Dance hall outbreak takes Hong Kong’s coronavirus fight two steps back. Starts with
It takes two to tango. But in Hong Kong, it took dozens of middle-aged women and their young, male dance instructors to spark a coronavirus cluster responsible for the city’s worst outbreak, erasing impressive gains in suppressing the pandemic.
I overheard two of the middle-aged women going to an upcoming competition in Orlando. They plan to go to Disney World too. My pro says he’s competing and otherwise isolating himself in his room with his wife!!!
Why the lack of comments on the dancing super spreader event? Or did we all know that dance is a thing of the devil?
Clearly, the preacher Dad from Footloose was right. . .
That reminds me of a joke, told to me by a Southern Baptist…
Q: Why don’t Southern Baptists have sex standing up?
A: People might think they’re dancing.
Good call, Lucia, on Footloose. I see some of Dad before he relented in the people commenting on a neighborhood blog about Covid-19 “violaters”.
Kenneth,
I’ve seen similar grousing on “Nextdoor”. The moderators have started stomping hard on anything that comes off as not friendly though. I think it just got so bad that they decided that’s not what they wanted Nextdoor to be about. Almost anything remotely political is getting squashed too. (This is improving that site.)
There are now reportso coovid antibodies were recently detected in Red Cross blood samples collected in California from Dec 13, 2019 to Jan 17, 2020. Approximately 1.5% of donated samples carried the antibody.
.
Since it takes a while after infection to develop antibodies, that means the virus was widespread in parts of the USA long before the first ‘official’ cases, and indeed, many before China first acknowledged the existence of the illness.
1.5% with antibodies is not that much less than in many states last spring and summer. If that holds up, it implies a lot of cases last year. Without anyone noticing. So either people are dying with covid rather than from it, or the virus changed in a significant way in late 2019.
.
Maybe it was a nearly harmless virus circulating unnoticed that underwent a small but significant mutation. That would explain why it was so well adopted to humans right from what seemed to be the start.
MikeM
If so, and the antibodies protect against both, one wishes the first one would make a comeback. 🙂
lucia (Comment #194800): “If so, and the antibodies protect against both, one wishes the first one would make a comeback.”
.
Indeed. Do we know that it is not still circulating as the cause of a lot of the mild and asymptomatic cases?
MikeM
Well… I guess that would depend on precisely how the PCR tests identifies things.
lucia (Comment #194803): “Well… I guess that would depend on precisely how the PCR tests identifies things.”
.
The PCR test looks at 1 to 3 small fragments of DNA. A slightly different strain is almost certain to give a positive result.
.
I was thinking in terms of whether people have been doing full sequencing of virus samples from asymptomatic people to determine if it is identical to the virus putting people in hospital.
Maybe someone is doing full sequencing. Maybe not. We’ve still gotten rising deaths, so there is plenty of the bad one going around. If one isn’t so bad, and it confers immunity, that would be nice to know.
lucia (Comment #194805): “If one isn’t so bad, and it confers immunity, that would be nice to know.”
.
I think that is a distinction without a difference. For the most part, the bad one is not too bad. Something like 1-2% of the time, it triggers a dysfunctional immune response that is very bad. So maybe the bad strain is 100% of all infections with a 2% chance of serious illness or maybe it is 20% chance of all infections with a 10% chance of serious illness. I don’t see where it makes a difference to the average person. Of course, it makes a big difference to the scientists trying to understand the virus.
MikeM
Uhmm… if your theory is correct, then you don’t know the % of time the bad one kill you because your theory is many of the cases where it doesn’t it’s not the “bad” one.
Celiac disease is a “dysfunctional immune response”. It doesn’t usually kill you. (My sister has it.)
.
So your using “triggers a dysfunctional immune response” is an dang interesting way to disguise that what people object to is “it kills you”, “gives you renal failure”, “results in long-term debilitation” and so on and so on. Or maybe it merely makes you feel really awful, but with treatment, oxygen and so on, you survive and recover.
.
WSJ: How to Handle the Covid-19 Vaccine Breakthrough the Right Way
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-handle-the-covid-19-vaccine-breakthrough-the-right-way-11607097703
.
“Launch an unprecedented vaccination campaign. Covid-19 is the first disease to have an antivaccine movement before it had a vaccine. So-called “antivax†sentiment has grown in recent years, leading to outbreaks of measles and other previously controlled infections. Doctors and community leaders tell me that they have already heard people say things like, “I’m not going to take that Trump vaccine.—
.
NYT recognizes the Midwest decline finally.
.
The Midwest, after being consumed by the coronavirus for months, is showing signs of progress.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/05/world/covid-19-coronavirus#the-midwest-after-being-consumed-by-the-coronavirus-for-months-is-showing-signs-of-progress
.
This part I found just a tiny bit self serving, ha ha. The saviors stepped in to save the rubes.
.
“In part, the news media may have had a role in the change, said Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Before the virus slammed into the region, news outlets were not necessarily giving as much coverage to the pandemic there as in other areas, like the Northeast. But once cases became prevalent, he said, news reports heightened public awareness of the danger, and more residents took action to protect themselves.”
Illinois with a Democrat at the helm certainly does not have Covid-19 under control. We are going up the ranks of states in cases and deaths. Governor Pritzker is fast running out of things to blame. I think the latest inference is that it is a disobeying populace.
I remember when there was not a lot of attention to a second or third surge even when there were predictions that it was going to be inevitable unless strict shutdowns were maintained until mass vaccinations were accomplished. I do not see that the political class has learned or anticipated much.
I have noticed from recent conversations that there are people who do not accept individuals taking common sense precautions when those precautions may not be in accordance with government mandates. Those people would probably prefer taking orders from the state on a permanent basis or at least think they would.
I have seen a rapid case rate increase for my locale, but not any lapses in social distancing or mask wearing.
https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/SCOTUSFiling.pdf&hl=en
.
Texas has filed suit directly vs several other states. Under the US constitution, this goes directly to the full USSC as its State vs State.
.
Based on unconstitutional changes to state election law by executive action. Changes to election law can only be made by the state legislatures as required in the US constitution.
.
Odds on Trump winning just improved dramatically if the electors are disputed and the election goes to the House, with each state only getting 1 vote in the House. More Republican states than Democrat states.
.
Ed
I’m betting against the vote going to the House.
Ed Forbes,
I very much doubt the SC will hear the case.
.
Which is not to say there was not a great deal of voting under rules clearly in violation of state laws. But the SC will not want to get involved.
.
Here is the thing: Trump managed to offend just about everyone, and he has few people at the state and local level willing to really help. Which is why so many horrible, and probably illegal, voting rules were adopted. Trump is is toast. Had he been able to control himself over the last two years, even a little, his record would have spoken for itself. He couldn’t. He is toast.
Kenneth,
I think the honorable thing for Pritzker to do would be resign and head off to his Bahamian estate for the winter. He won’t. He is an incompetent worm… but most of all, a worm.
Odds are you are correct….but Trumps odds are now much higher than they were.
.
The justices will look for a way NOT to decide, but on reading the brief, they will have to twist their opinion on the constitution into pretzels to rule against Texas.
.
But one only has to read their opinion on “Obama Care†to see that they can.
.
BILL OF COMPLAINT
Our Country stands at an important crossroads. Either the Constitution matters and must be followed, even when some officials consider it inconvenient or out of date, or it is simply a piece of parchment on display at the National Archives. We ask the Court to choose the former.
Ed Forbes,
“Trumps odds are now much higher than they were.”
.
Perhaps 0.01% instead of 0.001%.
He is going to leave office in January. He should spend his remaining time playing golf in Florida and putting together lists of people to pardon. And pardon them on January 18 or thereabouts.
Much higher odds than that
.
Several of the justices seems to be genuinely angry over the entire situation. Should make their internal discussions “interesting “.
.
The fact that the states are becoming involved is a very big deal. This is something that is hard for the justices to just shrug off.
.
Fighting this issue out to the bitter end is the best thing that Trump can do for both the country and the Republican Party. Allows him to shine a light the massive corruption seen in a number of counties.
.
If the court goes against declaring the illegal votes void, it is a good jump off for both appointing a Special Prosecutor to investigate and declare his candidacy for 2024. .
.
Makes for a great start for the 2022 campaign to take back the house.
.
.
The next major political fight will be over election law and procedures for the 2022 campaign for the House. Making this election a bloody fight to the bitter end makes it easier to win these upcoming fights as the public will be closely involved.
.
If “we was robbed “ becomes the rallying cry that unites the Republicans and the general public against election fraud, the Democrats are toast.
Ed
“We was robbed” will not become the rallying cry for all Republicans. But if it does, Republicans are toast.
Lucia wrote: “We was robbed†will not become the rallying cry for all Republicans.”
.
Russian interference into the 2016 election was exhaustively investigated, to the extent of “bending” the law to get it done. I want to see a thorough investigation into claims arising from the 2020 election. “Widespread” fraud is a red herring. A term without definition, and completely unnecessary to change electoral outcomes.
.
“But if it does, Republicans are toast.”
.
I doubt anyone will really give a ****, especially if no investigation takes place or it looks like a perfunctory whitewash. Russiagate set high standards for investigations into election interference.
DaveJR
Precisely. And this did not do the DEMs much good in the 2020 election. I don’t know why anyone would suggest the GOP imitating that behavior would do the GOP a lot of good.
.
But beyond that: asking for an investigation is different from crying “we was robbed”. Hilary cried that. She beclowned herself.
Lucia,
Hillary did beclown herself, but I think it can best be explained by one of Chasrlie Munger’s enumerated causes for human misjudgement: “11. Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial”
.
It was simply too painful for Hillary to accept the voters selected Trump over her, so she embraced the crazy idea that Trump was only a pawn, in cahoots with the Russians, as a less painful reality. Of course, she will go to her grave believing that. The good news: like the Wicked Witch, Hillary is well and truly gone, so we do not have to suffer her any longer.
.
Charlie is still around at 95 and still working with Warren Buffett age 90. They are both a lot smarter than Hillary.
Lucia wrote: “Precisely. And this did not do the DEMs much good in the 2020 election. I don’t know why anyone would suggest the GOP imitating that behavior would do the GOP a lot of good.”
.
Exhaustive investigations into election interference are a good thing, IMO. Investigations taking 2 years based on contrived evidence and information laundering, coupled with lies and “leaks” suggesting how water tight and incriminating the evidence is, culminating in attempting to impeach a president based on nothing, are not a good look. Even considering all of that, it is arguable how much damage the democrats took. Throwing as much dirt against the wall as possible does generally create the impression of a dirty wall, regardless of how much of it actually sticks.
.
If Republicans fail to push to have evidence investigated they will be viewed as weak and setting themselves up for irrelevance. Republicans that behave like the democrats did for four years… some people will be disgusted, for sure, but I suspect many will view it as tit for tat retaliation. Turning the other cheek will only get you two black eyes in politics.
DaveJR,
An open (not secret) investigation of fraudulent voting makes perfect sense, so long as it doesn’t go on for too long and is limited to actual fraud. Dead people voting? Sure, that deserves investigation. Multiple votes by the same person? Yup, that should be investigated. Crazy lefty judges in Pennsylvania choosing to ignore the states constitution? Nothing really to investigate…. lefty judges pretty much always do that sort of thing. States allowing “vote harvesting” in large cities? There is not much to be investigated: those states will always set up voting regulations favorable to Democrats.
.
I think in the end it will come down to: yes, there was documented fraud in lots of places, but no, it will not be possible to show fraud was at a level which would change the outcome of the election.
.
Where I think there is a case to be made for “payback” is in Senate approvals of Biden’s appointments. He has already selected many political hacks who shouldn’t be in charge of anything, and the Senate will be justified in refusing to confirm those hacks.
The Republican party, if it is to be a counterpoint to the far left that the Democrat party has become, needs a public conduit that is capable of articulating ideas counter to those of bigger and bigger government and do it in a measured, reasoned and less emotional manner. That would be a tall order for any political party but would be required for an opposition to the ideas coming from the combination of the current intelligentsia, MSM and Democrat party.
A spokesperson like we have seen from Donald Trump over the past four years fails badly in meeting those requirements. The Republican party needs to rid itself of the Donald Trump persona as quickly as possible while admitting to some beneficial changes that occurred under his administration and be ready to put down a Trump run in 2024. If a large number of Republican voters are that favorable to the Trump image and personal characteristics that they would turn down better spokespersons, that would speak to me of an unfavorable view of the Republican party as a whole.
I agree with SteveF. Appropriate investigations are useful. But “We were robbed language” language is not.
.
We need free fair and open elections. We need to look into making sure systems are in place to keep them free and fair. But there is such a thing as going around the bend and having a process be counter productive. I hope the GOP doesn’t imitate the DEMs in their insanity. “They were insane, not it’s our turn! ” is not a winning political position.
.
Kenneth,
I agree Trump needs to take his place in past history. The GOP needs to move past the guy.
Kenneth Fritsch,
The problem in 2016 was that there wasn’t much choice. Trump was, IMO, perceived as the best of a poor lot primarily because he was different. The Republicans will need to find someone who can attract the Trump Democrats without alienating the suburban soccer moms. That’s a pretty tall order unless the Harris administration is so incompetent that even the press is forced to acknowledge it. Yes, Harris. I don’t think Biden is in charge even now unless his wife, Jill, is succeeding at channeling Edith Wilson.
SteveF: “Crazy lefty judges in Pennsylvania choosing to ignore the states constitution? Nothing really to investigate”
.
Breaking the state constitution should be a serious matter! Ignoring stuff like this is a really bad idea. It only encourages more sliding.
.
“States allowing “vote harvesting†in large cities? There is not much to be investigated: those states will always set up voting regulations favorable to Democrats.”
.
If vote harvesting is illegal in the state, then it should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
.
“I think in the end it will come down to: yes, there was documented fraud in lots of places, but no, it will not be possible to show fraud was at a level which would change the outcome of the election.”
.
The point is to make sure such fraud doesn’t become so widespread that it does change the outcome of elections, regardless of whether or not it did so in this case.
.
Laws which aren’t enforced or taken seriously might as well not exist.
Kenneth,
Many years ago I would sometimes buy a copy of Foreign Affairs. But as my travel experience grew, and I actually knew something about some of the places Foreign Affairs worried about, I began to recognize that the “expert authorities” published in Foreign Affairs most of the time didn’t have the faintest idea of the reality on the ground in those places. They routinely pushed utter rubbish. I gave up on Foreign Affairs as a source of useful analysis, because my knowledge base had expanded, not because the authors had become less expert…. they had never actually been expert.
.
I think the rise of Trump was the result of a widespread recognition by voters that the “elite experts” of both parties just didn’t have the faintest idea of what they were doing beyond enriching themselves and their friends, and what they were doing was pretty consistently bad for many voters personally. Trump was (and is!) a badly flawed messenger for these voters to air their displeasure with “elite experts”, but the only choice they had. I hope elected Republicans will move away from many damaging policies long supported by ‘country club Republicans’ (high levels of immigration, ‘free trade’ that is often one-way and damaging to the USA industrial base, deferral of important policy choices to the permanent liberal bureaucracy in Washington, off-shoring of strategic production capacity, etc.). But I am not yet convinced that most elected Republicans are willing to do that. I fear that many elected Republicans tolerated Trump and endorsed many of his policies only as a matter of convenience not conviction.
.
Will a more effective messenger be found? I don’t know. But the job is clearly available.
Politicians in general and political parties have done nothing in the past 12+ years except to verify they deserve the ill repute they have garnered in the past. They both did it the old fashioned way, they earned it. It seems obvious the incentives of politics leads to making it a dirty business.
.
There is nothing wrong with investigating elections or Russian interference, it is in fact wrong to continue to make unsubstantiated claims after these investigations based on nothing but suggestions and assertions have showed nothing of substance that would make a material effect in results.
.
Trump lost, get over it. His loss, like HRC before him, is mostly at his own hand. He made a clown of himself almost daily. Most of it was completely unnecessary and pointless. I’m not saying he should have been a standard political robot, I’m saying he should have used his character flaws * and strengths * more tactically.
.
If you are more interested in results than appearances as I am, then Trump’s results aren’t bad at all. The usual suspects ignore them completely. However it is very easy to understand why people voted against Trump. That he won in 2016 and almost won in 2020 in pretty remarkable.
.
Time to move on.
DeWitt,
” I don’t think Biden is in charge even now unless his wife, Jill, is succeeding at channeling Edith Wilson.”
.
A very real possibility. We’ll know quickly after Biden is sworn in. If you see Kamala being sent to state dinners in Uzbekistan, you can be sure Jill has frozen her out. If Kamala is constantly in front of the camera’s advancing the administration’s policies, then Joe will probably be forced out after a ‘reasonable’ period… say a year or two. If he has Alzheimer’s, as I expect he does, then he will have declined a lot by then.
“The Republican party, if it is to be a counterpoint to the far left that the Democrat party has become, needs a public conduit that is capable of articulating ideas counter to those of bigger and bigger government and do it in a measured, reasoned and less emotional manner. ”
.
Meh. I agree with this personally but I think it is an appeal to people who are educated and care a lot more than the average citizen. Appeal to the eggheads/media and the rest will follow is not successful in politics. People have stopped listening to experts. Trump ran the exact counter to this and won. The illuminati loved Warren. Unfortunately emotional appeals are more successful it would seem. Deplorables? I don’t have any answers but my guess is you have to do a lot of different things targeting the electorate in different ways, and many of them are contradictory to each other.
.
Both parties usually do enough self inflicted damage once they get actual power to allow the other side to get power back. Over promise, under deliver. Next.
DaveJR,
“Breaking the state constitution should be a serious matter! Ignoring stuff like this is a really bad idea. It only encourages more sliding.”
.
When the state supreme court rules in ways contrary to the state constitution, who do you appeal to? The US Supreme Court has a very long history of ignoring the actual words of the Constitution in many rulings, and there is no appeal of those rulings either.
.
I doubt the SC will touch the case, with Roberts and Gorsuch voting with the three liberals to not hear the case.
The Texas case is on the USSC docket to be heard and has ordered a response by 3 pm Dec 10
I hope it is not forgotten that the MSM helped Trump disparage his primary opponents in 2016 and wanted him to run against their favored Democrat party candidate. Trump won and almost won against two very poor candidates in “crooked” Hillary and “sleepy” Joe.
That Trump and his spokespersons have asked state legislators to overturn the Presidential state election results based on unsubstantial evidence of sufficient fraud to change the election results should be a scary event for Republicans and Democrats. Enough already.
The attorneys general of Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri have issued statements saying they will back the Texas lawsuit.
.
There is president for USSC action. The USSC has ruled before that not following election laws violates the U.S. Constitution in both Bush v. Gore in 2000 and McPherson v. Blacker, regarding the 1892 election between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland.
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944230517/supreme-court-rejects-gop-bid-to-reverse-pennsylvania-election-results
After the fact looking for judicial relief in an election is not the time to do it. Even if PA acted unconstitutionally the remedy would not be to throw out people’s votes where no fraud was involved and in evidence.
“I think the rise of Trump was the result of a widespread recognition by voters that the “elite experts†of both parties just didn’t have the faintest idea of what they were doing beyond enriching themselves and their friends, and what they were doing was pretty consistently bad for many voters personally.”
.
Both parties need to recognize this. I don’t think it was necessarily a purposeful self enrichment scheme but a failure to recognize the results of their policies were doing damage that might have been avoided. Blinded to this they continue with their self serving policies. Policy makers in coastal bubbles have gotten so arrogant that they might as well be proclaiming “let them eat cake (as long as they aren’t racists)” as the official policy priority.
.
The lack of respect they have for people outside their bubble who are imminently more qualified to assess their own needs is clear. The people on the outside recognize that these experts are not held accountable for failures, except through elections. The umbrage the expert class took on having Trump hoisted upon them was a sight to behold, ha ha. To say they didn’t take this well is an understatement. Democracy was in danger if the expert class was not given their power.
.
The free market might in fact work all these economic things out in time, but it won’t win you an election in a town with rusting factories before that happens.
lucia (Comment #195189): “And this did not do the DEMs much good in the 2020 election. I don’t know why anyone would suggest the GOP imitating that behavior would do the GOP a lot of good.”
.
There is a huge difference: The Republicans actually have a mountain of evidence to back up their claims. That said, crying about it won’t do any good. What will do help them is passing laws that prevent such fraud in future. They ought to be able to do that in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. Not sure about Nevada.,
SteveF (Comment #195199) “I think the rise of Trump was the result of a widespread recognition by voters that the “elite experts†of both parties just didn’t have the faintest idea of what they were doing beyond enriching themselves and their friends, and what they were doing was pretty consistently bad for many voters personally.”
.
Exactly. But the experts weren’t just bad for many voters personally; they were bad for the nation as a whole.
.
SteveF: “Will a more effective messenger be found?”
.
Not likely. It is hard to imagine a better messenger than Trump. Some people seem to think that what is needed is someone pushing Trump’s policies but who sounds like a member of the elite establishment. That is not likely to work since it has a massive flaw: A person who sounds like the establishment sends a clear message that he is of the establishment. His policies then have the appearance of being irrelevant lip service.
.
What a politician sounds like dominates what he believes. Obama sounds like a unifying moderate while being in fact a divisive radical. He got away with it because he sounded like what people wanted. A Republican who sounds conventional while pushing Trump’s policies won’t get away with it because he will sound like what Trump voters don’t want.
.
Trump was effective because he sounded like an enemy of the elite establishment.
.
Huh. Until now, I had mixed feelings about Trump possibly running again in 2024.
Mike,
Whether they have a massive evidence for their claims depends on which claim you are talking about. There is some evidence of voter irregularities. There is not massive evidence they were robbed.
I have no mixed feelings about that. The idea of his running again absolutely repels me.
I doubt Trump will even try running again in 2024.
.
First, he will be older than Biden is now, and may be facing serious financial problems.
.
Second, there will be Republicans in office between now and then who can (if they try) co-opt the positives that Trump accomplished without the in-your-face, unthinking offensiveness.
.
Third, and most of all, voters understand something now they did not understand in 2016: Trump can’t possibly “grow into the office”. I know 2016 seems an eternity ago, but there was plenty of speculation before Trump took office that he would learn to be better focused and get more accomplished by avoiding pointless, petty fights, twitter rants, name calling, and buffoonish over-the-top self congratulation. That absolutely did not happen, and plenty of voters are not going to forget it.
I guess I do not understand the arguments using “elites” in a general sense like some might use “white males”. It would make a big difference to me if the elites were able to interfere in my life coercively like the government can directly or can be done privately and indirectly through the use the coercive powers of government or were a group of snobbish people who thought they were better than others and had no power directly through the government or privately and indirectly through the government and therefore merely sat around telling each other and anyone else who might listen how better they and their ideas were. I think that these arguments have to be made in more detail and argued with more specificity. I certainly would not want the government to go after someone called an elitist anymore than I would to go after white males.
Trump used America first more as a slogan than an idea as he did with trade and immigration restrictions. Instead of making an argument from a reasoned and well articulated idea and basis he came across as xenophobic and looking to the baser human instincts for support. If this is what wins peoples’ minds we are in bigger trouble than I might have thought. I judge Trump to be wrong on trade and immigration and much more right on deregulation and cutting back our military exposure in the world but all these issues get blurred by his approach.
I would want to argue these issues without the emotion and sloganeering and particularly in light of the fact that my opponents on the left are much better at that approach and better than Trump.
Kenneth Fritsch,
There is no “the governmentâ€. There are people who hold various offices with associated powers. They act according to their beliefs. All too often those beliefs derive from or are influenced by a relatively small number of what are called in social media ‘influencers’. Those are the elite or the clerisy or whatever. Unfortunately, most of them are completely out of touch with and have no sympathy for a large fraction of the population. See, for example, the disparaging remarks by Obama and HRC. Trump showed that you can mobilize them, but the progressives are still in denial.
PA suite is still active at the USSC. Speculation is that it may be combined with Texas
IMPORTANT POINT REPORTERS ARE MISSING IN PA SUIT:
The Supreme Court only denied emergency injunctive relief. In the order, it did NOT deny cert.@MikeKellyPA’s suit is still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.https://t.co/UNMZeuiDVy
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) December 8, 2020
Try:
Intellectuals and Society
By: Thomas Sowell
I agree that political ideas filter down from the philosophers to the intellectuals (I call it the intelligentsia and include the MSM at the bottom of that group) and finally to the politicians. Politicians normally do not discuss ideas to any degree and instead talk about what they are doing for the people. That doing is often detrimental to the people and often because the underlying ideas and the consequences thereof are not discussed. It needs remembering that good and even great ideas will be filtered down through the same process I noted above.
It is ideas that will eventually win the day and it is ideas that need to be talked about and put into perspective with the political policy that those ideas summon and the possible unseen or unmentioned consequences of those policies discussed in detail. It is not the elites that need discussing or blamed but the ideas that they hold dearly and ideas that are not necessarily unique to the so-called elites. Nobody is talking about the consequences of the recent Federal government profligate spending and printing of money out of thin air – and so who is winning the day.
Authoritarian governments often got their start by blaming a group or class of people and combine that with a populist view of things. It gives people from whom the politicians are seeking support a name to put on their own personal enemies list and steers them away of even thinking in a minimal way about ideas.
It should also be noted that Trump lost the popular vote to Biden by a bigger margin than Obama did over Romney in 2012. The counterfactual result of an alternative to Trump running for president on the Republican party ticket is not known either, but compare the Pence to Trump performance in the debates.
Kenneth. *clap clap*. You make some excellent points in that series of comments. I am agreement with all of those.
Got to give it to SpaceX, they sure have much watch viewing in test flights, ha ha. Today’s SN8 test was spectacular even though the landing was a bit higher velocity than intended.
“Election experts scoffed this week when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he would be filing a lawsuit in the Supreme Court against four key states in an attempt to block presidential electors from finalizing Joe Biden’s election victory.
But now President Trump and 17 states he carried are joining that effort.
Officials in the states targeted in the suit — Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — derided it as nothing more than an unfounded publicity stunt”
_________
I don’t think this suit has much chance, but Trump can raise some more money.
One must first determine whether a group or class of people are worthy of the blame they are being accused of. Ideas are important but what we have is smallish group of people culturally controlling what are the set of allowable ideas, the Overton Window, etc. It’s a pretty small group of people getting Facebook and Twitter to suppress speech.
.
There is a narrowing of diversity in thought from cultural leaders through heavy handed social pressure. These leadership areas are no longer representative of the nation at large and they are increasingly dismissive of their outgroup. You don’t need an Ivy League degree to know when you are being openly disrespected by people who set the cultural agenda.
.
One doesn’t need to believe in the concept of an elite monoculture that doesn’t even entertain certain ideas to recognize that many others do. People are losing trust in important institutions to represent their values and views fairly.
YouTube bans videos claiming Trump won
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/youtube-bans-videos-claiming-trump-won/
.
“We will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election,” the Google-owned service announced.”
.
“Discussion of election controversies won’t be completely forbidden, however. YouTube allows “educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic” videos to discuss content that would otherwise be banned.”
seventeen states filed an amicus brief Wednesday supporting the state of Texas’s lawsuit — filed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court — which targets Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin over claims of unconstitutional practices in their respective elections.
.
The states include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia:
Not surprised by Google banning discussions of election fraud. You fight lies with the truth but you fight the truth with censorship.
.
I think the Texas lawsuit is pretty much sure to fail, even though it seems to have a sound foundation.
Interesting paper that claims that there is a specific strain of the Wuhan virus associated with asymptomatic infections:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.01344
It is not really a particularly good or very convincing paper, with lots of jargon and using elaborate analysis to replace clear thought. But it could still be right, in which case it might be important for understanding the origin of the virus. The basic claim is that there are less and more dangerous strains that differ by a single mutation in one of the proteins. The less dangerous strain was quite common early in 2020, but has become much less common.
.
As I understand it, there is an intracellular waste management system. Autophages identify and engulf garbage then transport it to lysosomes, where the garbage is degraded and recycled. That interferes with viral replication when the viral proteins being produced get recognized as garbage. Coronaviruses have a protein, NSP6, that undermines the autophagy process, making it easier for the virus to replicate.
.
The paper claims that there are two significantly different forms of NSP6, one with phenylalanine (F) at residue 37 and the other with leucine (L) there. The L form does a better job of disrupting autophagy, making the virus bot more successful and more dangerous.
.
The authors insist on treating the L form as the original and F form as the mutant, causing them to miss what might be the most important implication of their result. Because L is outcompeting F, it makes more sense that F was the original. In that case, the F form might have been circulating unnoticed for quite some time, causing either a mild cold or no symptoms at all. That could explain its apparent world wide distribution already last fall, Then in November in Wuhan, the L form appeared and pretty soon all hell broke loose. That would also explain why the virus was so well adopted to humans by the time it got noticed.
It’s now 19 states supporting Texas
-Arizona
-Alabama
-Arkansas
-Florida
-Indiana
-Kansas
-Louisiana
-Mississippi
-Missouri
-Montana
-Nebraska
-North Dakota
-Oklahoma
-South Carolina
-South Dakota
-Tennessee
-Texas
-Utah
-West Virg
Mike M,
Interesting. Your theory is at least consistent with the Red Cross blood samples from December to early February 2020 showing widespread coronavirus-19 infection on the West Coast, long before people were dying from the virus. Seems to me testing other old blood samples could help confirm if the theory is right.
I sure as heck hope that stupid Texas suit does not win! It would be a catastrophe to our election system.
I’m with you Lucia. Even though I prefer Trump to Biden, SC overturning an election would be winning a battle to decisively lose a war.
It would make Bush-Gore look like a walk in the park. The usual suspects, including Roberts won’t have a problem ruling against, but the case at first glance does seem to have some merit. States shouldn’t be allowed to rewrite their laws by fiat or there is no law. But overturning an election, even though that’s what the Democrats tried to do for the last four years, would be a disaster.
I suspect the SC will just do some scolding about timely lawsuits and the need for states to follow the constitution… and their own laws. Overturning the election? Nah.
Illinois has broken into the top ten states in covid deaths per million population. At current rates it will soon approach the Northeast.
DeWitt Payne, are you arguing that Texas’ results should be overturned? Because they changed their voting procedures dramatically in response to the pandemic, e.g., by reducing the number of ballot box drop-offs to one per county.
Yeah! Biden wins Texas!
States should be able to rewrite their laws by fiat. But other states shouldn’t be able to interfere with a states election law. Certainly, some clarification is in order. But overturning their election is not the remedy.
States do have the right to rewrite their laws by fiat.
.
BUT…..it must be by the state legislature and they must follow their own laws.
.
The states named did not follow their own rules. Courts have overturned elections before over this issue. Gore vs Bush was a similar case, but there have been a number of electrons for lesser office overturned by courts.
.
Ed Forbes: “there have been a number of electrons for lesser office overturned by courts.”
I’m against electrons in office. They’re too negative.
Well, it IS a highly polarized political environment these days…
The SC knows better than to take this case, it will be denied. It’s pretty clear the states are in charge of their own elections, but they do have to follow the constitution.
.
You shouldn’t be able to modify your rules as you go along, even if there is a pandemic. Or at a minimum there should be procedures already in place that allows modifications for emergencies. Making it up as you go along is not acceptable, but the remedy to that even if it did happen is not overturning an election in this case. I don’t see any evidence that whatever rules were changed materially affected results. Lots of assertions, little convincing evidence.
.
Fortunately there is a multi-state margin here.
Lucia,
“States should be able to rewrite their laws by fiat.”
.
Did you leave out the word ‘not’? ‘By fiat’ implies laws mean nothing.
FL’s outbreak is about as bad as it was in the spring, or likely to get there soon. Deaths are lower. However they are near the bottom 5 of all states now. This is the big one for the rest of the US. It is noted that the moral posturing and tut tutting over masks/behavior are now absent from the media as the wave hits blue states. It has reverted to a bad disease taking out innocent victims.
.
Most of the Midwest is in decline again after Thanksgiving bump.
.
Given yesterday was record death day, the likelihood of the vaccine approval being delayed much is approx. 0.0000%. There will no doubt be some CYA posturing but I’d expect this to happen within a few days.
Curious. This from the same people who say challenge trials are unethical.
.
WSJ: “Dr. Fink also addressed one major topic that has been in question—whether patients in the Pfizer trial who were randomly assigned to placebo should automatically be switched over and get the vaccine. The FDA’s recommendation to the committee is they shouldn’t.
On behalf of the FDA, he recommended “continuation of blinded, placebo-controlled follow-up in ongoing clinical trials for as long as is feasible.
Steven Goodman, a Stanford University School of Medicine dean and epidemiologist, in testimony before the panel described that choice as an “ethical dilemma†in which both answers—getting vaccines to placebo patients and developing long-term safety and effectiveness—are right, and neither is unethical. In evaluating the question, Dr. Goodman suggested to the committee “not to use that word at all.â€
Tom Scharf,
You seem to be drawing a parallel between switching the placebo patients to the vaccine, and challenge trials. To me, there’s a clear difference. In challenge trials, one is deliberately infecting individuals with an untested vaccine. There is a definite chance of inflicting harm by inducing an infection, especially if the vaccine is ineffective.
Switching the placebo patients to the vaccine carries risk, to be sure, but only to the side effects of the vaccine, not to the disease itself. And the risk is no more than the vaccinated group received.
Given that the control group is in no greater danger than the general public, I don’t see that there’s an urgent need to switch those patients to the vaccine. It would be different in the more typical case where one has patients with an already established disease, in which case a proven-effective treatment should not be withheld strictly for experimental purposes.
Challenge trials don’t need 30,000 participants, they need a couple hundred people to get directly exposed to the disease if you are using the same numbers as the trial did.
.
I’m not advocating they don’t switch, I’m advocating the placebo people should be vaccinated first in line for their service to humanity. There are billions of other people currently running the unvaccinated protocol.
.
This is just random ethics, there is no overriding philosophy here.
Tom Scharf,
I’m with you, the control group deserves some reward for volunteering. An offer of early vaccination would be appropriate.
Tom Scharf,
“It is noted that the moral posturing and tut tutting over masks/behavior are now absent from the media as the wave hits blue states.”
.
I tell you I am shocked, utterly shocked, by this change in reporting. Cloth masks obviously don’t work, although they certify your personal purity and virtue. OTOH, N95 masks would probably help a lot, but there is no effort at all to make N95 masks available, even to those most at risk. Just another of the many mindless policies promulgated by mindless politicians. Signal your virtue? Yes, let’s do that. Do things to actually save elderly lives? They clearly don’t care.
Tom Scharf,
“I’m not advocating they don’t switch, I’m advocating the placebo people should be vaccinated first in line for their service to humanity.”
.
Yes, it is the minimum they deserve for volunteering, going to get the shots, accepting the possibility of personal risk, keeping a diary, etc. I think the pandemic has shown our society is plenty willing to reward selfish behavior; perhaps it would be better to reward good behavior.
According to The Federalist, Texas does not seek to overturn the election but to have the SC mandate that the electors are chosen by the State legislatures.
I haven’t checked, but I expect at least three of the four States in questions have Democrat majorities in their legislatures. So — Trump still isn’t going to win by this device, I would think, even if the SC hears the case and agrees with Texas.
Nope, I’d be wrong about that.
Surprisingly enough, Michigan legislature has a Republican majority in both the House and Senate, same for Pennsylvania, same for Wisconsin, same for Georgia.
Huh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Legislature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_General_Assembly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Legislature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_General_Assembly
mark bofill,
Many states are like the whole of the USA: Huge Democrat electoral majorities in large cities, but more rural regions held by Republicans, albeit with smaller majorities in those regions. So Joe Biden, and democrats running for statewide office (eg Governor, US Senate) can win the popular vote (by a whisker) even when the state has a solid majority Republican legislature.
Thanks Steve.
mark bofill,
I think the point of the lawsuit is indeed to try to reverse the election in Trump’s favor; all of Texas’s arm waves can be ignored. The republican legislatures in those state (some of which which DID object to the election rule changes without legislation), do not have standing with the SC to challenge their own states election officials. Hence, the suit by other states.
.
Still, I don’t think the court is going to do anything substantive. Maybe they will do some scolding…. assuming they say anything more than ‘case dismissed’.
I hope so. I expect so as well really. The SC is usually smart enough to avoid this sort of mess. At least that’s what I keep telling myself…
STeveF
Yep. I left out the not.
Check again. https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_composition_of_state_legislatures
The state legislatures of the 4 states are:
Georgia GOP
Michigan GOP
Pennsylvania GOP
Wisconsin GOP
I think their clear goal is to overturn the election and put Trump in.
The legislatures in each state should be allowed to decide to let the outcome of the plebiscite stand. So far they have. TX and SCOTUS shouldn’t be able to step in and change their decision.
Yup. My mistake. I agree with you and Steve, I think they’re trying to overturn the election.
New brief from Ohio, neither explicitly for or against Texas, but not supporting the Texas remedy.
.
With this brief the odds of an open USSC hearing on Texas improves markedly.
.
“..the States need this Court to decide, at the ear- liest available opportunity, the question whether the Electors Clause permits state courts (and state execu- tive officials) to alter the rules by which presidential elections are conducted. The People need an answer, too. Until they get one, elections will continue to be plagued by doubts regarding whether the President was chosen in the constitutionally prescribed manner…â€
.
.
“Because this Court has never held that the Electors Clause for- bids state courts and state executive officers from meddling with state legislatures’ work, state courts and state executive officers retained leeway to change the rules in the final stretch of election season. It is not unreasonable to wonder—and many millions of Americans do—whether those hastily implemented changes exposed the election systems to vulnerabili- ties.â€
.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163346/20201210125506698_TX%20v%20PA%20-%20Amicus.PDF.
Ed Forbes,
By fiat does not mean the normal legislative process. It means someone in authority, like the governor or a judge, orders a change.
All,
I don’t know if there is an actual contract involved, but my understanding is that the people in the trial were told that when Pfizer is allowed to unblind the data, the placebo recipients are supposed to be either first in line or very high up in priority to receive the vaccine.
DeWitt,
The question is when they get it. Perhaps it says after the full trial is done– that might not be when the Emergency Authorization goes through, but rather full.
.
That was actually one of the things I’d wondered about for the 30 seconds when I considered trying to hunt down being a trial participant!
Thanks for the link. I like this part of Ohio’s brief too
Pennsylvania has responded
.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163367/20201210142206254_Pennsylvania%20Opp%20to%20Bill%20of%20Complaint%20v.FINAL.pdf
“The 17-to-4 vote by the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, with one abstention, followed a day-long public hearing on the safety and efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine”
.
Wondering about the justification to vote against this. My guess is that everyone who voted against knew it was going to pass so they knew the vote wasn’t consequential and there would be no accountability.
Tom
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-advisory-panel-takes-up-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-11607596201
They voted to make it available to those 16 and older.
Tom Scharf,
“Wondering about the justification to vote against this.”
.
Ummm….. because they are a$$holes?
The original protocol was for 18 and older. It was extended to 16 and the number of participants was increased, but I don’t know how many 16 and 17 year old participants were signed up. I think there were some questions about pregnant women, who I don’t think were included, except by accident, in the trial.
I would think people under 20, or even 25, unless they have special risks should be low on the priority list. The news keeps talking about how more children are becoming infected, but they don’t talk about their fraction of total infections.
7 days after dose 2
Age Group: 16 to <18 years 77 (0.4) 76 (0.4) 153 (0.4)
Just over half of American Indian/Alaskan Native and 70 more total than Pacific Islanders.
Andrew P,
That’s cryptic. Care to elaborate?
Sorry just grabbed the line from the table of study participants 7 days after dose 2. 1st & 2nd are n in the 16 & 17 age range for vaccine and placebo respectively. Third column is both. One of the smaller categories for sure but you have fewer pacific islanders.
lucia
As I’ve pointed out before, the full trial is over. It ended when the success criteria were met. The participants will be monitored for at least six months. But that would have happened even if the vaccine was not effective. Do you seriously think that they would ever be able to recruit participants for a trial if they knew that the placebo group would have to wait six months before getting vaccinated? I don’t.
DeWitt,
Ok… but then what to they mean by continuuing it to study safety?
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195299): “As I’ve pointed out before, the full trial is over. It ended when the success criteria were met.”
.
I don’t think that is so. There are multiple objectives, which include monitoring efficiacy over time. Just because one objective is met does not mean the study is over.
“what to they mean by continuing it [the trial] to study safety?”
It sounds like what DeWitt said about monitoring for six months – looking for delayed or long-term side effects of the vaccine. They can still observe such until the entire control group is vaccinated, although the statistical power will weaken as more are vaccinated.
HaroldW,
Yes, but the issue is “what is the definition of the full trial”. Does it end when it is first unblinded? Or does it end when they’ve finished studying long term side effects?
.
The debate about not giving those who got placebo seems premised on the idea that the full trial ends after they’ve studied the side effect– and that it has not ended.
.
I get that they will have more statistical power if, for the purpose of giving those who got placebo, the trial is considered to not have ended — as in, Pfizer continues to study these particular groups. I don’t know how to describe the behavior of continuuing to study this group other than “this particular trial with this particular study group continues”. Maybe it’s not called “phase 3” anymore, but it’s still seems to be some sort of trial and it’s continued based on the same participants.
I’m going by what Tom Scharf quoted Dr. Fink: ““continuation of blinded, placebo-controlled follow-up in ongoing clinical trials for as long as is feasible.”
My interpretation is that the trial is complete — that is, they’ve established efficacy. But the study continues; perhaps they will be able to notice the duration of protection.
I hope that Dr. Fink was not suggesting that they insist on keeping the control group un-vaccinated — to me, that would be unethical. I think he intended that to the extent that the control group declines the vaccine (or experiences delay in getting it), they should be observed to detect any lessening of the immune response, or side effects.
Lucia,
Yes, the study continues to follow the vaccine group for long term data, including efficacy and unexpected side effects.
.
But from a practical POV, the objective of the study (gaining emergency use approval) looks to be reached within some days. (Nobody can say for sure how many days, it’s the FDA after all.) Within a very short time (a few weeks at most), there will be a million people in the UK alone which have received the vaccine, and many millions more worldwide a few weeks after that. I just don’t think the statistical power of the continued monitoring is going to matter much when many millions have been vaccinated. The statistical power of the many millions will be enormous, and will very quickly answer all the questions the Pfizer study could no for lack of statistical power.
.
I do think it is morally dubious at best to deny the placebo group the option to receive the vaccination.
.
The formal publication of trial results took place yesterday (New England Journal of Medicine), and shows the cumulative case graphic we discussed a couple days ago. The graphic in the NEJM article has a blown-up section of the very interesting knee transition, which suggests very strongly that there is substantial protection starting 12 or more days after the first injection.
SteveF,
Oh… I agree following this particular group for safety is rather pointless. I’m only saying the discussion of not giving the placebo group free injections seems to suggest “they” don’t think the trial is “finished”.
.
I would favor giving the placebo group vaccines.
.
If I got the vaccine, I’d try to play it safe and behave as if protection started 14 days later. But.. well… that’s just two days. 🙂
The vaccines will still be required to get full approval so the phase 3 trial for Pfizer won’t be officially over until at least 24 months after dose 2. This is when the last unsolicited adverse reaction checkpoint is set. There will also be a six month adverse reaction checkpoint. Pfizer is also actively checking for covid19 for a year. I for one would like to see more severe covid cases in the test group since there are currently only four total. (1 to 3 vaccine to placebo). Un-blinding would be a problem as you would really need that control group to keep the statistics valid. FWIW the <18 were not included in the EUA tables as the numbers were not considered adequate to identify adverse reactions.
SteveF (Comment #195325): “But from a practical POV, the objective of the study (gaining emergency use approval) looks to be reached within some days.”
.
The protocol says nothing about an EUA as the objective. It is structured as a standard study aimed at normal approval. The only thing that I can find concerning early termination is if the futility condition is met.
Out of curiosity: Did they fully unblind the test? Or did they only unblind for the individuals who has symptoms? Only the latter would be necessary for efficacy tests. And if the latter, the remaining participants don’t know if they got placebo or vaccine.
.
If they make them wait…. this is precisely what concerned me about enrolling as a participant. If I didn’t know, I would want to take a vaccine as soon as I was able. That will certainly be less than 24 months after dose 2 and would screw up the continued “study” also.
.
Ordinarily, this is not a big issue because you don’t have dozens of groups trying to work to develop a vaccine with several getting emergency authorization. But it’s a problem this time. No matter what anyone interested in “science” might say is necessary to gain better “understanding”, it’s going to be dang hard to convince trial participants that it’s “unethical” for them to protect themselves by getting vaccine when it does become available to them.
“The placebo group attack rate from enrollment to the November 14, 2020, data cut-off date was 1.3% both for participants without evidence of prior infection at enrollment (259 cases in 19,818 participants) and for participants with evidence of prior infection at enrollment (9 cases in 670 participants). While limited, these data do suggest that previously infected individuals can be at risk of COVID-19 (i.e., reinfection) and could benefit from vaccination”
3% of the study participants had evidence of prior covid19 exposure. The above seems to indicate that reinfection is an issue without the vaccine. Now I really want to see the efficiency data after 6 & 24 months to see when the vaccine wears off.
AndrewP,
Did it mention what the evidence of prior exposure was? (Or link… I can read too.)
Lucia,
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577
lucia (Comment #195330): “No matter what anyone interested in “science†might say is necessary to gain better “understandingâ€, it’s going to be dang hard to convince trial participants that it’s “unethical†for them to protect themselves by getting vaccine when it does become available to them.”
.
I don’t think that will be the case. Participants are free to withdraw from the study, in which case they can choose to get in line for the vaccine, just like everyone else. What might happen is that they won’t get priority for the vaccine.
https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download Not really. I pulled that from the FDA summary. Positive PCR or antigen I would assume.
Lucia, Andrew P,
The evidence of previous infections was said to be either detection of virus (I assume PCR) or serology (antibodies in the blood). In the paper they state:
So more data will be published. The authors do note that considering the high efficacy during the study periods, it would be both impractical (impossible?) and probably unethical to deny the placebo group immunization after approval for the general public.
lucia (Comment #195332): “Did it mention what the evidence of prior exposure was?”
.
From the Pfizer protocol:
Lucia,
I think the FDA has asked Pfizer to not inform participants of whether or not they received the vaccine. I rather suspect there will soon be a lot of very unhappy study participants who will think, rightly I believe, they are truly being treated as guinea pigs.
WRT to protection from a single dose:
The divergence of cumulative cases in the the placebo and vaccine groups 12 days after the first dose, combined with typical incubation in the range of 5 days following exposure, suggests protection from contracting covid illness actually begins somewhere near 7 days after the first dose of vaccine.
Is the placebo group necessary for anything other than determining effectiveness? I can’t think of any other reason. So then do we need more statistical power for effectiveness than we already have? I don’t see why. Therefore there is no reason to continue to maintain a placebo group and they should go to the front of the line for vaccination.
SteveF,
Yep. If the trial isn’t unblinded and participants don’t learn if they got vaccination or placebo, I definitely think there will be unhappy trial participants. That could make it harder to get participants in future.
.
In addition, both those who got placebo and vaccine will get in line to get whichever vaccine becomes available to them. After that: good luck untangling long term side effects between those who got vaccine twice (and possible two different ones) vs those who got some vaccine (and not necessarily Pfyzers).
.
Seems to me continuing the placebo group has a potential to do much more harm than good.
The other thing is that if someone in the placebo group dies from COVID-19 because their vaccination was delayed, then their blood is on the hands of those who insisted on maintaining the group. They won’t care, of course, but they will still be morally responsible for any deaths in the placebo group if they are not vaccinated in a timely fashion.
I see nothing but potential harm and absolutely no good.
Well, I guess this is the FDA’s view of whether the trial is over. I think the answer is no. The consider the trial to be “on going”.
https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download
It seems to me that the argument for ending the trials now is essentially the same as the argument for just not bothering with phase 3 trials. A difference in degree, yes. But not a difference in kind.
Foolish Devils Administration. Fire them all.
SC refused to hear the Texas suit against four other states, saying Texas lacks standing. Trump really has to start making his pardons list and plan on vacating the White House. With no more Air Force One, it’s a good thing he still has his own plane to get around in. I don’t think he will ever concede or go to Biden’s inauguration.
Good. Hopefully Trump concedes defeat gracelessly and the election disputes will be done.
Here’s wishing Joe Biden cognitive health and long life!
MikeM
Uhmm…. how are they the same? RQ.
mark bofill,
No cures (or effective treatments) for Alzheimer’s. Joe is going down. Say hello the lead comrade Kamala.
Yep. I think Kamala will be president in less than 4 years. Could be wrong… but that’s my bet.
Given that there will be tens of millions of people with vaccinations within a month and billions without vaccinations there should be plenty of statistical power readily available.
.
A formal study has its rules and double blinding prevents a lot of known problems with data manipulation. So for the sake of “science” I’m sure it is preferable for the people running the study that they conclude it on its original terms. I’m sure the participants were told all about what was going to happen.
.
I just think that is crazy in this case. It may very well be that a lot of participants are fine to continue on the original terms of the study. If they want vaccinated then they should be able to get one immediately. They can stay in the study as a late vaccination participant.
.
I find the ethical framework here perplexing and arbitrary.
Trump could pardon Hunter Biden, that would be quite a 3D chess move.
lucia (Comment #195357): “how are they the same?”
.
How are they different?
If that FDA policy stands then if I were in the Pfizer trial, I would immediately withdraw and refuse any further cooperation. As long as the participants are blind, they can only assume they got the placebo and need to get in line for a vaccination.
But I still don’t see any benefit to keeping the participants blind and a lot of downside.
How are they different? First, I think the burden on you is to show some aspect of the arguments that are remotely the same. You’ve shown zero, and I can’t think of any off hand.
.
I’ll give one that is rather obviously different. I gave this argument
That argument was certainly not given as a reason to not have phase 3 trials at all.
.
And as you may be able to see… DeWitt’s reaction to the effect of the FDA policy to try to continue the trials is that the current participants will quite a thwart the FDA
.
This was also certainly not given as a reason to not have phase 3 trials.
.
Really, I think if you think any are the same in any way, you should clarify which. Because otherwise, my reaction to your claim and like that of others his, “Uhmm… no they aren’t.”
.
I have no idea what reasons you thought were given for not having phase 3 trials at all, who they were given by nor what they thought the appropriate decision would be. But the reasons I’m seeing are certainly not similar to any reasons that could possible have been given for not having phase 3 trials at all.
Tom Scharf
I bet they were told something that gave many the impression they’d be “first in line” for free vaccine. Many of them weren’t thinking of the difference between being “first in line” two years from now with this vaccine and others being given emergency approval now.
.
That puts the placebo recipients last in line. Not only that, they have to wait until months after everyone who actually wants it is able to get it.
.
I actually thought of this, mentioned it here and someone (I’m pretty sure DeWitt) assured me that participants would get the vaccine when the trial was “over” which he thought would be now. He was pretty confident that’s what the rules meant, but I wasn’t soooooo sure…..
.
At some point, the FDA is going to have to realize that Pfizer will be unable to keep enough of those participants in the trial to allow it to have any power.
.
Owing the the results of phase III trials we know the vaccine is very effective. It’s unethical to not allow the participants to know which group they are in and unblind!
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195346): “if someone in the placebo group dies from COVID-19 because their vaccination was delayed, then their blood is on the hands of those who insisted on maintaining the group.”
.
SteveF (Comment #195325): “I do think it is morally dubious at best to deny the placebo group the option to receive the vaccination.”
.
HaroldW (Comment #195324): “I hope that Dr. Fink was not suggesting that they insist on keeping the control group un-vaccinated — to me, that would be unethical.”
.
Mike M. (Comment #195350): “It seems to me that the argument for ending the trials now is essentially the same as the argument for just not bothering with phase 3 trials. A difference in degree, yes. But not a difference in kind.”
——
OK, neither SteveF or HaroldW said what they saw as the ethical issue, but I thought it obvious they meant what DeWitt said.
So if it unethical to deny an available vaccine to people now, why was it ethical to deny it to people 4 months ago? A difference in degree, not in kind.
———
lucia (Comment #195381): “If the trial isn’t unblinded and participants don’t learn if they got vaccination or placebo, I definitely think there will be unhappy trial participants. That could make it harder to get participants in future.”
.
Superficially, that appears to be a difference. But (1) It may or may not be true; I don’t know enough about the motives of the volunteers to judge. (2) It is probably not relevant, since this situation has never happened before and may never happen again. (3) It is moot if you dispense with phase 3 trials. As such, the argument is circular since it is not a difference unless there is some other more important difference.
.
lucia: “if I were in the Pfizer trial, I would immediately withdraw and refuse any further cooperation. This was also certainly not given as a reason to not have phase 3 trials.”
.
It is also not a reason to terminate the trial.
———-
It sounds like nobody in a position to do anything actually thought about how the EUA would impact trials. Or if they did, they kept their mounts shut.
lucia (Comment #195382): “Owing the the results of phase III trials we know the vaccine is very effective.”
.
We don’t know that. We know that it is very effective for three months.
.
These are types of vaccine that have never been used before. They are being used against a disease that progresses in a manner that is totally different from other diseases for which we have vaccines; maybe unlike any other known disease. We don’t know why the disease progresses the way it sometimes does.
Mike M.,
The obvious difference from four months ago (closer to six for the first to sign up) is that it wasn’t known then if the vaccine was effective. The vaccine group was the group at risk and might not even see a benefit. The control group had the same risk as the general population.
Now that it’s known that the vaccine is effective and has been approved for widespread use, once a few million people are vaccinated, it’s the control group that is at a higher risk. The relative risk will increase as more and more people are vaccinated. I seriously doubt they signed up for that.
If we get 100-200 million people vaccinated under an EUA, I don’t see a significant (other than technical) difference between the EUA and full approval and licensing. With even one million people vaccinated, far more will be learned about safety and side effects from them than from the 20,000 people in the trial. That means there is no point, other than to bean counters, to maintaining a placebo control group.
Oh, puhleeze. Reinfection for those who had the disease is extremely rare. You would have to hypothesize that somehow the immunity conferred by the vaccine was different in kind than that conferred by having the disease. You have zero evidence for that. ‘Experts’ are saying that vaccine immunity is likely to last for several years.
Mike M,
“They are being used against a disease that progresses in a manner that is totally different from other diseases for which we have vaccines; maybe unlike any other known disease. We don’t know why the disease progresses the way it sometimes does.
.
I don’t think that is accurate. There was a instance several years ago where a common cold coronavirus spread rapidly in a nursing home (in Washington State IIRC), and quickly killed several patients and made several staff members very sick. There was initial alarm when samples were tested for SARS (the original novel coronavirus) and the tests came back positive for SARS because of cross-reactivity of the test with the common coronavirus. Turned out it was just normal cold coronavirus. Viral pneumonia kills the elderly all the time. The rate of death is higher for the 2019 novel coronavirus, which is not surprising since there is no existing immune memory, but I think there is little else very unusual about this coronavirus.
MikeM
I think this is obviously a difference in kind. Before phase II trials, we had no idea what the efficacy of the vaccine was.
.
It is not remotely unethical to deny people a vaccine whose efficacy is totally unknown and might be zero. It is unethical to deny people a vaccine whose efficacy is high.
.
The fact that the phase III trials was precisely to determine if it had any efficacy at all makes the ethical argument related to denying it entirely different in the two cases– and one of “kind” not “degree”.
The Supreme Court dismissed the Texas suit because of lack of standing. The lack of evidence, standing and attempts to reverse a statewide validated vote in violation of states’ rights in these attempts to somehow save Trump’s presidency should be a signal to tell this clown that the circus has left town.
I do agree that mail-in voting needs better methods to avoid potential fraud even if little fraud has so far been revealed. The counter argument that these measures inhibit voters needs to be demonstrated and not allowed to stand through sloganeering. State courts should not be allowed to make changes to election laws. There job is the pass judgment on the legality of these matters and not legislate. Court ordered busing appears to have passed muster with the Supreme Court back in the 1970’s and thus I do not know how much that precedent bares on court ordered changes to election rules.
MikeM
My mother has participated in trials– and is participating in one right now. I know her motives. She dang well wants to be first, not last, in line to receive things that works.
.
“Participants were screwed” is relevant to future participants decisions even if the specifics of this situations are never repeated.
.
The issue is not “moot” with respect to your claim that the same argument was made vis-a-vis having phase three trials at all. That argument was not made about having them at all. It is made about continuuing them. That is the fact relevant to your claim and it is not remotely moot to that.
MikeM
IOT:It is very effective. Adding “for three months” doesn’t make it suddenly ineffective. Preventing trial participants from making their own decision to have that very effective protection for 3 months is unethical vis-a-vis those participants.
.
I get that “science” might want to resolve this. But these are people who want protection. If it’s three months and not forever, it’s three months.
Technically it comes down to whether the study will unblind the data for participants if requested, and/or whether they will vaccinate on request. It sounds like they don’t want to do that. Clearly if a participant knew he was vaccinated it might change their behavior and invalidate parts of the study.
.
Alternately they could refuse to do this, participants would know they have a 50% chance of being protected, alter their behavior anyway and die. This vaccine is too high profile to allow this to happen in my view, it would be very damaging. The headline “Placebo group participant dies after requesting vaccine” won’t go over well.
.
Discussion: COVID-19 vaccine trial ethics once we have efficacious vaccines
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6522/1277.full
Trump being such a poor loser (surprise!) will hopefully remove any chances of him running again successfully. This is just an embarrassment. I still shudder at the thought of Senator Trump from FL.
There is an interesting question about whether you vaccinate those most likely to die or those most likely to spread the virus first. Clearly nursing homes et. al. are the best bang for the buck but after that it gets much hazier. A mathematical line probably gets crossed where you start vaccinating public facing people next, not sure where that is or whether anyone has actually run the numbers.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #195393): “The Supreme Court dismissed the Texas suit because of lack of standing. The lack of evidence, standing”
.
There is tons of evidence of wrongdoing. It is arguably not proof, but proof requires an actual investigation. We probably can not quantify the ultimate impact of the fraud, so there is no easy remedy.
———
Kenneth Fritsch: “and attempts to reverse a statewide validated vote in violation of states’ right”
.
The Texas suit did not ask the court to overturn the vote. They asked to have the state legislatures decide what should be done. As required by the constitution. No violation of states rights.
.
It seems to me that it is up to the legislatures of the affected states to initiate action, hence the lack of standing for other states. If a governor blocks that, then it should be up to the legislature of the state to seek judicial relief. That has not happened. I suppose one could claim that is because of lack of evidence, but I think it more likely that an actual special session would put those legislatures in a spot with no good option. So they choose to posture rather than act.
Tom Scharf (Comment #195397): “Discussion: COVID-19 vaccine trial ethics once we have efficacious vaccines
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6522/1277.full”
.
Thanks. Good article.
Tom Scharf
LOL!!!
I think that would make him the first to go from President to Senator, but I’m not sure!
MikeM
4 legislatores who were all republican dominated.
These state legislatures were already doing what was required of them by the US constitution. They had decided what should be done. Their decision was to let the plebiscite stand. They happened to do this through doing nothing to overturn it. This was the right of those state legislatures.
.
Nothing in the constutition allows TX to dictate the details of how WI, GA etc. legislatures go about deciding what should be done.
The SCOTUS decision did not violate TX rights. It did not violate the US constitution. And it preserved the rights of the other states from interference by TX.
.
It is as it should be.
Well… it might not be unethical to try to continue.
.
The article fails to address
(a) the very strong likelihood most participants will want to leave the trial as soon as they are in line to get vaccine. They only focus on avoiding “confusion and distrustâ€. They seem totally oblivious to the likelihood that participants who thought they would be in the front of the line for the vaccine will distrust them no matter how well the researchers explain their research oriented – screw the participants “rationaleâ€.
(b) the effect of trying to enrolls participants in one future trials after people hear these participants were encouraged to be last in line to get vaccine. Telling them they are free to quit is all well and good. But asking them to stay and “explaining†the case why why should continue to risk themselves is going to feel like pressure to participants. As someone noted: any of them dying after they could have had vaccine is going to be very bad publicity for those enrolling people in future trials.
It’s all very much from a “research†point of view, and doesn’t take much of a participant point of view. Of course the participants can quit. I suspect many will. I would. Though.. of course…. I didn’t look into enrolling precisely because I expected this to happen.
They never really needed a placebo group. They have the general public which is an enormous placebo group. The study and statistical conclusions are cleaner in theory with a double blind test, but this seems like it could be worked out. On the other hand a small number of outliers in the placebo group can cause big problems for a study, and then they will just claim that those outliers are invalid by referencing the general public statistics.
.
I suppose those who are in the study need to have some uncertainty about whether they are vaccinated so they don’t change behavior.
If suit brought by CA or NY prevailed to interfere with Alabama’s voting procedures I’d be good and pissed. I’d call that tyranny.
Just saying.
I think placebo groups make testing efficacy cleaner. You can have people roughly matched and you don’t have to worry that the participants might be demographically different from the general public.
.
They don’t need placebo groups to test for unusual or long term safety. They can definitely do that comparing to the general public. They do that for all sorts of things. It’s not as mathematically clean and having a placebo group but we know eating lead paint is unhealthy for kids and that wasn’t discovered by having a placebo and a test group!
Tom Scharf,
I don’t think Trump could win a primary against either Rubio or Scott; Rubio is up in 2022, Scott in 2024. Rubio is perfectly fluent in Spanish, an enormous advantage in South Florida.
.
Florida has open primaries. Democrats can vote as if they were Republicans. Trump wouldn’t have a chance.
Luica,
“They don’t need placebo groups to test for unusual or long term safety. They can definitely do that comparing to the general public.”
.
Heck, at this point they really don’t even really need the vaccine group, since many millions will receive the vaccine in the next month or two, and any unexpected side effects will be obvious. It is just the id!ots at the FDA trying to flex their bureaucratic muscle. Simply shameful behavior. If I were a participant in the Pfizer trial, I would stop communicating with the trial sponsors immediately.
SteveF,
I would give notice to Pfizer with a time limit for complete withdrawal from the trial, a month or less. That way they would have time to notify the FDA that they would be losing participants if the participants weren’t unblinded and those who received the placebo put at the head of the line for vaccination.
I think the bureaucrats at the FDA and their tame experts on the panel think of trial participants as ciphers, not real people. They are not even guinea pigs, but sacrificial lambs.
SteveF,
My impression is it’s normal to track safety issues after releasing a vaccine under the standard method. That method relies on monitoring those who get the vaccine– not on a double blind protocol.
lucia,
Andrew Johnson was a Senator after being President, so a Senator Trump would not be a first.
lucia,
I can think of one reason to have a placebo group, evaluating reaction to the vaccine injection. As I remember, at least some of the placebo group had similar reactions, local soreness e.g., to the vaccine group.
DeWitt,
Fair enough. Though that’s now in the past! It’s automatically possible if they have a placebo group for efficacy. Still, maybe there will be other reasons.
.
Placebo groups are always cleaner for comparison. But they really don’t need that to go on forever. Keeping people in the placebo group (or even in doubt as to whether they are in the placebo group) is not going to be popular with the sorts of people who volunteer to be test participants!
It’s pretty obvious that if we were to draw a Venn diagram of “those who would assume risks of being in test protocol) and “those who want to wait for ‘standard approval’ before taking the ‘risk’ of a not fully tested vaccine” is going to have an intersection that is the null set or nearly indistinguishable from it!
Lucia,
As many have noted, following those who received the vaccine is not the issue at all. It is the failure to notify participants of their actual vaccination status. I could rage almost without end about the immorality this, but instead, I will simply note that this is exactly what is wrong with the FDA, and exactly why the organization should be severely limited by Congress in what it’s allowed to do. Really, it is an organization which has long since outlived its usefulness, and now mostly does harm to the populace. Get rid it already.
lucia,
Yes. It’s called a Phase 4 trial.
Technically, an EUA is not on the market, but IMO that’s a distinction without a difference given the magnitude of the proposed vaccination program.
SteveF,
This is precisely the attitude of the Swamp, not just the FDA, that caused Trump to be elected in 2016 and nearly re-elected him in 2020.
From Trump’s remarks about the legal actions concerning the results of the presidential election a reasonable person would have to assume that he was talking about and urging the reversal of the key state election to his favor. I did not hear him say that he and his legal team were testing the legitimacy of some state actions concerning mail-in voting, but that if that outcome does not change the election results he would accept the results and concede. Instead he did his usual Trump thing in calling the election a fraud and disparaging elected officials responsible for vote counting or passing judgments on the process who disagreed with him. He should look for his next elected position in a banana republic.
There are voting process changes that should be looked into and probably need changing and particularly with regards to mail-in voting, but Trump’s actions appeared as usual to be only for the benefit of Trump.
Fed judge rules on the merits of Trumps request vis-a-vis WI. It’s meritless
https://reason.com/volokh/2020/12/13/another-court-loss-for-trump-campaign-in-wisconsin/
It’s also pretty clear Trump wants the vote overturned. Even if he doesn’t ask the judge to do it (because the judge can’t give the votes to Trump) he wants the judge to throw out the present result and force the GOP legislature to vote.
.
The WI legislature has a perfect right to allow their previously enacted legislation which was not violated hold.
lucia (Comment #195441): “It’s also pretty clear Trump wants the vote overturned. Even if he doesn’t ask the judge to do it (because the judge can’t give the votes to Trump) he wants the judge to throw out the present result and force the GOP legislature to vote.”
.
I think that is exactly right.
.
lucia: “The WI legislature has a perfect right to allow their previously enacted legislation which was not violated hold.”
.
I have found it very hard to find clear descriptions of just what is being alleged where. I thought the issue in Wisconsin was that the changes in election law were contrary to the state constitution.
.
There seems to be a circularity in the arguments against Trump. It seems he is being denied venues in which his claims could be tried and proved or disproved. And it seems he is being denied that because his claims have not been proved.
MikeM
That’s Trump’s claim. The federal district court judge ruling here says otherwise:
https://reason.com/volokh/2020/12/13/another-court-loss-for-trump-campaign-in-wisconsin/
Bold mine.
So the ruling is that Trump’s team theory that changes in election law violate WI’s constitution is a bogus theory.
The judge adds
MikeM
The above judge did not deny the venue. He ruled don the merits of Trump’s claim in WI. He finds Trump’s case is without merit.
.
Trump is just trying to fling poo at the wall and see what sticks. The poo isn’t sticking in court, but the lack of sticking doesn’t mean it’s not poo.
lucia (Comment #195445): “That’s Trump’s claim. The federal district court judge ruling here says otherwise:”
.
But that quote does not mention the state constitution.
MikeM
That’s likely because the judge addressed Trump’s actual claim which is WI is violating the US constitution:
Trump is done. He will continue to be obnoxious, but he will leave office in January. Unlike other presidents, he will continue to tweet and torment as long as people pay attention to him. When he was growing up he obviously missed the lesson on being graceful.
MikeM,
If you could find Trumps filing, we could read the language and see how he worded his complaint. But the judge in this case basically says the WI legislature passed valid laws regarding carrying out the general election and the Wisconsin ElectionsCommission (WEC_ followed those laws.
.
The WEC may have had more latitude than Trump preferred but that latitude is routine and is prefectly permissible. The WEC did not deviate from the instructions from the Wisc legislature.
.
If you think Trump is alleging a specific violation of WI law, you’re going to have to find the allegation so we can read precisely what Trumps team thinks was wrong. But the federal judge doesn’t seem to find anything remarkable in the WEC’s being given authority to organize the election , nor in their decisions under WI law.
SteveF
I follow him on twitter while he’s Pres. When he’s done: Hasta La Vista, baby!
Lucia,
I think there were instances where 1) local officials did not fully comply with the laws in their state, 2) other instances where the state legislature passed laws which Trump argues were in violation of the state constitution, and 3) there were some obvious instances of fraud… people long dead voting, people not resident voting, etc. I think the first and third fail because there is no clear evidence the irregularities were sufficient to reverse the outcome. I think the second fails because in each case the state courts did not find a violation of the state constitution, and the SC is not going to second-guess the state courts.
.
There was never the smallest possibility the SC was going to get involved in any of this. Trump has surpassed even Hillary as the world’s paramount sore loser…. and Hillary set a damned high bar.
.
He should work on his pardon list, and try to get another Arab country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The more Arab states establish diplomatic relations with Israel, the more difficult is is going to be for Biden to get back in bed with Iran, insist Israel abandon Jerusalem as their capital, and allow the Palestinians to veto every diplomatic move in the Middle East.
SteveF,
I think in the WI case, Trumps filing probably
*alleged (1). The judge refers to possible differences in statutory interpretation– which he said differences in interpretation don’t rise to a violation of the electors clause.
.
* did not allege (2) (He may have elsewhere… but if so, that should be possible to find in a filing.)
.
* seems not to have specifically alleged 3) . (Though heaven knows.. we know he does allege that elsewhere. Sometimes with adding ridiculous statistical claims which tend to undercut others that might be less silly.)
.
I agree Scotus is going to be reluctant to interpret states constitutions for them. That’s the job of State Supreme Courts.
.
Oh. Big time.
.
I agree he should impress the Arab/Israeli groups that it’s a good time to establish diplomatic relations. They don’t benefit from being hostages to the perpetually sore Palestinians or at risk of Iran.
He should submit the Paris Climate Accord to the Senate before he leaves so the Senate can formally reject it.
[Edit: Not my idea, but I think it’s a good one.]
mark bofill,
I completely agree, but I don’t think Trump cares much about such things. Submitting to the Senate is something he should have done as soon as he took office, before announcing the USA’s formal withdrawal. Biden would have a very hard time re-entering an agreement the Senate had already rejected. It would also have been the legally correct thing to do, since Obama’s entry into the agreement was of dubious constitutionality. Pointing out Obama’s many unlawful and unconstitutional actions is as important as withdrawing from the agreement.
Lucia,
Sorry, I should have been clear: I wasn’t talking about the Wisconsin case in particular, but rather the general claims Trump and his supporters have been pushing to support their claim of a “stolen election”.
Lucia,
.
I wouldn’t say the Palestinians are perpetually sore. It is just that they are 100% opposed to the existence of Israel, which is why they have refused every negotiated settlement, even with very generous terms. As far as I can tell from my visits to the region, the Palestinians will not enter into a negotiated resolution in the foreseeable future… they will accept only the elimination of Israel. With Biden in office, they will get more financial support and not be required to negotiate in good faith, so the Palestinians will be only more recalcitrant.
SteveF,
Yes. There have been general claims. The thing is, when reading a legal ruling, the only claims that count are the ones advanced in the filing and the evidence is the evidence they filed.
.
I agree the Palestinians are 100% opposed to the existence of Israel. And yes, with Biden in office, their intransigence will be facilitated by Biden. It’s not good for the region in general. It would be good for the other Arab states to recognize that the Palestinian demands are just unrealistic, and in the end counter productive. (Oddly, they are especially counter productive for the Palestinians!)
“3) there were some obvious instances of fraud… people long dead voting, people not resident voting”
I’ve seen fact-checker debunking this though I have no idea about reliability of those checkers. Do you have links to these incidences of fraud? I thought that every dead got removed from rolls so any attempt to register a vote for dead person failed the roll check? Aren’t there lot of legal reasons for non-resident voting? What fraudulent ones have been found?
Phil Scadden
Oh…. for sure they don’t all get removed. That should not be nin dispute. Our system has been really terrible about removing people from voters rolls for a long, long time. There is no real cross-referencing. So when a voter moves to– say Iowa– from Washington state, they don’t necessarily get removed from the voter rolls in WA state. There is no reporting back to WA when you registered in IA. This is the general rule.
.
When I was in grad school my mom noticed all four of her children were still registered to vote as if we lived with her. None of us lived there and hadn’t for years. We were all registered elsewhere and voted where we really lived. Normally all this disorganization and duplicate registration is not a problem. It’s illegal to vote where you aren’t supposed to and no one does.
.
Mostly no. Unless you count overseas military or students at university. But in the latter case, they vote at their legal residence which doesn’t have to be where they are stationed or their dorm. It can remain their “family” residence. For voting purposes, you have one residence.
.
By the same token….owing to the existence of disorganization, I suspect some people do take advantage of this disorganization and some dead people and some non-residents do vote every year. I’d be surprised if the number of fraudulent votes is ever actually zero.
.
It also seems true that some of the evidence for “fraud” this year is also confused and conclusion jumping. The same disorganization that results in people being registered at multiple addresses also results in there sometimes being incorrect birthdates registered and so on and so on. So some of the “massive fraud” claims were debunked. There may turn out to be some cases uncovered and we’ll eventually hear of some people who may have voted in more than one location. Or someone who voted for their dead relative.
Ok, thanks for that Lucia. I see this database for prosecuted fraud cases https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud but I guess far too early for anything from the Nov elections to be showing. It is a pretty small database.
As far as I know, all the US citizens in the office here voted so presumably there is provisions for people overseas too?
Phil,
The number of cases prosecuted is in fact small. There are two reasons: first, people engaged in fraud tend to hide that involvement; there are lots of documented cases where dead people voted by mail, but very few cases prosecuted. Second, isolated instances are not worth chasing after because there are no remedies. You check the voter rolls, and find that some person who died 8 years ago remains an active voter, and has in fact voted multiple times after death. But finding that after the fact (which is when it is found) can’t change the vote totals because that dead person’s anonymous ballot was counted already.
.
Which is why at least some people want voting to be in person with positive identification, except when the voter has unusual circumstances (like living in NZ).
Phil,
From the November election: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/12/13/with_runoffs_near_georgias_not_prosecuting_its_unprecedented_number_of_double_voters_126356.html
1,000 plus identified double voters the state has so far declined to prosecute…. these are only those who actually did vote twice, not the number who tried to vote twice but where caught by registration cross-checks before being allowed to vote a second time.
Shouldn’t the much touted “Thanksgiving surge” in Wuhan virus cases be showing up by now? I can’t find it. Not in the national data or in any states I have looked at. I am using the Financial Times tracker. Seems like the perfect record of the experts remains unblemished.
.
Many states, and the U.S. as a whole, show a holiday dip, presumably due to fewer people getting tested and/or slower processing of tests. But then the various states go back to the pre-Thanksgiving trend, whether rising or falling.
lucia,
Attempts to purge voter registrations of the dead, non-residents, etc. generate accusations of racist voter suppression because some people who are still residents but haven’t voted in a long time might be removed. It’s similar to the accusations that having to show an official ID is racist voter suppression.
I am curious about the how the various states where posters here live are prioritizing and handling the Covid-19 vaccinations. I have briefly checked the situation for IL where I live and as does Lucia and found the following prioritizations:
1a. Health care personnel, including staff at long term care facilities, group homes and home care givers, and long term care facility residents.
1b. Essential frontline, food and agriculture, utilities, transportation, correction and education workers.
1c. High risk medical conditions and adults over 65 years of age.
2. Workers in industries and occupations that are important to functioning society. Specific age requirements TBD.
3. Young adults 18-30 years old. Under age 18 TBD.
4. All other residents of IL.
http://dph.illinois.gov/covid19/vaccination-plan
Lucia, from this list I think I know where I fit (1c), but, if I were looking for where you would fit from what I know of you and my son and daughter-in-law who reside in IL, I do not see that clearly defined in this list. It would I think be just ahead of the 18-30 years old priority.
From my quick read of the link it was not clear how an individual wanting a vaccination would be contacted. I am not sure of the cold requirements for the vaccine in thawing, then keeping it at a lower temperature in liquid form and whether a third warming step is required before injection and further if the vaccine solution is made ready for injection and then not injected can it be saved by re-refrigeration. I see these requirements being critical to scheduling the vaccinations and having the correct number of people showing up for their scheduled vaccinations. They could over schedule and have long waiting lines but that might discourage some potentially needed vaccinations.
I’d expected 1a. I’m glad to see 1b!
.
Not happy to see I’m in group 4. But…. I can’t really complain it’s not fair. Young adults circulate more.
.
Oh well. I guess I’ll just keep taking my placebos. (D. Now carrageenan nose spray. )
Dewitt,
Yes. Complaints to purge are always greeted with accusations of attempts to supress the vote. No one wants to set up a system to report between states either. It’s one thing not to have voted; that could just be apathy.
It’s another to have moved to another state and register there. Unless things have changed, that still doesn’t get you off the registration list. (Or maybe they changed when motor-voter was implemented? I don’t know.)
Kenneth,
Florida’s first 180,000 doses will go as follows:
90,000 to health care workers who treat covid patients
60,000 to walgreens and CVS pharmacy chains for inoculating residents of long term care facilities (under contract)
The balance to the state department of health where they will choose additional long term care facilities based on local rates of infection.
.
I have seen no added information about the second and later rounds of vaccine, but DeSantis has been consistent on focusing on protecting people at risk, so I will be surprised if Florida selects bar-hopping 20-somethings ahead of the elderly. DeSantis is no friend of the teachers’ union, so they may not go to the head of the line. I would not be surprised if emergency responders get high priority.
New Mexico does not appear to have publicly disclosed their priorities, assuming they have set them.
SteveF,
The part of IL 1b that makes me happy is
I’d expected education and don’t mind it. But I was concerned the others would be overlooked. They often are. Honestly, teachers almost never get overlooked. They are vocal and organized!
Purging voter roles was met with the standard voter suppression cries in FL a few years back. There are no global wonder databases that can be used to do this accurately. So they wanted to do simple (cheap!) things like purge anyone who hasn’t voted in X years. If they showed up later then they would need to vote provisionally.
.
This is all fine, but I find it rather inconsequential either way. I just don’t believe there are conspiracies massive enough out there that could sway state wide and national elections. FL allowed felons to vote this time around, but how many felons are really politically engaged anyway? It’s very rare to have margins thin enough to be swayed by fraud in large scale elections and very hard to predict where they might be.
.
The same people who complain about low information voters also seem to want more of them. It needs to be relatively easy to vote, but making it too easy actually has downsides.
I am looking for what could go wrong in this vaccination process and right now based on my limited knowledge I think it might be scheduling of the walk ins for vaccinations, the cold storage of the vaccine, preparing it for injection and the no shows or alternatively over scheduling with long wait lines and having to reschedule for a future day.
My experiences with the state of IL make me less than confident that they are capable of getting this process organized. One thing I know with great certainty is if things go wrong the state will point to other involved parties to blame.
I’d prefer a couple obvious high priorities for the vaccines such as healthcare and nursing homes, then follow that with a simple age based / comorbidity condition priority queue. Essentially a who is going to die first, not a who is at highest risk of exposure. There is a slight possibility I might have a personal bias here, ha ha.
.
Other wise it is going to be a catfight to who can get in front of the line.
.
Farmworkers, Firefighters, Flight Attendants Jockey for Vaccine Priority
https://www.wusf.org/farmworkers-firefighters-flight-attendants-jockey-for-vaccine-priority/
“As a result, it’s been a free-for-all in recent weeks as manufacturers, grocers, bank tellers, dentists and drive-share companies all jostle to get a spot near the front of the line.”
Lucia, you do contract teaching as I recall and that might put you under education in 1b. I am wondering whether remote teaching like my daughter-in-law in IL is doing would qualify her for 1b. My grandkids from MN and their cousins are all in Florida for the month of December – along with their parents – and doing remote classes from their MN schools. Most schools in IL and MN I believe have gone 100% remote.
Kenneth,
They can only blame Trump for another month! They will then have to fall back to the evil obstructers in the Senate. I think it will need to be appointment based, but it does seem they haven’t really thought it through much. My usual comment on government incompetence when facing an unprecedented issue applies here. It will be chaos for a while, and slowly get more organized.
.
What they could do is use the same drive in testing sites and convert them to drive in vaccination sites. If they use a simple age based screening or “note from your doctor” requirement then they won’t have a hard time. If you show up at CVS and claim you are an essential worker, how are they going to verify that?
Tom Scharf (Comment #195506)
December 14th, 2020 at 11:42 am
I thought the plan was for the scheduling of appointments to come from the site doing the vaccinations and that there source would come from some data base. My walk ins from my above post meant for scheduled walk ins as opposed to giving vaccinations for example at a long term care facility. I do not think that walk ins in the common usage of that term would work for this vaccination. It would take a big and time consuming effort to qualify walk ins on the spot at vaccination centers.
They have had a long time to figure this out, I can’t find any info on how it would work in FL beyond delivery to certain drug stores. DeSantis says to stay tuned for further updates. It will take a couple months to get through healthcare and nursing homes.
Tom wrote: “It’s very rare to have margins thin enough to be swayed by fraud in large scale elections and very hard to predict where they might be.”
.
I believe it was the WP that claimed the margins that allowed Trump to win were such that fraud could easily have flipped the result, but that could just be another MSM nonsense article.
.
The forensic report from the Dominion voting machines released today claims that they were throwing back 68% of votes for “adjudication” because of “errors”, and that no paper trail existed for the “adjudication” process.
KEnneth,
I don’t know if it might put me to the front of the line. I’m 100% online so it seems likely not fair…. but well… maybe I’d be willing to be unfair. 🙂
.
One of the reasons I’m very happy to see the ag and food workers if they aren’t online. Teachers are. I don’t know that getting k-12 teachers immunized will get schools back in person because kids won’t be. Still if they are in person, those teachers should be prioritized.
.
I think prioritization needs to be pretty simple. So having teachers bring in an extra not saying they are in person wouldn’t make sense. Similarly, some of my concerns about extra points for comorbidities is …. well…. some MD’s would stretch points.
DaveJR (Comment #195514): “I believe it was the WP that claimed the margins that allowed Trump to win were such that fraud could easily have flipped the result, but that could just be another MSM nonsense article.”
.
They claim well over 100K illegal ballots cast in Georgia (dead people, fraudulent addresses, double voters, votes from non-residents). Details:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/07/no-the-georgia-vote-counting-video-was-not-debunked-not-even-close/
Over 70K questionable ballots in Nevada:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/03/trump-lawyers-claim-widespread-election-fraud-in-nevada-and-theyre-about-to-have-their-day-in-court/
Something like 200K late ballots illegally counted in Pennsylvania. And an entire truckload of ballots illegally shipped across state lines. And all sorts of violations in Wisconsin and Michigan.
.
Almost certainly not enough fraud to swing the nationwide popular vote count. But potentially an order of magnitude larger than the margins in some of the swing states.
The 60,000 doses destined for nursing homes in Florida represents a single dose for most of the 70,000 nursing home residents in the state. Add in the Dept. of Health’s 30,000 doses for nursing homes in places with high case rates, and that covers a single dose for all nursing home residents…. with some left over. Mu understanding is that provision is being made for second dose distribution three weeks after the first.
.
Florida has a larger number of “assisted living” residents, but I can find no published totals. I would guess in the range of double the nursing home residents. So maybe 200,000 total in “elderly care” facilities. I have read that about 40% of all covid-19 deaths in Florida have been in these facilities, so immunizing less than 1% of the total population eliminates 40% of deaths. That is efficient use of a limited quantity of vaccine.
.
Florida’s population over age 65, but not in elderly care, is about 4 million (~20% of the total population), so eliminating most of the remaining covid-19 deaths in Florida will take a lot of doses….
Mike M,
Whatever your concerns, it is not going to make any difference. Biden is going to be (very intellectually diminished) president from January 20….. until Kamala can figure a way to get rid of him. “Dr. Jill” may step in to keep Kamala at bay, at least for a while. A clash of the political Titans if there ever were one; I’m personally betting on Dr. Jill for at least 2 years.
.
There are lots of things Republican state legislators can do in the swing states to keep the worst of voter fraud from happening in future elections.
.
But 2020 is over, and you need to get past the current voting scandals. Trump is out on January 20.
SteveF (Comment #195522): “Whatever your concerns, it is not going to make any difference. Biden is going to be (very intellectually diminished) president”
.
I know that. As far as this election is concerned, the battle is lost.
.
SteveF: “There are lots of things Republican state legislators can do in the swing states to keep the worst of voter fraud from happening in future elections.”
.
That is my concern. It will not happen if the crimes of Nov. 3 are allowed to be swept under the rug.
If the vote is very close then all things being equal a new batch of votes or eliminating some votes will be near 50/50 and won’t sway things much. All things aren’t equal so it depends on where those votes were cast, etc. The court system is going to lean toward not invalidating any votes cast by citizens when there are questions.
Clark Co NV
.
“.. All mail ballots in Clark County were counted first by running them through a digital scanner. If the scanner cannot read the ballot or determine the voter’s intent, the ballot is sent to an adjudication or duplication team, both of which are overseen by a bipartisan election board. County elections officials have said about 70 percent of ballots are sent to be reviewed by elections officials…â€
.
https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/how-are-nevada-ballots-counted-and-verified-2177540/
.
Error rate matches to anterim countys 68.x% . Nothing to see here….move along….
Wife is getting the covid vaccine today. I’ll let you know if she explodes or grows two heads!
DaveJR,
As we have discussed here several times, the danger appears to be she could turn into a brain-eating zombie. Please let us us know if that happens.
Like the Pfizer vaccine, there is a clear indication of efficacy in the Moderna vaccine after a single dose, with divergence of the case rates starting about 12 days from first inoculation. Taking ~5 day delay between exposure and illness into account, the protection appears to start 7 days after the first injection. Combined with similar results for the Pfizer vaccine, this is very good news.
In Florida, even the first round of vaccinations in nursing homes should start making a difference in death rates by mid January.
Lucia,
Illinois continues to have horrible death rates per million population. Do you think Illinois’ plan for vaccinations will make a difference in the short term?
SteveF,
Oh… I don’t know. It sort of has to lower things relative to not doing anything. Though I admit vaccinating medical workers isn’t the main way to lower the death rate. It’s protects people who really deserved to be protected, but they are a group who better knows how to protect themselves and will be diligent.
.
But…. we’ll see.
.
It’s been weird explaining to people who wanted me to compete in FL that I wasn’t going to travel. Some would point out FL is not worse than IL. But… well… I would have to travel on the plane with people *from Illinois*!!!!
.
Hopefully some will be saved. Oh… well…
I think medical workers are justifiably being rewarded for their work. This is one group that basically did their job diligently without complaining much. There are many groups like this. Bus drivers, food processing plants, etc. I suspect the math backs up vaccinating those likely to die first (most people aren’t afraid of getting a little sick), but it’s hard to complain about people who took a lot of risks for fairly meager pay here to keep things operating through the shutdowns. I vote for toilet paper plants to get vaccinated next, ha ha.
Moderna placebo group had 30 severe cases, 0 for the vaccinated group.
.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/fda-releases-data-on-modernas-covid-vaccine-it-looks-good/
“Given the extremely promising results, it will likely be determined that ethics demand the placebo group be given access to the vaccine. The FDA evaluation suggests that any Emergency Use Authorization include stipulations about how the clinical trial will maintain participation once vaccines become widely available, given that we’ll need ongoing monitoring of long-term safety and efficacy. Moderna has indicated that it will try to enroll participants in the placebo group in long-term monitoring as they get vaccinated.”
Lucia,
Florida’s deaths per million population is much lower than Illinois’. How about if they held the competition outdoors and you drove?
That might work! Although, it’s a pretty long drive just for a competition.
.
Honestly, I am glad I didn’t go. The teachers at another local studio went with their students. They posted a video which looked really fun. Everyone went out all over the place…. the competition, restaurants, universal studios. No masks. They had tons of fun.
.
I think would have been a nervous the whole time. To some extent, it doesn’t matter what’s true habits form and sometimes breaking them starts to make you nervous.
.
So, for now, I wait.
Two interesting factoids from the Moderna data:
1) There were some ~330 people in each group who had evidence of previous exposure (circulating antibodies), so a bit over 2% of the enrolled population. These had to have been asymptomatic cases (or vey mild), since having known previous civid-19 illness excluded you. Anyway, none of the previously exposed who got the vaccine had any cases, while only 1 of the previously exposed in the placebo group got symptomatic illness. There were not enough people with previous exposure in the placebo group to draw any statistical conclusion about immunity due to previous exposure.
.
2) The best estimate of vaccine efficacy for those over 65 is slightly lower (86%) than for younger groups, although the uncertainty ranges for different age groups overlap. I guess this is not a surprise… people’s immune systems decline with age.
SteveF,
I’m have eagerly taken a vaccine with 50% efficacy, and would have taken one with 10-15%. So the 85% for over 65 sounds great to me!
.
But yes, it might not be surprising it’s less effective with age. But since your absolute risk also rises with age, it’s extremely advisable for older people to take it. (Well… unless they believe the risks of the vaccine is too high. But I leave that to individuals. Right now, the main thing is to get it to people who do want it. That include me!!!! )
Based on the traffic in FL, it appears to be wide open. The cases are nearing a peak near the spring outbreak, the death rate is about half of the spring outbreak. Most everyone wears masks indoors everywhere I go, but I don’t go too many places.
.
It’s pretty clear if they could have gotten this vaccine out 3 months ago it would have made a huge difference. This should be one of the lessons learned. It’s not clear they could have ramped up production any faster even if they had the go ahead though.
.
Allowing for quick mass production of mRNA vaccines in the future might be worth the investment.
Trump and Grover Cleveland
Amusing comparison
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/12/16/grover-cleveland-donald-trump-and-comeback-run-2024-column/3868018001/
Tom Scharf,
“Allowing for quick mass production of mRNA vaccines in the future might be worth the investment.”
.
For sure. Since the basic technology is going to be the same (regardless of the virus), and the manufacturing facilities will be in place, it should be possible to produce a new vaccine in large quantities very quickly. The problem is always going to be delays by the FDA.
.
Perhaps the pharma houses could move their early vaccine testing (phase 1 and 2) to other countries and just present the data to the FDA, fait accompli, so they would not have to wait for the FDA to approve each test step.|
SteveF,
Pfizer had a COVID vaccine testing site in Brazil and at least one other country. If you’re looking for fast approval, you need to have the FDA reviewing the data as it’s collected, which I think is what they did, and it was still slow. I know they did that for Keytruda, which had the advantage that no placebo or standard treatment control group was necessary. Late stage melanoma didn’t have a standard treatment and the life expectancy from diagnosis was well known.
While the FDA drags its feet a lot, at least we’re not in the EU, which has yet to approve a vaccine.
This is the kind of stuff that hurts “science”.
.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/covid-antibodies-traveling-reinfection/
“But should you travel if you already had the coronavirus? The short answer is no. The CDC guidelines of avoiding nonessential travel apply to everyone.”
.
What a bunch of crap. People already infected are the safest people around.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195599)
December 16th, 2020 at 2:32 pm
In my mind we should not compare ourselves to the EU in matters like these as they are a poor standard – even though a lot of progressives in the US think we should be more like the EU.
Tom Scharf (Comment #195600)
December 16th, 2020 at 2:57 pm
Tom, I am afraid you are another one of those not following science in these matters. Intermediated transmission is the scientific term we in know like to use in describing this phenomenon whereby an immune individual can transmit a communicable disease. It is much too complicated for a layperson to readily comprehend and therefore I recommend “following the science” i.e. whatever the scientists say.
It should be noted that a vaccinated person must also not travel or be an exception for the Covid mandated restrictions either. It also needs noting that, since we are interested in protecting every last soul from infection, restrictions should continue until every last person is vaccinated.
Tom Scharf (Comment #195600),
.
Yep. And now we are being told that masks, social distancing, etc, will still be required after vaccination.
.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #195604),
.
I honestly don’t know if Kenneth is being serious or sarcastic. Poe’s Law strikes again.
Tom
The argument is pretty much “we can’t be sure you are immune….. So act as if you are not.” This isn’t science it’s a value judgement or policy preference. It may not be wrong; it may not be right. But it’s not science.
The thing is: medicine relies on science and other things. Doctors will genearlly advice you to err on the side of caution. But that’s latter advice has nothing to do with science.
But you can get re-infected! The chances of that happening might be on the same level of needing an emergency appendectomy on a flight, but it could happen, so nobody should travel ever, ever. In fact people shouldn’t take any risks or risk the health of others regardless of how remote that risk might be. I’ve isolated myself from my family because I might self combust. All the molecules in my body might simultaneously move in the same direction at once, or I might accidentally fall though the floor to the center of the earth because you know, gravity. It could happen, it’s mostly empty space. Please do not stand below me to prevent injury.
MIkeM
Who is telling us this? I did read an article by a holier than thou sounding medical person who was front of the line to get the vaccine. He planned to continue wearing it as an example. But the argument is merely that he thinks medical personnel still wearing it is necessary to keep sending the signal they work as otherwise people might get the impression that the no one needs them. So basically, he’d wear his mask even though he no longer needs it. That’s different from saying we’d actually need them after getting a vaccine.
.
So… you’ll have to tell me who is saying we still “need” masks afterwards to give context. Becuase this guy isn’t saying that we will need protection afterwards. He just thinks those who get vaccine early should should continue to set the example so those who do need them will continue to wear them.
.
(Whether is notion is sound is debatable. But the message isn’t that masks will be required forever.)
I guess another question is who is saying vaccinated and/or recovered people * shouldn’t * have to continue safety protocols? It’s pretty much just crickets on the entire subject.
.
Vaccinated people still have some risk until herd immunity is effectively reached etc. However being 95% protected and a low infection rate in your area does actually change things. I can deal with a numbers argument, but not real fond of “we are all on the same team blah blah blah”.
lucia,
That sounds like a paraphrase of the so-called precautionary principle:
It’s the reason a lot of people reject genetically modified foodstuffs (see for example the Non-GMO project). And yes, it’s unscientific, no matter how elegantly it’s stated, because it implies that you can prove something is safe.
Tom Scharf,
A numbers argument is an argument. “We are all on the same team is not. It’s an appeal to sentiment.
lucia (Comment #195608): “Who is telling us this? … you’ll have to tell me who is saying we still “need†masks afterwards to give context.”
.
Well, here are two:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/nbc-doctor-masks-necessary-travel-restricted-even-after-vaccine
https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/12/covid-vaccine-when-can-we-stop-wearing-masks-not-soon-dr-fauci-says.html
I don’t know anything about Dr. Vin Gupta. But I think I have heard of the second guy.
The real danger here is that the nightmare of the covid-19 panic becomes the Whitmer/Cuomo norm: masks everywhere at all times, no personal liberty to do anything…. ever. Government control of all personal and commercial behaviors at all times.
When people start talking about how some asymptomatic person somewhere carrying some virus of some type represents a public threat which MUST be eliminated, I become very nervous about the future of humanity. The craziness has to stop.
MikeM
So… not cdc, fda etc. Just some random doctor who happens to work for MSNBC giving us his value judgement. And his argument is based on “we don’t know”.
All Fauci is saying is the pandemic wont be over.
He doesn’t come close to saying people who get vaccinated can’t travel. He’s saying society won’t be back to normal until the level of infection is low. That’s clearly true. I mean… even if those who got vaccine get to go live their lives, those who haven’t will likely need to be cautious. So yeah… even though a few people got gabs in the past few days, enough of us need to worry that we cant all just drop our masks today and go out dancing without any worry about getting sick. I’m certainly not going to.
SteveF (Comment #195616): “The real danger here is that the nightmare of the covid-19 panic becomes the Whitmer/Cuomo norm: masks everywhere at all times, no personal liberty to do anything…. ever. Government control of all personal behaviors at all times.”
.
I am becoming convinced that is the objective. They keep moving the goalposts closer and closer to where they want us to end up. It is not someplace I want to be.
Mike M. (Comment #195605)
December 16th, 2020 at 3:44 pm
MikeM if you had any doubts my last paragraph should have been a give away.
I agree with Tom. The one size fits all approach that governments often take is what I call overkill and it leaves no room for individual judgement on their particular case and circumstances.
Mike M,
I fear the only solution to the coveid craziness is is widespread civil disobedience. There is no way the Cuomo/Whitmer/Murphey axis of evil will ever stop, unless forced to by public disobedience of arbitrary rules.
Lucia,
“That’s clearly true. I mean… even if those who got vaccine get to go live their lives, those who haven’t will likely need to be cautious.”
.
Ummm…. well the only people who are at significant risk are those over ~60 and those with other serious health problems. Nobody below age 50 in good health needs to be cautious AT ALL. It is an illness which kills elderly people. If we keep acting like it is a threat to everyone (which it is not!), then we will only prolong the torture and increase social damage.
SteveF (Comment #195616)
December 16th, 2020 at 5:54 pm
It is not at all uncommon for governments to attempt and too often successfully carry over infringements on person liberties that come out of “emergencies”. Wars are probably the biggest example but an economic crises like the depression and 911 are other examples.
The difference with this emergency is that it is more directly affecting everyone’s individual liberties and in a very direct way.
What worries me is the large number of people who are ok with it in such a way that could allow governments to use it as a precedent for a more restrictive norm.
Kenneth,
“The difference with this emergency is that it is more directly affecting everyone’s individual liberties and in a very direct way.”
.
Well, if you refuse to wear a mask when you go to the store… so will I.
.
The lefties have faced near zero resistance to their crazy, illogical, arbitrary rules. That needs to change.
SteveF and Kenneth,
I”m actually more worried about the spread of wokeness and Critical Race Theory which leads directly to the cancel culture and the end of free speech. The apparent wide acceptance of the NYT’s 1619 Project is evidence of how far the rot has spread.
SteveF,
I think even younger people might need to be cautious. Some get quite ill which is an inconvenience. Whiledeath is rare, the disease isn’t necessarily a picnick. I had a 15 year old student recovering. She said she’s never had such a debilitting illness. Her younger brother got it– for him it was a walk in the park. Be she really woudn’t have wanted to get Covid if she could have avoided it.
The young can also transmit if they get ill. So they still might want to take some care to reduce their chance of illness. What that might be… well up to them.
.
Whether the government should enforce caution is another story. If deaths are down and almost everyone who wants a vaccine has had a chance to get one, there will certainly be no reason for the government to enforce caution on anyone’s part.
SteveF (Comment #195624): “The lefties have faced near zero resistance to their crazy, illogical, arbitrary rules. That needs to change.”
.
Indeed.
.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195625): “Iâ€m actually more worried about the spread of wokeness and Critical Race Theory which leads directly to the cancel culture and the end of free speech.”
.
It is really not one or the other. The two work together toward the same goal: Serfdom for all but a few.
I agree with SteveF. It’s been amazing how people in most blue states have just surrendered their freedom. Michigan is an exception where there is resistance. It’s Woodrow Wilson’s dream of the administrative state replacing the Constitution because experts are so much smarter than the rest of us. In Wilson’s administration, most of them were racists too, but that was the dominant elitist pseudo-science of the time.
SteveF is also right about those at risk. Hospitalization rates are very very low for healthy people under 40. Even the CDC estimates the IFR for those 0-19 years old as 0.003% which is very small. 20-49 get an estimate of 0.02% which is lower than many other risks for this age group. It’s the over 75 group where they estimate 4.5%. These people should be careful.
I do believe that even in the Civil War, the Bill of Rights was only suspended for short periods of time in places like Maryland when mobs seemed on the verge of preventing troops from passing through to Washington DC. Generally, political discourse was open, very partisan, and nasty.
Lucia,
“Whiledeath is rare, the disease isn’t necessarily a picnick. I had a 15 year old student recovering. She said she’s never had such a debilitting illness.”
.
Rare exceptions are, well, rare. 18 year olds do sometimes die in auto accidents. It is rare, but certainly more common than death from covid (or flu, or meningitis). Yet nobody says 18 year olds can’t drive. Flu and viral meningitis do (rarely) kill young people, but we don’t suggest young people should wear an N95 masks at all times. When people at real risk (over 50, but especially over 60) have had the opportunity to get the vaccine, the risk of sever illness will be low for everyone. All I am really saying is that at some point (soon) individuals need to assert agency over their personal choices… and tell the Cuomos and Whitmers to pound sand.
.
BTW, I wonder if your 15 YO student has ever had a bad case of the flu. I am betting she has not.
SteveF,
Good point about cars…. but I think people should be cautious when driving too. What does cautious mean? Don’t drive drunk. Don’t drive much faster than everyone around you. Don’t swerve like a maniac. Be alert… and so on. In the case of cars, some of these are mandated by the government!
.
I think the elderly should have their driving tested annually. Some states even do it! I think that rate of testing would be ridiculous for the young.
.
I’m also betting the 15 yo had never had measles, a bad flu and so on too. But I think people should be cautious and avoid and avoid those. The best way to be cautious in that case is to get a vaccine. If you don’t get the vaccine, stay out of crowds when you hear there is a measles or flu vaccine, to the extent reasonable wash hands. If you really want to… do more.
.
Avoiding disease is a good thing. People are wise to try to avoid it even if it doesn’t kill them.
.
I sort of have the impression what you think I mean by “be cautious” is different from what I mean by “be cautious”.
Lucia,
“People are wise to try to avoid it even if it doesn’t kill them.”
.
That avoidance of risk always has costs. I would not pretend to substitute my personal judgement of the appropriate balance of risk/cost for someone else’s. Current public policies insist, with force of law, on a certain balance…. at least for people without political power (powerful politicians are always exempt from that demanded balance, of course). These policies need to end, and the sooner the better.
SteveF,
I’d say avoidance of risks nearly always has costs. (Yes… if you drive like a maniac you probably arrive a bit faster. But you may save in auto-insurance in the long run.) Sometimes these cost are minor.
.
I’m not advocating substituting my judgement for someone else making decisions. I’m merely advocating for me not being required to shut up when pointing out that caution is sometimes advisable. In the situation of Covid: some caution is advisable even for the young.
A late night TV writer opines:
.
“And now? “I think we’ll be starting a shift in the other direction,†Bartlett said. “People desperately want and need hope right now.†She and the other Full Frontal writers will turn to topics such as climate change that the show could rarely cover because of the airtime Trump-related topics required, and they’ll try to be “more goofy†in tone. Drucker said he’s looking forward to analyzing “a whole new class of Batman villains†with the incoming administration—even if that potentially means turning off some left-leaning viewers. “There’s going to be a while that especially Democratic voters are going to be like, ‘You can’t criticize [Biden]. You cannot criticize; we worked very hard,’†he predicted. “There is going to be a cushion of time when audiences might not like you taking a critical eye to them.â€
.
Apparently nobody needed hope until now. The mean spirited way they consciously chose to cover half the country with will not be forgotten. They won’t get that audience back no matter what they do. They won’t do that to Biden or they wouldn’t have any audience left. It’s going to be interesting to see how the ratings and revenue of those who made that choice survive through the next few years.
And in news of the woke:
The San Francisco school district renaming committee plans to rename Abraham Lincoln High School. “Why? Because the president who freed the slaves is “problematic†and didn’t demonstrate that “black lives mattered to him.†And that’s not the only name getting canceled.
SteveF (Comment #195624)
December 16th, 2020 at 6:21 pm
“The lefties have faced near zero resistance to their crazy, illogical, arbitrary rules. That needs to change”
_______
SteveF, I remember a few months ago when you said a forecast of 300,000 deaths from covid-19 in 2020 was crazy. Well, deaths from the disease are already higher than 300,000 for the year. So maybe I should listen to the lefties rather than you.
On second thought, maybe you meant the forecast of 300,000 deaths
from covid-19 was crazy low.
As if there was any question of you doing that in the first place.
Thanks DeWitt. Sometimes I wonder what real world event maps to what Babylon Bee satire.
https://babylonbee.com/news/abraham-lincoln-to-be-removed-from-penny-replaced-with-blm-fist
Now I know.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195649)
December 17th, 2020 at 12:22 pm
The San Francisco school district renaming committee plans to rename Abraham Lincoln High School. “Why? Because the president who freed the slaves is “problematic†and didn’t demonstrate that “black lives mattered to him.â€
_________
Snopes says that story is false. The renaming has to do with treatment of native Americans under Lincoln.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-lincoln-blm/
OOOhhhh.
So we’re canceling Lincoln because he didn’t demonstrate that red lives mattered to him instead of black lives.
Thanks Max, I feel like that’s an important distinction that makes all the difference in the world. Really.
OK_Max,
You have to take Snopes’ bias into account when politics are involved. If the school is being renamed, then the story isn’t false. A different, but still woke, reason for the renaming does not make a significant difference.
As historian Howard Holzer said (quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle article linked above):
Throwing American history down the memory hole isn’t going to help, unless you want ‘1984’.
DeWitt,
“Throwing American history down the memory hole isn’t going to help, unless you want ‘1984’.”
.
I think that is really very much the objective.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195655)
Throwing American history down the memory hole isn’t going to help, unless you want ‘1984’.
_______
DeWitt, I doubt future generations of Americans would forget President Lincoln if San Francisco or any other city changed the name of its public schools named Lincoln. But that wasn’t my point.
What I questioned was the reason for the proposed change in the name of the Lincoln school in San Francisco. Was it because of Lincoln’s views and actions toward blacks or toward native Americans? Snopes says it was native Americans. That makes more sense to me.
As far as I’m concerned, San Francisco can call its public schools anything it likes, although I would hope names of infamous people like Hitler and Tojo would be avoided.
I don’t think it’s about forgetting history. I think it’s more about eroding or undermining recognition for good historical U.S. leaders. It’s easier to dismiss the Constitution as an outdated document say, easier to change laws and traditions, if people come to view important (and formerly respected) historical U.S. leaders as evil, or at least as unworthy of respect or admiration.
Just my speculation.
OK_Max,
“Well, deaths from the disease are already higher than 300,000 for the year. So maybe I should listen to the lefties rather than you.”
.
I have no doubt that is what you will do. But I was pointing out that while death rates do vary quite a lot between states, there seems no correlation between rates of death and severity of imposed restrictions. There are states with the most extreme restriction with very high rates, and states with the fewest restrictions with lower rates….. and vice versa.
SteveF (Comment #195660)
‘But I was pointing out that while death rates do vary quite a lot between states, there seems no correlation between rates of death and severity of imposed restrictions.”
_______
SteveF, I only recall that a few months ago you said a forecast of 300,000 deaths this year from covid-19 was crazy high. Now we know deaths from the disease have already exceeded 300,000. You under estimated the fatalities. No big deal. No one has a crystal ball.
Imposed restrictions should reduce both death rates and infection rates, but data on States may not show this because the rates are affected by so many other factors.
Well it seems to me that base contact rate for New York would be somewhat different than South Dakota. Population density, use of public transport, hospitality use etc would all be needed to make a realistic comparison. Places with highest contact rates are likely to have highest rate of infections and hence greatest need for NPIs.
OK_Max,
When the prediction of 300,000+ deaths before the end of the year was made several weeks ago, the death rate was lower than it is now and it did seem fairly unlikely. Considering how inaccurate models from organizations like IHME have been, doubting the accuracy of any prediction based on those models is my default condition.
Imposed restrictions are not going to have much effect if they don’t cause a change in behavior. Either people are already doing what the restrictions call for or they ignore the restrictions. IHME claimed that an earlier mask mandate would have saved 130,000 lives. But that number was based on an outdated and low rate of mask usage and an unreasonably high estimate of the effectiveness of masks.
“44 of the 125 schools in the San Francisco Unified School District to be renamed
Other names include George Washington, Herbert Hoover and Thomas Edison
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s name will be stripped from the Dianne Feinstein Elementary School for allowing the Confederate flag to fly outside City Hall”
.
The Cleveland Indians also gave up their name as well, ha ha. This is madness. If you can’t achieve greatness yourself I suppose you can form a committee and tear down the great achievements of others. This is purity testing the culture of the past to the “standards” of the present. Of course today’s standard is an ever changing chimera agreed to by nobody. Almost all people who achieve great things have vices, it goes with the territory of risk taking. It’s not hard to see why Musk moved to Texas. Why I heard Obama was a smoker! And was against gay marriage! Purge him.
.
What we have here is an epic case of isolated demands of rigor. The favored people will be given a pass and the non-favored will be given strict scrutiny. We even have Twitter struggle sessions now.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195668): “When the prediction of 300,000+ deaths before the end of the year was made several weeks ago”.
.
I think the prediction being made in October, there would be 300K additional deaths before the end of the year. Nonsense then, nonsense now.
I believe the paper in question is this one? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9 IHME forecast on Oct 23?
Fig 2 has the 300,000 by Dec. Figure labelled “Cumulative deaths from 1 February 2020 to 28 February 2021”. Seem to be on the money.
Quite a lot of detail in that prediction which should be interesting to analyze in the future.
Phil,
There’s a saying around here that even a blind pig will occasionally find an acorn. The IHME has made so many projections that one of them was bound to come close to the mark.
Lol! I like it.
A thoughtful rejection of the CDC’s vaccine priorities:
https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2020/12/17/the_current_covid-19_vaccine_roll-out_doesnt_make_sense_653619.html
.
My wife had lunch yesterday with three long-time friends, all retired and mid-late 60’s… a dentist, a school teacher, and a librarian. When the subject of getting vaccinated came up, two of the three said “absolutely never”, and the third said “maybe in a year or so if the vaccine doesn’t kill people”. My wife (a chemist) was shocked. There may be a lot more vaccinations available come February than expected. There may also be many covid deaths in 2021, even after the vaccine is widely available.
Well…. If I can get it in Feb, I’ll take it in Feb!!!
A “Facebook Friend” is posting about INVERMICTIN (the horse paste ingredient.) I guess there is a anti-vax campaign to get people to take that instead of the vaccine.
If it turns out it works, and they can get their MDs to prescribe the human form rather than the horse paste, hey, great! (I’m sure there are people taking the horsepaste too. Unfortunately, we won’t gather any statistics on effectiveness from that. Also, I’m sure they won’t all come forward to describe there side-effects. Like nearly all medicines, there are known side effects including liver disease. )
I’m still going for vaccine as soon as I can get it. I need my liver. I don’t want to have to give up drinking.
For those anyone tempted to go around their doctor and eat the horsepaste, here are the side-effects.
https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/product-safety-information/faq-covid-19-and-ivermectin-intended-animals
Tom Scharf,
“And was against gay marriage! Purge him.”
.
You can only purge people of African descent if they make the mistake of being anything other than a dedicated progressive. Obama can’t be touched by the social justice warriors.
I’d be curious to know how many of those who jump on the ivermectin bandwagon would never touch HCQ, and particularly the reasons why. Seems to me it’s a comparable situation, if not in HCQs benefit as far as human usage goes.
DaveJR,
Honestly, having read a bit (in a non-systematic way), I’d way the correlation between wanting to use Invermectin and wanting to use HCQ is very high.
.
Oddly (to me) there seem to be a negative correlation with wanting the vaccine. There’s a lot of “unproven vaccine” rhetoric on the pro-invermectin page.
.
I don’t know why they haven’t latched onto calcidiol– but they are taking D more generally.
.
They don’t seem to be pushing carrageenan nasal spray– which while it has less evidence, is pretty much utterly harmless and available over the counter in countries to at least use for colds and flu. Yeah… might not prevent covid, but does seem to help with colds caused by nearly anything that cases a cold.
.
I mixed up the carrageenan spray, I need to report on what using it is like. 🙂
OH.. I do not assume carrageenan spray will make me immune to covid. Though, if I get exposed, there is a possibility it could slow growth of vaccine in the nose, which might give the body more time to get its immune system in gear. Oh… and it’s a psychological thing.
Like many people, I need to “feel” like I’m “doing something”. This one seems harmless. And it doesn’t cause liver damage, so I won’t risk eventually having to give up drinking.
lucia,
Yet another proof of the principle that irony increases: Let’s take ivermectin, for which no clinical and little anecdotal evidence of effectiveness exists, rather than a vaccine that has successfully undergone an FDA Phase 3 trial. HCQ/zinc/azithromycin as a treatment for early COVID has far more evidence in its favor.
I think it may be residual Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I have seen and heard comments in the media that the Christmas Covid-19 case increase could be bigger than the Thanksgiving (TG) one. I have looked at the national and some state data for cases and all I see for TG is a decrease around TG day probably due to people not going for testing in that period or it not being immediately reported and than a make-up after the TG weekend. The seven day moving average shows no blip from the trend since before TG to current time. Am I missing something here?
It will be interesting to see what occurs during the Christmas weekend.
Cases of influenza are way down compared to last year.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-precautions-are-thwarting-the-flu-11608210000?mod=djemHL_t
DeWitt,
It’s not no clinical evidence. There was the recent double-blind study with invermectrin and carageenan nasal spray. There may have been other similar things. But I think it’s likely not enough evidence for the FDA to act. And, I would need to read the study and understand more about FDA requirement to conclude more.
.
But the types of arguments will be things like “it’s been used a long time”– that is conflating “time” with”safe”. I mean yes it’s been used for a “long time” for things like scabies or lice. But they sometimes use both topical treatments (which may mitigate side effects) and both of those would generally be “on time zaps”, not “take it every day until Covid goes away.”
.
There’s a difference between safe as a one time use and safe even if you use it every day forever.
.
Plus, I know people are self administering the horse medicine– because someone approached me on Twitter. He’s doing it and knows others who are. I know some of them think things like “They use it on expensive horses, so it must be ok.” Well… no.
.
I don’t know if the twitter guy is anti-vax. But my impression is there is a strong “anti-FDA-CDC” element to anti-vax and a similar strong element to “pro. HCQ” and “pro Invermectrin”.
.
Since I could be criticized for jumping on a different quack remedy….. the carageenan spray… yeah… 🙂
.
On the carageenan spray — there is definitely not enough evidence for the FDA to say it works for Covid. They wasn’t enough for them to clear it for common cold before Covid. But there was enough for Europe to allow them to market it as a “medical device”. OTOH: Maybe Europe allows things when there is only “some” but it’s “safe”. (Which is fine by me actually. It presents the risk of people wasting money or not seeking real help. Or, their doctors “not knowing” which can matter if a disease is really bad. But I figure that’s the case with many over the counter remedies. )
.
I’m certainly not going to go on a whining campaign about the FDA not approving carageenan spray. Or other things I might speculate “could” work. (E.G. IF I was into sucking on breathmints or gum, I’d get sugar free ones with Xytol. The theory is “why not suck on the ones that are sweetened with something that has been shown to kill Covid in-vitro?” My throat could be bathed in anti-viral instead of not-bathed. But once again: I’m not going to expect the FDA or CDC to clear this based on my “why not” theory. It’s ridiculous.)
DaveJR (Comment #195691): “I’d be curious to know how many of those who jump on the ivermectin bandwagon would never touch HCQ, and particularly the reasons why. Seems to me it’s a comparable situation, if not in HCQs benefit as far as human usage goes.”
.
Indeed. There is a lot of evidence in support of HCQ and its safety profile is such that it is available in much of the world without prescription.
.
Quercetin is also supposed to work, in combination with zinc (like HCQ). There seems to be some evidence for it an it is available without prescription.
.
Is there evidence for vitamin D as a treatment? There is a lot of evidence that vitamin D deficiencies are associated with poor outcomes. But is it fixable once you get sick?
.
Why have there been no front page stories telling us to take a vitamin D supplement to make sure we are not deficient? Because it does not serve either the narrative or the interests of corporate medicine.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #195697): “I have seen and heard comments in the media that the Christmas Covid-19 case increase could be bigger than the Thanksgiving (TG) one.”
.
Liars lie. It’s what they do.
.
Kenneth Fritsch: “I have looked at the national and some state data for cases and all I see for TG is a decrease around TG day probably due to people not going for testing in that period or it not being immediately reported and than a make-up after the TG weekend. The seven day moving average shows no blip from the trend since before TG to current time. Am I missing something here?”
.
I have noticed exactly the same thing.
lucia,
Using animal medicines to get ivermectin reminds me of the use of salt water fish tank hydroxychloroquine treatment. That didn’t work out too well for that one couple in Nevada or wherever, but who knows how much they actually took. I did notice that all the sources for the fish tank treatment were sold out at the time so likely some people were using it without killing themselves.
DeWitt,
The thing is, these people probably won’t die. Invermectin isn’t poison, and the amount of stuff in a whole tube probably wouldn’t kill them. But my guess is that horses aren’t given a tube a day, but rather some every so often. (I could ask my brother in law the vet. But my sister the doctor would get wind of this and mock me.)
The Cleveland Indians should rename themselves the Cleveland Indians and say they are now referring to the country of India. They are welcoming a country that has been oppressed by baseball and will require at least 15% of their players to be from India.
One the guys I golf with laughed and said he was never taking “that vaccine”. His wife is a respiratory therapist and had taken the vaccine the day it was available. He said she was forced to and had to bring proof to work. The others guys said they would take it when it became available. I would suggest most minds are already made up which is why I think they should have started a public campaign earlier. A bunch of celebrities taking the shot isn’t going to be helpful.
NYC: Never let a crisis go to waste.
“The city will eliminate all admissions screens for middle schools for at least one year, the mayor will announce. About 200 middle schools, or 40 percent of all middle schools, use metrics like grades, attendance and test scores to determine which students should be admitted. Now those schools will use a random lottery to admit students.”
.
I have no idea where they think this policy in one of the worst school systems in America will lead them. Academic performance by itself is discriminatory in this viewing of society. There are a lot of kids who put in serious effort (as directed by their parents many times) and they will now be put on the same platform as those who barely even show up for school at all or make little to no effort. The end result of this is likely to be the removal of politicians who support it, or many parents pulling their kids out of the public school system.
.
Ultimately many people are so disinterested that they likely won’t even sign up for the lottery though, so we will see. A complete detachment of demonstrated competence from rewards is just incomprehensible policy in my view.
Tom Scharf (Comment #195705): “The Cleveland Indians should rename themselves the Cleveland Indians and say they are now referring to the country of India.”
.
The Babylon Bee is reporting that the new name will be “Cleveland Genderless Sports Players With No Discernable Racial Features Or Specific Ethnic Background.”
The NYT discusses whether essential workers or the elderly should take preference for the vaccine.
“Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. “Older populations are whiter,†Dr. Schmidt said. “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.â€
DaveJR
Here in PA, health care workers are being offered $750 to take the vaccine. I guess they’re so “pro-science” that they have to be bribed.
DaveJR,
That’s following the science. /sarc
Critical Race Theory strikes again. So society is structured so that minorities are more obese and thus have a higher incidence of Type II diabetes? Who knew?
Has anyone here found out how individuals would be contacted for scheduling a Covid-19 vaccination?
I just left the same query for my medical group. The question and answers did not reveal that information.
Mike M. (Comment #195701)
December 18th, 2020 at 11:03 am
I do not think that media writers out and out lie. It would appear that some and perhaps many of the writers and commentators have an agenda or at least a preconceived conclusion in mind. When a piece of data becomes available that agrees with their thinking they immediately put it out to the public without further analysis or thought and in an exaggerated form. If it disagrees they do much more analysis and consulting of “experts” to find counterpoints.
A big issue with me is when I see data presented in a chart with a small change in time which is obviously noise and thus from which no conclusions can be drawn and I see the presenting writer headlining it as though a statistically significant change had occurred. I see this all the time on the news pages of the WSJ and used to see it when I was still subscribing to the Chicago Tribune.
John M,
Let them know that I would be happy to pay $250 to get the vaccine now, with my payment helping to fund their vaccination program for healthcare workers who are reluctant to get the injections.
Talk about idiocy.
Kenneth,
“I do not think that media writers out and out lie.”
.
You are much more generous than I would ever be. I think it is willful, conscious, out and out lies designed explicitly to advance a ‘progressive’ political agenda, regardless of factual reality. Not just wrong, not just inaccurate… simply evil.
John M,
Wow. What a waste. They should just make it available. If any health workers won’t take it, let them skip it. Move on to the next group.
.
I imagine the number of health workers not taking it will be small.
I didn’t know people vaccinated for covid-19 might still be able to infect others. I apologize if this has already been covered here.
“It’s also not yet known whether the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines protect people from infection entirely, or just from symptoms. That means vaccinated people might still be able to get infected and pass the virus on, although it would likely be at a much lower rate, said Deborah Fuller, a vaccine expert at the University of Washington.”
Source:Seattle Times
So this means I should continue to wear a mask after being vaccinated.
I just got a reply from my medical group and it appears that the Covid-19 vaccination for me would be scheduled through my GP’s office. It also appears that the details of how the state is coordinating this process has not been completed.
Max_OK
.
I gently suggest you wear a mask, even after vaccination, above all else, until you die, whenever that may be, regardless of any reality of infection risk.
.
OTOH,you could just get a vaccination and forget about covid 19. It is your choice. Unfortunately, just getting the vaccine means all the crazy covid rules make no plausible sense. You can sort this out. I, OTOH, will ignore the crazy sh!t.
Trump wins, or at least doesn’t lose, at the Supreme Court on the question of counting illegal aliens in the census. Even Roberts voted with the majority, so it was 6-3. There’s a lot of legal jargon in the article, so I don’t entirely understand the implications of the decision. In a tweet, the comment was that the SC punted and didn’t issue a definitive ruling.
https://bit.ly/34rNyRM
Supreme Court census decision long form URL:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/18/scotus-census-n2581805?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=12/18/2020&bcid=fedcd6eb57cb6c1a1720bb783ee9f8c4&recip=19022885
Using a tiny URL got the post moderated.
Tom Scharf,
Exactly why any primary care provider needs to be involved in this remains a mystery to me. Of course, people should get the vaccine; it is the only rational response to the virus. They should not need to pay some greedy medical hack $75 or $100 to verify the results. Please, test people without involvement of irrelevant medical doctors.
OK_Max,
I doubt that it is ‘yet known’ if having and recovering from COVID-19 protects people from infection entirely either. But it’s a good bet that both the vaccine and the disease prevent people from becoming infectious when exposed to the virus again.
DeWitt,
“it’s a good bet that both the vaccine and the disease prevent people from becoming infectious when exposed to the virus again.”
.
I understand that there is an especially horrible level of hell for those who do not routinely attend church. Plav4 ree094.
SteveF (Comment #195721)
December 18th, 2020 at 3:46 pm
Max_OK
.
I gently suggest you wear a mask, even after vaccination, above all else, until you die, whenever that may be, regardless of any reality of infection risk.
_______
Well, I do look better with a mask.
OK_Max,
If you want to wear it, wear it. It’s pretty harmless.
When you look at what’s happening now in Illinois and compare it to the previous peak in April/May…. what’s interesting is that the number of people occupying ICU beds is about 20% lower now and the number of people on ventilators is also about 20% lower now, yet the number of daily deaths is about 30% higher now.
I watch a Japanese TV channel routinely and there was program where some Japanese people who first started wearing masks a few years ago in public for protection from air pollution and I think also infectious diseases who later could not go out in public or be seen by other people without there mask on. Without a mask they evidently felt naked – so do not get too attached to your mask. Some I believe were being treated for their affliction.
Kenneth,
But I suspect Max is old enough it doesn’t matter if he ends up being eccentric. It’s different for young people who do have to often make a first impression with peers, customers, potential bosses.
.
Max can keep wearing his mask forever. I’m hoping to stop when I get my shot. (Which may be a l_o_n_g wait.)
skeptical, in April/May ventilators were being aggressively prescribed, partly due to being on a ventilator means exhaled air does not get inhaled by staff.
skeptikal (Comment #195733): what’s interesting is that the number of people occupying ICU beds is about 20% lower now and the number of people on ventilators is also about 20% lower now, yet the number of daily deaths is about 30% higher now.”
.
MikeN (Comment #195754): “in April/May ventilators were being aggressively prescribed, partly due to being on a ventilator means exhaled air does not get inhaled by staff.”
.
MikeN is correct; that seems to be one reason that the CFR is lower now. But I don’t know that can explain the full discrepancy that skeptikal points out.
It might be that now there are a higher proportion of deaths with covid but not because of covid. I have now seen data from three states (ND, MS, MA) that show that about 2/3 of those in hospital with covid are there because of covid. A similar ratio might apply to deaths.
Vaccine optimization for COVID-19: who to vaccinate first?https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.14.20175257v3
“Using an age-stratified mathematical model paired with optimization algorithms, we determined optimal vaccine allocation for four different metrics (deaths, symptomatic infections, and maximum non-ICU and ICU hospitalizations) under many scenarios. We find that a vaccine with effectiveness ≥50% would be enough to substantially mitigate the ongoing pandemic provided that a high percentage of the population is optimally vaccinated. When minimizing deaths, we find that for low vaccine effectiveness, irrespective of vaccination coverage, it is optimal to allocate vaccine to high-risk (older) age-groups first. In contrast, for higher vaccine effectiveness, there is a switch to allocate vaccine to high-transmission (younger) age-groups first for high vaccination coverage.” (note they mean high effectiveness and high supply here)
.
What Is the Best Strategy to Deploy a Covid-19 Vaccine?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-best-strategy-deploy-covid-19-vaccine-180976331/
.
“The consensus among most modelers is that if the main goal is to slash mortality rates, officials must prioritize vaccinating those who are older, and if they want to slow transmission, they must target younger adults.”
.
“One recent study modeled how Covid-19 is likely to spread in six countries — the U.S., India, Spain, Zimbabwe, Brazil, and Belgium — and concluded that if the primary goal is to reduce mortality rates, adults over 60 should be prioritized for direct vaccination.”
.
“Of course, when considering Covid-19’s outsized impact on minorities — especially Black and Latino communities — additional considerations for prioritization come into play.”
.
No, not really. My impression is, and I’d have to verify this, but these groups have old people too.
.
“With no vaccine, about 179,000 people may die in the first six months of 2021, Springborn says. His team’s model suggests that deaths could decline to about 88,000 simply by introducing a vaccine gradually, giving it to 10 percent of the population each month, and distributing it uniformly without prioritizing any groups. But distributing vaccines in a targeted way, based on people’s ages and whether they are essential workers, could save another 7,000 to 37,000 lives, depending on the situation.”
.
What is needed is some hard numbers on vaccination strategies. Once these are known then politicians have to answer to using politically correct alternate strategies that increase mortality rates. I have a feeling we aren’t hearing about these numbers because they are inconvenient to those who have to answer to the Twitterati. “Follow the science” disappears when it shows things that aren’t fashionable. One thing you can’t trust anymore is people in the media telling you want science says, you need to unfortunately directly access the science.
Tom,
From what I have read, prioritizing vaccine candidates by age and co-morbidity conditions like obesity and type II diabetes would automatically prioritize Blacks and Latinos. The only thing you might add would be number of people in a household. Multi-generational households seem to have higher transmission rates.
DeWitt,
After front-line health care, I think by age and key cormorbidities is the way to go. It would get the right minorities, rather than just any old person.
When I say “front line” I also mean ER, anyone caring for those with COVID, personelss in old folks home– and the janitorial staff in those places etc. Dentists and dermotologists can wait with everyone else… I’m sure they want to be covered, but tooth cleaning, while important, can wait. (Yeah… I know some can’t. But you could have a protocol for testing patients before they have root canals. )
Here is a long, detailed, highly informed, and very convincing argument that the second wave is an artifact of bad testing:
https://lockdownsceptics.org/the-pcr-false-positive-pseudo-epidemic/
It is specific to the UK, but the argument quite reasonably applies in the USA and elsewhere.
IMO, he buries the lead. He argues at length that one should not expect a second wave.Well maybe. But the really damning evidence is the shocking incompetence with which testing is carried out in the UK. That and the fact that the UK has had no second wave in excess deaths.
Mike M.,
You were expecting competence from the NHS?
In Italy they are getting positivity rates close to 100%. That would make me suspect that the test is giving a lot of false positives. Also the CFR is a lot lower, which could also be caused by a lot of false positives. In terms of a second wave, the number of occupied ICU beds might be a better measure. Perhaps the serious/critical column at worldometers.info could be used if historical data is available.
There’s also reports of a new, more infectious but not necessarily more virulent strain of SARS-CoV-2 in the wild. Lots of countries are banning incoming flights from the UK.
I take back the snark about the NHS. The NHS has been bypassed by private labs using untrained, incompetent staff.
Looking at the data, it does look like the ‘surge’ in New York could be a false positive artifact. California, maybe not so much.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195783): “Looking at the data, it does look like the ‘surge’ in New York could be a false positive artifact. California, maybe not so much.”
.
How can you tell the difference? Does the UK look like false positives or not? Real questions.
As for the new strain in the UK, I think the evidence is just that they have seen a lot of it. It could be that is due to it being more contagious. Or it could be that it just got into a favorable environment to spread. There is a lot of random chance involved in the spread of a virus, especially if a small number of superspread events are a large fraction of transmission.
MikeM,
Those guys are on about lots of things. Their knickers are certainly in a twist. But I would hardly say they’ve shown the second waves is false positives. Of course false positive increase the case rate. (And anyway, the amplification rate for PCR does make a case count for someone whose recovered “false positive” from an epidemilogical point of view. It just means the cases identification lags. But lagging indicators aren’t wrong in terms of diagnosing there is an epidemic going on. )
The authors stubborn refusal to accept that people are dying doesn’t mean they aren’t dying. There is a second waves of death which like it or not indicates that there is a second wave of cases. This is true no matter how much that guy dislikes PCR.
I’m not also sure those guys know what they are talking about more generally:
The reduction is not in propensity to be PCR positive. It was a reduction in propensity to get ill as in exhibit symptoms of illness. What that illness was was confirmed with a test. But the vaccine reduced illness. (And no, I don’t think quibbling that it might not be “severe” is meaningful. They throw “severe” in there for no good reason.)
.
lucia (Comment #195786): “The authors stubborn refusal to accept that people are dying doesn’t mean they aren’t dying. There is a second waves of death which like it or not indicates that there is a second wave of cases. This is true no matter how much that guy dislikes PCR.”
.
They claim that there is NO second wave in deaths in the UK. They back it up with a pretty convincing looking graph. Maybe there is something wrong with the graph, but I see no reason to believe that.
MikeM
Yes. That is their claim. Their argument for ignoring the deaths that are happening is utterly unconvincing.
The graph of covid deaths in the UK is here:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Covid+deaths+UK
It shows a wave.
FWIW: Even on their graph, you can see the second wave. Yes, it’s smaller. And the Covid aspect is not highlighted because it’s riding on top of other deaths. But you can see the wave in their figure too.
lucia,
You either not read the article or you are claiming it is wrong since you choose not to believe it.
MikeM,
I have read the article. Even though the authors want to use this to make the 2nd wave seem “gone”, the second waves is clearly visible in this graph.
If you can’t see it, you are blind.
It is true that it is more visible if you strip off the baseline of deaths (blue), it is still quite visible. But still: If you don’t see this, you are blind.
Yes. I say the authors argument for “no 2nd wave” is poor because it is poor.
Mike M.,
I hadn’t run the numbers and was just eyeballing the graphs. The reduction in a crude estimate of the CFR is a factor of ten for both New York and the UK. So I can’t say that New York is different.
It could be that both were severely undercounting cases in the spring and are overcounting now. OTOH, they both could be correct now and were undercounting in the spring.
Btw, your link reads more like a polemic than a paper.
lucia,
Based on the two and three sigma lines, the recent increase in total excess(?) deaths/day in the UK may, or may not be significantly different from the baseline, although it seems obvious by eye. The question mark is because I think the y axis is total deaths/day, not excess deaths.
I think the Y axis is total deaths. The blue is some sort of baseline for that time of year.
.
So the 3sigma above for a sustained period would indicate excess above total. It’s several hundred above the baseline– which is comparable to what we are seeing in the covid-only tracker
.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Covid+deaths+UK
.
I’m sure the graph above isn’t exactly the sum of the blue line and the covid tracker. But you don’t expect it to be because it’s possible there could be fewer deaths due to flu. So, the excess death graph looks consistent with the covid deaths graph. There’s a wave– albeit a smaller one.
.
Whether the UK is going overboard in lockdowns is a separate question. But there is a wave which on the excess deaths graph looks to be about 1/5 height of the earlier peak– but perhaps broader over time. On the covid only graph the 2nd wave looks about 1/3 as big (if you assume the base is unaffected and the deviation is all “covid”– which as noted above might not be the case.)
The US is different from the UK. In Illinois, we are having more deaths now than in the spring. So– definitely a 2nd wave.
Do false positives lead to hospitalizations and ICU admissions?
If the answer is no, then it is incorrect to say a second wave is due to false positives.
MikeN (Comment #195796): “Do false positives lead to hospitalizations and ICU admissions?”
.
False positives lead to hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths being incorrectly classified.
lucia (Comment #195795): “But there is a wave which on the excess deaths graph looks to be about 1/5 height of the earlier peak”
.
At least that. looks more like a factor of 7-8 to me. But it is hard to read.
There are some covid deaths. And there are likely extra deaths due to missed medical care, drug overdoses, etc.
.
lucia: “On the covid only graph the 2nd wave looks about 1/3 as big”
.
That one is a factor of 2, from 1.4 to 0.7 per 100 K:
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=gbr&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustx&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-03-01&values=deaths
MikeM,
Looking at excess deaths is an imprecise way. Of course it’s hard the read. Also, it mixes potentially off setting factors (fewer deaths due to flue mixed with more due to Covid, for instance.)
.
The Financial Times total deaths is probably better.
lucia (Comment #195799): “The Financial Times total deaths is probably better.”
.
Those are deaths attributed to the Wuhan virus. They can only be trusted if:
(1) The PCR tests are reliable and
(2) Cause of death is being correctly assigned.
Dr. Yeadon strongly disputes both points. Maybe he is right, maybe not. But you can not use the disputed “data” to prove that he is wrong.
.
Actually, it is not so much whether he is right or wrong as it is the degree to which he is right. There are false positives. There are actual cases. There are incorrectly attributed deaths. There are deaths due to the Wuhan virus. The question is the proportions. Until I read the Yeadon piece, I found it hard to believe that the false positives and incorrectly attributes deaths were more than a minority of the totals. Now I think it plausible that they are a substantial majority.
.
One thing remains certain: The unwillingness of the authorities to test the validity of the numbers is a disgrace.
MikeM
We both agree Dr. Yeadon disputes those points. He makes an unconvincing case.
1% right is not very right. Of course all tests have a false positive rate. He says that– he is right. He could add that lots of people like chocolate and say another right thing. And then you could say he is right to “some degree”.
.
He fails to show that his arguments are substantively correct.
I don’t share your opinion on this.
A while back while forecasting was active on this AI algorithm-based site, it used to be the most accurate. Now the site owner does only adjusted infection estimates as described on this page.
https://covid19-projections.com/#view-us-infections-estimates
You can find individual states and select county estimates there as well.
Mike M.,
I seriously doubt that a positive COVID test alone would put anyone in an ICU or even in a hospital. You’re going to have to back up that assertion. People get put in ICU’s because they are in serious distress and need much closer monitoring than someone who is less sick but still needs hospital care. Maybe they don’t actually have COVID, but they have something.
Shortly after I tested positive, I was transferred from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility. I might even have been able to go home except that I needed IV antibiotics several times/day.
I imagine a few people end up in the ICU if they go into full panic attack and convince themselves they are going to die, but that would be a pretty small number.
RB,
Interesting site, but I suspect they are doing little more that a wild-ass guess on the ratio of infections to confirmed cases (which indicates the fraction of people likely to not catch covid-19 again, for an extended time at least). Most of what I have read suggests a higher ratio of infections to confirmed cases than that site.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #195804): “I seriously doubt that a positive COVID test alone would put anyone in an ICU or even in a hospital. You’re going to have to back up that assertion. People get put in ICU’s because they are in serious distress and need much closer monitoring than someone who is less sick but still needs hospital care. Maybe they don’t actually have COVID, but they have something.”
.
That is what I said. But I see that I said it in a way that is easily misread. I did not say “False positives lead to hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths”. I said “False positives lead to … being incorrectly classified.”
DeWitt
Agreed. And, hospital admissions in the UK have soared.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
If all the Covid positives are false, MikeN needs to explain these people who have symptoms requiring hospitalization. I doubt it’s an outbreak of broken toes caused by people kicking chairs after learning their Covid test results.
And in the shutting the barn door long after the last horse has left category, we have countries banning incoming flights from the UK because of the new, more infectious strain of SARS-CoV-2 there. The first cases of the new strain were discovered in the UK in late September. I would say that the new strain is likely pretty much everywhere by now.
Mike M.,
Dr. Yeadon’s assertion that asymptomatic transmission is unlikely is total BS. Just because there is no coughing or sneezing does not mean potentially infectious aerosols are not produced by other activities like talking. Talking loudly, like in a crowded, noisy bar, would produce even more. We have anecdotal evidence that singing, as in a church choir practice, can cause transmission.
MikeM, the number of hospitalizations has quadrupled since October. Testing for COVID of hospitalized patients has been happening since April.
False positives cannot explain this increase.
Death with coronavirus can only account for about 10% of coronavirus deaths.
Interestingly, NHS admissions in general (march-Oct) are down on 2019. Unfortunately, information for admissions in Nov isn’t available yet, but attendances at A&E >4 hours were over 100k less in 2020 than in 2019.
MikeN (Comment #195812): “the number of hospitalizations has quadrupled since October.”
No, the number of hospitalizations with positive PCR tests are up. It does seem that total hospitalizations are up; by something like 25% where I am. There are a number of things that are going on.
(1) Something like 1/3 of PCR positive people in hospital were admitted for something else. That raises PCR positive hospitalizations but not total hospitalizations.
(2) There are people being hospitalized with the Wuhan virus. Those numbers are up, so that accounts for at least part of the increase in total hospitalizations. I say that we do not know how large a part that is.
(3) A lot of medical care has been skipped or ignored. Those chickens eventually come home to roost. So that is likely another contributor to increased total hospitalizations. Again of unknown magnitude.
(4) You get a cold, then a false positive PCR test. You are not that sick, but your doctor is concerned that you are at high risk. So he admits you to hospital for observation and/or treatment with remdesivir. That contributes to an increase in total hospitalizations. For a cold.
That is just off the top of my head.
.
MikeN: “False positives cannot explain this increase.”
.
Why not?
.
MikeN: “Death with coronavirus can only account for about 10% of coronavirus deaths.”
.
Determined how?
———
My guess is that more of the second wave is real here than in the UK. The UK is a small, densely populated country. So the first wave probably spread pretty effectively throughout the country. There are definitely places here that were pretty much missed by the first wave and that are getting hit now. Unlike the UK, hospitals are getting stressed in at least some places here. But that does not mean that the second wave is entirely, or even mostly, real.
———
Edit: DaveJR (Comment #195813) says that hospital admissions in the UK are not up while lucia (Comment #195808) says they have soared. But lucia’s link seems to deal only with PCR positive admissions, not total admissions. But I did not download all the docs at that link.
Yes Mike– the PCR admissions have soared. Somehow people with positive PCR seem to be getting symptoms. That strongly suggests those are positives not negatives.
MikeM
Even if it’s true that this fraction of the PCR positive people were admitted for something else and even if all those admitted for something else are false positives, this still means there is a 2nd wave. That’s a lot of PCR positive people with symptoms of Covid. The simplest explanation is they actually have covid.
I looked at the other data on the site for total admissions, which also does some categorization, not specifically covid related stuff. I assume an admission is an admission, regardless of cause.
>MikeN: “Death with coronavirus can only account for about 10% of coronavirus deaths.â€
.
Determined how?
It was covered here recently. Someone ran the numbers and confirmed my estimate. Should be in one of the recent threads.
It wasn’t about false positives, but death with covid vs from covid.
Take a look at what fraction of people will have covid at any one instant, and the deaths from all causes. Combine and ~10%
lucia (Comment #195816): “That’s a lot of PCR positive people with symptoms of Covid.”
.
Well, it is 2/3 of hospitalized because they have symptoms of something that *might* be covid and a positive PCR test. The symptoms are so broad that it is quite possible that a large fraction have something else wrong.
People see what they expect to see. A patient with ambiguous symptoms is a puzzle. A patient with ambiguous symptoms and a positive PCR test is a covid patient.
.
lucia: “The simplest explanation is they actually have covid.”
.
I agree. But that does not make it the only possible explanation.
MikeM
Yes.
No. But the explanation the author at your link is trying to come up with is tortured and implausible.
Mike M.,
Handwaving. You have zero evidence that it’s not COVID.
Occam’s Razor.
Sure you can hypothesize the existence of some other medical condition that is causing people to need hospitalization in the UK with some dying. But without evidence, it doesn’t mean much.
Mike M. (Comment #195814)
“My guess is that more of the second wave is real here than in the UK. The UK is a small, densely populated country. So the first wave probably spread pretty effectively throughout the country.”
__________
May be, but the UK has a new strain of covid-19 that may be easier to catch, and thus could boost their second wave.
As a precaution, Germany and some other Euro countries have banned flights from the UK. The US, however, isn’t sure the new strain is easier to catch, and so far to my knowledge hasn’t banned flights from the UK.
Questionable quality control at the clinical labs does not prove that there are huge numbers of false positives. It does open the door for speculation. But without evidence, it’s still just speculation.
I just talked to my friend in the Pfizer trial. He did exactly what I would have done, he gave Pfizer notice that if they didn’t unblind him soon, he would be gone. Apparently, all the first responders in the trial that have been able to be vaccinated have withdrawn already. Meanwhile Moderna can go ahead and unblind and give priority to those who received a placebo.
He did say that the latest compromise will be to unblind by cohort. He’s over 75, so that would mean February. But the FDA’s goal to obtain long term safety data controlled by the placebo group isn’t going to happen. And good luck Pfizer recruiting immunocompromised and children for those trials.
DeWitt
Yep.
DeWitt,
I hope your friend takes the opportunity to explain to Pfizer what a$$holes people at the FDA are and that Pfizer had a moral obligation to publicly critique the blatant immorality of the FDA’s request to not unblind the study.
SteveF/DeWitt,
It utterly amazes me to think of how freakin’ shallow this is:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6522/1277.fulllots of people think it’s a duty of first responderes to take the innoculation and public service messages are encouraging people to be innoculated not only for their own sake but that of others.
.
They don’t give the slightest consideration to the position of participants in society. Of course all first responders are unblinding and stepping out of the protocal. Yes these first responders want to avoid getting sick for their own sakes. That’s considered by the article and some how dismissed as not making it unethical to try to keep them at risk.
.
But these first responders also don’t want to risk others. The sciencemag article doesn’t consider that at all. It’s written as if this is no different from a non-communicable disease. But I think it’s pretty obvious medical workers, firemen, school teachers and all sorts of people in public facing jobs will want to be innoculated to slow down the pandemic. Moreover,
.
Yet…. the FDA wants to keep the study blinded. That that decision runs counter to the message that it’s important to get innoculated to achieve herd immunity…. well… let’s just not even think about that. ‘Cuz we are the FDA? Maybe? Anyway, it’s just ridiculous.
lucia,
You may not have noted that the Moderna trial participants got a better deal from the FDA. They can unblind and vaccinate their placebo group. Apparently Moderna has better negotiators or something. I guess I should read the article to see if they address the fact that a placebo group cannot be maintained for very long once the vaccine is available. Worse, they will lose long term data from the vaccinated group as well if they are not unblinded because they will withdraw too.
lucia,
And do what?
Anticipate this possibility? Might result? Oh puhleeze. It’s a certainty and it will result…. It’s already happening. It’s clearly in a participants best interest to withdraw from a placebo controlled trial as soon as the vaccine becomes available to them. For people at low risk, that might be a while. Maybe some people will be selfless or stupid enough to ignore the risks and continue in the trial. I don’t think it will be many, though.
From my friend in the Pfizer trial:
DeWitt,
Yeah. I know. Might? It isn’t like this is a vaccine for freakin’ shingles. If it was for shingles, I might stay in the study “for the science”. I won’t die of shingles. I’m not horribly worried about feeding a chicken-pox epidemic if I get shingles. But people who are informed enough to join a vaccine trial are likely to be informed about Covid and want vaccine as soon as they can.
As I stated before it is really hard to square the circle of medical ethics. It is rather random in my view. Challenge trials are unethical, but somehow trying to force people to stay with a placebo is ethical because … something. It’s basically just, me, me, me.
Because Science. Same as climate change, do as your told, sacrifice as we direct, because Science.
Pulse Oximeter Devices Have Higher Error Rate in Black Patients
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/health/oximeters-covid-black-patients.html
.
“The new findings “help quantify the potential harm done by a ubiquitous medical tool that may normalize white skin as the default,â€
.
Sigh. Maybe they should test pulse oximeters on dark skin people. Oh wait, they do. Under tightly controlled conditions. A typically pulse ox study uses all ten fingers, 10 patients of a required representative diverse skin nature, and 20 blood draws per patient. 2,000 data points per device, per sensor type. Millions of test points over the past few decades.
.
The error rate does go up with less light transmitted to the sensor, but it is inconsequential clinically. The low light issue is more prevalent on fat fingers, not dark fingers, although fat and and dark are even worse. Some people are almost transparent, I called them ghosts. Fingers are rarely a problem for any modern oximeter, getting through baby feet is another issue.
Even worse than the FDA refusing to unblind studies are the highly woke professors of public health at universities calling for rich white old folk to wait until all medical workers, all public facing workers, all teachers, all black people (regardless of age), and all other ‘disadvantaged minorities” have received the vaccine. The fact that sequence puts most people who are truly at risk of death about 180 millionth in line, and sentences many thousands more to absolutely unnecessary death is a non-issue with very woke professors. It seems to me defunding university education is the only real answer.
Tom Scharf,
The great thing about the NY Times is not just that they are very often mistaken about all sorts of technical subjects, but that they don’t care if they are mistaken. If it fits the political narrative they want to advance, then it is published, with no regard at all to accuracy. They are not just wrong, they don’t care that they are wrong….. the organization is evil.
This is why it is a rather wise decision to let states do their own decision making. I really don’t want to be waiting in a line a Harvard ethicist has drawn up nowadays. Mr. Cynical says that those professing this woke wisdom will somehow find a way to protect their loved ones regardless of their skin tone.
Tom Scharf,
Ron DeSantis confirmed again today that in Florida, after elderly care residents and health care workers, the elderly (regardless of skin color or family heritage) are next in line. I can only imagine the lawsuits families of the deceased will be filing in woke states like New York and Massachusetts after they sacrifice a thousand 70 -75 year olds on the alter of woke virtue signaling.
… and … on that very same subject.
.
Elderly Floridians will get vaccine before essential workers, DeSantis says
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2020/12/22/elderly-floridians-will-get-vaccine-before-essential-workers-desantis-says/
.
“The vaccines are going to be targeted where the risk is going to be greatest, and that’s in our elderly population (over 70),†DeSantis said. “We are not going to put young, healthy workers ahead of our elderly, vulnerable population.â€
.
“He said he considered prioritizing people with underlying health conditions, such as those with compromised immune systems, but decided it would be too difficult to assess such “comorbidities.â€
“The problem is, how do you administer that? Do you want to have the hospitals having to slice and dice everyone’s comorbidity?†he said. “Do I say this person’s comorbidity counts, and this person’s doesn’t?â€
He said it would be faster and more effective to vaccinate the elderly, and especially over people declared “essential workers.â€
.
Good politics, wise decision.
Tom,
As I remember, the immunocompromised were excluded from the vaccine trials. So we don’t know if the vaccine would induce immunity in those people. Better to use the limited resource where it will do the most good, i.e. anyone over 70.
Besides, Florida has a lot of older voters and they do vote.
Tom Scharf,
Oddly enough, the incredibly loathsome DeSantis wants to stop deaths as much as possible and as soon as possible. Lefty governors want to advance their political agenda. It is a modest but real difference. 😉
.
I hope the friends and families of all those people lefty governors are going to inevitably kill with their idiotic prioritization of younger healthy people over elderly people remember who was responsible for those unnecessary deaths at the next election.
DeWitt,
Months ago I examine the age profile of deaths in the first 50,000 confirmed covid cases in Florida. Turned out the age where vaccination will do the most good… in terms of life-years saved…. is 72-73. Older and younger people produce less total benefit; younger because their chance of death falls faster than their potential life-years lost rise, and older because their expected remaining life years fall faster than their their chance of dying from covid rise.
.
From a practical POV, it make sense to just immunize everyone over 65 as a first pass, since that eliminates 80% or more of all deaths, then immunize at gradually lower ages. When you reach 40 years old, deaths will drop to almost zero. DeSantis (Harvard grad) is no fool. Nor is he woke. It is a very unusual combination, I admit.
To return to the whole second wave thing. A second, and higher, wave was predicted early on based on lockdowns, social distancing, etc.,i.e. NPI’s, flattening the curve. But there would still be a lot of susceptible people in the population. Then when the NPI’s become less effective for a variety of reasons, infections would increase to higher levels than the first peak. I can probably find the link to the article I’m thinking about if anyone cares.
Also, while there was a factor of ten decline in the crude case fatality rate (peak deaths/day divided by peak new cases/day using the seven day moving average) in New York and the UK, there is not a similar reduction in Germany. The crude CFR for the second wave is slightly lower than for the first wave, 2.4% vs. 4%, daily deaths haven’t peaked yet. It seems likely that the CFR for Germany will be very close for both waves. Did Germany do a better job of protecting their elderly than New York and the UK in the first wave? I dunno. We do know that New York did a lousy job.
Not that I need to beat this dead horse anymore, but I can’t help myself. CA is now about as bad as the Dakotas were six weeks ago. The tone of the coverage is striking.
.
California Has Lost Control
The Golden State was in better shape than most of the country. Now the outbreak there is going from bad to worse.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/12/covid-hospitalizations-california-will-break-records/617455/
“Why California—a state that had been an example of a reasonably effective response—and why now? Some officials have pointed to lockdown fatigue. Thanksgiving alone is not the culprit, as cases were clearly rising in early November. The state’s reversal of fortunes is so sharp and sudden that the reasons remain unclear, but its time as a big and relatively bright spot in a dark winter has definitively come to an end.”
.
The reasons remain unclear? Let’s see how journalism handles that mystery for other places.
Death Came for the Dakotas
In terms of the coronavirus, they’re a theater of American disgrace.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/covid-north-south-dakota.html
.
Even by Florida standards, Gov. Ron DeSantis is a covid-19 catastrophe
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/21/ron-desantis-florida-covid-19/
.
Victims vs people who deserve what they get. They only personalize the virus for political opponents. This type of analysis is simply a disgrace, they don’t even bother checking the facts. The virus is bigger than statewide mask mandates, effusive performative displays of “caring”, and games of political topper on who can lockdown the hardest.
.
If you have a large vulnerable population, it’s coming for you. You are either going to get your population vaccinated or reach herd immunity the hard way. Don’t get cocky or you will soon be embarrassed.
Super woke, politically correct New York Gov. Cuomo has 127 deaths per day and rising, while the evil DeSantis has 97 deaths per day and falling…. no to mention Florida has 10% more people than NY and a much older population, with many more people at higher risk of death. And the cherry on top: New York has almost twice as many total deaths per million population as Florida. So saintly Cuomo presides over twice the death rate and is declared a hero, while DeSantis is reviled. And journalists wonder why there are complaints about “fake news”.
.
When DeSantis brings deaths in Florida down much more quickly than in New York and similar bastions of woke idiocy, he will be declared evil yet again, for no reason other than journalists don’t like conservatives. It is the MSM that are evil, not Ron DeSantis.
I am a little late to the party but I wanted to comment on that article about the extra deaths in the UK and how it relates to Covid-19 cases/deaths. I find the data included of some interest, but the conclusions drawn from the article’s graph and the conjectured reasoning weak and the language indicating an agenda.
The trending extra deaths appear from the graph to be exceeding the 2 and 3 standard deviations of the baseline. It would be interesting to see how the baseline and its uncertainty limits are determined – as there is a large variation over the period graphed. I think that extra-deaths metric is an interesting one that probably deserves more attention. Obviously there was a big variation from the early surge to the current one. It would be of interest to know if there are confounding factors that might affect the comparisons of those 2 periods as was suggested by Lucia by deaths from the common flu and other infectious diseases that Covid-19 precautions have affected. There is also the question that I believe has not been substantially answered concerning dying with Covid-19 and dying from it.
False positive test results could, I think, affect the number of cases, but I would assume that with deaths that would be much more unlikely because of the symptoms being observed during hospitalization.
There may be some damning evidence in this matter and data with regards to policy, but when an analysis goes a few bridges too far it has the opposite and unintended effect on keeping policy on a truer path.
Kenneth
And choices suggest picking what they “want” to consider and ignoring other things.
.
It’s fairly well known that Covid kills older people more than younger people. During the first wave, it swept through nursing homes and other places with older populations and so had higher mortality rate. Those places are now more protected, and there is a level of immunity owing to the fact that some of the residents recovered. Covid is now hitting younger cohorts.
.
So we know that if we compare death rather than cases, the wave of deaths will look smaller than for cases. So at least part of the reduction has nothing to do with the possibility that there might be false positives in tests.
.
Other choices like hospitalizations of those who got positives on their covid tests are unexplained. Sure it might be that these are people who went to the hospital after stubbing their toe when kicking the wall in frustration over mask mandates. So it might be just an increase of “with Covid”. But that’s really a case one should present and then make.
.
They mislead on the ability of the Lateral Flow Tests ability to detect Covid. It has low false positive rate for those with high viral loads. This is a good thing for a fast test and for identifying who is likely infetions right now, but from an epidemiolgy POV of trying to determine how many people in the population have been infected, failure to detect those with low viral loads is a false negative. Sure: you might have detected the people two weeks late— after they are recovering– but they are still “true positives” from the POV of knowing how the disease is progressing.
.
All their grousing about “high amplification” giving “false positives” is entirely misleading with respect to the issue they are discussiong which is detecting a 2nd wave.
.
It is important information for a clinician. But honestly, even then, it’s not a negative that the clinician will know the person once was infectious. There are people who become “long covid”. There are people with lurking symptoms. Clinicians will want to know the possible source– and so the high amplification tests gives information. Yes– that information might be inconvenient to the lockdown skeptics case– and so they want to claim it’s somehow all a “false negative”. But that’s just incorrect– or at least so deeply misleading as to amount to incorrect in the context of their argument
.
Other claims about false positives are purely speculative. So for example, their claim that no longer having PCR be the sole province of the NHS as somehow leading to false negatives is utter speculation. No real evidence is provided. (And as I noted: The lower rates of Covid with the LFR tests is not real evidence.)
.
It’s just such a poor article with evidence of cherry picking, speculation and axe grinding. I find it totally unconvincing.
.
Obviously others can have a different opinion. Or, perhaps they can dive into details explain just why “amplification” is a problem. Or actually find and present evidence people outside the NHS can’t do PCR appropriately. Or present evidence on hospitalization and find doctors who admit those are really all people admitted for broken toes who happen to have Covid. And so on: But right now, all that is absent.
.
And it’s a L O N G article with plenty of words spent on their political view about masks, lockdowns and so on. So it’s not like they didn’t have space or ink to engage and address rather obvious points that cut against their claim.
Oh… Lateral flow tests
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/oxford-university-and-phe-confirm-high-sensitivity-of-lateral-flow-tests
So: it has low false positives for people with high viral loads. That’s why they think it’s a good tool for identifying the infectious. They aren’t claiming it identifies everyone who got infected. In fact, it will miss people who had low viral loads. From an epidimiology POV you want to count those people, since the count that includes them tells you how the disease is moving through the populations. (Including, btw, how herd immunity might be building!)
Not clear how they derived the UK strain is more contagious, other than identifying a variant and noting it was more prevalent at the moment. There have been many breakouts unrelated to a new strain, such as the current US breakout. The UK breakout isn’t that remarkable by itself.
.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-coronavirus-strain-splits-scientists-as-u-k-and-others-act-to-curb-spread-11608665330
“Yet, he added, more research was needed to figure out how much more transmissible it is and the biology behind it. “We still don’t understand the exact biological mechanisms of that, there is still a lot of uncertainty about exactly how it’s occurring, exactly the extent of the extra transmissibility.â€
.
At least they aren’t pretending they understand things anymore.
More info on UK variant here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55388846
.
If the numbers come from Imperial College analysis, they must be solid, ha ha.
Tom wrote: “At least they aren’t pretending they understand things anymore.”
.
The damage has already been done.
Apparently Deborah Birx has announced her retirement after being called out for not actually following the recommended personal isolation from the CDC. Can’t say I am surprised. Setting unrealistic rules for the populous only leads to 1) violation of the rules by normal people, for which they are punished, and 2) violation of the rules by the rich and powerful, for which they are never punished. The powerful, like idiot Gov. Newsom are the evil posterboys for the whole woke dishonestly. Will they ever face the wrath of voter? I doubt it; the voters in California appear to be mentally retarded.
There is a movement to recall Newsom. They need some 1.5 million signatures by March. A couple weeks ago they were over half way there.
Looking at Trump’s pardon list, I would say “drain the swamp” must have a different meaning to usage here.
Phil Scadden,
Not sure what you mean. Can you be less cryptic?
Mike M,
The recall is the longest of long shots. Unfortunately, Newsom will continue to torment his state’s citizens. Besides, even if he were recalled and replaced, his replacement would probably be even worse.
Yes, Trump pardoned Manafort, and he was certainly as swampy a swamp critter as anyone could wish for.
It’s alright though. Trump’s time is almost at an end, and an unprecedented new era of integrity and transparency is about to begin with President Joe Biden. There is no evidence that Joe Biden has ever been involved with anything shady, nor will there ever be, if our activist left leaning media has anything to say about it.
I look forward to watching the press enjoy the same abusive relationship with Biden that they suffered under Obama. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people.
It’s probably just as well he pardon’s his buddies. We could debate the justice, but it would be nice to have the next few years not be “about Trump” or his cronies. Like it or not, their trials being in the news would make things be “about Trump”, and it’s not like the Feds not pursuing Manafort etc. is going to cause actual harm.
.
Any crimes at the state level will still be unpardonned, of course.
mark bofill,
The lap dogs in the MSM will sit on Biden’s lap and bite anyone who dares to criticize him. Like they did with Obama, but worse…. at least Obama was not suffering from dementia.
lucia,
“Any crimes at the state level will still be unpardonned, of course.”
.
Yes, and there are plenty of Democrat governors who will be licking their chops at the prospect of punishing Trump’s (now pardonded) cronies. Manafort will surely be prosecuted for state tax evasion.
Lucia,
Yes, I agree. In particular:
I sometimes think this was one of the factors that brought Trump down this election. It’s not that I believed most of the horse hockey the media presented about ‘literally Hitler’ Trump, I didn’t. But Lord I got tired of listening to the hysterics. They wore me out. I have to admit, having the media quit the never ending ranting and raving is going to be something of a relief.
.
Steve,
Yup. Maybe the media and social media will turn on him when the time is deemed right for Madam President Harris to take the Oval Office.
mark bofill,
I think everyone got tired of Trump’s endless bombast and constantly shifting positions. The very weird thing is everyone was telling Trump he was hurting himself with the endless, pointless tweets and ill-considered public statements, with his foolish participation in the live covid news conferences the low point of his term in office….. but he either could not or would not change even in the slightest. It cost him re-election.
Steve,
Yeah. There were several factors, and I think those you cite were definitely among them. Lots of self inflicted wounds.
Warts, bad breath and all to the end, yup. He was who he was.
.
It’s over now, and the press will go back to singing us soothing lullabies while the ship drifts aimlessly for awhile. Hopefully we won’t hit anything too devastating in the near future.
Lucia,
With Biden assuming office, I rather suspect Trump’s personal/business tax issues will become much worse for him. The IRS is going to punish him financially as much as possible, and with the scale of money involved, that could be a lot of punishment.
.
My understanding is that he has also personally guaranteed loans made to his company, and will not be able pay off those loans as they come due without liquidation of many (most?) of his assets. Going broke (relatively) may be the only thing that keeps Trump from running again in 2024.
mark,
“…the press will go back to singing us soothing lullabies while the ship drifts aimlessly for awhile.”
.
Only if Republicans win at least one of the Senate runoffs in Georgia. If not, the ship will most certainly not be drifting at all, but piloted full speed ahead toward crazy, destructive policies.
For me it is good riddance to Trump. For the MSM he was an easy target because his affliction with narcissism made it easy to see all the disingenuous characteristics that most politicians possess come to the fore. Trump was a net minus with my libertarian view of things though not sufficiently so for the leftist MSM.
Most frustrating for me is when the MSM media gets in bed with leftist politicians like they did with Obama and will do with Biden. They start appearing to be like the state directed media in totalitarian regimes.
I would say it is time for the Republican party to say good riddance to Trump and particularly so after his totally stupid and sudden political move for $2000 for everybody. I think the Georgia senatorial elections would be a good measure of where the Trump supporters stand politically if the Republican party starts parting ways with him. If those voters would prefer the leftist outcomes of a Democrat controlled Senate, it would speak volumes about their true political leanings. I suspect Trump’s recent actions tells us something of his political leanings – although with a narcissist like Trump it might be only about him.
SteveF
Perhaps. I sure hope he doesn’t run. What a catastrophe for the GOP that would be. Getting elected would not mitigate the catastrophe.
.
Whether Trump fans like it or not, GOP needs to come up with an identity that is separate from “Trump”.
It’s only ever happened once in our country I think, that a President has lost an election and then gone on to win again (Grover Cleveland?). I don’t think people would chance it. I made this same claim about Hillary — the only unforgivable political sin is losing. Trump won’t get another chance.
Yes…. but I hope he doesn’t decide to try!
mark bofill,
“Trump won’t get another chance.”
.
Probably not, but he can do Republicans a lot of damage if he tries. I sure hope he doesn’t.
.
Republicans need a presidential candidate who can appeal to many of Trump’s supporters, without offending so many who are closer to moderate in their views. Even among many of Trump’s supporters, he was an obvious embarrassment….. I think the pollsters got 2016 and 2020 very wrong mainly because they simply have no way to account for the embarrassed Trump voter. Whoever is the next Republican presidential candidate, the more that person is vilified by the MSM, the less willing that candidate’s supporters are going to be to disclose their support to pollsters. Since the MSM vilifies every Republican, regardless of office, and essentially declares support for all Republicans beyond the pale, there is a chance pre-election polls may never again be accurate.
I’m trying to remember the events leading up to the 2016 Republican primaries. I don’t feel like I remember correctly and well, in part because I was blindsided by Trump’s success until embarrassingly late in the process.
I suppose one can argue Trump did plenty of damage to the other candidates. He prevailed there against the odds after all, with his knack for dismissive nicknames and his willingness to roll in the mud. Maybe you two are right and it would be best if Trump didn’t run, by reason of the damage he’d be likely to inflict on whoever wins the primaries.
With respect to polling, I tend to agree that they [polls] have become fairly useless predictors for whatever reason. There may be many reasons for it. I ought to spend some time looking into that.
“Republicans need a presidential candidate who can appeal to many of Trump’s supporters, without offending so many who are closer to moderate in their views.”
90% of Republicans approved of Trump’s job performance in 2020. In contrast, even in 2007 before the financial meltdown, George W. Bush had a job approval among Republicans only in the 70’s. To say that Trump’s appeal was restricted to the fringe understates his support from Republicans.
“I suspect Trump’s recent actions tells us something of his political leanings – although with a narcissist like Trump it might be only about him.”
It’s the M.O. of a mob boss.
RB,
I neither said nor implied Trump’s support was only a fringe of the party. Many of Trumps policies did have overwhelming support among Republicans. But he also offended a lot of people with his behavior, even if they supported Trumps policies. You should not confuse the two.
Yes, the policy ends may have justified the means for GOP voters. But a very large majority of Republicans thought this is the guy who deserves four more years in the White House.
RB,
Is your point that Trump turned off swing voters? If so I agree.
RB,
There is nobody ‘deserving’ of election. All elections represent a choice, and not always between very attractive options. It is most always a lesser of evils choice. I personally found Trump’s behavior appalling, but the policies advocated by Mr Biden, and the appearance of oncoming dementia, seemed to me the worse alternative.
Mark,
Yes. that may be correct. A conservative is never going to stand as a Democratic presidential candidate. Biden is about as conservative as you could get for a Dem candidate and the swing vote leaned his way but did not for HRC.
Thanks. I hope Biden governs as a centrist. I imagine the outcome of the Georgia runoffs will dictate the political reality Biden will have to work with. I genuinely do wish him well; good health and sharp faculties in the years to come.
mark bofill (Comment #195905): “I hope Biden governs as a centrist.”
.
I also hope that Biden breaks all of his campaign promises. But I am not optimistic.
Yeah. I hope. I wish I could say I expect.
It is what it is. We’ll see whatever it turns out to be soon enough
If the Republicans win at at least one of the Georgia Senate runoffs it will be in spite of Trump. His recent actions, particularly the veto and threatened veto of bills passed with votes from both sides of the aisle, seems like a scorched earth policy.
There are the fan of the party voters who support whoever is the candidate of their party, but I find most voters who I know vote against a candidate of the opposition party rather than for the candidate of their party. Knowing how most politicians operate the voting against approach appears to me the most reasonable and thoughtful.
Of course if one still buys the Civics 101 version of government without the realism of how the politicians think and operate, I can see a tendency for voters to have their heros for whom they vote.
There has been a change in the voting populations that precedes Trump. Women have been voting more Democrat and men more Republican. Wealthier and more educated have voted more Democrat and the more rural and working class more Republican. The suburban area where I live has been trending more Democrat for probably a decade and Trump’s negative coattails have nearly completed that mission. It may well be a permanent or least longer term change.
DeWitt,
It doesn’t make any sense at all. Trump could have raised his objections long before the bill passed, not after. If it is just spite, then it will be cutting off his nose to spite his face. If Dems control the Senate then Biden will nominate a bunch of extreme leftist judges, and Kamala will be there to confirm every one of them, undoing much of the shift toward a more conservative judiciary Trump (and McConnell) achieved. It is crazy.
DeWitt,
I agree. If the GOP candidates win in GA, it will be despite Trump.
Question: Have North and South Dakota passed the Herd Immunity Threshold? Daily new cases peaked in both states in mid-November. Active cases in both states are way down from the peaks and trending downward. Confirmed cases are about 12% of the population in ND and 11% in SD. Deaths/million are relatively high, 1,653/million in ND and 1,616/million in SD. They’re not quite to New Jersey and New York levels, but they’re fairly close.
Note that near the peak in new cases, ND imposed a mask mandate but SD didn’t. Yet both states showed similar declines in the new case rate. Eyeballing the graphs, ND might have done a little better, but SD has a slightly better population adjusted death rate.
SteveF, when you said: It is crazy , I think you meant He is crazy.
Another question: Now that Trump is nearly history, does anyone think that his tariffs accomplished anything significant other than to increase government revenues? I don’t. I agree with the Cato Institute, a marginal upgrade at a high cost. I don’t think the trade war with China accomplished much either.
DeWitt,
I think that is a great question. I don’t know. But its definitely worth looking into.
I agree that Trump’s trade wars accomplished nothing and probably a net minus like all trade wars. Trump, like other politicians, did it to gain votes and not from some underlying principle or economic theory.
It’s kind of hard to score. It might have prevented China from going further down the road of cheating in trade. You have to draw a line somewhere and impose sanctions even if they might impact you negatively if the opposing side isn’t playing by the rules. Protectionism isn’t usually very useful, but you also can’t offshore entire industries without paying a political price. Optimizing GDP is not the same as optimizing the welfare for the majority of your citizens in all cases. I think these are issues that play out over decades, not years.
Tom Scharf,
I agree. It is not so much the total net dollars, but the distribution of those dollars, and the strategic and tactical position of the country. Yes, the Chinese can with extremely low labor cost put most any US industry out of business, while enriching select others (like Apple, IRobot, etc). But if that is overall ‘good’ is a very different question.
Tom Scharf,
Tariffs have a negative effect whether the opposing side is playing by the rules or not. Look at steel. Have the steel tariffs increased US steel production? No, they haven’t. IIRC, employment in the US steel industry has gone down. And they have cost jobs in companies in the US that use steel that couldn’t be supplied by US steel mills and who, in spite of that, couldn’t get an exemption.
Tariffs on Canadian aluminum were supposed to aid in negotiations for the USMCA. But when it was finally passed, Trump kept the tariffs in place for far too long. Canada isn’t China, nor is Mexico. Trump seems to be clueless about the economics of international trade and has an advisor, Peter Navarro, who, if anything, is even more clueless. Trade wars are not easy to win. Both sides usually lose.
DeWitt, that is my assessment of the situation.
“This country is doomed”.
.
https://twitter.com/ShakaThaGod/status/1341571197272612864
The other tweets say the statements before give some context. Of course, we can’t know unless they leak more. But, I seriously can’t take things too seriously if someone only leaks 26 seconds of a zoom meeting that was obviously much longer.
Yes, to be fair, the preceding sentence is:
.
“If we cannot make significant progress on racial equity, this country is doomed.”
.
Still, “This country is doomed.” is an interesting comment.
.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-bidens-country-is-doomed-quote-is-being-taken-out-of-context-on-social-media/ar-BB1cbW3e
.
On the upside, Biden proclaims that he will not violate the constitution, overstep his bounds, or fight hate with hate.
.
But then he further runs off the rails with climate change and exposes his plan to use political manipulations.
Not that I was not already aware, but that Biden clip shows that we will have another not-very-bright President.
Kenneth Fritsch,
How do you think he compares to Al Gore? A friend of mine’s son-in-law was a military attache or something military related in the White House during the Clinton administration and he says that calling Gore as dumb as a bucket of rocks would be insulting the bucket of rocks.
I always thought Al Gore’s demeanor was more comedic than Biden’s but they are close. I remember in the debates that Al Gore after someone must have explained to him the true nature of the so-called trust fund for Social Security and he thus was going to lock up assets in the fund and he repeatedly referred to it as a lockbox.
Long before Biden was even vice president I would argue with liberal acquaintances that he sounded like a good old boy who did not know when to shut up. They mostly defended him as a well informed politician of another kind. Although Biden has probably lost some of his mental capacity and memory like we all do when we age he still has the same way of talking. That has not changed in my mind – but then maybe I have not remembered well.
As far as tariffs go I can remember back in the day when the Japan auto industry was putting pressure on the US auto makers who had over-promised and paid its unionized work force and further gotten lazy about quality. There was much pressure put on the government to use trade restrictions to protect the US auto market. It turns out that the Japanese competition, fair or not, was a large factor in turning around the US automakers. It also created US jobs when the Japanese built manufacturing facilities in the US.
An interesting factoid is from the following link:
https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/competitiveness/article/21974235/toyota-tops-most-american-made-car-list
Kenneth Fritsch,
What I remember about the government ‘protecting’ the US car industry from Japan was imposing a quota on Japanese imports. Of course what that led to was a reduction in the number of cheap econoboxes imported and an increase in the number of higher end cars. Needless to say that increased Japanese profits and made things worse for the US car industry until they were able to turn their manufacturing quality and efficiency around.
Another interesting case of fact checker logic torture.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/02/ron-desantis/florida-doing-better-covid-19-locked-down-states/
.
DeSantis: “So I hear people say, ‘Oh, well, Florida is open, and they’re having increased cases,’” DeSantis said Nov. 30. “Well, OK, the states that are locked down are increasing at twice the rate we are. If you look at the per capita cases, in a lot of these states that have closed schools, businesses shuttered, some of them even post stay-at-home orders there, you see a huge increase in these cases.”
.
Politifact: “Only about half of the 10 most stringently regulated states saw rates of cases, deaths and hospitalizations that were twice as high as Florida’s, which was DeSantis’ benchmark.”
.
Well … if half are above and half are below then the average would be about twice as high all things being equal.
.
Politificat: “Currently, Florida has relatively low rates of coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitalizations. However, the connection between this and Florida’s light regulation of businesses’ and residents’ behavior is less clear-cut than DeSantis suggests.”
.
I don’t see where he is saying that at all. What he is obviously referring to is that stringent lock downs aren’t necessarily effective if you look at the data. I don’t think he is trying to say less severe lockdowns make the virus spread less, this is completely in the heads of the fact checkers here.
.
Politifact: “We found that while Florida is doing comparatively well at the moment, DeSantis overstated the correlation between cases and lockdown rules. It’s likely that other factors beyond just a state’s rules are affecting COVID-19 rates.”
.
Really, other factors? Perhaps you could then fact check a thousand other statements made by the media and others that demonize FL routinely for lack of state wide mask mandates. You simply cannot challenge the narrative.
The conspiracy of Japanese vendors dumping memory chips on the market for below cost put several domestic manufacturers out of business, and they have not returned.
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/03/business/japanese-chip-dumping-has-ended-us-finds.html
.
You have to look at this on a case by case basis. It’s complicated. Free trade in theory isn’t always free trade in reality.
Tom Scharf,
Can you say straw man? This could be used as an example in defining the straw man fallacy. DeSantis suggests no such thing. Politifact has put words in his mouth that he didn’t say. This isn’t tortured logic, it’s fake news.
Tom Scharf,
I’m not sure the dumping did Japan much good either. It looks like Taiwan’s TSMC is now dominating the both the technology and manufacture of the most advanced chips.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-is-losing-its-bet-on-chips-11605476356?mod=searchresults_pos1&page=1
Meanwhile another article says that China will dominate chip manufacturing in the 2020’s:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-fewer-chips-say-made-in-the-u-s-a-11604411810?mod=searchresults_pos3&page=1
The fabless model in semis is a natural outcome of the enormous cost of fab plants for the advanced nodes. Developing a 5nm process costs billions of dollars in investment. This is great for the majority of U.S. semi companies (except Intel) that can focus on the design and development. The process development is probably close to its end over the next few years with an uncertain and unknown future.
A so-called fact checker with an agenda. Who’d have thought.
In the 1980s as I recall, the DRAM chips coming out of Japan were of better quality than those made in the US. There was a glut of these chips when Japanese companies unloaded them to get rid of inventory. Even if the reason was inventory it was covered by dumping laws. The trend was for the Japanese companies to manufacture commodity chips and the US to shift to higher end and more profitable electronic components.
I am not defending the Japanese approach to trade, but users of their products can certainly benefit and they have had a wake-up effect on US manufactorying enterprises. I sometime think that those who look at trade protection for domestic companies as not understanding that a major benefit of capitalism is that it allows change through creative destruction.
RB,
I have visited TSMC, and I can confirm the investment in modern fabs is indeed many (many!) billions of dollars. TSMC has a huge and dedicated technical staff, willing to work 12+ hour days, that makes TSMC extremely competitive. But there is a real danger in relying on fabs in Taiwan: they will be China’s very first targets when China moves to militarily to take over the island. Any company (or country) reliant on Taiwanese fabs is going to be in a very bad way. From a strategic POV, I think it unwise to depend on those fabs.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #195992): “I sometime think that those who look at trade protection for domestic companies as not understanding that a major benefit of capitalism is that it allows change through creative destruction.”
.
I sometimes think that the religious adherents of free trade don’t understand that, as Adam Smith pointed out, unrestrained capitalism tends to destroy competition.
SteveF,
Agree that a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would be a full-blown crisis for the U.S.
Any war with China will no doubt begin in the South China sea and Taiwan. I had a Lonely Planet guide book in China and a stranger walked up and told me that I should not carry that book in public or it would be confiscated, it referred to Taiwan as an independent nation.
.
The rise of China is mainly due to their own hard work and their embrace of selective capitalism and I don’t begrudge their success.
In the grand scheme more success across the globe should help everyone. However there are increasing signs their government is getting more and more authoritarian on a global scale. Making the NBA and Hollywood bow to their wishes for market access is not a good sign of things to come. We shall see what the future holds.
Tom Scharf, re the Politifact article (#195982)
Looking at this article, there is a bar graph showing the 10 most-restricted states (plus Florida) in normalized cases, hospitalizations, & deaths. Only on the hospitalizations tab does Florida not show clearly lower numbers.
Averaging the per-capita case rates supports DeSantis’ claim of “twice the rate”: I get 60.7 (per 100K residents) as the average, vs. 32 for Florida. [To be precise, 1.9x]
Averaging the per-capita death rates yields a 10-state average of 58.2 [per 10M residents], vs. Florida’s 31. Again, a ratio of 1.9.
Averaging the hospitalization rates yields a 10-state average of 31.4 [per 100K residents], vs. Florida’s 20. [Only 1.6x]
The only part of Politifact’s “caveats” which I find credible is “Florida may be faring better than many other states in fighting the coronavirus, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a lack of restrictions is to credit for better coronavirus statistics…[F]actors other than behavioral regulations, such as warm weather, may play a role in keeping coronavirus infections relatively low in Florida.” One might equally well flip this statement, saying “It doesn’t necessarily mean that increasing restrictions will result in lower coronavirus statistics”; oddly, Politifact does not consider this possibility.
HaroldW,
When the MSM critiques covid policies, it is always “heads we win, tails you lose”. When DeSantis does demonstrably better than very restrictive states, it is because of other things… never that the less restrictive policies are effective. And forget about any discussion of better quality of life or less economic damage. But when States like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois do badly, it is always claimed to be for some reason other than that the very restrictive policies don’t work to control the spread…. which they clearly do not. Those very restrictive policies obviously do damage businesses and diminish the quality of life… but that never even enters the calculus. The MSM proffers pure garbage and fake news, 24/7.
CDC report on vaccine priorities. This is interesting.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2020-11/COVID-04-Dooling.pdf
.
“Initially vaccinating age ≥65 in Phase 1b averts approximately 2–6.5% more deaths, compared to targeting high-risk adults or essential workersâ€
.
This number seems low to me, but at least somebody ran some numbers. They then go on to say “Differences among 3 strategies is minimalâ€. Hmmmm.
.
The CDC then applies effing “ethics†categories they label “promote justice†and “mitigate health inequalities†to their formulas and determines essential workers should be first (see page 33 for how science works!), this even after showing poll numbers that people favor older vaccination over essential workers.
.
I don’t give a flying eff what the CDC ethics calculations are and I don’t even want to see them include this garbage in their report. This is the very definition of the corruption of science. Elected (and accountable in theory) politicians can apply the ethics filter if they choose and suffer the consequences. This is politics with the veneer of science.
.
Arggghhhh.
I’m not sure I’d be singling out DeSantis as a benchmark for performance.
California deaths per million residents: 612
Florida deaths per million residents: 988
Best state on deaths per million: Hawaii, 201
Worst state on deaths per million: New Jersey, 2,113
I don’t see a political story to be told in the statistics.
There’s more information on this CDC outrage on-line of course.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/public-health-bodies-may-be-talking-at-us-but-theyre-actually-talking-to-each-other/2020/12/27/2c5064a2-4626-11eb-975c-d17b8815a66d_story.html
.
It should be noted that after “feedback” was given to the same committee who unanimously and vociferously approved of these priorities on ethics reasons (essential workers are a more diverse group), they met a month later on Dec 20 and updated the list. Essential workers are now tied as a priority with the elderly, ha ha.
.
This is just shameful for the CDC. Maybe they should start investigating disease control at some point rather than vain statements on equity. The very worst part is people like DeSantis who prioritized 65+ for vaccines are now served up with this:
.
DeSantis Will Not Prioritize Florida’s Essential Workers For Covid Vaccine, Breaking With CDC Panel Guidance
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/12/22/desantis-will-not-prioritize-floridas-essential-workers-for-covid-vaccine-breaking-with-cdc-panel-guidance/
Thomas Fuller,
“I don’t see a political story to be told in the statistics.”. That is exactly the point. The red policy vs blue policy is a mirage. It’s like making a political fuss over where an asteroid impacted.
.
FL is neither good nor bad and is just as likely as anybody else to lead the next outbreak. The national/coastal media can’t seem to understand this. It miraculously stops being political at the very moment it happens to the in group.
.
CA was doing just fine like many places, until it wasn’t. The Midwest was once doing really good. CA is now #1 on the board per capita.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/
That is a dead give away that the analysis is biased. Interesting that some fact checking bodies want to appear to utilize some neutral and wise process that is so above reproach that their conclusions should be accepted without question.
Tom Scharf (Comment #196018)
December 28th, 2020 at 1:33 pm
I was going to make the same point with emphasis on the current CA situation. There is a lot we do not understand about this pandemic and it should not be that difficult to admit it.
Where was the TG spike? Will there be a Christmas spike? Here I am talking about real evidence and not that assumed or fits an agenda.
Thomas Fuller,
Florida has one of the older populations in the country (42.2 years median vs California 36.8 years), so at least part of the difference in deaths is due to a more susceptible demographic in Florida. New York (39 years median) and New Jersey (40 years) are somewhat younger than Florida. The truth is there is a huge range of outcomes, none of which seem even remotely connected to the severity of local restrictions. But still, DeSantis in particular is routinely criticized, and I think unfairly, while Cuomo and Murphy (NJ) are never criticized… and nearly promoted as saints, despite adopting policies which directly caused thousands more deaths in nursing homes and other elderly care facilities. Those states have policies which are destroying small businesses, yet the governors clearly don’t give a sh!t about that economic damage. Those governors are not and will not be held responsible by the MSM for the damage their policies have done.
I’m going to ask again: Does anyone else think that North Dakota and South Dakota have passed the Herd Immunity Threshold? I think they have, but I’d like to see some other opinions. If you look at the change in new deaths, ND and SD have close to the largest recent percentage reduction. New cases peaked in November in both states. Total confirmed cases are about 12% of the population in both states. But, of course, we don’t know how many asymptomatic or otherwise untested infections there were.
Tennessee isn’t number one in new cases adjusted for population anymore, although not by much. Hurrah.
Kenneth Fritsch,
Looking at worldometers.info, it was in the UK. There was a small TG dip in the US followed by a return to the previous trend. Yet in the MSM, a US TG spike is dogma.
Tom Scharf,
” The very worst part is people like DeSantis who prioritized 65+ for vaccines are now served up with this…”
.
DeSantis is going to save a lot of lives by prioritizing people actually at risk of death….. I hope knowing he saved a lot of lives will be enough reward, because the MSM will NEVER give him any credit for that. The CDC is morally reprehensible, just like the MSM.
DeWitt,
‘Yet in the MSM, a US TG spike is dogma.”
.
It is not just coronavirus. Most of what is reported by the MSM is based primarily on dogma.
If we knew what the HIT was, and how many hidden cases there were then the answer would be easy. The test is whether the decline has staying power, the past declines have not after postulation of low HIT. It seems rather unlikely they will get another peak that large though.
Iowa and Nebraska look to be just behind ND and SD. Next in line is TN, which shows signs of peaking, but not as clear cut as the first four states in terms of population adjusted total cases.
In related news, influenza cases are still way below expected for this time of year. Closing schools or social distancing and masks in classrooms may be the biggest driver IMO. Classrooms are almost ideal for spreading respiratory infections like influenza which affect children.
The more I think about HIT and the possible ways Covid-19 is spread the more difficult it is for me to get my head around how to analyze it from an estimate of Rt and the non homogeneity of Rt.
It is my understanding that 70% of the spread of Covid-19 infections originates in households. Restrictions related to stay at home or travel would appear to increase the spread in households once a household member was infected. Size of household would be another factor as well as how well infected or thought-to-be-infected family members can or are willing to isolate. Conditions within the house such as humidity, air turn over and even furnace filters could play a role in the spread of the virus. Since the limiting factor for households would most likely be transmission by a single member of the family an influential circumstance would be families with a member with high contact with the outside world.
I am not even sure what HIT would mean for a state where travel into and out of the state is necessarily heavy.
There are probably some statistics that could counter my above (over) analyses like, for instance, the variability of infection spread for within households.
DeWitt,
“But, of course, we don’t know how many asymptomatic or otherwise untested infections there were.”
.
That is the rub. I suspect the number of infections is higher than the confirmed cases by at least a factor of 3 to 5, which if true, gets the number of immune people into the range where herd immunity begins suppressing spread. But of course, the herd immunity threshold is very likely to depend on local factors like population density, household size, personal activities, etc. Not to mention how many people have some resistance due to earlier exposure to related common-cold corona viruses.
.
So you may be right about the Dakotas being past the HIT, but impossible to say with any certainty.
Kenneth Fritsch,
I’m thinking that you can derive an Rt from the data using a model, but going the other way doesn’t seem to work very well. Which means estimating HIT using Rt and models doesn’t work very well either. Which means we’re only going to know after the fact.
Btw, there’s a recent article in the WSJ on how monoclonal antibody drugs are sitting on the shelf because infectious disease specialists “want more clinical trial data” before prescribing these drugs.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/highly-touted-monoclonal-antibody-therapies-sit-unused-in-hospitals-11609087364
If they wait long enough, the pandemic will be over before they feel comfortable using the new drugs.
The best part of getting through a big spike is that your personal risk drops once it is over and you survived it. Being in a place that has faired well for a long time is ironically not optimal at all in the long term, at some point NYC might be much safer than New Zealand long term without vaccines.
.
One would expect the increasing rate of infection to drop once herd immunity is being approached. So places like NY and NJ which were hit hard generally have gentler slopes of increase the second time around. FL’s second wave was gentler in increase. It could also be the vagaries of the virus though.
.
The Rocky Mountains of infection should turn into the rolling hills of infection. It won’t make any difference from 1% to 5% of the population infected. But 10% to 50% infected then the rate of change should be apparent. There is probably some math here I’m too lazy to do.
SteveF,
I think, given time, you can say with reasonable certainty that a place is past the HIT. If SD, ND, Iowa and Nebraska case counts continue to decline and TN shows a definite peak soon, that, to me, would be pretty strong evidence. What you can’t say with any certainty is the value of the HIT because we don’t (and probably never will) have the data.
SteveF (Comment #196012
“But when States like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois do badly, it is always claimed to be for some reason other than that the very restrictive policies don’t work to control the spread…. which they clearly do not. Those very restrictive policies obviously do damage businesses and diminish the quality of life… but that never even enters the calculus.”
_______
SteveF, if you mean the restrictive policies “clearly do not” control the spread of covid-19, I don’t know how you know that. I believe the spread of this disease probably would be worse without the restrictive policies. I won’t get covid-19 if I don’t come into contact with anyone infected with the disease. The policies reduce the chance of contact.
I agree that many businesses would do better and quality of life for most would be better if policies were less restrictive or not restrictive. But costs likely would be (1) additional covid-19 deaths and non-fatal infections, and (2) over-burdened hospitals resulting in additional deaths and suffering from other diseases. Governments have decided these costs outweigh the temporary restrictive policy damage to businesses and quality of life.
Hopefully, covid-19 vaccines will be accepted by enough people to end the epidemic and the need for restrictive policies.
Thomas Fuller (Comment #196015): “I don’t see a political story to be told in the statistics.”
.
The statistic that would tell the political story is lives ruined by misguided government policies. The impacts of the virus do not seem to depend much on policies or politics. But the other controllable impacts on lives do depend on policy. Fl has surely done much better than CA in that regard.
OK_Max,
I don’t know how you know that things would be worse without restrictive policies any more than how SteveF knows that restrictive policies clearly do not work. I do think that there is more evidence for SteveF’s POV than for yours. Note that people started taking precautions before restrictive policies were in place.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #196022): “I’m going to ask again: Does anyone else think that North Dakota and South Dakota have passed the Herd Immunity Threshold?”
.
I think that HIT is too vague for the real world. It comes from models in which the population in homogeneous and well mixed. Neither assumption is valid in the real world. So the epidemic may move through one subset of the population, then wane because of herd immunity. But other subset might still be vulnerable.
.
I think it is clear that the declines following big spikes are in some sense due to herd immunity. I see no other plausible explanation. But that does not mean that future spikes are not possible. That said, it seems to me that cumulative cases in places like the Dakotas are so high that future big spikes are unlikely. Unless a big fraction of those cases are false positives.
OK_Max,
“(2) over-burdened hospitals resulting in additional deaths and suffering from other diseases.”
.
Please point out anywhere in the USA that this is a problem today….. choose any restrictive state or non-restrictive state. I don’t think there is any place where other disease cases are being not treated because hospitals are over capacity. I do thing many cancers and other serious illnesses are not being treated, but mostly because people are now so frightened by all hype about covid that they refuse to go to the doctor or hospital.
.
One can’t prove a negative (restrictive policies don’t help), but in asking for that impossible proof, you shift the burden unfairly: policies which cause known real harm (due to all kinds of restrictions on school attendance, restaurants, theaters, etc, etc.) need to be justified by something more than an arm wave about how things might be worse absent those policies. There is no justification I have ever seen for the economic and social damage of many covid policies, save for vague claims of “reduced risk” and “it could be worse”. Yes, if you sit in your house and never have contact with anyone, then you won’t catch covid. Your quality of life will be diminished, but that then is your choice, not a choice imposed on everyone. One size does not fit all.
Somebody has to pay for these gargantuan stimulus packages.
$1T / 145M taxpayers = $6,900 per taxpayer.
.
The discussion gets more interesting when asked whether one is willing to take on a onetime tax burden of $10K or more to support a shutdown. Let’s do that referendum and see what happens. Real cost and alleged benefit.
Even with the “new” restrictions, Sweden remains far less restrictive than most anyplace else in the developed world: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/covid-19/regulations-and-general-guidelines/
Tom Scharf,
“$1T / 145M taxpayers = $6,900 per taxpayer.”
.
In theory, yes. In fact, there will be inflation which diminishes the Federal debt without substantial tax increases. Of course, that means those who are holding fixed dollar value obligations will get screwed. Those in substantial debt will benefit, along with high income people who will not face much higher taxes. So re-finance your house at a low fixed rate and live well in the coming decade…..
DeWitt Payne (Comment #196039)
December 28th, 2020 at 4:05 pm
OK_Max,
if you mean the restrictive policies “clearly do not†control the spread of covid-19, I don’t know how you know that. I believe the spread of this disease probably would be worse without the restrictive policies.
I don’t know how you know that things would be worse without restrictive policies any more than how SteveF knows that restrictive policies clearly do not work. I do think that there is more evidence for SteveF’s POV than for yours. Note that people started taking precautions before restrictive policies were in place.
_______
What “more evidence” ?
OK_Max,
More evidence: States with very restrictive policies have similar outcomes to states with much less restrictive policies. If you were correct, then there should be a clear difference between outcomes. There isn’t.
SteveF (Comment #196041)
” I don’t think there is any place where other disease cases are being not treated because hospitals are over capacity. I do thing many cancers and other serious illnesses are not being treated, but mostly because people are now so SteveF (Comment #196041)
December 28th, 2020 at 4:20 pm
OK_Max,
“(2) over-burdened hospitals resulting in additional deaths and suffering from other diseases.â€
.
“Please point out anywhere in the USA that this is a problem today….. choose any restrictive state or non-restrictive state. I don’t think there is any place where other disease cases are being not treated because hospitals are over capacity. I do thing many cancers and other serious illnesses are not being treated, but mostly because people are now so frightened by all hype about covid that they refuse to go to the doctor or hospital.”
________
Sure, today, but I wasn’t taking about today. I was referring to how
hospitals could be over burdened with covid=19 cases if there were less restrictions or no restrictions at all.
Fear of catching covid-19 at a hospital is another matter. It is not an irrational fear.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #196049)
December 28th, 2020 at 5:34 pm
OK_Max,
More evidence: States with very restrictive policies have similar outcomes to states with much less restrictive policies. If you were correct, then there should be a clear difference between outcomes. There isn’t.
______
U.S.States are different in ways that affect the spread of disease and people travel from State to State.
I think you can, however, compare Sweden with the surrounding countries of Denmark, Norway, and Finland. Sweden with it’s less restrictive policies has much higher infection and death rates from covid-19 than the other three countries.
OK_Max,
Cherry pick much? You need a lot more examples than that to demonstrate significance.
OK_Max,
It once again comes down to hoped for benefits (maybe lower deaths, maybe lower hospitalizations, maybe hospitals not overwhelmed, maybe teachers don’t get sick, etc.) weighed against the clear costs (financial, social, political, educational, public health… suicides, drug use) of imposed restrictions. It is IMO a very bad deal, and one for which no credible argument has ever been presented. Perhaps the Bronx needs draconian restrictions, although again no clear argument has been presented, but many places clearly do not.
On Nov 18 the AP ran a long story about surging cases in Sourh Dakota, and how the governor refused to issue a mask mandate or other restrictions. All the usual suspects were quoted, strenuously criticizing the governor…. one comparing South Dakota to Somalia. Now that the cases have fallen by a factor of 4, and continue to drop, I fully expect the AP will revisit the now much low case rate in South Dakota, especially if DeWitt is right and the state has a long term continuing decline.
.
No, of course I am joking. The MSM never admits their foolish exaggerations of covid doom. States with case surges only work as stories if you can lambaste a conservative governor.
New Mexico has followed a similar trajectory to SD, but lagging by about a week and dropping a bit slower. The peak in NM was about 3/4 the peak in SD. We have had a mask mandate since spring and some of the worst continuing restrictions in the country.
On Nov. 16, the Governor put us back into lockdown. New cases peaked about a week later and Reff peaked about the time the lockdown started. The Governor is taking credit.
The problem is that the start of the decline in Reff only coincides with the lockdown if you use the date on which the positive test was reported as the date of infection. In reality, positive tests should lag infection by about two weeks. So the decline in Reff can not possibly be due to the lockdown.
Minnesota, with very harsh lockdown, is very similar to NM and the Dakotas. The peak in Reff also occurred prior to their most recent lockdown.
There are many more states with similar trajectories in spite of very different policies.
A WSJ editorial this morning points to some of the realities of the processes involved with trade restriction whereby connected politicians (swamp dwellers) plead for exemptions to trade restrictions which they may well have favored generally. The excerpt below was followed by several other examples of the exemption process which were based on some very real damages that the trade restrictions were having on primarily smaller businesses. Only some of the exemptions were granted.
Yet another truth finding heroic journalist opining on Trump vs Biden:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/12/media-after-trump/617503/
,
“Nuzzi is more troubled by the perverse incentives the Trump era has created for journalists like her. “There is kind of this temptation to satisfy the resistance with worldview-confirming reporting chum,†she told me. She’s spent enough time on the internet to know who her most devoted readers are, and they aren’t MAGA bros.”
.
“Nuzzi can already tell that the dynamic will be different in the incoming administration. “On a purely social level, I don’t know that reporting critically on Joe Biden will feel as safe for reporters,†she told me. “You’re not going to get yass queen–ed to death.â€
.
“One cable-news anchor told me that praise from anti-Trump celebrities on Twitter has become like a “narcotic†for some of his colleagues. ”
.
“… but Acosta said he doesn’t expect to bring the same crusading style to his coverage of the next administration. “I don’t think the press should be trying to whip up the Biden presidency and turn it into must-see TV in a contrived way,†he said. If that sounds like a double standard, Acosta told me it’s not partisan—it’s a matter of professional solidarity”
.
“It will not be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job to fact-check Biden,â€
.
I find it surprising how up front they are about bias. They simply don’t care, they are in it for Twitter likes.
“It will not be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job to fact-check Biden”
.
No, of course not, it will be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job to “fact-check” people fact-checking Biden…
That is not upfront. Giving partisanship another name is delusional. I would not mind these journalist writings if they were more honest about how they report.
Kenneth,
“I would not mind these journalist writings if they were more honest about how they report.”
.
Ummmmm… seriously, what could possibly make you think there is anything ‘honest’ about how “journalists” report; everything they report is blatantly dishonest. They went to journalism schools where being a Marxist, if not obligatory, is strongly encouraged. They work for organizations where the most extreme views of Marxism are elevated above the Declaration of Independence….. and anything relating to the US Constitution is considered utterly racist. Everything they write is dishonest…. and explicitly designed to damage the political structure of the USA.
“It will not be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job to fact-check Biden”
.
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1344015403882692610
DeWitt,
At least some people agree with you about reaching the HIT: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/12/30/some_states_may_be_well_on_their_way_to_herd_immunity_144936.html
North and South Dakota have much younger populations than many states (~35 years median), so if they have reached the HIT then their rates of death (over 1600 per million) would seem to represent a lower bound for fatalities in most states to reach the HIT. States with older populations would automatically have higher rates unless the elderly are better protected from exposure than in the Dakotas.
I’m pretty amazed the media didn’t just say “Nothing will change, we will continue to just do our jobs as we have been doing. Protecting democracy and holding the government accountable”. Eye-roll, of course, but it is just brazen partisanship now.
.
In some ways this is an improvement, they aren’t pretending to be professionals any longer. Journalism as a “profession” is basically over, as having standards of professional conduct that are adhered to. It is much more of an entertainment enterprise, and it’s possible financial forcings caused this to change. I’m sure there are some individuals that take old school journalism seriously, but I don’t know who they are. It’s certainly not Hannity or Maddow.
.
If you go to cjr.org (the voice of journalism), it has changed over the past decade. Just today a lead story is “Journalists have a moral obligation to declare a climate emergency”. This leftist slant on the profession has become prevalent there where it was once about standards. It’s full on activist now. Dissent has been squashed and is completely absent.
mike M,
Using no-mask, no-lockdown South Dakota as a basis, New Mexico will have to reach 3,200 deaths to be at the no-mask HIT. Of course, if masks and other restrictions actually do anything significant, the effective HIT could be somewhat lower….. but only so long as the masks/restrictions remain in place.
SteveF,
Glad to see my brain hasn’t completely rotted.
In a similar vein there’s this article in today’s WSJ:
The idea that NPI’s like masks or contact tracing and quarantine could ‘crush’ the virus is, and always was, a fantasy in the US because the virus was so widespread before we noticed.
Kaplan says in your linked article that there may be 8 mild or asymptomatic cases for every confirmed case. Then he multiplies confirmed cases by 8 to get total infections. Shouldn’t that be 9? Using a factor of 9, in TN 75% of the population could have infected, and sure enough, new cases (7 day moving average) are down over 40% from the December 18 peak.
I’m really curious how Fauci and the MSM will react if there is no Christmas surge in the states where it’s likely that a large fraction of the population has already achieved immunity through infection. Maybe it will be like the imaginary Thanksgiving surge and they will declare it happened even though there is no evidence.
SteveF (Comment #196111): “North and South Dakota have much younger populations than many states (~35 years median) …”
.
I don’t think median age is the relevant measure. Both states had flat or declining populations for a long time; North Dakota had a smaller population in 2010 than in 1930. That usually means a disproportionate number of old folks who stay behind while their kids move away. Both states have been growing fast, that usually means a lot of people younger than average. That lowers median age while possibly still having a lot of people in the vulnerable age groups.
Has anyone tried to group states based on broad policy responses to Covid? To the extent that such a grouping exists, it would be possible to measure effectiveness using metrics such as deaths per million residents or some such.
You can sort by death rate and examine red/blue states. You won’t like what you find here if you are searching for policy signals, it’s readily available in many places. Mr. Cynical says that’s why this isn’t being reported far and wide. The virus is larger than petty politics.
.
If you go to the total US map here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/
.
Setup: Cases/Adj. For Population/Cumulative
.
Then zoom in and scroll around you will find that the spread of the virus is strikingly uniform. There are no axes to grind here for anyone. One can pretend any isolated area of low infection rate is due to the wonderfulness of their people and leaders, but my view is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIbEj1CIpuU
Yes, the Red/Blue stuff doesn’t really interest me. I am interested in the relative success of different policies adopted. I suppose there’s some redness/blueness involved in that, but not really. Some red states were quite proactive, some blue states kind of clueless.
Kind of early on I saw some charts showing counties in Kansas that adopted mandatory masking versus other counties that did not. It showed a clear difference. I’d love to see that writ large.
True or False:
1) If you consider the United States without California, Donald Trump wins the presidential election.
2) If you consider the United States without California, Donald Trump wins the popular vote.
3) If you consider the United States without California, the number of new cases of Wuhan virus is declining.
There was a desperate search to validate masking policies and I heard about the Kansas one as well. Masking probably helps reduce some risk when used correctly, but I think everyone gave up the masks as prophylactic validation search when the major breakout occurred as masking went up. The “maskless” state of FL where I live has been under mandatory mask orders for 9 months and counting in my county. Even though a person cannot be fined, the compliance in my area is near 100% at places like grocery stores and so forth.
.
You reduce risk by a combination of many things. Social distancing, masks in public indoor places, reducing contacts with people, gargling bleach every morning, etc. You can still get unlucky.
.
The competing narratives of “masking and social distancing will make the virus disappear” vs. “they don’t work at all” has become rather tedious. We discussed this earlier with Phil on the other thread where he found a paper with ranked ordering of interventions, but these are rather hard to sort out given the available data.
.
Doing something is better than doing nothing in most cases, but banning golf and outdoor dining is likely bad policy. It’s a judgment call and the science isn’t solid enough to support either above narrative.
They started vaccinating 65+ in FL yesterday. It’s pretty much chaos as phone lines, etc. are over burdened and limited supplies.
https://apnews.com/article/seniors-florida-ron-desantis-coronavirus-pandemic-coronavirus-vaccine-fcd51ac335959d68d8e85146f4eb1f24
.
It will be quite messy for a while I suspect.
In my view of journalism I have to separate and classify the levels of it and the amount of deception and biased involved. That part represented by the likes of a Hannity and a Maddow certainly can give you a partisan view of politics but are less deceptive in that most viewers know where they are coming from. I have noticed that partisanship in reporting at this level is usually negative offerings against the opposition and can often be on point. I think that their reporting is mostly negative has a lot to do with the nature of politicians generally and certainly goes with my opinion of that group of people and how they work the system. There is value derived from this negative reporting as long as it is accepted as a view of politics generally and not of much value in comparing parties or political philosophies. Most of the reporting at this level can be seen as very contradictory when reporting on the favored party. Faults with the favored party are either ignored or rationalized away by means so obviously hypocritical that it can be seen for what it is.
What really offends the idea of a neutral, non partisan and unbiased journalism are those nameless journalists and their editing staff who write up factual news with a rather obvious agenda and partisan bias where descriptive and critical-to-meaning adjectives are changed depending on the party of the politician being reported on. Their biases can be seen by the headlines used for their stories which can often present a different view of the facts in the article, by burying a critical take on the information at the end of the article, appearing to be lazy in reporting opinions that fit their agenda without doing any journalistic background searching and the every present unnamed experts and sources that are used to enforce the reporters agenda.
In my mind the Sixty Minute program which is evidently accepted by many viewers as legitimate source of investigative journalism is actually a prime example of reporting with an agenda whereby only the facts and opinions that would support a foregone conclusion are presented or presented in the best light. It is if the producers of these reports have a paternalistic view that their audience is incapable of being presented with all the facts and making up their own minds.
RIP MaryAnn:
.
Gilligan’s Island star Dawn Wells has died from COVID-19 at age 82
Turbulent,
I guess she should have stayed on an island.
Mike N,
No, no, yes.
Mike M,
Both South and North Dakota have relatively low % of population over 65: https://www.prb.org/which-us-states-are-the-oldest/ Note that these are 2018 numbers, so not exactly correct for today.
.
New Mexico has a greater fraction of people over 65 than North and South Dakota, but not much. None come close to Maine, Florida, and a couple of others.
Tom Scharf,
I’ll be happy if I can get the vaccine before the end of February. Based on the projections of production for the two available vaccines, Florida should receive another 4+ million doses for everyone over 65 in Florida before the end of February. By March death counts in Florida should be very low.
Kenneth Fritsch,
In 1979, Sixty Minutes was awarded a Golden Globe for best dramatic TV series. While the usual suspects went ballistic, I thought it was totally appropriate. The Sixty Minutes segment on the Audi 5000 unintended acceleration problem in 1986 was additional evidence, if anyone paying attention needed it, that they never let facts get in the way of sensationalism.
My friend who is in the Pfizer trial now has an appointment to get vaccinated. He’s been pretty active, including getting a front page, above the fold article in the local paper today. He received this from the CDC on 12/28:
That makes a lot more sense than those idi0t articles linked somewhere above.
DeWitt,
Beyond that, once the vaccine is available to them, the participants will drop out of the trial if that’s the only way to get a vaccine.
.
It’s one thing for idi0ts “ethicists” to convince themselves it’s “ok” to ask participants to remain blinded and continue the trial not knowing their status. But it’s another thing to convince participants that ethics require them to stay unblinded for the sake of “the trial”. In fact: participants have tons of reasons why they will think risking getting ill is both (a) not in their own self interest and (b) not ethical vis-a-vis the risk they can present non-participants when they do get sick.
.
Even apart from self interest, the participants will way the ethics in their own particular circumstances and decided those ethics say: drop out of the trial, get vaccinated.
.
And in close cases where perhaps they can continue to quarantine and avoid getting infected and then infecting others, they’ll say “F*** the ethics! I’m getting vaccinated for m own self interest.)
Biden officially let the cat out of the bag Tuesday:
DeWitt,
Biden is not long for the presidency. He has dementia. My only doubt is if he will stay on as a figurehead or be driven out of office so Kamala can take over before the 2024 election campaign.
It’s not dementia, it’s a stutter you fools.
.
What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say
His verbal stumbles have voters worried about his mental fitness. Maybe they’d be more understanding if they knew he’s still fighting a stutter.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/joe-biden-stutter-profile/602401/
.
He was really saying “vie,vie,vie,vie,vie … ummm … President elect Harris”. One can be of a slowing mental capacity and have a stutter. I don’t really care that much either way as I imagine a totally competent Biden might be worse than a slowing Biden. This is inline with my theory that a government that does nothing at all is likely an improvement over an activist government.
Tom Sharft,
As you mention, stutter and dementia are not either/or.
.
Biden managed to be a fast talker when younger. We saw him in hearings frequently.
Tom Scharf (Comment #196153): “I imagine a totally competent Biden might be worse than a slowing Biden. This is inline with my theory that a government that does nothing at all is likely an improvement over an activist government.”
.
The problem with that is that a competent Biden might act as a partial brake on the worst excesses of the FBI, “intelligence community”, military, foreign policy establishment, China’s allies in and out of government, climate and public health “experts”, the Squad, etc.
And now for something completely different…
.
How To Be The Bestest Journalism Ever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzSI5HANe1I
.
I want to be on the record as disagreeing with everything said here, and have notified YouTube.
I wish everyone a Happy New Year.
I second OK_Max’s motion! May all of the Blackboard denizens have a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2021!
A happy, health, and prosperous 2021 to all. And with the end of Covid 19 now in sight, that seems more likely than 4 months ago.
.
Oh for the simple pleasures of ridiculing climate science activists and their preposterous projections of doom.
Can’t say I expected The Critical Drinker to turn up in these parts!
.
The end in sight for covid? Don’t you know super covid is right around the corner?
.
Best of luck for 2021 all!
Happy New Year!!!
Let’s hope for a better 2021.
Lucia,
Actually, some of 2020 wasn’t that bad. The SC has a new conservative member, shifting the balance of power away from mealy mouth Roberts, and toward someone who actually reads the statutes and the underlying constitution.
Happy New Year all.
mark bofill,
Happy New Year. May the planes always fly and the bugs be inconsequential. 😉
Thanks Steve!
I think they want to wait 2 years before knocking out Biden, so that Harris can run in 2024 and 2028.