Posted on 10/06/2020 7:20:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
Source: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian
With President Trumps hospitalization and treatment for COVID-19, its time for a serious reality check.
The President lives in a bubble. Everyone who gets close to him gets checked for the CCP virus. Test positive and youre persona non grata. This presidential bubble is functionally similar to security precautions at maximum security prisons. They work hard to avoid ever allowing drugs or weapons to enter the facility. Yet drugs are pervasive and weapons arent uncommon. In short, such measures dont work, and the Presidents illness demonstrates that they dont work for diseases, either. Lets break it down.
The Abbott BinaxNOW test gives an answer in fifteen minutes. It is reported to be 97.1% accurate for COVID-positive persons and 98.5% for negatives. This sounds really good. And, as medical tests go, it is. But this is where news outlets drop the ball. The real-world math goes like this.
For the first person tested, theres only a 1.5% chance of a false negative result. This person could still be infected, but the chances are very small. When the second person is tested, the individual chance is still 1.5%. But what is the chance that two people will yield one false negative? Statisticians can give this answer in their sleep. Its [1 - (98.5% x 98.5%)], or 2.98%. As we keep adding steps, we discover that the chance of an undetected COVID-positive individual slipping through reaches 50/50 at 47 tests.
Forty-seven? Yes, thats the real number. More than 47 people enter the White House on any given day. As Slate notes, theres a valid argument that this is a misuse of testing. But were not done. By time you reach 306 tests, theres a 99% chance that youve missed an infected person. 99%.
This doesnt mean the test is bad. Its actually a very good test. But testing cant be effectively used for screening. You need 100% reliability and specificity for screening, and no test is that good. When you have to deal with a lot of people, you will get exposed. You just cant avoid it. Its in the wild. More on that in a minute.
The idea that Trump got the bug from Hope Hicks borders on stupidity. They became positive with a day or two of each other, meaning that they both were exposed at least a week (and maybe two) earlier. But that does not imply that they got the bug from the same source. It does not imply that Trump got the bug from not wearing a mask. Hicks is a compulsive mask wearer and got sick. And everyone at the debate tested negative.
How did he get infected? Its almost certain that track-and-trace efforts will find some likely suspect, but it will never be proved. Further, its likely that the suspect will be someone who was never really sick, but maybe had a dry cough or two before his evening adult beverage in front of the news on the box. In short, we wont find anything meaningful.
Before I move on, I have to note that the CDC, WHO, and Oxford Center for Evidence-Based Medicine have all found no evidence that masks reduce the transmission of disease. But this shouldnt be a surprise. COVID-19 and H1N1 are both spread by aerosols. And masks dont stop aerosols, they just redirect them. Further, by looking at the spread of COVID-19 and mask wearing around the world we find that there has been no benefit from mask wearing.
Meanwhile, the CDC continues to push hand washing and social distancing, methods tailored for droplet and contact-spread diseases. But The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for social distancing of 6 feet and hand washing to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 are based on studies of respiratory droplets carried out in the 1930s.
Just to make life interesting, Spain and Brazil have both found COVID-19 in sewage samples from last November, putting the idea that the virus started in Wuhan in serious jeopardy. Now Dr. Tom Jefferson, an honorary senior research fellow at the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine of Oxford University suggests that there is evidence that it was pretty much everywhere in nature, waiting for some trigger to become a human pathogen. This means that restricting travel to isolate the US from the bug was a fools errand. It seemed like a good idea back then, but the virus had already been here for quite some time.
Theres a term for a virus thats everywhere. Its in the wild. Its like mosquitoes. If youre in Anchorage during prime season for the Alaskan Air Force, youre going to get bitten. You have as much chance to avoid getting close to COVID-19 as you do trying to stop mosquitoes with a chain link fence. You can socially distance. You can wear masks, which even the WHO says dont work. But I already told you that here, here, here, here, and here. And Im not alone. Even the CDC said that masks dont work back in May. Yet they keep recommending that we use them.
Can we protect high risk individuals? Maybe. But they still have to have food, see doctors, and so on. They will be exposed. But what we must not do is put them next to people who are already sick. We need to have a high index of suspicion when they show even mild symptoms.
We cant use testing to screen groups. Masks have been shown to be worthless for anyone other than workers in special high risk areas. Social distancing is meaningless, because it addresses the wrong method of disease transmission. So what can the rest of us do that reduces risk, other than staying away from people who are actually sick?
The first thing is to avoid prolonged indoors exposure. Every supers-preader event has been indoors, where air conditioning takes that other guys infectious aerosols and adds them to his aerosols from five minutes ago, an hour ago and two hours ago. This creates a smoke-filled room that raises virus levels high enough to infect people. That doesnt happen at Trumps outdoor rallies and Supreme Court reveals.
If you must be indoors, then let the outdoors in. You can open windows or doors, or use an A/C system that mixes outdoor air with indoor air. Or you can use high intensity UV light (like sunlight!) in the A/C to kill the virus.
The only real question remaining is what happens after the virus bites you, because it will. And that answer is, at best, very uncertain. We know that between 50% and 60% of the population has T-Cell Immunity. This appears to be acquired by historical exposure to related viruses. If you are under age 60, you really dont have much to worry about. But if youre high risk, get to the doctor soonest. Let him worry about the latest literature on treatments.
If Biden wins, you’ll get your wish for lighter traffic.
I want a bumper sticker that reads A Vote for Biden is a Vote for Lighter Traffic
Good article.
Heard it referenced on a radio show today.
Bingo!
One of these days; a few thousand Richard Dreyfuss types are going to remove their masks...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.