2020:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-deadliest-pandemics-by-population-impact

Age 70+ — 94.6% Survival

Which means, there is a 5.4% fatality rate if you are over 70!

Probably higher if you are over 80! My wife is 81 and I am 82.

Pandemic Death Toll by % of Population Year of Population Estimate

So, how does that 5.4% death rate for seniors compare to previous pandemics?

Antonine Plague 2.6% 200
Spanish Flu 2.5% 1919
The Third Plague 1.0% 1850
HIV/AIDS 0.7% 1981

The Cuomos, who hate senior citizens, would love it if no senior citizens were vaccinated.

Which is why some of us are driving over a 100 miles each way to get vaccinated!

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-deadliest-pandemics-by-population-impact

[DannyTN]

Is science following the science?

And does common sense still have a role, or did it leave earth?

[katie didit]

The CDC and NIH were never interested in effectively treating C19 nor putting guidelines out for MDs based on best practice. They knew the medications were there last March.

It’s almost as if someone very high up wanted the information squashed.

Fauci: a political animal who will lie until Armageddon and has violated his oath. If his lips are moving he is lying.

[HotHunt]

I've wondered for sometime now what the survivability rate is for those over 70 (or 80) if they died from something other than the corona virus.

Common colds? Seasonal flus? Infections? Injuries from falls? Old age diseases coming to fruition? Organs starting to fail? Heart disease? Old age chronic leukemia?

I just wonder how much more (or less) deadly this virus is than routine deaths of the aged? I mean, older people don't live forever. They get to their 70s, 80s and they start to die from just being old and vulnerable.

I'm in my mid-70s and I see examples of this when I attend my high school reunions. Every reunion, fewer and fewer people have survived.

Certain death is a fact of life.

So are we putting too much emphasis on the danger of dying from the covid than people already experience at advanced ages with co-morbidities?

Are we making this virus more deadly than it really is by coding everybody who dies with the virus as dying from the virus?

I'm just sayin'....

[NetAddicted]

Saving settled science? link.

[Grampa Dave]

Just saying if one is basically healthy and isn’t an overweight diabetic, or a druggie. There is probably zero need to get the vaccine if they are 65-70 and younger.

However, I don’t want a bunch of Cuomo wanna bees telling my wife, our siblings, cousins and friends, we are too old to be vaccinated, or a vaccination is a dangerous waste. Many of us have had older relatives make it into their late 80’s early 90’s and while still enjoying lifae.

That is the first greased step into the elites* and Cuomo wanna B’s telling you, me and our families/friends that we are too old to be living.

First, they set the upper limits to 65, then 60 and then 55.

Now, it is the basic reality of my body and my right to say what I do with it.

*I really don’t want some liberal elite, named Zeke or some self labeled FR armchair computer conservatives, semi virus experts or whatever determining how long I or my family should live.

If they feel that the vaccines are dangerous and worthless, they don’t have to take them. They can save their lectures.

Now, only we, as American adults have the right to decide if we want the vaccines.

[HotHunt]

Gotcha. Didn't mean to rattle your cage. I was just musing about some thoughts I'd had for a while.

I'm going to pass on this vaccine. My logic is if I've lived this long without problems, why tempt fate by taking a new vaccine that will surely have some long-term side effects that haven't bubbled to the surface yet. I don't think my wife is getting it either. And we were bother medical people in the military together and in our mid-70s. We see the vaccine as a bigger, unknown risk than the disease itself.

And I agree with you about that disgusting example of a human being, Cuomo and his ilk. They need to string him up by his sexual harassment balls and throw him into a cell infected with the virus. Why do citizens elect losers like him?

I lived through the Hong Kong flu pandemic in the late 60s and didn't even know about it until this last year. Never saw anything in the press about it, never heard of anybody who had it, never had to wear masks, social distance, lockdown or lose my three part-time jobs and life just moved on.

I also have this thing about wasting what little time I have left at the end of my life, being too safe. I take the opposite tack. This is my last go around and why waste it on being too careful when the end draws nigh soon enough anyway.

But my real concerns or questions are about treating this corona virus like it's the worse thing since the black plague. The majority of people who die from it are older folks, like you and I. But the authorities have manipulated the death numbers up so that it looks a lot worse than it really is.

The CDC admits in a report last fall that the real death rate from covid, is only 6% of the reported numbers. And compared to that "real" number, what is the death rate for the same age group population from other maladies?

IOW, if you take the covid deaths out of the equation completely, at what rate do older folks, aged 65-90, die normally? I've tried to find a number online but everything now is covid numbers, like heart attacks, cancer and kidney failure don't exist anymore.

I suspect that older folks' morbidity rate from other problems is much the same as it is for the "real" covid numbers. And if that's the case, why are we making such a big stink about this virus when we haven't done it in the past with other viruses and society coped with them?

Thanks for responding, Grampa Dave. Take care and don't do anything I wouldn't do. 🤪

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the back and forth here.

I have enjoyed it.

Thank God, we live in a country where you can say, “I don’t want the vaccine, or me, I want to be vaccinated.

My wife, our siblings and friends pushing 80 or past it, can say I want the vaccine. Which we have and did.

We, also, have younger direct families where no one will be vaccinated and some of their siblings and their families, due to their jobs have been vaccinated.

In the meantime, we can read my tagline and push to get America back on its feet.

Thanks
Dave

[Grampa Dave]

Sounds like you and Hunter agree on this:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

So do I!

[Jim Noble]

I have done nothing but COVID since March 2020.

There are a couple of problems with “following the science”.

The first is that the science is incomplete and rapidly changing. New disease, first look by the human immune system, virus is changing rapidly (as RNA viruses do), extreme political bias coloring data, etc.

The second is that science has nothing to say about political choices. Science can (possibly) tell you what closing restaurants will mean for spread of the virus. Science cannot tell you if the price is worth paying. That is a purely political decision.

The right way to look at lockdowns, or so-called lockdowns, is, “If Ebola were airborne with its 70% mortality rate, would we question (for example) closing restaurants?” The answer - of course we wouldn’t be having a discussion about that - tells you what you need to know about the cowardice and failure of our political leaders, ESPECIALLY exposing the way they hide behind “science” and refuse to do their own jobs.

[HotHunt]

I don't see the need to play it safe on my last go around the block. Let your foot off the brakes a little and give it some more gas. Go for it!

I spent my whole adult life taking care of myself. I didn't drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. I watched my diet and tried to stay in shape. For decades I was a long distance runner and was always in training for road races. 10Ks and marathons.

But then at age 60, all that healthy living caught up with me. I had both my knees replaced, had a quadruple open heart bypass and valve repair and both my shoulders hurt so bad with arthritis that they need replacing but I put up with them for now.

I don't want to waste what time I have left recoverying from surgery or rehabbing. To what end? So I can die in good shape and look good at the funeral? Lol!

We live on a farm in the country and have an acre that's been designated as a family cemetery since 1936. My wife's relatives and our son are buried there. The county tax collector doesn't charge taxes for the cemetery. So there is a financial benefit in having one.

But it has to be maintained with the lawn mowed, the grass trimmed around the headstones and looking nice. I do that once a week. I joke with my wife that when I die, to let me know a couple of days ahead of time so I can mow it so it will look good for my funeral.

Funny that. 😂

[HotHunt]

I see your tagline. We live in Florida and it's been open up around here for some time now.

Some people in the blue states are getting the shaft, while others of us in the red states are forging ahead.

[Grampa Dave]

This is funny!:

It has to be maintained with the lawn mowed, the grass trimmed around the headstones and looking nice. I do that once a week. I joke with my wife that when I die, to let me know a couple of days ahead of time so I can mow it so it will look good for my funeral.

We have ash lock boxes at our church. They are paid for and there is no upkeep nor expense. There is one for each of us.

This ensures us that we will not be late to our funerals.

Also, we get to keep up with what is going on in the church.