Free Republic

When the coronavirus lockdowns began almost two months ago, the outdoors seemed like a scary place. It was where you could get infected by a neighbor, jogger, public bench, doorknob or any number of other things. The better move, as a popular hashtag put it, was to #StayHome. As more virus research has emerged, however, the outdoors has begun to look safer. It still brings risks (like those doorknobs). But they are fairly small. One study of 1,245 coronavirus cases across China found that only two came from outdoors transmission. Beside the research, something else has also begun to make...

The estimates from Imperial College London said the virus has already infected about 13 percent of the state’s 6.9 million residents....“Over 80 percent of [Massachusetts] hasn’t been infected yet,” said Samuel Scarpino, an epidemiologist at Northeastern University. “We’re going to be susceptible to another wave of infections.”...If mobility returns to 20 percent of what it was before the pandemic, COVID-19 could kill about 500 people daily by the end of June, the researchers said. If mobility increases to 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels, the virus could claim the lives of about 800 people each day, the model said. Massachusetts experienced...

Does COVID-19 truly warrant a nationwide shutdown? No, and that has been made increasingly clear. The predicted dire need for hospital beds did not materialize, while most infected are among those who are quarantined, especially elder care facilities which account for over 40% of deaths. Up to about 80 percent of those infected with COVID-19 are estimated to be silent carriers, [1] meaning they show no symptoms (the New York City labor and delivery unit found 88 percent of infected patients had no symptoms, [2] while over 600 sailors on the coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt tested positive, yet 60%...

And still even more proof that the lockdown is a scam! Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of Illinois Department of Public Health, said, “… if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it’s still listed as a COVID death…” They keep giving me more and more things to add to my list: Here are 56 reasons why I’m against the COVID-19 lockdownsHere’s the newest one that I just found out about:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljpHugKNcoIThe video’s description states: (the bolding is mine)Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of Illinois Department of Public Health, explains how extremely broadly deaths count as...

There has been story upon story of people dying from “coronavirus” when in fact they died of other causes. I have heard of three such stories this week alone, two in the Bronx and one in Queens. The one I heard from a client just an hour ago was the most egregious. The client’s father was 88 years old and in a nursing home suffering from the terrible effects of Alzheimer’s. He also had diabetes and was a cancer survivor. Last December he stopped eating many foods he previously enjoyed as his condition was deteriorating. About a month ago he...

Coronavirus fatalities in long-term care facilities have surpassed a grim threshold in much of the country, accounting for at least a third of the deaths in 26 states and more than half in 14 of those.The data, which was published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, reports tallies from a variety of care facilities, including nursing homes, adult care residences, and other skilled nursing care settings. However, it does not break out those categories separately. The report comes as states prepared to meet a federal reporting deadline Friday... Priya Chidambaram, a policy analyst with the foundation...expects that skilled nursing facilities will...

(CHICAGO) WEEK - State Health officials have acknowledged a bending of the "Covid Curve" seeing smaller spikes in positive cases, or rather, not as exponential of a jump as recorded weeks ago when virus testing capability was much lower. Additionally, despite the additional virus-related deaths being reported everyday, Illinois Department of Public Health reports those numbers are decreasing too. Still, the department's Director, Dr. Ngozi Ezike used part of her time during Sunday's health briefing to explain how the department determines if a death is related to Coronavirus. Essentially, Dr. Ezike explained that anyone who passes away after testing positive...

New York state is reporting more than 1,700 previously undisclosed deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities as the state faces scrutiny over how it has protected vulnerable residents during the coronavirus pandemic. At least 4,813 people have died from COVID-19 in the state’s nursing homes since March 1, according to a tally released by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration late Monday that, for the first time, includes people believed to have been killed by the coronavirus before their diagnoses could be confirmed by a lab test. Exactly how many nursing home residents have died remains uncertain despite the state’s...

Pennsylvania has removed hundreds of COVID-19 deaths from the official death count after coroners pointed out the state’s health department numbers did not match their own. Pennsylvania Health Department officials had included in their count “probable” coronavirus deaths in cases where they believed the virus was the cause of death but did not have confirmation from a positive test result, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Officials removed over 200 probable deaths from their official tally on Thursday in what they said was an effort to be transparent. “We realize that this category can be confusing, since it does change over time,”...

Many hold out hope for a vaccine to bring our present COVID-19 pandemic to an end. But development of a vaccine is not a certainty and could take months or years to develop, while millions suffer job losses and economic devastation. The second-best hope to escape our nightmare in a timely way is herd immunity. A month ago, Dr. David L. Katz, wrote a significant piece in the New York Times, “Is our fight against Coronavirus worse than the disease?” He advocated a pivot from our current health policy to a “surgical approach” in fighting the disease. On April 19th,...

As of Thursday, nearly 16,000 people in New York have died of virus-related complications. With 250,000-plus confirmed cases, the mortality rate would be as high as 16 percent. With 2.7 million cases, it would be around 0.5 percent -- much lower, though still much higher than the seasonal flu.

Evidence that the virus is much less deadly than people feared weakens the case for maintaining lockdowns.... The way Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer framed the study's results raises a question that policy makers across the country will confront as they consider when and how to loosen sweeping restrictions aimed at curtailing the COVID-19 epidemic. Will they be guided by emerging evidence, or will they use it to support the policies they already favored?.. The Los Angeles County study, conducted by University of Southern California researchers in collaboration with Ferrer's department, tested a representative sample of 863 adults...

A baby thought to have been the youngest ever to die of COVID-19 may not have been killed by the coronavirus after all. Days after Connecticut officials last week announced that a six-week-old baby died after contracting coronavirus, the state’s medical examiner is not ready to say that COVID-19 was the cause of death. Governor Ned Lamont on Wednesday said that the toddler who was rushed to intensive care at a Hartford hospital was the youngest fatality of COVID-19 ‘anywhere.’ As of Friday afternoon, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has yet to officially rule that the novel coronavirus...

Puerto Rico Secretary of Health, Lorenzo González Feliciano, announced that, after a review of the positive tests for coronavirus (Covid-19), the correct number of positives is 915 cases. "We will be able to see the data reflected in the coming days," said the secretary at a press conference this afternoon. The Health Department dashboard is not yet updated with the data offered today, so it continues to show 1,298 positives. Of the 915 cases, 736 are molecular tests and 189 are serological tests, the official said today. Last week Health admitted that there was duplication in some positive results, if...

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now counting "probable" cases of coronavirus among its tabulations, according to the agency's website. The inclusion of such cases will add thousands to the total number of patients and deaths by including people who didn't have a positive test but showed signs of having the virus.

Vote yes or No at link (no pop ups that I know of) Do you think the extended severe restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are too extreme?Yes - too extreme: the long-term unemployment and lack of activity, and fear of others will do more harm than a more moderate or shorter period.No: long-term outlawing of most sports, recreation, many businesses is necessary to stop this deadly virus. Yes: a moderate response of wearing masks in mass transit, work and crowds instead of isolation, except for those in need of care, would be better.No: if anything, the most severe...

A widely followed model for projecting Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. is producing results that have been bouncing up and down like an unpredictable fever, and now epidemiologists are criticizing it as flawed and misleading for both the public and policy makers. In particular, they warn against relying on it as the basis for government decision-making, including on “re-opening America.” “It’s not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited” to projecting Covid-19 deaths, epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told reporters this week, referring to...

It’s just the flu, bro. A few things: 1. Some study in the Bay Area showed antibodies are widespread and there could be 85 people who have it for every one person who was tested - good news as it shows that its lethality is about the same as the flu. 2. Texas didn’t go far enough with their announcement on reopening. 3. Healthcare workers are getting laid off or are on reduced hours - checked two clinics yesterday and one was closed and one was half hours due to reduced number of patients during Corona. They flattened the curve...

The [Puerto Rico] Secretary of Health, Lorenzo González, acknowledged today to the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI) that the agency he heads has been mixing the results of molecular tests, which are confirmatory that the person has the virus, with the results of the rapid tests or serological, whose result according to the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA in English) is inconclusive. The implication of this is that there has been a double count, perhaps even triple, of the results in government reports on COVID-19. For example, a person who had a rapid test that was positive and then...

The most widespread testing so far shows that COVID-19 has a fatality rate of 0.004%. That’s lower than the flu. Should we start shutting everything down, every year, because of the flu? Iceland has tested 10% of its population for COVID-19, by far the largest percentage of any country.And it has discovered that the fatality rate is 0.004%.That’s lower than the flu.Should we start shutting everything down, every year, because of the flu?