Some of you have already learned that CEI won the summary judgment to not be sued by Mann. The case against Symberg continues. The court also made decision about expert witnesses, excluding 7 proposed by Mann’s side and 1 of 2 proposed by the defendants. The reasons some were excluded made me laugh. But the exclusion I found most interesting is that of Raymond S. Bradley, D.Sc, the “B” in MBH. I’m going to mostly just post text from the ruling.
Dr. Bradley provides expert testimony about the findings from the MBH research, how global temperatures were calculated, and the use of proxy data in the hockey stick research. Bradley Rep. ¶¶ 12-39. The Court will, however, exclude this testimony because Dr. Bradley fails to put forth the scientific technique or methodology underlying his expert opinion. See Sacchetti v. Gallaudet Univ., 344 F. Supp. 3d 233, 250-51
The type of proxy data used and whether it was properly incorporated into the hockey stick research is a fact at issue in this case. Dr. Bradley, as a co-author of the MBH98 and MBH99 studies, has first-hand knowledge of the data used in the hockey stick research. In arriving at his conclusion that the “technique was properly incorporated into, and used appropriately in, the MBH98 and MBH99 studies,†Dr. Bradley’s testimony skips a significant step that is required of all expert testimony. See Bradley Rep. ¶¶ 36-39. Dr. Bradley only speaks to how the proxy data was chosen but fails to establish the principles and methodologies he used to arrive at his conclusion that the data and technique in the MBH98 and MBH99 studies were properly incorporated and used appropriately. See Arias v. DynCorp., 928 F. Supp. 2d 10, 15-16 (D.D.C 2013) (indicating that an expert’s opinion can be based on their experience, but in those instances the expert must explain “how the experience leads to the conclusions reached, why the experience is a sufficient basis for the opinion and how that experience is reliably applied to the facts.â€). The Court must, therefore, exclude Dr. Bradley’s testimony.
I find this very striking because many of Steve McIntyre’s discussions of those criticizing the Hockey Stick research address the point of principles and methodologies are applied to the following questions:
- How do we know any proxie is a valid temperature proxy?
- How do we know whether using a proxy “upside down” is proper or improper application of “the” methodology?
- Has the methodology described been shown to give correct answers in previous applications? And finally:
- Was the methodology described actually used to come up with the results in the paper?
And these questions about proxies don’t even get use to “the trick” which gets to the question of whether there is an accepted methodology for splicing different sorts of data together.
Often the response to this is pretty much “other people have gotten the same thing”. Or alternately, “You don’t know enough to be able to understand the nuances of making these choices.”
But of course, that’s not a satisfactory answer in court! Because, evidently, in court, the judge’s position is “Yep. But you supposedly do. So explain those nuances”. And “Tell us how trained people do these analyses.” Both certainly ought to be possible. And if science is systematic and based on principles, facts, observations and techniques, someone should be able to explain the nuances or tell others how to get the answer!
In fact, if you can’t describe or outline a proper method, it’s clearly silly to claim you can determine if the method used to get a result was proper or improper.
Yet. It appears Bradley— the B in MBH– did not describe proper principles or techniques to select proxies. This, despite the fact that his proposed role was to tell the jury that proper principles or techniques were used. And, more over, it appears describing what these principles and techniques are ison of the things the law requires of an expert witness.
Other proposed expert witnesses were rejected for similar reasons. But to me, Bradley’s was the most interesting rejection of all.
A long long time ago Mark Steyne said Mann was at risk during the discovery process. He said Mann’s methodologies would never hold up in a court of law…. And cross examination hasn’t even started.
Russell,
This is prior to discovery!!
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Mann’s expert witnesses were excluded because they did not even try to explain the methodologies or principles in the data handling.
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I don’t see how there is even anything to crossexamine. I mean:
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Please explain the method used to pick the proxies to the jury? No.
Please you explain the principles used to pick the proxies to the jury? No.
You can’t even move on to how you can determine a method is “proper” if you don’t even explain what it is.
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Looks like the judge really has narrowed this down to how do you pick proxies? Is there an objective method? Or is this just “torturing data”?
Lucia, Yes that is my point. The Mann case will never survive discovery and cross… it flunked voir dire.
And the answer, of course, is you pick the ones that give you the answer you want. IOW, you beg the question.
If you have ever looked at the raw data graphs of these tree ring proxies you just know the analysis that comes up with a tidy graph is complete utter crap. They are a total mess. If you have to invent new statistics to get the answer you want then it is likely not a very good answer.
“And the answer, of course, is you pick the ones that give you the answer you want.”
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If you followed the Gergis proxy disaster at Climate Audit, then you know this isn’t even sarcasm, it is literally the truth.
https://climateaudit.org/2016/07/21/joelle-gergis-data-torturer/
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The short form
1. Author finds another hockey stick with ocean sediments
2. McIntyre finds math error, when algorithm is run as author states, no hockey stick.
3. Author retracts his paper. They are now forced to choose between republishing with no hockey stick as is, or …
4. Author updates their algorithm a couple years later to get hockey stick again.
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This is all inside baseball of course, but the real crime was that climate science circled the wagons and lashed out at the criticism. Pretty intellectually bankrupt.
Tom,
Reading the discussion of what Gergis eventually did, one might suspect Bradley or Mann doesn’t want to state what “proper” methodologies or principle might be and the reason would be that subsequently Gergis (and likely other papers) would have their methodology and principles compared to the clearly explained “proper” methodology.
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I mean: would Bradley’s ‘proper’ principles say you can expect a biological proxy like a tree ring to be sensitive to next years temperature? Or would he suggest it can’t?
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Would Bradley’s ‘proper’ principle say you can expect tree’s rings would be more sensitive to a temperature many miles away rather than the temperature where the tree is located? Or not?
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And if they might be, is he going to explain the proper principle or method to determine if the tree rings should respond to the temperature recorded 500 miles to the north, south, east or west rather than the local one.
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If he says that procedures are not proper, then a number of papers are then decreed improper in a court of law. And if he says they are: What will ordinary jurors think? If he says they “might be”, then either the methodology because “not a methodology” or he has to explain what factors you use to decide they once that “might be” proper choices are.
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And of course, that would leave things open to someone showing what happens if you apply this “proper” methodology to noise.
Good news is UK cases look to be falling rapidly. Now we can all speculate on whether it is seasonality, behavior changes, the much hoped for HIT, or “factor X”.
I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say the proxy methods change every time the proxy set changes. I stopped paying attention to this entire area after it got so ludicrous. My final conclusion was tree rings aren’t very good thermometers and a hockey stick is one of many possible past scenarios but there is not a good reason to believe that is likely.
NYT: “New coronavirus cases have declined for six days in a row in Britain, a shift that is baffling scientists, many of whom predicted a powerful surge in cases after the government relaxed all but a handful of restrictions in England last week.
Few experts are willing to draw definitive conclusions from the downward trend, which could reflect transient factors like the school summer break, the end of the European soccer championships or fewer people getting tested for the virus.â€
“The Daily Telegraph reported, based on leaked data, that roughly half of all new Covid cases in people admitted to hospitals were in patients seeking care for other illnesses and found to be infected through routine testing.â€
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I’m pretty sure the experts haven’t been unbaffled in the last year or so. They also seem entirely willing to draw conclusions from upward trends. Anyone who thinks these “experts†can accurately predict an infection peak haven’t been paying much attention lately.
I have always had a low opinion of the competence of Mann’s lawyer. Having his experts rejected is embarrassing. Really stupid, in my view to claim to be an expert in disinformation, like Mashey did and for Williams to present him to the court as an expert. Not a great look on Bradley.
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All that being said, the appeals court didn’t distinguish itself in the 100 page opinion it wrote. I could see it reversing some of the exclusions here 5 years down the road, if it isn’t too embarrassed to take on this case again.
Wish I had time to read the whole opinion, but haven’t been able to.
Tom Scharf,
I’ll bet that cases in the UK continue to decline for the next six days. The case rate behavior is very reminiscent of Ireland in January. The Full Width at Half Maximum of the seven day trailing average peak there was 14 days. I suspect that while cases were increasing rapidly, people who claimed to be experts were predicting the rate would keep increasing for weeks and that hospital ICU’s would be overwhelmed, etc., etc.
People claiming to be experts have been predicting big surges when restrictions have been relaxed a lot. Lately they’ve mostly been wrong. Early on, most models failed to predict a second wave, often because they didn’t run the model long enough.
Tom Scharf,
“The Daily Telegraph reported, based on leaked data, that roughly half of all new Covid cases in people admitted to hospitals were in patients seeking care for other illnesses and found to be infected through routine testing.â€
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The UK has done almost 4 tests for each person in the country….. they are testing so much that they are going to catch lots of asymptomatic cases that are missed in most other places.
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I suspect the reasons ‘experts’ don’t want to comment on the declining cases is because they all predicted wrongly that relaxing restrictions would make cases go up rapidly, but also because they don’t want the pandemic to end in the UK, which is likely what is happening. The CFR is already very low; if cases drop to a low level, then most people will just shrug at the experts’ opinions.
The CFR in the UK is 1 death in 400 confirmed cases.
There is a new queen in women’s gymnastics.
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Now everyone is going to think “well Simone didn’t compete, so put an asterisk by that oneâ€. Guess what? When you choose to not compete, somebody else gets to have the accolades. Will she? I don’t know, I hope so. One thing for sure is the GOAT label is being peeled off of Simone Biles this week.
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I guarantee you she is not going to like taking a back seat to the reining Olympic champion for the next 3 years. I have no idea what constant adulation and hero worship does to a 20 year old brain, but all of it can’t be good. Welcome to the world of adversity. Not having the world staring at your every move from afar may be quite a relief.
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Perhaps Simone will use this as motivation and come back and win in 2024, that would be a compelling story.
Tom Scharf,
Greatest of All Time is based on career performance, not on what have you done for me lately. It will take a while for Sunisa Lee to establish a reputation equal to or better than Simone Biles, if she ever does. For one, she needs to have moves named for her that only she can do.
I’m not saying Sunisa Lee has that label, I’m just say Simone Biles has arguably now fallen back into a group of other strong contenders. Biles has exactly * one * all around gold medal. There have now been 5 in a row for the US. Biles was likely more dominant, but I only pay attention for short periods. It’s just not “great†to abandon your team at the Super Bowl without notice, that counts in the negative column. This is a harsh assessment, only countered by its bitter and unfortunate truth. This will be remembered forever, it can’t be unseen. It’s all spin right now. Simone can reclaim the title by overcoming this.
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Nadia Comăneci, Romania 1976 I think is likely the most well known gymnast.
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The most memorable performance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VzDDLumYYU
Tom Scharf,
Simone Biles didn’t abandon the team. She gave someone else on the team an opportunity. After seeing her initial vault where she did one less twist than planned and still muffed the landing, it was obvious to any observer that she would not have been in contention if she continued.
It’s called the twisties and it’s similar to the yips in golf. There isn’t anything you can do about it.
DeWitt,
These are just speculations as to whether she could have performed or not. Maybe they are right, maybe they aren’t. Maybe she made the right call, but it is indistinguishable from just having an uncharacteristic mental meltdown and choking. We will never know. Her teammates obviously weren’t aware she might bail out on them. Regardless it’s still her and her coaches job to be prepared at game time. It didn’t happen and they aren’t giving out non-participation gold medals at the Olympics, but they are in the media, which is my entire point.
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That’s the way sports work. It’s unforgiving in its outcomes, but it’s just sports! There are huge numbers of athletes at these games who didn’t win for various legitimate reasons including they just aren’t talented enough, didn’t train hard enough, had the wrong coaches, bad genetics, got injured, got unlucky somehow, etc. So? Are they somehow less “courageous” than the people who just didn’t try? Failure is not winning, it’s not hard to confuse these things, unless you write for the US media. This was a failure with a capital F. It’s not a moral victory either, it’s just a regrettable loss.
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Every great athlete has non peak periods and stinks it up occasionally, and they play through and many times recover. Tiger Woods doesn’t have a bad warmup on the range at the Masters and gets in his car and drives home, he just goes out and has a bad day like everyone else not at peak performance.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #204129): “Simone Biles didn’t abandon the team. … It’s called the twisties and it’s similar to the yips in golf. There isn’t anything you can do about it.”
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Yips, twisties, choking; whatever you call it, she did let the team down. It is not a moral failing and I have not seen anyone say it was (but no doubt, somewhere on the internet …). There is certainly nothing admirable about it, despite what the cultural vandals are saying.
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What she did have control over was the way she handled it. From what I saw, her statement was all about her. She never said that she was sorry about letting down her teammates or for disappointing her fans. There is no requirement that she do so. But that is what a true champion would have done.
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p.s. – I can’t blame her for withdrawing. When Tiger Woods has a bad day, he hits some drives in the trees and misses some short puts. Biles would have been risking serious injury.
MikeM
I think she handled it fine. I don’t know that she “let down” anyone. Perhaps her fans were disappointed. But that doesn’t mean they were owed an apology. Sometimes people don’t get what they hope for. They have feelings, but that doesn’t mean other people are responsible for those feelings and own them an apology.
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The fans got an explanation, which seems fair enough to me.
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Honestly, I don’t think Biles story is a big deal one way or the other. It’s a sports event. It’s not someone starting or ending a war!
Simone Biles lost awareness of where she was. To continue in that situation risks breaking her neck.
JD, there is no need to appeal. The judge signalled that he might let in the witnesses in the future, if they change the statements.
Simone goes out not at her best, tries hard and loses. Courageous.
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Simone goes out not at her best and gets injured. Courageous.
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Simone decides not to compete because of self professed mental health issues. Courageous.
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Simone goes out not at her best and wins the gold anyway. Courageous?
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I’m not seeing the potential non-courageous angle here from the POV of the media. They are whizzing on me and telling me it is raining. Perhaps it is because they are partly responsible for building up the hype that broke her. It’s all there in black and white, no interpretation necessary.
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I sure hope that something else comes along in the games to be the enduring memory, because this is definitely the biggest moment so far. If only somebody else from the US could win. Nope, not good enough, Washington Post:
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“But the reality is Biles’s withdrawal from the all-around competition — a competition she won with ease five years ago in Rio de Janeiro, a competition she wins with ease any time she competes — provided more than Lee’s gold. It provided Olympic athletes — not to mention the entire world — with an opportunity to reassess priorities.
That’s more important and impressive than any medal issued over the course of these Games.”
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Ummmm … no. I really wonder what it’s like to be Suni Lee right now … wait … I think I know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2fXs3bf-p0
The Wall Street Journal featured Suni Lee’s win on the front page today.
MikeN
Some proposed expert witnesses clearly have no ability to change in relevant ways. Mashey has nothing to contribute. I have no idea how Oreskes could possibly change statements to make any sort of valid contribution. And what could Holdren change it to? “Now I’ve read 2 wikipedia pages?”
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The judge has cleared signaled the case is about how the proxies were selected and data handled to create the stick. In principle Bradley could change his statement. If the Mann is allowed to propose other witnesses, maybe he can find someone with math chops who can talk about Principle Components and someone who can and will talk about appropriate criteria for picking proxies in the first place.
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But if Mann can propose new people with math chops, who knows? Maybe the defendants could too. Simberg has linked to Climate Audit. So if they brought in McIntyre, they could not only have Steve explain some things but they could also show that Simberg was aware of stuff Steve wrote!
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There should be no question that the original MBH hockey stick paper was deeply flawed. It has been demonstrated beyond a doubt that it produces hockey sticks from reddish noise. How this suit has continued for so long demonstrates beyond a doubt that the legal system is also deeply flawed. Shades of Bleak House.
Probably the Bee posted this because of Dr. Fauci and the CDC and so on, but it applies equally well here I think.
https://babylonbee.com/news/study-finds-97-of-statements-following-experts-say-are-completely-made-up
Don’t know if this is true, but it wouldn’t be surprising…
“White House chatter is that lockdowns for delta variant all but a done deal. Virtually all blue states are cooperating with WH / CDC. They’re aiming for late 2nd week of August, per WH official”
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment #204153): “White House chatter is that lockdowns for delta variant all but a done deal. Virtually all blue states are cooperating with WH / CDC. They’re aiming for late 2nd week of August, per WH officialâ€
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Seems suspicious, since plotting it that far in advance means that it would not be driven by the science.
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Hmm. The USA has been lagging about one month behind the UK. Cases in the UK peaked on July 20. So if the pattern holds, cases in the USA should peak late in the 3rd week in August. Just in time for the power hungry SOBs to declare victory.
Mike M,
Cases are not deaths. I doubt there will be any lockdowns. Some blue state governors will institute mask mandates, as is their wont…. but they will not be popular.
Tom Scharf
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The media’s behavior is the media’s fault, not Bile’s fault. I’m not accusing you of saying otherwise, nor being wrong. I suspect you are right about all possible things “the media” would have written.
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I think Biles is a sympathetic character. I think the press likes to make things “big”. If it’s a story (and it is that) they feel the need to laud her as “courageous” or villify her as a “coward” or somehow deficient. The truth is in between.
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Right now: she is sympathetic. Members of the media are mostly going to pick laud. They get criticized less by readers that way. A few are villifying her– that also gets them clicks. But the extreme view drive clicks, links and attention for the media in ways that moderate ones don’t.
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I mean, the emdial could run a more neutral story: Simone is having troubles, they are affecting her performance. Gymnastics is dangerous in a way other sports are not. So it is literally true that attempting some of these things at a high level could endanger her life of body. We’ve seen bad things in women’s gynmastics before. Kerri Strug had to be carried to the podium after agreeing to vault while injured. The agreement appeared to be made under pressure. The risk she took was enormous. It’s not at all clear that was the right decision though it did get the team a gold. (Though it turned out that the American’s would have won anyway!)
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Less dramatically, Simone performing at a very low level could lose her team a medal where otherwise, they might win. Unlike Strugs decision where no one else could be substituted at that point Simone exiting meant someone else who is currently performing better could take her place.
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What do do about this is a difficult judgement call. There is no inherently “right” one. She made one. Obviously, she was going to make a decision– even if it was a default one. But the one she made is news.
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But if the medial said all that, they wouldn’t get clicks!
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The media’s need to make strong value judgements is the media grubbing for clicks, attention etc. It’s what they do almost especially in sports. After all: sports is actually entertainment. Entertainment is about puffery in the end. The sports media is doing what are doing what the sport’s media does.
Masks are back on in FL, about 50% at the grocery store today (voluntarily). FL is definitely a preview of what is going to happen in other regions I suspect. Counterintuitively if it is true that the vaccines are losing efficacy after 6+ months then it actually makes sense to not flatten the curve and instead let delta rip, and it is ripping in FL.
Tom Scharf,
I’m assuming your theory is the shot still reduces symptoms for Δ and the vaccinated would have milder cases no rather than later. This would potentially reduce deaths. Am I guessing right?
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Alternatively, they could let people opt to get a third shot (or 2nd for J&J). It’s untested, but so is not getting another shot. Technically so is using masks and so on.
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Some people would take the booster. Some wouldn’t. I’m not sure what I’d do given the choice. I might want to go in and get pfizer. I can be a guinea pig. 🙂
Simone Biles is a sympathetic character, and until lately a historically strong and dependable performer. She “manned up” and did a press conference after withdrawing and attended the competition and cheered on the other athletes, but also chose to not make herself the center of attention. She could have said it was a physical injury and everyone would have accepted that, she went for the truth. She handled it about as gracefully as could be expected. There is little doubt this has been a nightmare for her.
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My comments can be interpreted harshly, but I am holding her and press coverage to the professional standard of athletics which may or may not be appropriate.
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I mostly watch football and golf and the media is typically unrelenting in their hostility to poor performances (that’s their job). Poor Louis Oosthuizen has to endure “you came in second again, why can’t you get it done” questions over and over. But these professionals become hardened to this and know how to handle it. The NFL media coverage is like a war zone. Nobody gives fawning press coverage to bad football performances. Nobody. Doing that to a 16 year old Olympian is inappropriate, doing it to Biles maybe not.
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If you look at the most egregious click bait on Biles from either side like the one I posted above, they are coming from political columnists generally. They want her to be protected, she doesn’t need their protection, and she probably shouldn’t want it. Not that she could stop it.
The reports are that Pfizer is starting to lose efficacy after 6 months by a few percentage points every month. This cannot be certain because it is difficult to separate that from delta just being more virulent. The Israeli data suggests more breakthroughs over time. We shall see.
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Since the most vulnerable were vaccinated first, they will lose efficacy first. If they had to be exposed to delta, better now than later. It may just be reality that a large percentage of the population is going to be exposed to delta unless they self isolate.
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If the first to be vaccinated begin to have bad outcomes at an elevated level then a third shot or booster will likely happen. It seems to be trending that way and Pfizer no doubt wouldn’t mind.
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I would personally go for a third shot.
Tom Scharf,
“Masks are back on in FL, about 50% at the grocery store today (voluntarily).”
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Delta is ‘ripping through’ Florida among the unvaccinated. The people who are dying in Florida are nearly all unvaccinated. Young people are not dying in significant numbers. There is zero evidence masks are needed for vaccinated people with normal immune systems. It is just public panic in response to endless, hysterical, and nearly fact-free MSM news coverage. The coverage is actually worse than fact-free; it is refusal to convey the most important fact: if you are vaccinated and have reasonable health, delta is not a significant threat to you.
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Delta will burn through the unvaccinated in Florida. To the young unvaccinated, it won’t matter much. It will, sadly, kill a lot of elderly unvaccinated people, for no reason other than those people making a very unwise health care choice… it’s like Russian roulette with covid instead of a pistol.
Simone Biles went into detail about her problems today.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/simone-biles-olympics-tokyo-twisties-11627639363
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Today was not the right day to do that I think. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
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The twisties sounds like a physical problem, not a mental one.
Tom,
The problem with suggesting she shouldn’t talk today is that the media are all going to be asking her. So yeah… there is an element about sounding like “it’s all about me”. But on the other hand, people would infer the same if she refused to answer questions. People who want to see her as in the wrong would criticize her if she did answer the questions and also if she remained silent.
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This is exactly the flip side of some describing her as “courageous” no matter what she does. Others see it as “all about me” no matter what she does or says.
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Once again: I think this is the sports/entertainment media eing sports/entertainment/celebrity-paparazzi media. It’s not much different from people covering Harry and Meghan. Some report everything they do is splendid. Others criticize them for everything.
SteveF (Comment #204169): “Delta is ‘ripping through’ Florida among the unvaccinated. The people who are dying in Florida are nearly all unvaccinated.
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Do you have numbers for that? It seems to me that either you have numbers or you don’t really know. If you have numbers, I’d be interested in them.
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My *guess* would be lots of infections among both the vaccinated and unvaccinated, but deaths overwhelmingly among the latter. But I don’t *know* that. I’d love to see actual numbers.
She doesn’t have to talk to the media, she posted on Instagram. She could also tell them she will fill in all the details next week. What she had to do is commit to the apparatus finals soon, or not. Let Suni Lee have the spotlight she earned. But yes, the divisive takes aren’t going to change.
Hilarious excerpt from WSJ article on the final days of Bin Laden today.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-last-days-of-osama-bin-laden-11627657283
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“He explained that killing President Barack Obama was a high priority, but he also had General David Petraeus, at that time the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, in his sights. Bin Laden told his team not to bother with plots against Vice President Joe Biden, whom he considered “totally unprepared†for the post of president.”
Tom Scharf (Comment #204164): “Masks are back on in FL, about 50% at the grocery store today (voluntarily).”
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I did not see many masks at the grocery yesterday. But it was Walmart. I’m guessing there would have been a lot more at Whole Foods.
Mike M,
The state is not publishing numbers, but three large hospital groups in Miami and Fort Lauderdale report nearly all people hospitalized for covid are unvaccinated. https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/07/21/how-many-covid-19-patients-in-south-florida-were-vaccinated/
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One thing to note is that the “146 inpatients who have tested positive for COVID-19, with 91% of them unvaccinated” data may be due to all patients who are admitted being tested… covid symptoms or not, so that will include asymptomatic people admitted for other reasons.
The experience of MLB is informative: there have been lots of players who tested positive in spite of vaccinations….. but not because they were symptomatic. They are all being tested on a routine basis. Those ‘cases’ are never going to be caught among the general (vaccinated) public, since asymptomatic people are unlikely to seek out a test.
SteveF (Comment #204176): “The state is not publishing numbers, but three large hospital groups in Miami and Fort Lauderdale report nearly all people hospitalized for covid are unvaccinated. https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/07/21/how-many-covid-19-patients-in-south-florida-were-vaccinated/”
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Thanks, that is informative. I see no way to interpret that other than that the vaccines are extremely effective in preventing hospitalization.
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I don’t see why hard numbers aren’t made readily available. If the vaccines are really effective, the numbers would support that. If the vaccines are really safe, solid numbers on adverse effects would support that. By not making the numbers available, the authorities feed all sorts of speculation and misanalysis. Just one more way that they undermine confidence in the vaccines.
Mike M,
“By not making the numbers available, the authorities feed all sorts of speculation and misanalysis. Just one more way that they undermine confidence in the vaccines.”
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I think it is misguided. I think it displays a level of contempt for citizens, and their right to to know the truth, which is shameful. Reminds me of “you can’t handle the truth”: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/specialengagements/moviespeechafewgoodmencodered.html
SteveF,
Do we know how fast the infected vaccinated baseball players cleared the virus from their systems, i.e. how long it took them to get a negative test?
DeWitt,
I don’t know that. I don’t know who does. They have a standard protocol for return: minimum 10 days isolation. https://www.mlb.com/news/health-and-safety-protocols-for-2021-mlb-season
They have a saliva test every two days, so they are probably catching everything.
Alex Berenson had an article last week about how the government was lying about its vaccinated vs unvaccinated deaths, probably going back to last year for its count of unvaccinated.
He was disputing a ‘99.2% are unvaccinated’ claim.
He concluded the vaccine was very effective, but not as much as claimed, and they should just stick to this rather than trying to inflate the numbers.
How does one make a Greek delta on a computer?
MikeN,
https://www.thoughtco.com/html-codes-greek-characters-4062212
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But it depends on what parts of HTML the blog supports.
Ampersand Delta semicolon (no spaces) works for me
Δ
(apologies for the post but I have to try that. Δ )
[Edit: neat!]
Let’s see if the others work too.
Δ
Δ
Another way is just type “delta symbol” into Google, find it in a sentence, then copy/paste it. Δ. As long as it is a defined Unicode character it should work.
Copy and paste from Character Map from Windows accessories:
Δ
99.2% is likely one of those that isn’t properly binning vaccinated person days and unvaccinated person days for the comparison. The Israeli data comes in at 97%. That always seemed high to me but they did their math correctly. Even if it was 90% or 95% there is no need to amplify an improper higher number. Vaccine evangelists sometimes try too hard.
Character Map has pretty much any symbol you want, but there are so many it may be hard to find what you want.
I have a short cut to “greek letters” programmed on my mac. (I picked the short cut. Its command G) I do the short cut, type a D and then re type toe the short cut to toggle back.
Tom Scharf,
“The Israeli data comes in at 97%.”
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Very close to the data from the large hospital groups in Florida. If you are vaccinated, you are very unlikely to suffer severe illness, and probably won’t suffer symptomatic illness at all.
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The vaccines are not perfect. But they are still very effective. It is tragic that so many older (over 45) Floridians have not been vaccinated. I don’t much care about the unvaccinated bar-hopping 20-something set…. it is not going to kill them anyway. And kids? Forgetaboutit… not even worth discussion. But it is destructive that people have not been given accurate information about actual risks following vaccination; it makes for hysteria and poor personal and public choices.
DeWitt,
“Character Map has pretty much any symbol you want”
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I use the character map sets in Word when I need to include equations in technical documents. A little awkward/slow, but does the job. Would be nicer if they were available via a hot-key (eg F4) that opens temporary keyboard layouts with the character sets.
USDA says that a large fraction of the Midwest deer population has antibodies to the Wuhan virus: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/over-half-the-deer-in-michigan-seem-to-have-been-exposed-to-sars-cov-2/
They claim no antibodies found in archived samples.
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The virus can infect many other animals, so if the report is reliable then it seems likely that there are lots of reservoirs. So much for the idea of wiping it out with vaccines.
MikeM,
Wait, are you saying deer don’t routinely wear masks to avoid covid 19? Shocking!
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Aside from endless humor, one of the few good things things about covid 19 is that it has demonstrated, without any doubt, that the ‘elites’ have not the smallest clue what they are talking about. From ‘could smell the Trump supporters’, to today’s ‘force them to comply’ with vaccinations crowd, the left has totally lost the plot WRT the US experiment in self government and personal independence. I rather suspect they never really paid any attention to history. Or at a minimum rejected it 100%.
“The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest 92% of adults in the UK now have antibodies to the virus in their blood, either through a previous infection or at least one vaccination dose.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57962995
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Covid Zero isn’t going to happen.
So much for the cruise debate.
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Royal Caribbean shares tumble as 6 Covid cases discovered on board a ship, cruise line expands U.S. testing policy
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/royal-caribbean-says-6-covid-cases-discovered-on-board-a-ship-shares-fall.html
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4 vaccinated people and 2 of their minors. Only one had minor symptoms, others asymptomatic. They had to leave the ship in the Bahamas and go home. Unclear who paid for that. They are going to force negative testing within 3 days prior from here on out on cruises of 5 days or more. I doubt it will solve the problem.
Many times the test results don’t come back within 3 days.
The judge ruled on the admissibility of various “experts’ testimonyâ€. All of Mann’s proposed experts were considered to be unrelated to the question of defamation. Steyn, however, had asked for a statistician named Abraham Wyner to present testimony. The judge allowed this expert to partake in the case to be presented to the jury.
The statements Mann complains about relate to him “torturing data†to produce the “fraudulent†Hockey Stick. (That he was indirectly compared to a child molester / sexual predator was not a matter that has survived the court system.) In roughly 2009 Wyner and a partner statistician published a peer reviewed article in a respected statistical journal arguing that the statistical methods — data selection and analysis both — used in Mann’s work were (shall we say, as kindly as possible) not capable of bearing the weight of the importance placed upon the results. This was roughly contemporary with the Climategate email scandal. And the whole thing was widely discussed on Steve McIntyre’s ClimateAudit blog — which Steyn has admitted (“bragged aboutâ€, might be more accurate) following in the three years prior to the publications at issue.
Steyn doesn’t need to be a climate expert or an expert statistician to show he relied upon secondary media (the blog) in forming the opinions he expressed. So the question becomes whether (a) the reports in the media accurately conveyed the gist of Wyner’s findings and (b) Steyn’s opinions can be reasonably interpreted as derivative of Wyner’s. Wyner is the expert most capable of assessing both. He will be allowed to present for the defense. Mann has no such experts in his corner, as of today’s ruling.
From the judge’s order
Dr. Wyner’s opinions regarding the veracity or reliability of Plaintiff’s [Mann’s] work bears directly on Plaintiff’s required showing of falsity, and should be admitted for that purpose.
McShane and Wyner (2010) in the Annals of Applied Statistics, abstract:
We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature. Furthermore, various model specifications that perform similarly at predicting temperature produce extremely different historical backcasts. Finally, the proxies seem unable to forecast the high levels of and sharp run-up [ the hockey stick ] in temperature in the 1990s either in-sample or from contiguous holdout blocks, thus casting doubt on their ability to predict such phenomena if in fact they occurred several hundred years ago.
I was reading today on VOX that the Delta variant R was between 5 and 9 and that means it will be nearly impossible to stop the current surge. It does appear however that while cases are surging deaths are not up very much. Basically, covid is going to be a chronic problem. Vaccines help, natural immunity is a lot more effective and we can do little to affect the course of this pandemic.
I was reading today on VOX that the Delta variant R was between 5 and 9 and that means it will be nearly impossible to stop the current surge. It does appear however that while cases are surging deaths are not up very much. Basically, covid is going to be a chronic problem. Vaccines help, natural immunity is a lot more effective and we can do little to affect the course of this pandemic.
David Young (Comment #204733): “I was reading today on VOX that the Delta variant R was between 5 and 9 …”
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I am pretty sure that R is well under 2. R0 is higher, depending on what fraction of the population has been “removed” from the pool of susceptible people. If you assume that the vaccinated have been removed, then you get a really high R0. But that would be an incorrect assumption.
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David Young: “… and that means it will be nearly impossible to stop the current surge.”
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Indeed. Just as it was impossible to stop the earlier surges or the recent surge in the UK. So far, the forecasters have a perfect record.
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David Young: “It does appear however that while cases are surging deaths are not up very much.”
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On what do you base that? It does seem to have been true in the UK. But here the CFR has been running 1 to 1.5%, depending on whether I use a 2 or 3 week lag (using the Financial Times numbers). Maybe just a bit lower than what it has been for the last year.
I decided to take a closer look at the CFR, using data from the Financial Times (https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areasRegional=usmi&areasRegional=usfl&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=0&startDate=2020-09-01&values=cases)
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I can not download the data, but actual numbers can be obntained by hovering the cursor.
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Michigan had a big surge in the spring. Since there is a full peak, we can make good estimates of delay from cases to deaths and CFR. The delay is 3 weeks and the CFR is 0.9-1.1%, depending on just how I compute it.
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More recently, the CFR in MI has been about 3%. Since deaths have been low (5-7/day, recently rising to 9) I suspect they might be contaminated by late reporting of deaths from months ago. That has been documented in Minnesota.
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Using a 3 week lag with the FL data, the recent CFR has been 1.4%, down from 1.8% a month ago. But it looks like a 4 week lag might be more appropriate, in which case the CFR has been steady at 2.3-2.6%.
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The current CFR for the USA is 1.3% using a 3 week lag.
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Absolutely no indication that the current surge has a low death rate.
Mike M.,
The CFR (really the Confirmed Case Fatality Rate) is a nearly meaningless number because we don’t have a clue whether the ratio of total cases to confirmed cases is a constant. Given the large number of vaccinated and previously infected, you could have a much larger number of very mild or asymptomatic cases than in the past when there were much fewer people with some immunity. Or, it could be that the ratio is now lower. We simply don’t know. And we probably can’t know because with vaccination, serum antibodies no longer correlate with total cases.
So using the CCFR to compare virulence of the different strains is highly questionable.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #204742): “The CFR (really the Confirmed Case Fatality Rate) is a nearly meaningless number because we don’t have a clue whether the ratio of total cases to confirmed cases is a constant.”
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I would not say that CFR is meaningless, but it must be interpreted with great caution. It should be an upper bound to the IFR (infected fatality rate) which is what we really want to know.
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DeWitt Payne: “So using the CCFR to compare virulence of the different strains is highly questionable.”
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True. But I did not do that.
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At least two people have claimed on this site that although cases are up, attributed deaths are not. I have also seen that claim elsewhere. The data show that claim is simply not true.
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I would have thought that the CFR should have dropped some, although not as much as the IFR. That has not happened, which I find interesting.
Really good information from the UK.
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SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in
England
Technical briefing 20
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1009243/Technical_Briefing_20.pdf
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The UK and Israel are by far the best place to get good information.
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Example: The CFR in England for Delta is 0.2%, however it is 2.0% for the over 50 age group and 0.0% for the under 50 age group. The UK numbers are more trustable overall but something is different in the US, perhaps virus reality, perhaps subpar data reporting. Speculation is that the UK had already reached higher immunity levels prior to their recent delta surge. Since our frickin CDC can’t seem to monitor antibody levels in the population we just don’t know.
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It shows delta is about twice as likely to infect someone in a household than alpha (secondary attack rate). This number is still only about 12% though. Probably an over dispersion factor, some people are just really good transmitters.
Tom Scharf (Comment #204745): “The CFR in England for Delta is 0.2%, however it is 2.0% for the over 50 age group and 0.0% for the under 50 age group. The UK numbers are more trustable overall but something is different in the US, perhaps virus reality, perhaps subpar data reporting.”
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Table 4 on page 13 shows CFR of 1.1% for alpha and 0.2% for delta, both since Feb. 1. A factor of 4.3 lower for delta (using the raw numbers). I suppose the latter could go up a bit from deaths not yet reported.
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The ratio of under 50 to over 50 cases is a factor of 2.2 higher for delta. So that leaves a factor of two to account for. It could be that a more detailed breakdown by age would account for it.
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Table 5, page 18, shows 10% of the over 50 delta cases unvaccinated compared to 55% for under 50.
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One difference in the USA is a lot more black and brown people. They have both poorer outcomes and a lower vaccination rate.
I overlooked that the UK report has deaths broken down by vaccination status. That gives the following CFRs:
over 50
4.8% for alpha
6.0% delta, unvaccinated
1.5% delta, vaccinated
under 50
0.06% alpha
0.03% delta, unvaccinated
0.02% delta, vaccinated
I would guess that the difference between CFR and IFR is especially large for the vaccinated.
MikeM
Depends when they said it and which locations they were talking about. Two weeks ago, deaths were at a relative minimum– so down (6/day_ . They’ve now nudged very up (14 /day). The latter is still much lower than the bump in April/May (29/day) and certainly than prior to that.
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Cases are definitely back up to the April/May “bulge”.
So for Illinois, the claim you dub “simply not true” is actually “substantively true” .
lucia,
You are smarter than that. Cases in IL rose over a 4 week period from 1500/day in mid-March to a peak of 3400 on April 13. Compare that to just over 3000 now, following a 5 week rise from about 300 in early July. A slower rise from a lower level means that the effect of the lag from cases to deaths was less in April. So deaths were higher at the time of the case peak in April: 20/day compared to 13 per day. But it makes no sense to compare deaths to cases on the same day. There is a lag.
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Three weeks after the April case peak in IL, deaths peaked at 34 per day, 1% of the case peak. Three weeks ago, cases were about 1100. Since 13 is more than 1% of 1100, it looks like deaths might be higher in this surge, once we account for the lag.
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Cases in IL might or might not be peaking. But deaths will keep rising at least into early September. U.S. deaths are on the way back up to over 1000 per day. Quite possibly over 2000/day, if cases have not yet peaked.
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I am amazed that people refuse to consider that deaths lag cases when looking at the current numbers. Motivated reason is a powerful thing.
Iceland seems an interesting case. Extremely high vaccination rates, but still a big surge in cases: https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/iceland-deals-with-growing-delta-outbreak-as-high-vaccination-rates-stop-deaths/news-story/b970a814615715e573d67b3a1c1525f0
No deaths yet, but the surge only got going about 3 weeks ago and they have had just 29 total deaths. Small population, lowish total cases, CFR under 0.5%.
Those numbers don’t seem to be internally consistent. And the last number seems inconsistent with the panic and strain on hospitals described in the article. But I have not really tried to reconcile them.
MikeM
Huh?
You appear to be advising me to conclude it’s “simply not true” to think “attributed deaths are not” up. With are in the present tense.
And you seem to be suggesting that correct statements about the level of attributed deaths right now– present tense are ‘simply not true’ based on your prediction of what will happen in the future.
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I think I am smarter than thinking that makes sense.
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Based on what data we have now death’s have not risen.
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Yes. Death’s may lag. Maybe they will rise in the future. But that’s the data we have. And you are wrong to claim that the “attributed deaths have not yet risen” is not true because they might rise in the future!
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Even if they do rise in the future, they haven’t done so yet. So it’s true to say they have not.
Here’s a side by side comparison
I think it’s safe to say attributed deaths were down relative to reported cases in the March/April bump. That’s even accounting for the lag–the death’s happened later.
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But regardless of the lag it is absolutely true to say we attributed deaths are not up. (Present tense. ) Cases are up– present tense.
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Maybe death’s will go up later. Maybe not. But suggesting there is something “not smart” about this is any way to support whatever argument you are making. This is simply the truth at present.
lucia,
You are quibbling. Yes, deaths are not yet up by as much as cases. I see no reason why we should care. But deaths ARE up by roughly as much as should be expected from the rise in cases. That is significant.
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Eyeballing your graph, it looks like the current CFR is in between the winter and spring surges.
Gotta say the media is crucifying Biden on Afghanistan. He hasn’t handled this very well to say the least, and he owns it. Biden said some really dumb things a few weeks ago.
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“There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan.â€
“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.â€
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Then the attempt to blame Trump over the weekend while he vacationed was both petty and tone deaf.
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I think a Taliban takeover on exit was inevitable no matter what happened. They live there, and their history is quite repetitive with the foreign invader du jour being waited out. It was a bit quicker than most “experts” thought, but that is more of a reflection on their alleged expertise. I’m not going to miss the Afghan occupation. We shall see if they learned their lesson on hosting Al Qaeda.
Tom Scharf,
“I think a Taliban takeover on exit was inevitable no matter what happened.”
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Completely agree. The reason the Taliban were in charge before 9/11 was because the culture of Afganistan (extreme muslim teachings plus no history of freedom) allowed the Taliban to run the place. They will do so again, indefinitely. The country has a future in the middle ages, and we can’t change that. Neither could the Russians, nor the British before them.
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The USA military should have gone in after 9/11, killed every Al Qaeda they could, then issued a warning to the Taliban that the next time they let Al Qaeda function in their country we would return and kill ever Taliban leader we could find along with anyone who supports the Taliban. Rinse and repeat, with each iteration causing more death and destruction in Afganistan. Nation building never works, and never will. It is a stupid waste of money and lives. All you can do is make the punishment for bad behavior too costly, even to animals like the Taliban.
MikeM
I don’t think I’m the one who is quibbling.
* You noted people said deaths are not up.
* You complained that was simply not true.’
* You now admit deaths are not yet up.
Perhaps we shouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean you get to claim that the people who said deaths are not up are saying something that is untrue. That they are saying is absolutely true. It’s not a “quibble”.
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Oh? Well since you aren’t telling us how much we should have “expected” we can’t possibly make a comparison to determine whether what you claim is right or wrong.
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I’m eyeballing the graphs and it sure looks to me like if we scale the proportion of deaths to cases from the “bump” between Oct-Feb” deaths in the “April” bump were clearly up much less than we “would have expected” based on the previous bump. That’s accounting for the lag.
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As for the 3rd case bump: looks like this is also will beless than the Oct-Feb bump. But we can’t know for sure.
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But one thing we certainly can’t say is that it’s “simply not true” death’s aren’t up. In the present it’s certainly true they are not up. In the future: Well, we don’t know. But your the one who is way out there trying to claim really extreme things like “simply not true” based on ??
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Ok. So no you are changing the subject to CFR in winter and spring. But CFR in spring already looks lower than winter.
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I’m not entirely sure what point you are trying to advance.
The UK was one of the few countries that was even worse than the US experience, and that may be the reason it has faired or will fair better in the near future. With delta there is a population wide price to be paid, you can pay that price in vaccinations or infections. The only question seems to be when you will pay. Don’t count on that message from Fauci’s mouth anytime soon.
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What would be rather interesting is a graph showing regional population antibody level versus CFR. The death rates probably start dropping once you get to around 90% or so. Reinfections or vaccinated cases start to dominate. The CDC should be tracking this, but they don’t.
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The dynamics have reversed with the worst hit places perhaps now being in a better position. Ugh.
As near as I can tell, the situation is that people who have been infected have both mucosal and systemic immunity and so have minimal chance of reinfection. People who are vaccinated but have not been infected (hereafter “vaccinated”) have systemic immunity but not mucosal immunity. So if exposed, they are probably just as likely to get infected as those who have not been either vaccinated or infected (hereafter, “unvaccinated”). However, their mucosal immune systems can recruit the systemic immune system, allowing the vaccinated to mount a quicker mucosal immune response than the unvaccinated although not as fast as the infected.
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So at first the vaccinated respond to the virus pretty much the same as the unvaccinated, meaning that they are contagious and maybe get the start of symptoms. But they clear the infection much faster, and so are not as likely to infect others. And their systemic immunity keeps them from getting significant infection in the lungs or bloodstream, so they are unlikely to get seriously ill.
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So eventually, everybody will get infected. But if you have been vaccinated you probably won’t get anything worse than a head cold, maybe just sniffles. Might as well just accept it.
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Not much of what I said is solid, but I think there is evidence for all of it. The weakest link is that I am assuming that there are a LOT of undetected infections among the vaccinated. That is, I suspect, the best case scenario. I hope it is not just wishful thinking.
Yes, the Taliban are likely to have returned regardless, but it sounds more like the allies retreat from Dunkirk than an orderly withdrawal, with the reports of equipment left behind. Biden projects a weak image because that is what he is. I suspect they wouldn’t have been so bold to make their move when they did with the “crazy, irrational” orange man in the White House.
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Let’s not also forget military leaders boasted about lying to Trump about troops in Afghanistan. Big round of applause guys! Great job!
I’m not sure how much of today is truly Biden’s fault. I suspect that this day has been inevitable since whenever the decision was made to stay and do ‘nation building’. Twenty years I suppose.
It didn’t have to be quite the disorganized looking fiasco it appeared to be, that’s on Biden. But I don’t think any other outcome (besides the Taliban or similar taking over fairly quickly) was going to happen. It was silly for people to pretend for so long, is all.
MikeM,
Sure. That’s plausible. As I’ve said before: If vaccination only gives me humeral immunity, I’m fine with that. That’s keeps me from getting extremely sick. Getting sick and having it limited to a nasal infection and subsequently having natural mucosal immunity on top of humeral immunity is fine by me.
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There may very well be a lot of undetected infections among the vaccinated. We’re pretty sure many were always undetected. If vaccination makes infection milder we’re still going to have some undetected infections– perhaps tons. If the infections are limited to nasal and look no worse than “summer cold”, people aren’t going to go get tested.
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This is dangerous for the unvaccinated and may explain the rise in cases. We know some unvaccinated are getting infected, sickening and even having very bad outcomes. There is very little we can do about this.
Well, unless we really force vaccinations, which most think would ought not to do. They want to take that path; they take that path.
Here’s a humorous/serious story you might enjoy “Lawrence of Kabul”! The spirit of British exploration isn’t dead yet!
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https://youtu.be/xqRnSZu6n58
In a rational world, the unvaccinated would see delta as very bad news. There was some hope that they could wait covid out and get lucky while everyone else achieved herd immunity. Now they stand a pretty significant chance of having to deal with an initial infection unvaccinated. The young can still weather this with good odds, the old not so much.
The WSJ is channeling Mike M today:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-herd-provincetown-mayo-delta-mask-mandate-vaccine-passport-cdc-mucosal-immunity-11629128219
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“The answer is that there’s more than one kind of immunity. Internal immunity protects the inside of the body, including the lungs. This occurs by release of antibodies of the Immunoglobulin G type, or IgG, into the blood and production of T-cells. Vaccines injected into our muscles are highly effective at stimulating internal immunity. This largely protects vaccinated people from being overwhelmed by the coronavirus, unless they have an immunodeficiency or are exposed to an unusually large amount of the virus. Vaccination will dramatically reduce your likelihood of serious illness or death if you’re exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
In contrast, mucosal immunity provides the first line of defense by protecting the nose and mouth, and by doing so also reduces spread to others. The mucous membranes secrete a particular form of antibodies of the Immunoglobulin A type, or IgA. But vaccines injected into our muscles—including all the approved inoculations against Covid—are largely ineffective at stimulating the secretion of IgA into our noses that occurs after actual infection with a virus. As a result, vaccinated people can contract a Covid-19 infection confined to the mucous membranes. They may get the sniffles but can spread the virus to others even if they are asymptomatic. That’s why it makes sense for them to wear a mask under some circumstances.”
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“Vaccines administered via nasal spray exist for other ailments, including polio. They’re under development for Covid-19 to supplement existing shots with mucosal immunity. In the meantime, herd immunity may prove difficult to achieve unless more people get infected and develop natural immunity of both types. Given the dangers of infection, officials are rightly reluctant to encourage actual infection, and loath to mention its benefit in conferring mucosal immunity.”
Tom
Well… if we want to spread more slowly.
Seriously, it sounds like R0 of Δ is sufficiently high that nearly all the unvaccinated will get it. When we’ve had measles outbreaks no one said we’d control that with masks! Maybe masks would slow it, but it’s pretty much: go get vaccinated!
Sounds like actual infection is going to happen whether they ‘encourage’ it or not!
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The could just emphasize: the humeral immunity is the one that keeps you from dying! (Or, failing that, makes the infection less bad.)
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The whole “socialist do it for grandma or others or selflessly or…” is just not helpful here. Get the vaccine for selfish reasons!!
Mike M,
“the situation is that people who have been infected have both mucosal and systemic immunity and so have minimal chance of reinfection.”
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Do you have data in support of that? Could well be true, but then breakthrough infection of those who have recovered should be demonstrably less likely than among those who have only been vaccinated.
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Tom Scharf,
“Given the dangers of infection, officials are rightly reluctant to encourage actual infection, and loath to mention its benefit in conferring mucosal immunity.”
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“Rightly”? I don’t think so.
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I grow tired of all the lies, and especially ‘noble’ lies; the ignoble lies are at least easier to detect. They should just tell the public the truth, with any associated uncertainty. It seems to me the “dangers of infection” for those who have been vaccinated are pretty well limited to the elderly. I don’t see why it would be bad for a vaccinated 30 YO to suffer a very mild ‘breaktrhrough’ infection if that gives them bullet-proof immunity.
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One of my vaccinated sons (36, a bar hopper, unfortunately) contracted a mild breakthrough case from an unvaccinated young woman 10 days ago (basically a 2 day head cold, with a low fever). He tested positive twice, but cleared the virus in 7 days (two negative tests).
Tom Scharf (Comment #204773),
Glad to see the WSJ catch up with me! 🙂
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But I think they get one significant thing wrong:”This largely protects vaccinated people from being overwhelmed by the coronavirus, unless they have an immunodeficiency or are exposed to an unusually large amount of the virus.”
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People previously in reasonably good health are not “overwhelmed” by the virus. Severe illness is caused not by the virus running amok but by the immune system running amok. I have seen that called immune system disregulation.
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My original concern with the vaccines was that severe covid is a dysfunctional immune system response that we don’t understand and that we are fighting the virus by mucking with our immune response to it. So far, there seems to be no evidence that is a problem. Whew! I hope it is not just that inadequate statistics are hiding a problem. And that it won’t occur in future, perhaps as antibodies wane or in reaction to a new variant.
lucia (Comment #204774): “Seriously, it sounds like R0 of Δ is sufficiently high that nearly all the unvaccinated will get it.”
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And possibly nearly all the vaccinated as well. It seems that the virus does spread more slowly among the vaccinated. That could be due to the vaccine providing some protection to the vaccinated. But it also could be due to the vaccinated being less likely to spread the virus as a result of clearing the infection more quickly. Since the vaccinated are more likely to associate with other vaccinated people and the unvaxxed are more likely to associate with other unvaxxed people, it is hard to untangle the two effects.
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For now, I am very glad I got vaccinated.
SteveF (Comment #204776): “Do you have data in support of that? Could well be true, but then breakthrough infection of those who have recovered should be demonstrably less likely than among those who have only been vaccinated.”
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Do I have data? Of course not. Very little data is available, it might be that no one is even collecting it.
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What data we had on re-infections pre-vaccine indicated that it was very rare. Of course, that was also pre-delta.
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I am pretty sure that there is no data to undermine my claim. If there were, we would be hearing about it since that would fit the narrative. But it could be that there is no data either way, because of CDC incompetence.
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price has some advice for Afghanistan’s new leaders:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/anthony-blinken-speaks-on-the-fall-of-kabul
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But what can we expect from people who are so reality challenged that they insist men can have babies?
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Maybe they are hoping the Taliban will laugh themselves to death. Unfortunately, the Taliban do not seem to have a sense of humor.
Mike,
Yeah. All that’s left is to come up with a new narrative that nobody much will actually believe but that everyone can pretend to believe as needed to save face until the next disruptive incident occurs.
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I was caught a little off guard by media criticism of President Biden. Maybe they have decided Vice President Harris’s time has come.
Mike M.,
Nancy Pelosi also gave a “stern feminist warning for the Taliban”.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosi-afghan-women-biden-withdrawal-taliban-forced-marriages-misogyny-feminism-11629058703?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
I’m sure the Taliban leadership are quaking (with laughter) in their boots.
The Taliban, with 10th century morals and behaviors, won’t pay much attention to Nancy Pelosi’s sensibilities. When the Taliban returns to stoning to death unfaithful women, and tearing the fingernails off women who dress ‘inappropriately’, I hope Nancy is ready to advocate dropping nuclear weapons on the Taliban. No? Then she should just shut up.
Biden takes no questions from reporters, goes back to Camp David vacation. No, this ain’t the Bee.
https://www.yahoo.com/now/biden-ignores-questions-retreats-camp-204600462.html
Impressive. Good thing he took responsibility and explained how the buck stops with him. My takeaway[] is that the guy does not give two shits about the situation in Afghanistan.
Maybe he’s right not to. Shrug.
mark bofill (Comment #204781): “I was caught a little off guard by media criticism of President Biden. Maybe they have decided Vice President Harris’s time has come.”
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The media are on the side of the Democrats. But more than that, they are on the side of the permanent “national security” state (the Deep State, if you will), who were uniformly opposed to withdrawing from Afghanistan. So I am not at all surprised by the attacks on Biden.
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I assume that the military opposed withdrawal and predicted disaster. Which means that Biden put his foot down, and told them that we were getting out and that it was their job to do it right. If so, good on you, Joe! Maybe they were just incompetent. But I would find it believable if the Pentagon screwed it up just so that they could say that the politicians had better do as they say in future.
Mike,
My impression is that the top brass did not predict disaster, but I might have that wrong. I’ll get back to you on that.
I’m pretty sure the low level guys saw it coming, but I might have that wrong too. We’ll see.
Michael Corleone: “We saw a strange thing on our way here. Some rebels were being arrested, and instead of being arrested, one of them pulled the pin on a grenade he had hidden in his jacket. He took himself and the captain of the command with him. Now, the soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren’t.”
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Hyman Roth: “What does that tell you?”
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Michael Corleone: “They can win.”
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The government troops in Afganistan (and any other nation-building candidate country you can name) have no skin in the game and no real commitment to ‘the cause’. The Taliban are ready to die and meet their many virgins in heaven. That is why they win.
mark bofill (Comment #204788): “My impression is that the top brass did not predict disaster, but I might have that wrong.”
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They did not predict that publicly.
Steve,
Yes. I think there’s something of that. Also, I suspect that security force low level troops were much more sympathetic to the Taliban than realized. It’s like – the occupying whomevers leave the U.S. (I know, nobody can occupy the U.S., just pretend) and the boys from Texas take over. Are you really gonna take up arms against the boys from Texas?
Mike,
Yes, there’s that. What generals publicly say and what they actually know aren’t always similar. I haven’t had time to go looking yet, I will at some point.
Once our ‘allies’ in Afghanistan understood the USA would actually withdraw, they melted away instead of standing and fighting. This is not a surprise. From top to bottom, none were committed enough to fight the Taliban; if they had been, the Taliban would have been eliminated long before Al Qaeda arrived via targeted assignation of Taliban leadership.
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Everyone on the ground knew that the Taliban would take over, although the speed with which it happened tells you just how rotten the entire Afghan military and civilian leadership really was…. and how dishonest US military leaders have been for two decades. We should never have been there past a year of arrival. The country was always going to descend into a medieval horror show. But why waste a trillion dollars and thousands of lives to delay that for some years. Afghanistan is just going back to where it has always been. May we never do anything so stupid again.
Amen.
Mike,
I think you’re right.
https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2702101/afghan-forces-have-capacity-to-fight-defend-country-milley-says/
It sounds to me like General Milley could read the writing on the wall perfectly well.
[Edit: Sometimes what I say gets misconstrued as sarcasm. I intended no sarcasm there. I think this shows Milley knew it was more likely than not that the Taliban was taking over fairly soon. He probably had no reason to commit to a stronger statement than he the one he made.]
Perhaps instead of building up government forces, they should have given weapons to the general public. If these people were also handing their weapons to the Taliban, then it’s no worse than current situation.
They should have never let bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, then left after finishing off Al Qaida.
Boy, I am impressed. The same people who were waxing poetically about virology and epidemiology yesterday are today expounding on terrorism and military strategy. Where does one do postgraduate training for that? The John Hopkins War Collage, or maybe the Mayo Clinic of International Diplomacy?
Re: R Klier at 8:56. Can’t be worse than US generals and politicians. See https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-us-government-lied-for-two-decades
Come now Russel. When was the last time US military intervention succeeded in its goals beyond its primary objective of pummeling enemies to pulp? It’s not a military failure, it’s a political one, although a failure to witbdraw in an orderly fashion after statements assuring that was exactly what was going to happen is probably a failure of both.
Russell,
People are allowed to read the news and form opinions on multiple subjects. It’s even encourages since we all must decided who to vote for and many issues matter.
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I was not surprised Al Quaeda took over so fast. The news before the event seemed to suggest this would happen. I’m not claiming expertise. So …. yeah….. if I could anticipate this, seems to me lots of people could have.
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I can say that and have discussed Covid yesterday and the observation I discussed both doesn’t bother me one iota.
Boosters coming for most Americans, scheduled for 8 months after your first shot. Looks like they may use the honor system for scheduling.
I don’t see either the Iraq or Afghan operations as “failuresâ€. I think we can’t really pass judgment for a while, and they have to be compared against alternate realities in which we took no action. Suppose Saddam acquired nuclear weapons? Suppose Al Qaeda spread massive bioterror from their base in Afghanistan?
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We also never had any intention of permanent occupation in either of these places. The results in Iraq are arguably better than Syria, these are examples of action versus non-action, which is better? The lesson to be learned is that military intervention almost always results in chaos and a local political nightmare, and when you mix that with cultures that don’t align then the results are usually pretty bad for the occupyee.
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One also has to look at the future incentives for the bad actors. Is Iraq likely to invade a neighbor anytime soon? Is Syria a regional threat? Are the Taliban likely to openly host terrorist organizations? How is it working out for those chest beating Jihadists taunting the West with exported terrorism? Sometimes you are fighting to avoid the next war, setting a precedent.
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I think the last 50 years have set up some realistic expectations management. Things aren’t going to go well for anyone involved in these operations. South Korea and Japan ended up better off, but those nation building plans seem to be a historical artifact at this point, or perhaps a factor of the culture of the people involved.
“Biden administration expected to advise Covid booster shots for most Americansâ€. CNN …. Well this unfolded exactly on the timeline I laid out. The Magic Covid Crystal Ball did it again.
Re Afghanistan: if nobody feels the need or is asked to resign, I guess everything happened according to plan.
~grins~
I haven’t served in the military in any capacity and I have a bachelor degree in computer science, which doesn’t qualify me in any way to talk about any of the things I talk about here. I talk anyway. 🙂 If this offends you Russell, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Tom Scharf (Comment #204817): “I don’t see either the Iraq or Afghan operations as “failuresâ€. I think we can’t really pass judgment for a while, and they have to be compared against alternate realities in which we took no action. Suppose Saddam acquired nuclear weapons? Suppose Al Qaeda spread massive bioterror from their base in Afghanistan?”
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Both were clear failures, as was Libya. In all three cases, the failure was not having clear, achievable, and finite goals.
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Initially, Afghanistan was a success but not a complete success since we failed to finish the job at Tora Bora. But everything from 2002 on was an abject failure. There is *nothing* that can happen in Afghanistan going forward that can change that. All that remains is to learn just how bad the consequences will be. Yes, if we withdrew in 2002 the Taliban would likely have taken over. So what? If they let us alone, we could have let them alone. If they started exporting terror again, we could have bombed their camps and killed their leaders. As many times as needed until they learned their lesson. Now our hands are tied.
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Iraq and Libya succeeded in that we killed Saddam and Ghaddafi. But we did not think beyond that. So now Libya is a total mess and we spent years in an Iraqi quagmire. At least Iraq might end up OK, so it is possible it won’t be a total loss.
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Tom Scharf: “Suppose Saddam acquired nuclear weapons?”
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And suppose that space aliens had entered the war on Saddam’s behalf. About as likely.
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Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Panama ended up very well. In none of them we had nation building as an objective. Nor did we engage in nation building (maybe somewhat in South Korea?). We did provide assistance to help the locals rebuild (maybe not so much in Panama).
Yes, forums can be a bidirectional information transfer device. Opinions spouted are challenged and refined.
20 years and no declaration of war? Yikes! Suppose the USA declared war officially on Afghanistan in 2001 when they refused to turn over Bin Laden and his crew. Invade quickly, kill as many bad guys as possible, specifically targeting Taliban leadership, then leave with a warning the next time would be MUCH, MUCH worse for Afghanistan. Sensible policies are impossible to implement with idiots in charge. The entire ‘foreign policy establishment’ needs to be on the street…. including the ‘woke’ generals.
Russell Klier,
So we should accept without question whatever our government tells us? I don’t think so. In fact, hardly anybody from the Founding Fathers on thought that was a good idea.
“There is *nothing* that can happen in Afghanistan…”
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Herein lies the problem. This is just a post hoc declaration of failure under any circumstances. After the initial Gulf War and the second war anti-Bush partisans declared the whole thing a failure. When I asked what state could Iraq be in 10 years in which you would call it a success? No answer, not even a made up stringent never likely to be met condition. Just “failure”. This is a very uninteresting conversation.
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At the time I said “Iraq is a functioning democracy in 10 years that is not a threat to its neighbors”. That arguably happened but unintended consequences such as Iraq being so weakened by infighting that it was taken over by ISIS wasn’t on the radar.
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The Middle East is a clusterf*** we need to stay out of unless the situation demands it. That is a judgment call, Obama said stay out of Syria and look what happened. ISIS, mass immigration to Europe. That could still have been the right call. There aren’t any right answers here, and people who think they can predict outcomes in this region are quickly proved wrong, as Biden just demonstrated.
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We were able to keep the Taliban out of power for 20 years, and the price for that was debatable. It’s not nothing. I say if the Taliban keeps their ideological terror within their borders for the next 10 years, and starts to become pacified by having to actually govern then some useful goals were achieved.
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We absolutely did nation building in Japan over a hostile defeated enemy. I’m sure the Japanese people did most of the heavy lifting. You would have to use a pretty convoluted definition to say we didn’t do any nation building in those places.
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FYI: Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor under construction in 1981. I suppose you also believe Iran has no nuclear intentions.
Tom Scharf,
“The Middle East is a clusterf*** we need to stay out of unless the situation demands it.”
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On at least that we can agree. The time I spent in the Middle East convinced me that the majority of people outside of Israel have no interest in personal freedoms and democracy, or at least not enough interest to actually stand up for those things. What appears to us in the West to be horrible government, is consider by many to be good government. They want Sharia (whatever version their sect supports), a government run by religious authorities, and are quite willing to punish, including by execution, any who disagree.
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Anybody who hasn’t spend time there probably does not appreciate the magnitude of the challenge: government that we in the West view as unacceptable is embraced by the locals…. it is why they have the government they do. We are fighting against what we see as a “problem”… a poor, backward, brutal country with an 8th century culture… but only we see that as a problem.
mark bofill (Comment #204820) You wrote “If this offends you Russell, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.” Offended? Me? Heavens no! I am just happy to be here learning things. For example just today I learned the an essential part of an echo chamber is someone with a “bachelor degree in computer science”.
Trolls gonna troll I guess.
shrug.
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Tom,
Thanks for pointing out Germany and Japan. You are correct, there was nation building there that appeared to work. I’m interested in finding out why those efforts succeeded and more recent ones have failed. That’ll give me something to read in my spare time.
mark bofill,
Germans are very good at following orders. (that was not entirely sarcastic)
Once the Japanese accepted that we had defeated them, they wanted to copy us.
Russell,
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”… Richard Feynman.
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We should logically extend Feynman’s observation to all ‘experts’ in other fields, who deal with subject matter that is not so rigorous (AKA falsifiable) as is science. All rational analysis demands belief in the ignorance of experts.
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I have observed that many ‘experts’ are in fact simpletons, and worse, often willful liars. An event like the fall of Kabul in a only few days is as close as we can come to complete confirmation the ‘foreign policy establishment’ is ignorant. And all those people, starting with George W Bush, who insisted we could create a functional democracy in a hell-hole like Afghanistan, were incredibly ignorant. I think they should be held *personally* responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths and trillions of lost dollars, but never will be, except maybe in history’s judgement.
Russell,
Credentials are worth something, but aren’t an unquestionable passport to the truth. Given no other information, those with credentials in the area of interest should be deferred to. What are you to do with certain areas of science and politics that have a checkered history with * confident * assertions of outcomes that turn out not to be true? Notably when these assertions match preferred outcomes to their prior ideological biases?
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Given enough uncertainty people almost universally select the option that matches their prior biases, and credentials do not provide immunity from this errant brain wiring.
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Am I to believe butter and meat are so bad for me in moderation that I should exclude them totally from my diet? Should I believe we are going to see 1M of sea level rise by 2050? Are masks going to stop (or even significantly limit) the eventual delta surge? No, no, and no.
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The credentialed then consolidate and use their power to limit or eliminate opposing debate, calling into question everything their field has opined on recently. Trust, but verify. And some verifications need more work than others.
mark bofill,
Both Germany and Japan had a history of home-grown democracy dating from the 19th century, although in both places things went terribly wrong, at least in part due to global economic depression.
. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Germany#Imperial_elections
https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a03302/
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After WW II, returning to democracy in these countries was not such a big leap. The Middle East has no such history of democracy. Nor does China.
DeWitt, Steve,
Thanks. Yeah, I’d think cultural differences must have something to do with it, but I haven’t read much about post war Japan or Germany recently (at least not recently enough to remember).
mark bofill (Comment #204830: “Thanks for pointing out Germany and Japan. You are correct, there was nation building there that appeared to work.”
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There was no nation building; both Germany and Japan had long histories as nations prior to the events that led to invasion. They had strong economies, educated and literate populations, and strong societal and government institutions. We allowed most of that to remain in place; we even let Japan keep their emperor. We did disband their militaries, we removed the men who led them into war, we supervised the re-establishment of democratic governments, and we provided material aid to help rebuild their infrastructures. But the really important stuff, the stuff that can take generations to develop, was already in place.
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Afghanistan never had any of that. I guess Iraq had reasonably strong institutions, but all the key positions were held by members of the Baath party as were much of the rank and file. We promptly kicked all of them out, leaving the country without functional institutions. And there was really no such thing as an “Iraqi”, which might still be the case.
Mike,
I read that the Allies undertook activities that have been at least sometimes referred to as nation building. I believe you are correct in pointing out that Afghanistan was never really a nation in the same sense to begin with.
Well, well it looks like Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions [masks and restrictions] do work after all: “Taken together our results indicate that state implemented NPIs can lead to less COVID-19 cases and mortality. While it was previously thought that more NPIs led to a better outcome of disease burden (15), we found that even a moderate amount of restrictions can have a substantial impact on lowering COVID-19 transmission.†…Lots of data here:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261286v1.full#F3
New Zealand Orders Lockdown After First Covid-19 Case in Six Months
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-zealand-orders-lockdown-after-first-covid-19-case-in-six-months-11629193896
“The seven-day lockdown for Auckland will close schools and most businesses and also be imposed on another region, Coromandel, that the infected person, a 58-year-old Auckland man, traveled to. All other parts of the country will be required to lock down for three days.â€
“Neighboring countries, including Australia and Fiji, have struggled to contain outbreaks of Delta despite previous success in suppressing the spread of the virus. Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, remain locked down as authorities battle Covid-19 outbreaks.â€
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I don’t see this as sustainable, but it has worked so far for NZ. Vaccinations are at 19% there now. If they can hold out a few more months perhaps they can reach vaccination saturation, but the population is going to get lockdown fatigue eventually.
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One case. This method is the only viable way to do lockdowns, but they might have a bigger problem if they had the level of illegal immigration the US has on its southern border. 212,000 people detained last month (the ones that were caught).
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“Biden officials predicted earlier this year that the volume of people crossing the border would decline with the summer heatâ€. I’m sure the people saying that were credentialed, ha ha.
mark bofill (Comment #204840): “I read that the Allies undertook activities that have been at least sometimes referred to as nation building.”
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Whatever you call it, what was done in Iraq was quite different from what was done in Germany and Japan. And Afghanistan is not even remotely similar.
Results of the Providone-Iodine nasal application clinical trial: The lone test subject did not contract Covid during the two-week trial period. Therefore, Providone-Iodine is 100% effective at preventing Covid infection. Additional results: It’s yucky [Providone-Iodine smells and tastes awful] and messy [I hope my wife doesn’t see the stains on the guest towels]. Phase two of the clinical trial is now underway. The concentration of Providone-Iodine has been reduced to a few drops in an ounce of saline solution and the frequency of application has been reduced to once in a blue moon.
I suspect that, for example, implementation of gender studies courses at Kabul University is a quite different form of “nation building” to what took place after WWII. Perhaps this might be more accurately termed nation rebuilding vs nation building?
Dave,
I was thinking that too. I still need to do my homework.
Regarding gender studies, from what little I gather women had been afforded greater opportunities and freedoms and legal protections over these last 20 years in Afghanistan. I don’t sneer at that, although I do sneer at grievance studies. But there’s nothing to be done if the people of Afghanistan aren’t going to fight for it, as far as I’m concerned.
Russell,
Check the leaderboard here:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/
NJ, NY, MA, RI, CN
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Now look at the NPI leaderboard in the study you posted. The states with the highest death rates also had some of the highest NPI interventions. That’s almost to be expected as governments react to bad outcomes of covid, but it should lead one to question the conclusions of the study. Using a bunch of proxies to make judgments on NPI’s while also ignoring the most important information is adding noise and subtracting signal.
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There just isn’t a red/blue signal to be found here. These things likely have had a measurable effect, but that effect size is small compared to the covid signal. It’s all a data hairball, covid is winning handily so far.
Tom Scharf,
“covid is winning handily so far”
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I am not sure what constitutes winning for covid. Survival? Spread?
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In any case, when the delta variant burns through the unvaccinated (and a some mostly mild cases among the vaccinated), it will become an endemic illness. Like the flu, the common cold, and rotavirus illness, among others. Of course, a mutation which makes the virus more virulent is always a possibility, but since humanity is still around, in spite of plenty of viral illnesses, I think we will survive covid 19 and its variants.
Tom Scharf (Comment #204847): “The states with the highest death rates also had some of the highest NPI interventions.”
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Indeed. The analysis in the study appears to be very complex and convoluted, with a weak signal extracted from a whole lot of noise. That gives the authors lots of room to play with the method and the included factors until they get the desired result. For instance, I see that FL is shown as having an above average death rate. But FL has a below average age adjusted death rate. So it is possible that using the latter could make the signal disappear. I also see that FL and TN are shown with an NPI score of zero. But both states allowed local interventions, apparently not considered.
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It is a very weak study. Even if one accepts it, they show that at most the interventions had but a slight positive effect. Weigh that against the huge cost and negative consequences.
Mike M,
“I see that FL is shown as having an above average death rate. But FL has a below average age adjusted death rate.”
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Yup, the dishonestly of the MSM seems always to shock. Adjusted for population age profile, Florida’s covid results are excellent, and far better than most “heroic” lefty states like California, New York, NJ, MA, CT, RI, IL, etc, etc. The dishonesty in the MSM is profound and endless. They should be ashamed of themselves, but instead they say *we* should be ashamed to insist on accepting factual reality.
I’m pretty sure that overall, NPI’s do have an effect on the transmission rate of SARS-CoV-2. All I have to do is look at the graph of the daily new case rate in the Czech Republic. But we don’t have much, if any, evidence of which NPI’s were most effective and which (masks?) had little effect.
TN with a score of zero on NPI’s??? That’s news to me. Restaurants in my county were take-out only for months and there was a county-wide mask mandate, among many other things including one-way aisles in the supermarket and lines on the floor marking six foot distances.
DeWitt,
“But we don’t have much, if any, evidence of which NPI’s were most effective and which (masks?) had little effect.”
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OK, but that just means you have to adopt ALL the NPI’s, plus some you never heard of. You can never be too safe you know.
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But seriously, if you stay in your house, and have zero contact with outsiders, you will catch nothing. If you actually meet people (masks or no in daily life) then you may catch the virus. People need to get over this phase of covid denial.
“I don’t see this as sustainable” – it isnt supposed to be. The government has produced a rather sketchy plan for open borders but depends on getting the vaccines out. We have had significant supplies over last few weeks and really ramping up.
However, lockdown is inevitable for moment. The picture isnt rosy. No link to border yet and the case watched the rugby test in a crowded bar in a holiday town while likely infectious. The next few days are going to be interesting as the contact trace and test tries to corral it. We are about to find out whether level 4 lockdown (extreme) is able to contain delta. The closely monitored managed isolation facilities provide scary data on how transmissible delta is (eg 5 seconds of shared air between 2 rooms).
Bummer is that we have temporarily moved to central North Island (work has an office there and we are supporting extended family with childhood cancer), and thus stuck in tiny apartment with minimal internet. Did late night run fetch computer from work before the midnight deadline.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #204853): “I’m pretty sure that overall, NPI’s do have an effect on the transmission rate of SARS-CoV-2. All I have to do is look at the graph of the daily new case rate in the Czech Republic.”
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If they work one place, but not in 50 other places, then either it is chance or it is due to something that one place is doing different. Identify that, and I’m listening.
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The seven day lockdown in NZ actually makes sense for one case although it would not make sense for 100 cases. Maybe they can keep it from spreading much while they trace and contain. At this point, with almost the entire population vulnerable and help on the way, it is worth a try.
Mike M,
“At this point, with almost the entire population vulnerable and help on the way, it is worth a try.@
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They should have started vaccinations back in December and January. I expect Trump will be identified as a big part of the problem, but that is pure rubbish. They were very late to get people vaccinated. Basic bureaucratic incompetence? Unwilling to spend the money? Fear someone would blame them (for something)? Matters not a bit. They are four to eight weeks late addressing a problem every conscious person in the world could see. Heads should roll. They won’t.
SteveF (Comment #204858): “They should have started vaccinations back in December and January. … They were very late to get people vaccinated.”
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They might not have had access *that* early. But they are only at something like 20% fully vaccinated. It would be interesting to know why.
Speaking of heads rolling, I’m really surprised that someone wasn’t thrown under the bus or fell on his sword after the fiasco of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. While the process of withdrawal may have started under Trump, the recent unpleasantness is all on the Biden administration. Even if it was a committee, they should all have been let go. Otherwise, the implication is that Team Biden did nothing wrong.
Phil,
AFAICT delta is occasionally, but rarely, extremely transmissible. It really depends on the infected person apparently, the whole overdispersion thing. So I wouldn’t apply the 5 second rule homogenously. This is part of why things are so confusing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/
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People living in the same house only transmit to each other less than 20% of the time according to UK data, but if you get unlucky and happen to live with an “overdisperser” then everyone in the house will get it. How do you tell who those people are? You can’t.
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Even if delta does get loose in NZ it will still take a month or two to really get going. FL had delta in March I think. This should give plenty of time to reach vaccination for all the willing. No doubt that NZ should proceed as fast as possible though.
There are lots of bad ways you can analyze NPI data if you want. For example if you just examine caseloads then the entire NE would end up looking OK because their initial very bad breakout was when little testing was available, thus low cases. If you choose to remove that time period then these states had higher immunity levels that need to be estimated. You also need to factor in regional outbreaks (state to state transfer) and especially the little understood seasonality effect which appears much larger than the NPI effect. Mask wearing was around 80% and steady over the last year with some minor variance between states. When these NPI’s were static caseloads varied tremendously which indicates much more important processes are in play for disease spread.
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As DeWitt mentioned my county in FL was under mandatory indoor masks for well over a year, and I hear from partisans over and over and over and over and over and over that FL had “no statewide mask mandates” when in fact every large metropolitan area had them, even most of the rural ones. The largest blue areas in FL (Miami-Dade) have had the worst outbreaks. It’s not really governance, it’s other things.
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It’s a red flag if FL was given zero points for NPI’s. Ironically it just works against the study because a large population without counted NPI’s faired average.
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This is not to say these NPI’s are worthless, they aren’t. They apparently worked for healthcare personnel. My point has always been the efficacy of these things were oversold *relative* to the innate destructiveness of the disease once it has widespread transmission (i.e. covid is winning).
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Some of these studies are just a desperate attempts at a red bad/blue good political exercise. Let’s keep recounting the data in different ways until the outgroup looks bad and then publish. Examine their anecdotal comparisons for a clue, or see if they even mention death rates at all, the one thing that is counted better and matters the most.
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Some of these are valid attempts to seek what works better. Even for this set, they don’t have high quality raw data and then resort to scoring exercises and the necessary complex modeling which introduce potential bias. As I have mentioned before, why don’t they ask hospitalized people about their mask wearing habits?
Tom Scharf (Comment #204864): “This is not to say these NPI’s are worthless, they aren’t. They apparently worked for healthcare personnel.”
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My understanding is that surgical masks did not provide health care workers with much, if any, protection. Remember how many health care workers were getting sick during the first surge? Then they switched to N95 and those worked.
Tom Scharf (Comment #204864) “Some of these are valid attempts to seek what works better. Even for this set, they don’t have high quality raw data and then resort to scoring exercises and the necessary complex modeling which introduce potential bias.†From a layman’s perspective I couldn’t agree more. None of the studies have produced a convincing argument to me for or against any of the NPIs in use today. So let’s look at the other factors.
On one side we have the public health professionals. Public health science dates back to Roman times. This is not a new science. Worldwide, national and local public health officials have been strongly in favor of implementing NPIs to combat Covid outbreaks. These are credentialed public officials with the awful burden of preventing mass death.
On the other side we have a hodgepodge of kibitzers, many have no credentials and almost none have public health responsibilities. They are saying to the professionals “you can’t prove NPIs are effective, so let’s do nothing.â€
It doesn’t work that way. The burden of proof falls on the gadflies who are challenging the existing public health protocols. And the proof ain’t there.
Russell,
Credentials mean very little when the data doesn’t exist to support public policies. Your experience with allergies and allergists should tell you something about the true value of credentials. Some things are known to reduce exposure risk (eg avoid all contact, wear an N95 mask), but the rest are costly and unproven. If you ignore the cost side of the equation, then you can argue there is no limit to the restrictions that should be imposed to reduce the spread of covid. But it doesn’t work that way; costs have to be considered. The ‘kibitzers’ are a lot more sensitive to the costs, which are both financial and social, and they have every right to be, since those costs are being imposed on them, often it seems by pure fiat.
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My condominium association has a cable TV and broadband internet contract with Comcast, and has for many years. The internet speed is limited to about 30 megabits per second, which is far slower than other available services like optical cable. But the combined TV and internet package is cheap. The elected board of directors decided they should consider other (much faster) providers, called in several experts, paid them consulting fees, and concluded that they should sign a 10 year contract with a different provider with 50 times faster internet….. but which would add about $40-$50 per month to each homeowner’s cost. They also failed to consider that many people would be forced to maintain an existing internet account with Comcast because they use email for business, and changing their email to a different provider would be disruptive, further increasing their cost. When the homeowners discovered after the fact what the board of directors had done, there nearly was an insurrection… board meetings became crowded with lots of very angry homeowners. The board was forced to back out of the new contract (fortunately no actual construction had started). At the next election, every one of the board members was voted out; two were so unhappy about being thrown out of office they sold their houses and moved away.
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The board members were shocked at the reaction of the homeowners, but the mistake was theirs: they had considered mostly the benefits (blazing internet speed) but not all the added costs. Elected officials who do not consider all the costs of their policies are going to face strong pushback from those forced to bear those costs. Calling people ‘kibitzers’ doesn’t make their pushback any less valid.
Phil,
Wishing the best for you and everyone down under.
I’d say I[m praying. But I’m an atheist, so that’s lame. Still “praying for you†is the best one can do when one either (a) can do nothing or (b) don’t really want to do anything. WRT to me and Aus/NZ, it’s certainly (a)!
At least it sounds like being on the island is likely full of plenty of fresh air? Is your family vaccinated?
DeWitt,
Plenty of stuff about the withdrawal got changed by Biden. The fiasco is his.
Steve,
I know this has nothing to do with your point. Google is at their wits end with me, trying to figure out what it will take to get me to switch from Comcast to Google Fiber in my neighborhood. Truthfully they appear to offer a better service. I just won’t do it because I don’t want Google to have any more power over me and my business than they already do.
Russel
No. Which means we have a long history of seeing they can be wrong at least as often as they are right! 🙂
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True. Having responsibility to do something when it is not in your power to do it or when you lack knowledge about the right steps is a huge and awful burden!
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And who are no less likely to be correct about what we should do!
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That’s not how burden of proof works. In fact, the burden falls on the public health officials to make their case to the gadflies. They aren’t doing it. You can’t just “decree” the officials right.
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Now, the officials may have the ability to make rules and enforce them. But that power doesn’t mean the rules are useful or correct. They might be, or they might not be.
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When we lack data and knowledge, the officials legal right to make rules doesn’t magically make their decisions scientificially, ethically or logically correct. They are just legal. Those are different things.
SteveF,
I have a friend (who I suspect is a hypochondriac) who in a text wrote I should do “everything” to avoid getting sick (like her.)
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I told her, nope. I’m not going to do “everything”. “Everything” would be:
* Have all food delivered.
* Don’t dance with anyone other than Jim.
* Take any and all lessons online.
* No driving anywhere (lest I break down or have to enter the quickie mart to go to the bathroom.) That means no visiting my mother.
And so on.
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I’m not going to do “everything”. I did get vaccinated.
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(For reference: this friend is *convinced* she has a “breakthrough” Covid case based on feeling bad Sunday night. She has had 7 negative Covid tests since Sunday, and two more scheduled for Friday. She says she will conclude she doesn’t have a break through covid case IF the two scheduled Friday come back negative.
Is she vaccinated? Yes: Pfizer. She also thinks she had Covid early in the outbreak and thinks she now has Long Covid. She did not have a Covid tests in her initial “Covid” and did not have an antibody tests after she recovered. I suspect she is a hypochodriac or has Munchaussens. Her motive for getting vaccinated was evidently that it’s rumored to help Long Covid. )
SteveF (Comment #204869) I found this whole comment to be well reasoned and well articulated. I don’t see very much of that on the web, and I agree with your point. The social and financial cost must be considered when implementing mask and lockdown mandates, but not by public health officials. They have zero credentials in such matters. They also have no authority to implement such matters. The public policies you object to are implemented by elected officials [Governors, City commissions, school boards]. Public health officials are only advisors. Many people voted against Trump because of his lackadaisical stance on masks and lockdowns. Lockdown governors will face the music this fall. Many internet experts are attacking the public health officials personally and professionally. They deserve more respect. If there were clear evidence of better approaches to protect the public they would be right on it. Given the nature of the NPI research, I bet there will never be conclusive studies that stand up to the scrutiny of statistics geeks. The public officials have to make decisions now, today, and they do that based on their interpretation of the best available information.
Russell
You don’t need “credentials” to understand a social and financial cost!
Actually, authority is precisely what the sometimes do have. Authority is often a simply a legal matter. Sometimes (not always) that is delegated to “public health officials” like the CDC or state equivalents.
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I think you are mistaken if you think this is the reason they voted against him!
Call them all then names you like. I also bet there will be no conclusive studies. Because the supporters aren’t going to spend money to do good studies. It’s not the fault of those who see there are no good studies to point out there are no good studies. It’s just the truth! If the king isn’t wearing clothes, he’s not wearing clothes. Call the kid who pointed out a geek all you want. He’s still not wearing clothes.
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Yes. Even no decision is a decision. But this need to make a decision doesn’t make the decisions scientifically sound. An the people you call names have every right to point this out.
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Honestly, as far as I can tell, you “like” the current mask advice. So you are now writing about how the officials need to make decisions and blah, blah, blah.
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But a few weeks ago you did not “like” the lack of mandates and you were criticizing their lack of action. That is: you were doing what you know call others “kibbiterzer” for doing.
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So it’s hardly as if you really truly believe that people shouldn’t “Kibbitz”. You just think they shouldn’t do so now when the rules seem to have flipped to what you want them to be. When the reverse is true, you slam public health officials just as much as anyone!
Russell Klier (Comment #204867): “On one side we have the public health professionals.”
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That is simply not true. There are plenty of public health professionals on both sides.
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Depressing news here in New Mexico. The Wicked Witch of the West is imposing a new mask mandate. I have not decided if I will comply. I probably will because (a) I am a wimp and (b) not complying would probably just put some minimum wage schmuck in the middle.
NYC implements a vaccine mandate. No medical exemptions. This should be interesting!
Mike M,
I wouldn’t beat myself up about compliance in your shoes. I’m no activist, ready to sacrifice myself for the betterment of humanity. I’d rather live my life making decisions that seem locally optimal for me and the people I care about.
MikeM
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(b) is sufficient for me in public places. The minimum wage schmuck may even agree with you. But they are aminimum wage schmuck and they want to eat, pay their rent and perhaps even have money to buy a few beers.
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(a) I don’t necessarily consider complying being “a wimp”. There is a point where one must decide which battles are worth fighting and who they are worth fighting with.
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I think it is worth discussing what the evidence on masks is here on the web. I’m not going to be bullied into saying that there is evidence they work just because someone wishes they work or has convinced themselves it’s “selfless” to wear them for “others”. I don’t know if they work or not. I’m willing to wear on in public places.
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I do think vaccinations work pretty well at making this disease not fatal or horrible. People should get themselves vaccinated. If the only way for people to avoid death or ‘horrible’ was for me to wear a mask for them, yeah… I’d do it for them. But adults in the US should be vaccinated by now! If they aren’t, that’s not on me.
lucia (Comment #204879)
I wrote “ Many people voted against Trump because of his lackadaisical stance on masks and lockdowns.†… and you responded: “I think you are mistaken if you think this is the reason they voted against him!â€
Lucia I didn’t dream that up on my own. Trump’s own polling said that and many in the media echoed it. “Why did Trump lose? His own top pollster blames COVID†“Trump faced criticism for his response to the pandemic, downplaying the COVID-19 risks and resisting precautions advocated by his administration’s health experts.†https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article248943964.html
I think voters blame people in power when things go wrong. It doesn’t much matter what Trump did or didn’t do, just as it doesn’t much matter now what Biden is doing. Biden’s poll numbers are dropping because of the Delta variant, link here. It boils down to this in my opinion — the pandemic is still here. It hasn’t been solved. The guy in charge shoulders the blame for that in the eyes of the voters, irrespective of whether or not he deserves it.
Russel
That someone else dreamed this up doesn’t make it correct. Plus, I would never take the public statements of a politicians own pollster as an honest assessment of why he lost. Never. A politician and his pollster never want to admit real substantive reasons.
Look at the link to the underlying poll summary:
* “While a majority of voters said they didn’t find either Presidential candidate honest or trustworthy, Biden held a double-digit advantage over POTUS, especially in the “Flipped†states”
* 9-in-10 voters in both groups said that SCOTUS was a factor in deciding their vote. Ironically, those who said it was a factor voted for Biden in both state groups while those who said it wasn’t a factor voted for POTUS by large margins
Tons of voters voted against Trump because they didn’t think he was honest or trustworthy. The advantage was double digit. This was a huge factor.
Yes, Trump faced criticism for Covid. It certainly affected the vote. But it’s a huge leap to say voters voted against him for that reason. If Trump’s pollster think that voters didn’t have tons of reasons to not vote for him, the Trump’s pollster is simply wrong. (It also doesn’t look like the pollster says the same thing you say, btw. That’s you interpreting. I think you are reading in what you want to read in.
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Trump’s incessant tweeting? That’s not in the poll. But it turned lots of people off.
Trump’s going off onto the whole “voter fraud” thing? Turned lots of people off. Also not in the poll. Trump going on that and even turning on some republicans– not in poll. But I’m pretty sure that made a difference.
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The poll is useful. But you are making your own conclusions that go beyond it. And worse, you are trying to suggest those are Fabrizio’s conclusions. If they were his conclusions, you could find a quote of him saying it. He doesn’t.
lucia (Comment #204883): “(a) I don’t necessarily consider complying being “a wimpâ€. There is a point where one must decide which battles are worth fighting and who they are worth fighting with.”
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I strongly agree. The question is, where do we draw the line? If there is no resistance to small impositions, we get bigger and bigger impositions. Eventually, it comes to this:
DaveJR (Comment #204881): “NYC implements a vaccine mandate. No medical exemptions.”
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In other words, you have to get vaccinated even if you doctor tells you that because of your autoimmune condition, the vaccine might kill you. Even if you have had covid and have the antibodies.
Draw it in a personally optimal way. Shrug. I’d move out of NY to avoid being in the situation you describe. Others can decide differently – non compliance, or comply and risk it, or protest at city hall, what have you.
mark bofill (Comment #204888): “Draw it in a personally optimal way.”
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That is what I normally do.
On the other hand: “First they came for …”
I am concerned that we are reaching the point where the latter is applicable. That is based on much more than the response to the Wuhan virus.
Lucia,
“…someone wishes they work or has convinced themselves it’s “selfless†to wear them for “othersâ€.”
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I fact in the few instances where I discussed mask mandates and the lack of evidence they do much of anything with someone who supports them, that is exactly the fall-back position I hear. It is basically “what is your problem, it is only a small imposition”, which actually means “I don’t think these mandates are a problem, not even for 6 year olds, so you shouldn’t either.” Or even more succinctly: “My values are good and noble, yours are crap.”
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The I-am-absolutely-right-so-you-shut-up POV is now so common among ‘progressives’ that I fear it will lead to destructive social confrontation on every policy question in the coming decades. Long gone on the left is any consideration of other views as worthy of compromise. It is an enormous change from even 30 years ago, and not a good one.
lucia (Comment #204879) You wrote: “Actually, authority is precisely what the sometimes do have.â€
In the entire Country every single public lockdown or public mask mandate that I know of was enacted by an elected official or elected body. Certainly in Florida the DOH Director issued no such order and the local health departments all work for the State of Florida.
You wrote: “Honestly, as far as I can tell, you “like†the current mask advice.â€
No! Wrong! In Florida we have no mask mandates and no lockdowns. DeSantis is still using the full force of the State Government to run roughshod on local governments to ensure no lockdowns and no mask mandates.
I think that Mitch Daniels well expresses my position re Russell’s position:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/mitch-daniels-risk-taker
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By the way, the new mandate in New Mexico applies to two year olds.
MikeM
I think the time to fight that is when it happens. So now.
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Similarly, I think the time NCL needed to fight DeSantis rule prohibitting then from asking passengers Covid status was when it happened. That’s when they did fight it (and it looks like a big win for NCL and the liberty of private employers.)
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I think fighting things prematurely can often lead to expensive losses because the fight is against a hypothetical that might happen sometime in the future in some unknown and unknowable circumstances.
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No you don’t have to get the vax. You don’t have to get it even if your only reason is “don’t wanna”.
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There are vaccine requirements. But there is no point in overstating it just because you think exaggerating might make your case stronger. The current mandate allows the unvaccinated to live in NYC unvaccinated. They can’t go to restaurants, nightclubs, city museums and some cultural institutions. But they can still live in NYC, get groceries, walk in the park, go to work etc.
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Some people don’t like this and are going to sue the city. NOW is the right time to do that if you object. I don’t know who will win this suit. But regardless of who wins: No one is being forced to get an injection.
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The unvaccinated’s access to some amenities will be limited– but that’s not the same as being forced to be vaccinated. So far, the courts have seen this distinction. It’s a very real one.
Russel
Well, then according to your theory of governance, you should have no right to yap or complain. The “authorities” have advised him. He is in power to make the decision. He, being informed, has made a decision. You are in the peanut gallery. According to your rhetoric you should just accept!
Russell,
I think Trump lost because too many people concluded he was a jerk. He is the kind of person people go out of their way to avoid. .
I doubt it was specifically covid… although covid and the covid news conferences gave him a unique platform to show the public how much a jerk he is. Add the endless, ill considered tweeting rants and Trump was at a huge disadvantage compared to 2016. I think in 2016, lots of voters believed Trump in office would be more measured than Trump the bombastic candidate, and I was one of them…. or as some had already suggested, he would ‘grow into the job’. It is also useful to keep in mind that Hillary was the alternative…. someone with a long track record of being completely unprincipled, utterly dishonest, and grossly incompetent.
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By November 2020, too many people had a visceral dislike of Trump to vote for him, no matter his policies or the fact that ol’ Joe is incompetent and has dementia.
If they go over the line, you hold them accountable in elections. Gov Newsome in CA is now in a dead heat in his recall election. I guarantee no politician is missing that fact. Gov. Cuomo was forced to resign. 3 members of the SF school board are under a recall threat. Defund the police is polling in the gutter. There are massive fights going on with mask mandates in schools.
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Good luck firing someone in heavily unionized NY for not getting vaccinated. I assume they can still get tested regularly if they choose.
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Delta has made the vaccine mandate logic a lot more fuzzy since it can still be spread by vaccinated people. Regular testing of everyone would actually likely be a superior answer to stopping the spread, although vaccines are a much better personal safety answer.
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Vaccine mandates also open a huge liability issue if long term problems crop up with the vaccines, and *claims* of this happening are guaranteed by the blood sucking legal community. Mandating a vaccine under EUA that goes sideways later will be an epic disaster in front of a jury.
Lucia,
“That’s when they did fight it (and it looks like a big win for NCL and the liberty of private employers.)”
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Well, it was a temporary restraining order issued by an Obama appointee. It is not clear the appeals court for the 11th circuit will agree with the judge. We will see.
“DeSantis is still using the full force of the State Government to run roughshod on local governments to ensure no lockdowns and no mask mandates.”
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Apparently the working definition of “roughshod” is following all applicable laws and the state constitution with respect to which levels of government have which powers.
Tom Scharf,
“….the blood sucking legal community.”
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That gave me a chuckle. Calling JDOhio!
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I think the FDA has delayed giving formal approval to the vaccines because of the liabilities involved…. and I note they are still are not recommending vaccination for those under 12…. who are at virtually zero risk of severe illness from covid. But here is the weird thing: rather than stand up and say clearly: we think the potential risks of vaccination of children under 12 outweigh the benefits to those children. They simply refused to admit any risk at all from vaccinations. Cowards.
This is the state of FL’s “running roughshod” with authoritarianism on the poor unsuspecting populace:
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“Students are required to wear masks at school and on the bus, unless a parent fills out an opt-out form. We, as well as all other school districts in Florida, must follow Governor Ron DeSantis’ Executive Order that preserves a parent’s right to choose when it comes to whether their child will wear a mask to school, and also prohibits school districts from issuing blanket mask mandates.â€
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So masks are required in some local schools with an optional parent opt-out.
“…optional parent opt-out.”
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That is pretty much the whole disagreement.
“…optional parent opt-out.”
Yup. Like Hitler. Literally.
lucia,
Long term anxiety can certainly be debilitating. Sounds like your friend would be better off to just go catch covid and get it over with (not a joke). One word: Xanax. I thought I had covid paranoia, but that is taking it to a whole new level, ha ha.
Question for the Florida folk:
Is the Worldometer data accurate for Florida deaths?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/
Numbers have fallen off the proverbial cliff. Seems too good to be true.
SteveF,
Yeah. I was getting mixed up with the Indiana University Case.
(The IU case also isn’t a private employer. Just the kids who don’t want vax are seriously slapped back. )
Tom,
My friend has issues. Real issues. Not Covid.
Don’t want to get into it more here.
Jacksonville’ Florida’s largest hospitals report that “over 90%” of patients currently hospitalized for covid (some 600 in total), were never vaccinated. No exact %, and no information on ages for vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.
I keep wondering what people are thinking when they leave out the most important information. Good grief.
Tom Scharf,
I’m guessing a fair number of parents will opt out. With some no-mask kids, teachers are going to have a heck of a time forcing the ones who hate masks to keep them on!
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So basically, masks are not required in school. 🙂
lucia (Comment #204894)
You wrote “Well, then according to your theory of governance, you should have no right to yap or complain. The “authorities†have advised him. He is in power to make the decision. He, being informed, has made a decision. You are in the peanut gallery. According to your rhetoric you should just accept!â€
You are again misinterpreting my words. It happens so often I think you do it intentionally. I have never said anyone has “no right to yap or complain”. I have described those complaining as having no bonafide public health credentials, experience or responsibilities. I have described them as “armchair quarterbacks, kibitzers, internet experts, and gadflies. I do like your “peanut gallery†term and will use it in the future. I have often prefaced my remarks as coming from a layman. It is the responsible thing to do when you comment with authority on things outside your area of expertise. They have every right to speak their mind and I have every right to call them on it.
John M,
Florida changed the way they report deaths…. it now is the same as Sweden, where deaths are reported for the date of death, so there is no “daily total” now available, and the counts only become accurate after the deaths are formally registered with the Department of Health. This amounts to a delay of a week or more to get an accurate count for a specific date. The drop-off is just an artifact of the reporting. The final death counts will be accurate, and more accurate date-wise, but only a week or more after the fact. I think DeSantis made a political mistake changing the reporting, one for which he will be endlessly hammered by those who disagree with him on policy.
So – this is an echo chamber, and Lucia misinterprets, and she does it intentionally.
And Russell keeps coming back for more of his own free will.
Mystifying.
Just in case it is not already clear that the people running our foreign policy level are incompetent, we have this gem from our Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/critics-un-ambassador-press-statement-taliban
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A strongly worded letter. The Taliban must be quaking in their boots.
Russell,
“I have often prefaced my remarks as coming from a layman.”
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Public policy does not, and I think should not ever, come from “experts” in public health…… or any other subject. Public policy is inherently political, where people use their personal values, priorities, and judgement to balance their perception of costs and benefits to settle on preferred policy. Ron DeSantis is no ‘expert’ in public health, and neither are the other governors who decide on public policy for covid. Laymen, in the legislative and executive branches *always* set public policy; experts never do. Everyone has a right to disagree, and a right vote accordingly.
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But there is no absolutely correct policy, one based on the judgement of ‘experts’. My sorry experience is that too often ‘expert opinion’ is good *negative* guidance for choosing public policies: listen to what experts say, then do the opposite if you want to improve the chance for good policies.
Now Mike, it wasn’t a strongly worded letter. It was a very strongly worded letter.
It’s the little chuckles that get me through Wednesday.
Mike M,
Linda Thomas-Greenfield is a career foreign service employee and diplomat. Enough said.
Mark
What am I misinterpreting? I’ll admint Russel is pretty hard to interpret.
Lucia,
Well, near as I can make out, it’s not that Russell thinks people don’t have a right to yap and complain. They have that right. But they are wrong to use that right.
See, when people use their rights wrongly, they can either be wrong or they can be left. People on the Right use their rights wrongly and that makes them wrong. People on the Left use their rights wrongly and it isn’t a question of them being right, because they’re leftists to begin with. But there’s nothing sinister about being left, unless one is left handed. But it isn’t a matter of right or wrong for them.
It might have something to do with three left turns too, but I’m not sure about that part yet.
Right?
Russel
You’ve been calling people names.
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Like this “On the other side we have a hodgepodge of kibitzers, many have no credentials and almost none have public health responsibilities.”
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You also wrote this
That sure sounds a snide insinuation that these “same people” shouldn’t be speaking.
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Sure, I guess you haven’t literally said they don’t have a right to speak. But rather than engaging what they say, you just call them names and making what sounds like snide insinuations they don’t have a right to talk about what they are talking about that.
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Perhaps you see that as calling them on something. But it sounds a lot more like questioning their right to speak or insisting they not be listented to. And that is so even if you say they have a right to speak.
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Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. But perhaps you might want to think about whether what you insinuate quite strongly and repeatedly doesn’t match some of the things you want to claim more directly.
Anybody care to hazard their guess as to whether or not the Newsom[] recall will succeed?
[Edit: My guess is it fails. But I’m just guessing.]
One of the many reasons we had the glorious privilege of being governed by Trump was a pushback against a perceived dictatorship of experts.
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The credentialed class was pushing far beyond their boundaries and wanted to dictate policy without input from the rubes. When the rubes pushed back using the democratic process, the expert class amusingly called restricting their ability to dictate policy a threat to democracy.
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If the American people want to reject the dictates of arrogant experts within the boundaries of the Constitution, then that is their right. Even if it is unwise in the view of experts. Case closed.
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What’s an unfairly maligned and benevolent expert class to do? First off take a heaping helping spoonful of humility. Secondly understand that the academy lounge is not representative of the views of most Americans. Thirdly somehow drop the unbearable sanctimony that just oozes from the pores of everything they say (mostly a MSM issue). Fourthly start trying to respect others even if they don’t meet your standards of intelligence.
One CA realizes a Newsome loss is a real possibility, they will rally and retain him because the alternatives are bad and worse to most of them.
mark bofill (Comment #204920): “Anybody care to hazard their guess as to whether or not the Newsom[] recall will succeed?”
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My guess is that it will fail, but not by a lot and far from certain. Many people are angry, frustrated, and scared (some are all three). Under such circumstances, any politician who sticks his head up has a good chance to get it blown off. Newsom has no choice about sticking his head up. So we shall see.
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I bet you know what result I am hoping for. 🙂
———–
In other news, lots of masks at the grocery this morning (the mandate does not start until Friday). The PANdemIC is back!
Tom,
There’s that too. I was thinking that the polling shows close numbers, with the recall slightly behind. (Put on your tin foil hat for this part, now) I think that it’s close enough that sleight of hand by the people in charge of ballot custody and counting would be enough to swamp the recall. I don’t know that foul play will happen, but I do think that if there’s anyplace where such could happen, it’d probably be in a bastion like CA or NY (*1 see below). With strange absentee ballot exceptions, COVID exceptions, so on, officials have room to play with the rules.
So all things considered, I give the recall nothing better than maybe a one in five estimated chance.
(*1 – this wasn’t intended to imply that liberals or democrats are fundamentally any more corrupt than anybody else. It’s just in CA or NY, they are the overwhelming majority. I think Alabama would have the same problem in reverse trying to recall Kay Ivey and replace her with a Democrat — it wouldn’t happen, even if the votes were there by some small margin. At least, I think it’d be less likely to happen in Alabama than elsewhere because of the conservative bias of the majority of people here.)
(You may remove your tinfoil hats now)
Public health experts are incentivized to protect health above all else, they are unlikely to weigh things like economics and personal liberty in their recommendations. This is why they don’t get a vote on whether a new sales tax is worthwhile.
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Asking the leading physics organizations whether a new collider is worthy of funding is going to get a predictable answer, and it’s not going to be “it’s too expensive for the possible benefits”.
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They have to make a compelling argument that their policy preference is worthy in spite of the cost and drawbacks. Somebody then gathers inputs from other parties of interest and makes a decision. Usually a politician in these matters.
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If the public health officials are well credentialed and have correct arguments it does not follow that they get what they recommend. It has never worked that way. The economists have experts and correct arguments, as well as the ACLU (of old), etc. Policy tradeoffs are not pointing to one group and declaring “their cause is worthy”. It’s a competition.
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Public health and the CDC are responsible for trying to limit the disease spread. Vaccines are a big success for them. Investing in vaccines was an easy sell, and it worked. Alternately we have done recommended lockdowns, we have done mask mandates, we closed schools. We still have a crapload of covid transmission. The same old NPI’s have marginal utility in the grand view with delta and leaky vaccines. It’s justifiable that this is a harder sell now. It needs more justification today than stamping of the feet and appeals to authority. It still may be the best policy, but public health is in a weaker position to dictate this.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizers-covid-19-booster-shot-improves-immunity-israeli-study-suggests-11629308427
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“Early data from Israel suggests a booster shot of Pfizer Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine can significantly improve immunity in those aged 60 and above”
“The booster shot reduced the risk of infection in the 60-plus age group by 86% and against severe infection by 92%, according to an observational study by Israel’s second largest healthcare provider, Maccabi Health Services, released Wednesday.”
“Maccabi said its latest study compared test results of 149,144 people who had received a booster after at least seven days, with 675,630 people matched by age, gender, socioeconomic status and population who had received two doses between January and February of this year. Just 37 of the former group tested positive, compared with 1,064 of the latter group, the study found.”
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(37/149144)/(1064/675630)=0.1575
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Boosters are going to be helpful. It seems Moderna holds up better over time reading the tea leaves, probably because they have more active ingredient in their shot than Pfizer (?).
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Oddly they have said almost nothing about adding boosters for J&J. The big problem with J&J is simply lack of data. The UK and Israel don’t use it, so it is left to the CDC to provide that information. Could be a while given their track record.
Thanks Lucia. Adults all vaccinated. Family we are helping on an isolated farm, so life not much different. Outbreak appears to be largely among young adults so a lot of contacts. No link to border yet but wastewater monitoring suggests hasn’t been here for long. Modellers predicting up to 120 may already have it though.
mark bofill,
I think the vote will be reasonably close, and the outcome not certain, but Newsom is more likely to be retained, in large part because mail-in ballots were sent to everyone.
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It takes a lot less effort to mail in your ballot than go to a polling station….. so Democrats who are not enthusiastic about their governor are more likely to vote, and Newsom retained. Newsom’s incompetence, hypocrisy, general arrogance, and exaggeration of his accomplishments have turned a lot of voters against him, but not so much that they want a Republican in his place; it is the left coast after all. I will venture that Newsom’s political career will likely end when his term is over. So it is not all bad.
Thanks Steve.
Also thanks Mike.
So it sounds like the general thinking is Newsom stays more likely than not. That lines up with my thinking. Should be interesting to see what plays out.
The didn’t use J&J in Israel or UK.
The Biden administration is talking about boosters. I have seen the claim that there are just published CDC studies supporting boosters, but I can’t find them. In searching, I did find a group of CDC papers published yesterday, but I see nothing in them suggesting a need for boosters. Anybody have any infor on this?
I am referring to the US government not saying much about J&J but saying mRNA shots will need boosters. The CDC is getting hammered for slow data output. We are effectively depending on Israel and the UK for most real time data. A blistering report today from the Washington Post:
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How CDC data problems put the U.S. behind on the delta variant
Critics say the CDC’s failure to share real-time data led to overly rosy assessments of vaccine effectiveness — and complacency on the part of many Americans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/18/cdc-data-delay-delta-variant/
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WP: “When Pfizer representatives met with senior U.S. government health officials on July 12, they laid out why they thought booster shots would soon be necessary in the United States. Data from Israel showed the vaccine’s effectiveness waned over time, especially in older and immunocompromised people.
But officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disagreed, saying their own data showed something quite different, according to four people with direct knowledge of the meeting who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
Other senior health officials in the meeting were stunned. Why hadn’t the CDC looped other government officials on the data? â€
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Fast forward a month and the CDC never showed anyone that data, but today released their data showing boosters were necessary.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html
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WP: “The CDC’s fumbles on the delta variant, following a year when its missteps were often attributed to Trump administration meddling, tell a more complicated story — that the once-storied agency faces other challenges that have hampered an agile response to the pandemic. Critics lament that the most up-to-date data about the delta variant has come from other countries, such as Israel, Great Britain and Singapore.“
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Obviously having a nationalized health system helps data gathering.
MikeM,
I know there are tests of boosters including mixing.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-evaluating-mixed-covid-19-vaccine-schedules-begins
..
Is now late summer? I haven’t heard any results yet, but perhaps they are emerging.
Tom Scharf,
I read the report. Like most information from the CDC, it seems to me almost useless to actually evaluate the effectiveness of the vaccines or the likely need for boosters. They did not in any way differentiate severity of symptoms, nor indeed, even say how many cases were symptomatic versus asymptomatic (asymptomatic caught I guess by routine testing).
CDC, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again!
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And repeat, ad nauseam.
“Data from Israel showed the vaccine’s effectiveness waned over time, especially in older and immunocompromised people.”
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Older people are effectively immunocompromised compared to younger people. It is why they routinely die from infections that don’t kill many younger people.
Israel already recognized the vaccines were waning, implemented a booster program, and yesterday reported that said booster program was effective with real world test data. They showed their work in a timely fashion. Good for them, they are setting the global standard.
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Meanwhile the CDC is today reporting mixed data on the waning of vaccines after denying it a month ago. Israel had a head start on vaccinations, but the CDC is still too slow for a quickly changing epidemic. Bureaucratic delays I suspect.
I find it curious that “universal” mask mandates at schools are the hill many from both sides want to die on, but mandating vaccines for teachers and staff is not. This has turned into pure political theater. Nothing useful will happen here.
Tom Scharf (Comment #204932): “Fast forward a month and the CDC never showed anyone that data, but today released their data showing boosters were necessary.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html”
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That link is what I had found. Read all three papers. Found nothing that really supports boosters.
The messages in those papers were mixed. I only scanned them. Mostly they were “vaccines are working, yeah team!” exercises, but a couple did note that efficacy is declining at the end of the time period studied. The real support for boosters really comes from the Israeli data.
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“Analysis of nursing home COVID-19 data from NHSN indicated a significant decline in effectiveness of full mRNA COVID-19 vaccination against laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, from 74.7% during the pre-Delta period (March 1–May 9, 2021) to 53.1% during the period when the Delta variant predominated in the United States. This study could not differentiate the independent impact of the Delta variant from other factors, such as potential waning of vaccine-induced immunity. ”
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“These data provide evidence for sustained high protection from severe COVID-19 requiring hospitalization for up to 24 weeks among fully vaccinated adults, which is consistent with data demonstrating mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have the capacity to induce durable immunity, particularly in limiting the severity of disease”
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“In this study, current COVID-19 vaccines were highly effective against hospitalization (VE >90%) for fully vaccinated New York residents, even during a period during which prevalence of the Delta variant increased from 80% in the U.S. region that includes New York, societal public health restrictions eased,§§ and adult full-vaccine coverage in New York neared 65%. However, during the assessed period, rates of new cases increased among both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated adults, with lower relative rates among fully vaccinated persons. Moreover, VE against new infection declined from 91.7% to 79.8%. “
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7034e1-H.pdf
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Finally some age referenced data from the CDC. Looks like hospitalizations for those fully vaccinated and younger than 50 is very, very low, and really not a serious public health issue.
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The 50 to 64 vaccinated group has low hospitalization rates, but much higher than the under 50 group. The protective effect for vaccination is maintained across all age groups in both number of confirmed cases and hospitalizations.
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Among those over 65, vaccination appears to reduce hospitalizations (compared to unvaccinated) even *more* than it reduces the number of confirmed cases. This suggests breakthrough cases are significantly milder and less likely to lead to serious illness.
On August 7 the Magic Covid Crystal Ball MCCB predicted that Florida new cases would stop accelerating and level out over the next week. That little guy is just never wrong. These are the latest numbers Florida reported to the CDC. The MCCB is not ready to predict that Florida has reached peak Covid because some data streams are still murky. This may just be a plateau.
Aug 17 2021 23,335
Aug 16 2021 21,669
Aug 15 2021 17,216
Aug 14 2021 16,476
Aug 13 2021 22,355
Aug 12 2021 25,995
Aug 11 2021 23,941
Aug 10 2021 24,856
Lucia, looks like the Michigan health officer has no authority to order a mask mandate either…. “ Whitmer, state’s chief medical official at odds over school mask mandate
Michigan’s chief medical executive says she recommended a statewide school mask mandate, which the governor apparently did not follow.†https://justthenews.com/nation/states/whitmer-states-chief-medical-official-not-same-page-statewide-school-mask-mandates
Russell,
Whitmer understands she will probably lose the next election if she doesn’t relent on her many mandates. The mandates are extremely unpopular with a substantial fraction of voters in Michigan; she doesn’t want that many highly motivated voters anxious for her next election to express their disapproval.
Russell,
Health “authorities” may be given power by the legislature and/or the executive (governor). Some states have given it; some haven’t. It can always ultimately be overruled by the legislature or the executive.
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Similar things happen at the federal level. Agencies like the CDC are federal branches. They have been given some rule making authority. But ultimately the power can be withdrawn, and/or the executive (president) and order executive agencies to not do things. (The latter can be a bit touching, but it happens.)
Total abuse of power by Governor DeSantis: “Miami, Tampa schools defy DeSantis on masks despite threats”
The Governor is forcing himself into local decisions were he has no business. This goes contrary to the whole concept of the US Republic, when applied at the state level. Government that is closest to the people governs best.
https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/08/18/miami-tampa-schools-defy-desantis-on-masks-despite-threats-1390193
Tom Scharf,
Your comment (204921) was very insightful. I think you might find this short essay from C.S. Lewis very interesting. He supports your position in that calm and well-informed manner that he carrries so well
http://liberty-tree.ca/research/willing_slaves_of_the_welfare_state
(Hope I posted that link properly)
Yeah. Literally Hitler, like I said before.
A truly enlightened governor would consult Russell before making any decisions for guidance.
Russell,
So I take it you disagree with President Biden mandating vaccines for nursing home workers.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/18/biden-announce-nursing-homes-must-vaccinate-workers-against-covid-19/8183943002/
Russell,
The fact you don’t like DeSantis’ policies doesn’t make them ‘abuse of power’. If those policies were not lawful, state courts would immediately enjoin his actions. AFAICT, DeSantis is 100% within Florida law and the Florida Constitution.
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It is a very different situation with Biden and the CDC issuing a nationwide mandate prohibiting evictions for failure to pay rent; in that case the Supreme Court had already told the Biden administration that the earlier CDC no-eviction mandate was unlawful. The SC will strike the CDC mandate, but the Biden administration knew that would take several months…. so they abused the executive’s power and issued a new illegal mandate.
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Biden’s nursing home mandate will also be struck down. There is zero legal authority for such a mandate.
SteveF (Comment #204954)
“If those policies were not lawful, state courts would immediately enjoin his actions. AFAICT, DeSantis is 100% within Florida law and the Florida Constitution.”
The court battle is just beginning. It will be fun to watch.”Tampa Bay, Central Florida residents sue DeSantis over school masks” https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2021/08/06/parents–students-in-hillsborough–orange–pasco-and-volusia-sue-desantis-over-masks
My prediction:
The defiant school boards in Democrat controlled Florida cities will cause the legislature to call a special session… where a law allowing the governor to remove any school administrator who defies the state board of education would quickly pass. This defiance of the governor and legislature is not a prudent path for Florida school boards. I expect it will end badly for them.
Russell,
No doubt they understand that they would lose for sure in state court. If they get lucky, they may get assigned an Obama judge and get a temporary stay (there are 5 Obama appointed judges), or they could get a Trump judge (4 of those), and get no stay.
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Any stay would be appealed to the 11th circuit court of appeals, where I expect Clarence Thomas (SC justice assigned to the 11th circuit) would have some quiet conversations with the appellate judges about being over-ruled at the SC. Like he probably did with with the CDC trying to force cruise line companies to follow CDC’s “four-phase” rules for cruising.
I suppose Russell is dead set against a Federal mandate for masks and prefers local control? Not too big, not too small, the Goldilocks level of control, or perhaps selectively choosing the one which agrees with his position.
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What is clear is that Feds cannot mandate masks in states as the Constitution gives most of this type of power to the states, and each state has different laws. It is usually not very complicated to determine in any particular state where that power lies. As Lucia mentioned in some states they have delegated certain powers to local authorities, but the state legislature can always take that power back if desired. I’m not sure of the details in FL.
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I still find it hilarious that the interpretation here is that forcing people to wear face coverings is deemed a local God(?) given power, and the state telling localities they can’t do that is somehow authoritarian. This is exactly backwards.
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Masks in schools is just not a very important issue. Go ahead, mask up. Delta will still “spread in schools” at a rate that scales with community transmission, students have lives outside of school. I’m not sure what they plan to do with the students who refuse or aren’t diligent, how they plan to eat lunch, etc.
Russell Klier (Comment #204950): “This goes contrary to the whole concept of the US Republic, when applied at the state level. Government that is closest to the people governs best.”
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I think that is how it *should* be. But it is definitely not the way it is. The Supreme has ruled that local governments are entirely subservient to state government. Any restrictions on what the state can do re local governments would have to derive from the state constitution.
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Russell Klier: “The Governor is forcing himself into local decisions were he has no business.”
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If your political theory were correct, then DeSantis is in the right. Your theory of the power would seem to be
individual > local government > state > federal
There is much to commend that, although it is *not* the way it is in the USA. But DeSantis’s position is that the decision should be made at the individual level and that some local officials are sticking their noses into individual decisions where they have no business.
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If DeSantis has the power to order a statewide mask mandate, he has the power to prohibit the same.
Desantis is acting like a short belligerent dictator and a lot of Floridians think so too.
“Shock poll: Charlie Crist leads Ron DeSantis amid COVID-19 surgeâ€
“Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and the members of the Miami-Dade County School Board, will now face the wrath of Florida’s bully governor, who doesn’t believe in local control.â€
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/445638-shock-poll-charlie-crist-leads-ron-desantis-amid-covid-19-surge/#:~:text=Shock%20poll%3A%20Charlie%20Crist%20leads%20Ron%20DeSantis%20amid%20COVID-19%20surge
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article253589664.html
Paul Maeder,
Thanks for that, 1958:
“Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.”
I know, right? All the absolute worst dictators were short and enforced horrific oppressive policies that gave individuals more choice and control over their lives and children.
It’s a good thing you’re here Russell. I didn’t know how I was ever going to turn this echo chamber around.
Do you have any pronouns?
Russell Klier,
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has imposed a mask mandate on everyone in New Mexico. If I understand you, she has absolutely no right to do that. Is that correct?
Oh, I got it Russell, don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it for you!
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Mike,
Is she short?
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[Edit: Hmm. On the one hand, I read Grisham stands 5’3 in a nation where the average female height is 5’4. Sounds a little authoritarian to me.
But on the other hand, the villain DeSantis who is destroying Florida by ensuring that parents have a say on whether or not their kids are masked all day at school is 5’9 and I read that the average male height in the U.S. is … 5’9.
How can this be?
Russell, I think I’m gonna need a little help here.]
mark,
FYI, it is Lujan Grisham. One of those confusing last names, like Conan Doyle.
Or, as I like to call her, the Wicked Witch of the West.
A rather deep dive into NPI modeling:
https://cspicenter.org/blog/waronscience/lockdowns-econometrics-and-the-art-of-putting-lipstick-on-a-pig/
“As I have already pointed out in my case against lockdowns, the comparison with vaccination is really illuminating in that regard. Many studies claim that non-pharmaceutical interventions have very large effects on transmission, but many other studies reach completely different conclusions and even researchers who find that non-pharmaceutical interventions have very large effects only reach this conclusion by using complicated statistical techniques that rest on very uncertain and often highly dubious assumptions, which as we have seen often collapse under closer scrutiny. By contrast, in the case of vaccination, the effect is totally obvious even on a simple graph and you don’t need to squint or use sophisticated statistical techniques to detect it.â€
“Thus, unless you have enough background knowledge about the subject-matter (which again you usually don’t), you should be very suspicious of any claim based on sophisticated statistical techniques that can’t already be made plausible just by showing the data in a simple chart, because you typically have more reasons to believe in what you can see in a simple plot of the data than in the truth of the assumptions on which those statistical techniques rest. This doesn’t mean that sophisticated statistical techniques are useless, but I think their usefulness is widely overestimated. ”
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I only read part of it. Basically it’s really hard to separate the effects of policy from people’s voluntary changes in behavior based on the news cycle. Secondly if you take models and use updated data or alter the models slightly (alter lag times, etc.) many of the alleged results disappear entirely or you get spurious non-sensical results. The models are pretty fragile.
Sorry Mike, thanks for the correction.
Russell “.. The Governor is forcing himself into local decisions were he has no business. This goes contrary to the whole concept of the US Republic, when applied at the state level. Government that is closest to the people governs best…â€
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One must realize that States are sovereign under the US constitution. There are many SC decisions upholding the fact that local government, cities & counties, are entirely subservient to the State and only exist at the pleasure of the State. State law entirely overrides local government entities.
Tom Scharf,
“Masks in schools is just not a very important issue. Go ahead, mask up. Delta will still “spread in schools†at a rate that scales with community transmission, students have lives outside of school.”
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I agree, it is not very important, since almost no children will suffer significant illness, and the virus will spread (unless you stay home 100% of the time) and eventually reach you (and all the kids). School teachers (if they have a lick of sense) were long ago vaccinated. The only importance is who gets to choose if 6 year olds are forced to wear masks to protect…. nobody.
Not that I’m a big fan of Colin Powell, but I think this quote from him is on point:
Chiefio has a posting on ivermectin with hard data from India and Mexico with several vids by Dr. John Campbell on the effectiveness of ivermectin.
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https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2021/08/19/dr-john-campbell-on-ivermectin
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Ed Forbes,
“One must realize that States are sovereign under the US constitution.”
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Under the constitution, yes, absolutely. But in practice? A lot less. There has been plenty of Federal intrusion into the states’ sovereignty, and I suspect half the Federal judiciary (certainly all appointed by the likes of Obama) are quite willing to completely ignore state sovereignty, save for a bit of lip service when the case doesn’t matter much. Fortunately, more than half on the present SC *do* have some respect for state sovereignty.
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I saw an interesting survey result: before Trump, conservatives said the SC was very important to them, and progressives much less. Now it is the other way around: progressives are focused on the SC much more than conservatives. I suspect Thomas is nearing retirement, but the rest of the conservatives will be around for a while.
Steve,
yes there is quite a bit of intrusion of Federal sovereignty into State sovereignty, but Sovereignty of the State over their local governments is pretty much unquestioned as long as the State law in question does not conflict with the US constitution.
My local hospital is ‘Bursting at the seams’ Dr. Manuel Gordillo the hospital’s infectious disease expert had one comment today “Go back to the basics, masks indoors, get a good maskâ€
‘Bursting at the seams’: Sarasota doctor urges mask-wearing to relieve strain on hospital” https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/coronavirus/2021/08/19/covid-19-patient-count-dips-thursday-sarasota-memorial-hospital/8192236002/
In Calif, recall was done by sending ballots to all voters.
The envelope was set up so people can see the vote from the outside.
MikeN,
“The envelope was set up so people can see the vote from the outside.”
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Only in despotic countries and the state of California could that happen. Much like forcing disclosure of contributors to causes Democrats don’t like. Despotic and unapologetic…. AKA the left.
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One very positive development from the covid pandemic is that several states have enacted laws (some over the veto of the present governors!) requiring any declaration of emergency be of short duration, and renewal of emergency measures requiring frequent approval by the legislature. There could always be another pandemic, but in many states the really crazy rules put in place by governors won’t last for very long. This puts a limit on the economic and social damage the poor judgement…. and political biases…. of one person can possibly do.
MikeN (Comment #204980): “The envelope was set up so people can see the vote from the outside.”
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California is corrupt. Nevertheless, if you want me to believe *that* you must provide evidence.
Mike M,
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CSvivWOjkuh/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=4d66533a-1a09-4923-8683-568b67b41b1a&ig_mid=6152A2A0-4F49-4404-A151-3C10B0E8D6B0
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it depends how the ballot is placed in the envelope… but clearly possible to see if it is a yes or no vote when the ballot is placed in the envelope in one orientation.
Ed,
” there is quite a bit of intrusion of Federal sovereignty into State sovereignty”
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Yes, but that also means there is plenty of Federal intrusion into state sovereignty over their own local governments. Watch what happens in Florida with lawsuits to block DeSantis from insisting local school systems follow State mask rules: If it is an Obama judge, then it is *almost almost 100% certainty* a stay will be issued to stop DeSantis…. even if they know their ruling will be overturned. The part that most pisses me off about progressive judges is that they completely reject the authority of past SC rulings when they disagree, and do their level best to subvert the rule of law when they disagree with the law. They should be in prison, not on the bench.
SteveF (Comment #204987): “to see if it is a yes or no vote when the ballot is placed in the envelope in one orientation.”
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Thanks. But it seems you can only see a yes vote, and only if the ballot is positioned just right. So what MikeN said “The envelope was set up so people can see the vote from the outside†is not really true. Still, some fraction of the “yes” votes will be visible to a person trying to bias the result. That should never be allowed to happen.
Mike,
” But it seems you can only see a yes vote”
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Well, since it is a yes/no ballot, seeing if the ‘Yes’ bubble is/is not blackened is all someone would need to see to be tempted to “misplace” the ballot.
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Best I can figure, including how the ballot is folded, there are eight possible orientations, one of which shows the yes/no vote. So if the ballot were placed in the envelope randomly, 12.5% would show the yes/no vote. Of course, some of the other orientations may also show the replacement preference, which also means it is a yes vote. The envelope just shouldn’t have any holes in it that possibly allow snooping by mail handlers, poll workers, or anyone else.
A contribution to the heat this summer is that the cold air at the poles is staying there this year. Arctic sea ice is above the average of the 2010’s. Antarctic sea ice is currently at the third highest level since the 1980’s. Global sea ice is about half way between the 2000’s and 2010’s average. Remember when the doomsters were predicting that the Arctic Sea would be ice free in September 2013? Of course, like the heat waves this year, it’s almost all weather, not climate change.
Florida hospitals ‘stretched to their absolute limits,’ report says
FLORIDA HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION COVID-19 UPDATE
“There can be no question that many Florida hospitals are stretched to their absolute limits,†said Mary C. Mayhew, President and CEO, Florida Hospital Association. “While hospitalizations continue to increase, three out of four Florida hospitals expect to face critical staff shortages in the next seven days, an increase of nearly ten percent since last week, and half of our hospitals will no longer accept transfer patients from other facilities.â€
And what is Governor DeSantis spending Florida State Government resources on?…Squelching local government efforts to slow down the pandemic. His is worse than DNA [do nothing approach]. He is actively blocking local officials who are trying to do something. Other than that he’s pretty much MIA.
https://southfloridahospitalnews.com/florida-hospital-association-covid-19-update-august-17-2021/
The numbers just don’t make sense. Here in New Mexico the poohbahs are screaming about hospitals being overloaded and blaming it on people not getting vaccinated. But cases are 30% of where they were last fall and we are told that the vaccine greatly reduces the chance of serious illness. So how can the Wuhan virus be putting even more strain on hospitals? In fact, current hospitalization numbers are something like 30-50% of where they were last fall. There seems to be extreme panic in Florida, with somewhat more cases than in the last peak. In Minnesota, 50% of Wuhan cases in hospital are *not* for treatment of covid. That seems to be up from 1/3 last fall.
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Although covid cases might be contributing to strain on hospitals, there is no way they are the main problem. They are just a convenient scapegoat. And blaming covid fits the “narrative”.
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I think that what is happening is a combination of two things. One is that the chickens are coming home to roost as hospitals try to catch up with deferred medical care. That is on the terrorists in the government and the media who have kept people frightened for the last year and a half. The other is the RSV epidemic.
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It is a disgrace.
————–
Terrorist: (n) One who favors or uses terrorizing methods for the accomplishment of some object, as for coercing a government or a community into the adoption of or submission to a certain course.
In FL they give you a thick sheet of orange paper and instruct you to place your ballot inside that folded paper before mailing. I thought it was kind of weird, but now I see why they do that.
DeSantis missing in action looks like this:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/monocolonial-antibodies-treatment-covid-19-florida-desantis/
If only they had capable, competent leadership in Florida, like President Joe Biden.
There really isn’t a panic in FL compared to previous outbreaks (Russell not withstanding, ha ha). I went to the grocery store today and it was about the same as the last few weeks. 50% or so masked, but all the employees were masked today. No doubt hospitalizations are up and will get worse the next several weeks. It seems FL is at or near peak cases.
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IMO the inevitable outcome here is at least 90% of the population gets immunity one way or the other before the severe illness rate starts to drop substantially. You can do that fast and hard, or slow and long. There are arguments for both, but I don’t see an obvious winner. In theory once the regional delta burn is over then you are in a pretty good place for a while. We shall see.
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I would call FL in more of a resigned acceptance. Most national news organizations have run low key stories over the past week that covid is almost certainly going endemic.
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Covid Isn’t Going Away. So What Now?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/opinion/covid-booster-delta-end.html
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The Coronavirus Is Here Forever. This Is How We Live With It.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/how-we-live-coronavirus-forever/619783/
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It also looks like delta has officially busted the Australian border, most officials there have given up on zero covid but still work hard to keep things limited so people can get vaccinated. 787 cases in the last week (very low by most standards). Sydney will stay in lockdown for the third month in Sept.
Mike M,
The official talking points are delta is much more transmissive, there are still large numbers of susceptibles (unvaccinated), and this is an outbreak of the unvaccinated. Thus we are getting similar caseloads and death rates.
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The officials are no doubt very hesitant to ever say the vaccines aren’t performing as well as previous, which they aren’t, but the 95% infection block was a very high bar. They do seem to be 80% to 95% effective at preventing hospitalization depending on what study you look at.
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So lower numbers of people who can get severely ill, but a much more transmissive disease and leaky vaccines.
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The UK’s low severe illness rate appears to be linked to their very high immunity rates. We are just behind them on the curve, but we are catching up fast, ha ha.
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Or it could be something entirely different. The CDC should be monitoring antibody levels in the population, but they aren’t.
mark bofill, “ If only they had capable, competent leadership in Florida, like President Joe Biden.†I have been strongly anti-Biden since his first campaign in the 1980s. In the last presidential election I voted for The Loser.
Oh, sorry Russell. Thanks. We’re anti-Biden, check.
I’m with the program now.
mark bofill (Comment #204996): “DeSantis missing in action looks like this”.
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How dare he spend his time coming up with actual solutions, when he could be issuing meaningless directives and acting like he is in charge. Who does he think he is? A public servant or something? The nerve.
Mike,
He’s a short, bad little belligerent dude. I don’t know what this monoclonal therapy is all about yet. Probably another aspect of systemic racism that’s going to drive climate change. What I am sure about is this:
Further evidence (as if any were needed) as to what a dictator his little scoundrel is. Overriding the authority of doctors to make sure people only get prescriptions after visiting and paying them! Outrageous! No cost to patients! It’s like he’s Che Guevara and Mao rolled into one, with a little Stalin on the side.
Tom Scharf (Comment #204998): “The official talking points are delta is much more transmissive, there are still large numbers of susceptibles (unvaccinated), and this is an outbreak of the unvaccinated. Thus we are getting similar caseloads and death rates.”
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Sure. But the unvaccinated are biased young and healthy, so even if almost all “cases” are among the unvaccinated, the number of hospitalizations and deaths should be down.
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Even setting that aside, there is a disconnect here. There are currently 356 “cases” in hospital, compared to about 950 at the peak last fall. So the number hospitalized due to covid is probably down from about 650 to maybe 150-200. There is no way the current number should be producing anything like the stress on hospitals that they had last fall.
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And although they blame the unvaccinated, they never give numbers for vaccinated vs not. Very fishy.
This is some pretty credulous parroting here:
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NPR: “The federal government deliberately targeted Black Lives Matter protesters via heavy-handed criminal prosecutions in an attempt to disrupt and discourage the global movement that swept the nation last summer in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, according to a new report released Wednesday by The Movement for Black Lives.”
“The report, which was first shared with The Associated Press, argues that as the uprisings in the summer of 2020 increased, so did police presence, the deployment of federal agents and prosecution of protesters.”
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/20/1029625793/black-lives-matter-protesters-targeted
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“The Movement for Black Lives is calling for amnesty for all protesters involved in the nationwide protests.”
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I’m sure the Capital “Insurrectionists” will be glad to hear that. Oh, they aren’t on the targeted with heavy handed tactics list?
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Alternate take: Criminals were prosecuted for committing crimes, check the abundant video. This is just bad journalism and helps nobody.
mark bofill,
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The CBS report is (surprise!) dishonest. They talk first about how many people have been hospitalized, then about how many young people have not been vaccinated and note also that DeSantis is fighting school districts about masking mandates. What they carefully avoid saying is that most hospitalizations are in fact older people, and the vast majority of those older people were never vaccinated. Hospitalizations have little to do with vaccinations among 20 or 30 year olds, and certainly nothing to do with K-12 schools mandatory masking. Unvaccinated older people are causing the high rates of hospitalization, and they will continue to…. until delta runs out of fuel.
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The false attribution of hospitalizations to young people not being vaccinated or not wearing masks in schools is pure reporting dishonesty.
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But fear not, the delta surge has probably peaked in Florida (and most other places as well), and will start dropping quickly… In four weeks Florida hospitals will be looking for more patients. But the MSM will continue to dishonestly criticize DeSantis anyway.
The “hospitals under stress” story is a bit overplayed for NM at this point, no doubt. Likely more to come there though of course.
Nobody is calling out the national guard quite yet. You do have to give the hospital workers a bit of sympathy though. That has got to have been a huge grind over the last year and a half, and they really just don’t complain much. Compare that to the teachers unions, who are the heroes here?
Steve,
Yah, maybe so, but I don’t know. I still think CBS is morally correct even though they’re not strictly factually correct. People would feel much better if DeSantis would just quit being such a bellicose bully and let other people like school districts and doctors boss the public around some too. His approach is just driving inequality like mad.
Mike M,
Relative to confirmed cases, deaths are definitely down.
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There are just a lot of unvaccinated elderly people. How many? In Florida, there are about 4,460,000 people over 65, and about 15% remain completely unvaccinated…. that is 600,000+ potentially serious cases. Among that unvaccinated elderly population, the *average* chance of death from a confirmed case is in the range of 10%….. so a potential 60,000 more deaths in Florida alone….. most because elderly people have simply refused the vaccination. Of course some of those people would probably have asymptomatic illness, and some have already had covid, so the potential is surely less than 60,000, but the number of potential deaths is still very high. All those who die will do so in an intensive care unit. So hospitals are stressed.
.
My vaccinated, bar hopping 36 year old son had a breakthrough case a few weeks ago, as did 7 of his (all young) co-workers, two of whom were unvaccinated; one of those unvaccinated got sick first and infected the others. No serious cases, and all cleared the virus and were back at work within about 8-9 days. It is not young people driving hospitalizations and deaths. It is old people refusing the vaccines.
Tom Scharf,
“Compare that to the teachers unions, who are the heroes here?”
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To even ask the question is to know the answer.
Latest from Israel which now has one of highest vaccination rates AND one of the highest outbreak rates:
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“According to the Health Ministry, the rate of serious cases is far higher among unvaccinated Israelis over the age of 60, with 174 severe cases per 100,000. Among the fully vaccinated, the figure is 21.3 per 100,000, and among the partially vaccinated, 54 per 100,000.”
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Israel is likely already seeing some amount of the third booster shot effect and that may be pretty hard to sort out I think.
And in more fear porn news, models, or a model, projects cases will peak in mid-October. Cases appear to be peaking now just past mid-August. I really wonder why, after all the bad predictions of the models, they are still front page news, or any page news for that matter. When searching, it looks like most of these stories were written in late July, but I still saw a mention of it today.
Mike M,
“How dare he spend his time coming up with actual solutions, when he could be issuing meaningless directives and acting like he is in charge. Who does he think he is? A public servant or something? The nerve.”
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Ya, well, when your objective is to name/shame/blame and demand, rather than help people, someone like DeSantis probably seems pretty odd. He will be re-elected easily next year, and maybe win the presidency in 2024…… if Trump doesn’t screw it up.
Tom Scharf (Comment #205006): “The “hospitals under stress†story is a bit overplayed for NM at this point, no doubt. Likely more to come there though of course.”
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I am inclined to believe that the hospitals here are under stress. I just don’t believe the reason given.
DeWitt,
“I really wonder why, after all the bad predictions of the models, they are still front page news, or any page news for that matter.”
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When the object of your existence is to tell people what to do (and that includes both modelers and journalists), ‘uber-scientific’ models help you do that. Doesn’t matter at all if they are utter rubbish in a purely factual sense and always wrong. The goal is power over people.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #205012): “And in more fear porn news, models, or a model, projects cases will peak in mid-October. Cases appear to be peaking now just past mid-August.”
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The *current* surge may eb near its peak. About one month later than last summer, after starting one month later. But the big surge last year peaked in November here, later many other places. It remains to be seen how big a fall/winter surge we get this year.
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I have pretty much given up trying to predict anything with this virus. But I will stick my neck out and predict that the models will be badly wrong.
SteveF (Comment #205008): “All those who die will do so in an intensive care unit.”
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A large fraction (~30%, if memory serves) of those who have died from this virus did not die in hospital. Because of advance directives.
DeWitt,
Cases will peak in the States within a week or two. Unless a new variant arrives that evade vaccines, that is where I think the covid “surges” end for the States.
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Joe Biden will claim credit, of course… assuming he is still able to read a teleprompter and say the word ‘coronavirus’. The MSM will confim Biden’s sainthood, even if he can’t read the teleprompter, and will vilify all Republicans, explicitly blaming them for nearly 100% of covid deaths. And with special critique for the devil’s right hand Ron DeSantis.
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This will be combined with endless positive stories about heroic governors like Murphy, Whitmer, and Wolf, who’s states have much higher total deaths than Florida or Texas. While carefully ignoring that those governors’ stupid covid rules in nursing homes killed thousands without good reason and their stupid lockdowns and restrictions destroyed thousands of small businesses and put millions out of work.
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Certainty about Covid is difficult. Certainty about bias in the MSM is absolute.
Mike M,
“Because of advance directives.”
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Fair enough. Absent advanced directives, they would all die in an ICU.
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But most do in fact die in an ICU. My wife knew several fundamentalist Christians in their 50’s and 60’s who died of covid…. all of them in an ICU… all unvaccinated. Since I do not attend the churches those people did (nor any church!), I have known nobody who died of covid.
Peaking in October would mean cancelling my goal of doing my first Am-Am competition on October. Am Partner and I agree we don’t do it if cases are raging. The next local competition is in November so we’d wait.
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If they are raging then, we’ll probably have to wait until Northewestern Universities college level competition in February. (It was cancelled last year. Could be again.)
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This is really inconvenient for my Am_Am dreams.
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My pro-Am partner will still compete no matter what Covid is doing. It’s his job. What else is he going to do?
Lucia,
I am guessing the competition will go on…. no peak in October.
The overall peak in the south is close I think, but my guess is the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific NW have regional delta burns in their future, likely fall/winter seasonal. The fuel is sitting there. Why we don’t have any estimates for how many people in each region have no antibodies is beyond me. Predicting the outbreaks has been a fool’s errand no doubt, but I think there is no other path but for almost everyone being infected or vaccinated.
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The UK got to 94% of adults with antibodies during various lockdowns and one would expect other places to eventually reach those type of numbers. So if you have 30% or more of your population with no antibodies …
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FL was more or less average overall with vaccinations and previous infections, and has had a pretty major caseload. The only people who should be better off are those who had high infections counts and high vaccination rates, perhaps the NE.
If Australia can keep vaccinating quickly (~2.1 million doses per week) and suppress spread for just a few more weeks with quarantining/tracing, they may get enough elderly people vaccinated that the number who die will be relatively low compared to most other economically developed countries.
SteveF,
I’m guessing the same. We are practicing. Our plan is we compete in October. If we don’t, we don’t. It’s not a big deal.
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We have a Tango routine. We are moving on to Foxtrot.
SteveF,
Fingers crossed for Australia. They may be able to do it. Let’s hope the ‘Git ‘Er Done!
Tom Scharf (Comment #205025): “The fuel is sitting there. Why we don’t have any estimates for how many people in each region have no antibodies is beyond me. Predicting the outbreaks has been a fool’s errand no doubt, but I think there is no other path but for almost everyone being infected or vaccinated.”
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Circulating antibodies are not relevant for transmission and infections. But they do seem to matter for serious illness.
It is probably relevant, but not in a blocking kind of way.
Unvaccinated and uninfected tend to have longer infections and probably are more transmissive, or maybe just contagious for a longer period. Yet another thing we don’t have good handle on. Obviously the subset of vaccinated or infected that never get a measurable reinfection or have very mild symptoms are not driving the outbreaks at the same level, but there would be an outbreak anyway as we have unfortunately learned from Israel and the UK.
If Australia and NZ get a large portion of their 60+ population vaccinated they should fair much better than most places. They likely have a bill coming due no matter what though with endemic covid. It’s still possible an effective treatment or better vaccines could show up and make things much better.
Florida seven day Covid deaths were 1,486 on 8/19, up 38% from last week. This is approaching the previous record weekly deaths of 1,560 on 8/6/2020. The Magic Covid Crystal ball [MCCB] predicts a new record in the coming weeks. I hope the MCCB finally gets one wrong. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jason.salemi/viz/shared/33M8KS6MZ
The current CDC data (August 19, 8:00 PM) shows the 7-day moving average is 686 deaths per day for the USA. The peak in that measure (back in January 2021) was a little over 3,600 deaths per day. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths_7daydeathsper100k
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There is no possibility the current (delta) case surge will cause anywhere close to the death rate for January, because a large majority (~80%) of the most vulnerable population has been vaccinated. Most of the deaths that happen will be among the vulnerable population that has refused vaccination.
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The number of cases matters very little. People recover…. unless they are dead. Deaths matter.
Been noticing a whole lot of US military aircraft moving this week…. Mostly big birds flying intercontinental routes. This AM I noticed this guy leaving Miami: Dornier C-146AType Desc.:L2T Squawk:3575 Called “Wolfhoundâ€.
“ Mission:
The C-146A Wolfhound’s primary mission is to provide U.S. Special Operations Command flexible and responsive operational movement of small teams and cargo in support of Theater Special Operations Commands. Airlift missions are conducted by Air Force Special Operations Command aircrews to prepared and semi-prepared airfields around the world.†https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/467729/c-146a-wolfhound/
I don’t know if something is afoot or just some flyboys on a junket, I expect it will disappear if it’s on a mission.
You can follow Military aircraft here: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ click the “U†button to display military aircraft. The U stands for U2.
Update: It disappeared
I would suspect Afghanistan is the problem.
DaveJR (Comment #205037) “I would suspect Afghanistan is the problem.” Yes There is currently a conga line of big military birds that appeared suddenly at 30,000 feet over Pakistan…. From US, UK, Australia and France. I suppose they left Kabul evacuating their people and flew together without transponders till it was safe.
Update some appear to be landing at Ras Al Khaimah International Airport in UAE
“Orlando urges residents to limit water use as liquid oxygen for treating the water supply is being diverted to hospitals for COVID-19 patients” Hah! didn’t expect this… Hospital oxygen shortage taking O2 supplies from water treatment plant. https://www.businessinsider.com/orlando-limit-water-use-liquid-oxygen-water-supply-covid-patients-2021-8
Russell Klier (Comment #205039): “Orlando urges residents to limit water use as liquid oxygen for treating the water supply”.
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That is surely wrong. I assume the fault lies with the journalist, not Russell. Liquid oxygen is not used in either water purification or hospitals. Pure oxygen is used in hospitals and might be used in water treatment, maybe to produce ozone. Of course, that makes me wonder what else the journalist got wrong.
Russell Klier (Comment #205033): “Florida seven day Covid deaths were 1,486 on 8/19, up 38% from last week. This is approaching the previous record weekly deaths of 1,560 on 8/6/2020.”
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SteveF (Comment #205035): “There is no possibility the current (delta) case surge will cause anywhere close to the death rate for January”.
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So what are you saying, Steve? That Russell’s numbers are made up? I just checked at the Financial Times. The latest Florida numbers are 153 deaths per day, compared to about 180 at the peaks both last August and January. Those are updated weekly and another update is due. Since the last week jumped by almost 75%, it is quite possible that a new record will be set soon.
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Or are you saying that there is something special about Florida? I suppose there is in that some places are peaking now and other places will peak later. In that case I agree that for the country as a whole *this* surge probably won’t reach the levels of last January. But that is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
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You have previously claimed that what is happening now could not possibly happen.
It seems that New Mexico is collecting data on vaccination status, but one has to dig to find the numbers. My local paper published some of them today. 19% of new cases and 13% of hospitalizations are fully vaccinated. 3.8% of cases lead to hospitalization for the fully vaccinated vs. 6.0% for others. Of course, it is better than that since the vaccinated skew to higher risk groups. So there is definitely value there.
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I continue to hope that cases among the vaccinated are being hugely under counted. With luck, maybe enough to prevent an even bigger surge during flu season.
Mike M. (Comment #205040): “That is surely wrong.”
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No, *I* was wrong. Of course, hospitals need oxygen gas not liquid. But it seems that for large volumes it is more practical to ship and store oxygen as liquid rather than compressed gas.
Mike M. (Comment #205043)“But it seems that for large volumes it is more practical to ship and store oxygen as liquid rather than compressed gas.â€
Mike, most of the compressed gas cans we use day to day contain the gas in liquid phase. That’s why the can gets so cold when you use it….. The heat of phase change [evaporation]. You can sometimes tell the liquid level in the bottle by the surface temperature along the side when it’s in use.
Just shake a half empty air duster can, you can feel the liquid sloshing around in the bottom.
Mike M,
I linked to the CDC site for the whole of the USA, not for Florida, and I was describing the situation for the whole of the USA.
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But that said, yes, I do think Florida is a special case in two ways: 1) it has more elderly (as a fraction of the population) compared to all other states except Maine, and 2) it has a combination of slightly lower vaccination rates among the elderly and significantly lower cumulative deaths per million population compared to states like Massachusetts, NY, NJ, and others, even though those states have younger populations.
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Those higher death rates, combined with significantly younger populations, mean that a greater fraction of elderly caught covid in those states than in Florida, and are now resistant to infection…. even if not vaccinated. Among those over 65 who have neither vaccination nor previous infection, the confirmed case fatality rate is in the range of ~10%… which means that at least nine times as many elderly survived and became resistant than died. The true number has to be higher than 9 times the number that died, because there are asymptomatic infections and mild cases that were symptomatic but never confirmed.
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Florida is in a sense paying now for lower infection and death rates among the elderly earlier in the pandemic. What has changed? Probably delta is infecting people who were able to resist some exposure to the original strain.
Russell Klier (Comment #205044): “most of the compressed gas cans we use day to day contain the gas in liquid phase. That’s why the can gets so cold when you use it”
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That is true for some gases, such as CO2, propane, and the HFCs in air dusters. But O2 has a critical point of 155 K, so it can’t be a liquid above that temperature.
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Any gas cools as it expands. If the initial pressure is high enough, the molecules can be close enough together so that the attractive forces that cause condensation can have a significant effect. That results in even more cooling when the gas expands.
Russell,
“Mike, most of the compressed gas cans we use day to day contain the gas in liquid phase.”
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What? Most compressed gas cylinders are in fact filled with gas, not liquid (eg oxygen, nitrogen, argon, helium, methane), while CO2, common refrigerants, and light hydrocarbons like propane and butane, are in liquid form. As Mike M noted, the gases which are non-condensable at ambient temperature can be chilled to form liquids at near ambient pressure, and it is cheaper to ship and store in liquid form at near-ambient pressure if the quantity is large.
Yet another chapter in building distrust in fact checking:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-illegal-u-s-border-crossings-likely-arent-fueling-the-covid-19-surge-11629547201
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Why Illegal U.S. Border Crossings Likely Aren’t Fueling the Covid-19 Surge
Migrant arrests are hitting records, but many who are intercepted are sent to Mexico while those who stay are often tested for the virus
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“But in locations that have reported figures, migrants generally test positive at similar or lower rates than Americans living in the counties where they are tested.
“At the Casa Alitas shelter in Tucson, for example, about 7% to 10% of people passing through have tested positive, said Teresa Cavendish, who oversees the shelter. Sister Norma Pimentel, who runs the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, has reported a similar positivity rate.”
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Ummm, what? At least the WSJ states the obvious a paragraph later:
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“These figures aren’t entirely comparable, though, because every migrant is tested, while many Americans are tested only when they suspect they could be carrying the virus.”
“Most public-health experts say it isn’t likely that migrants are contributing significantly to transmissions within the U.S., since nearly all are tested and quarantined before release, and because the Delta variant is already widespread.
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said on Fox News in August that while the border is a concern, it isn’t a driving factor of the pandemic in the U.S. He also said Covid-19 rates in Mexico and Central America were lower than in the U.S.”
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10% of migrants have active covid, there were over 200,000 detained in July and they aren’t contributing to the spread? *20,000 cases a month*. How many weren’t detained, how many chose to not go into quarantine, etc? Silence.
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So there is a case to be made that this isn’t a driving factor (140K cases/day in the US). The illegals detained with covid are about 0.5% of all US cases.
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However my point is, as usual, “public health” is applying a totally different standard to a favored identity group. Try applying the Sturgis standard and see what happens.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sturgis-motorcycle-rally-draws-throngs-as-covid-19-surges-11629117902
“Last year, health officials and researchers tracked at least 463 laboratory-confirmed cases of Covid-19 from Sturgis back to some 30 states and city health departments across the country. Some researchers said the event eventually led to hundreds of thousands of cases.”
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463 cases in one year, aaaaagghh SUPER-SPREADER!!!! 20,000 cases a month, “not a driving factor”. Note the slight of hand with the possible secondary cases count for one analysis, but not for the other.
Tom Scharf,
“463 cases in one year, aaaaagghh SUPER-SPREADER!!!! 20,000 cases a month, “not a driving factorâ€.”
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Yup. The WSJ news department is now just an extension of the NYT news department….. all biased, all the time. It is comically bad.
They will not honestly report anything that is counter to their preferred political narrative.
SteveF (Comment #205049)
You wrote:
“What? Most compressed gas cylinders are in fact filled with gas, not liquid (eg oxygen, nitrogen, argon, helium, methane) while CO2, common refrigerants, and light hydrocarbons like propane and butane, are in liquid form.†you were criticizing my comment:
“most of the compressed gas cans we use day to day contain the gas in liquid phase.†Well, CO2, common refrigerants, and light hydrocarbons like propane and butane we do use day to day and are in liquid form. Liquid oxygen, nitrogen, argon, helium, methane are not things most of us use day to day.
That said, liquid oxygen is available for home use for us lung patients, but it is not very common at home.
https://lunginstitute.com/blog/liquid-oxygen-weighing-pros-cons/
Mike M. (Comment #205047)
You wrote†But O2 has a critical point of 155 K, so it can’t be a liquid above that temperature.†That’s just wrong. In thermodynamics all gases obey the ideal gas equation for real gases with a compressibility factor: PV=ZnRT. You compress em enough you get liquid. Liquid oxygen, nitrogen, argon, helium, methane for example. You can buy a lot of them from Linde https://www.lindeus.com/gases They are under such high pressure the come in thick walled metal canisters. They are dangerous to handle.
Here’s a video about liquid oxygen at home: https://www.lung.org/lung-health-diseases/lung-procedures-and-tests/oxygen-therapy/getting-started-with-liquid-oxygen
MikeM. You were right, I was wrong that liquid oxygen tank is not a high pressure tank, it’s a low temperature tank.
Here is a nicely done analysis of Israeli data on hospitalizations among vaccinated and not:
https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated
60% of those hospitalized are vaccinated but the vaccines are about 90% effective at reducing hospitalization (better for under 60, worse for over 60).
Russell Klier,
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Well, no. Above the critical temperature, there is no phase change to liquid at any pressure. At high densities, you get what’s called a supercritical fluid. That’s not the same thing as the liquid gas, though, because you don’t have separate liquid and gas phases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_fluid
Mike M.,
Yes, if it’s doing work by expanding. Not necessarily if it isn’t, i.e. in a Joule-Thomson expansion . Hydrogen and helium heat up in a J-T expansion above their Joule-Thomson inversion temperature (45K for He and 200K for H2 at one atmosphere).
DeWitt,
Damned chemists! 😉
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I didn’t want to go that deep into it, but maybe Russell will appreciate your explanation.
Mike M,
Excellent post you linked to. Now if the CDC could(would?) ever do something so useful.
It seems the Australians are fed up with lockdowns.
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Australia suffers its worst day of Covid-19 pandemic as anti-lockdown protests flare
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/21/asia/australia-covid-worst-day-intl-hnk/index.html
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No word from the media whether the protests were mostly peaceful or not.
Tom Scharf,
I hope lines for vaccines are short and supply is abundant.
NZ’s one case has turned into 72 over the past several days. Another week of that and it will likely not be containable. They had 4 hour wait times at their testing centers which seems a bit odd.
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After 200 days of lockdowns in Melbourne Australia, an apparent hopeless situation to contain delta with 825 cases in a day, and police arresting 218 in violent protests who will all be fined $5K for breaching covid protocols the outlook is not pretty. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58291873
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Vaccinate the seniors ASAP, there is still time.
Everything so far is either cases infected pre-lockdown or in bubble. We’ll get worried if there is cases spreading outside bubbles. Wastewater suggests not all cases found yet, but we are hoping daily case nos should start to drop next week. Also, so far all community cases linked genomically to a case that crossed border on Aug 7. There was good reason to go into immediate lockdown on single case because they had no obvious link to border. South Island is hoping to drop a level Wednesday if there continues to be no cases found despite a lot of movement. I think rest of us, going to be stuck for a month. Vaccination rates hit 1% per day and rising. About same no. being being tested per day. Getting well through the senior tranche and starting to vacinnate 40s. I am still reasonably optimistic. End of next week will give a steer.
Phil Scadden,
I hope you have fewer over 60 who refuse the vaccines. Experience in the States is that those are most of whom will die. The very rapid 100% replacement of the original strain with the delta strain in the States suggests that having resistance to serious illness (from the vaccines) may now not be enough to stop the spread (I personally know of 5 breakthrough cases). So the best you can do is minimize severe illness (and death) by vaccinating all of the vulnerable population.
Tom Scharf,
Aussies may be frustrated that they have endured long and draconian restrictions based on promises the virus could be kept from spreading widely. That now looks like it may be impossible. Australia seems way behind where they should be with vaccinations for elderly people. The government may be driven from office if things turn out as badly as it looks like they may.
More (from two weeks ago) on using the military to enforce lockdown in Australia:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-58066389
Might explain why personal reports seem unaware of it.
But it seems like the specific complaints are about police, not the military.
Herald Sun: “Premier Daniel Andrews has defended a Labor MP who left her Melbourne electorate during lockdown to stay at her holiday home with her sick husband”.
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I believe it was here I saw a discussion about what people meant by the “elites” some time ago. The “elite” can be summarized quite simply by the phrase “rules for thee, but not for me”. They neither feel the need to obey the rules they apply to others, face no consequences for breaking them, and are often even defended for breaking them as if it’s quite obvious that they are a special class of people to whom they do not apply.
Someone on here expressed concerns about vaccine approval bypassing safety protocols. General consensus was that it was worth the risks. I think I or maybe someone else said it would lead to mandates in schools regardless of safety testing. They are handing out some exemptions, but Indiana has done so, and UVA just disenrolled students who weren’t vaccinated.
I would call Australia and NZ a glorious success if they keep the virus suppressed until they have 90% of seniors vaccinated. 200 days of lockdowns isn’t any fun, but having to do that and not then reaching that vaccination target would be a horrible failure.
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The US, Europe, et. al. never had a choice as they had too much early transmission and the borders are way too hard to seal off without extreme measures and serious downsides.
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Ultimately Australia and NZ should reach virus parity with the rest of the world but without having to pay the early penalty.
The FDA is reportedly giving full approval to Pfizer tomorrow which changes the game for mandates I think. Mandating a drug under EUA was not palatable in my view.
Tom Scharf (Comment #205079): “The FDA is reportedly giving full approval to Pfizer tomorrow”.
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So they are meeting to make a decision that reportedly has already been made. That should make a difference for the legality of mandates, but it will do nothing for the credibility of the vaccine.
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Do the public health authorities have any toes left? Or have they shot them all off?
Mike M.,
The FDA is a bureaucracy on steroids, as it were. They can’t issue something official until all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed on the paperwork, i.e. long after the actual decision has been made. I’m expecting that vaccine resistance based on not having ‘full approval’ will morph into ‘the approval was rushed and is politics not science’ so it doesn’t count.
DeWitt,
I actually know a few people who regretted their family not getting the vaccine, but that only seems to happen after someone in the family dies from covid. No amount of data will convince those who simply don’t want the vaccines. More power to ’em, but it may cost them their lives. It is tragic, but there is nothing we can do about it.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #205082): “The FDA is a bureaucracy on steroids, as it were. They can’t issue something official until all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed on the paperwork”.
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No doubt all the paperwork will be correct. But there is a difference between paperwork and scientific integrity. At this point, there is plenty of reason to doubt the latter.
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DeWitt: “I’m expecting that vaccine resistance based on not having ‘full approval’ will morph into ‘the approval was rushed and is politics not science’ so it doesn’t count.”
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For sure. Very sad. Especially since it is rational. Over the last 20 years, we have learned that we can not depend on the competence and integrity of the CIA, the State Department, the Fed, the FBI, the CDC, and the military. So there is no reason to trust the FDA. Very sad.
bMikeM
A trustworthy agency would have granted full approval months ago. As we can see, they allowed politics to delay things.
And if things in the US Military weren’t bad enough we have this (quoted from a comment on the opinion piece All the President’s Yes-Men in today’s online edition):
So, as Biden said, Blacks how voted for Trump aren’t black. I guess the same goes for Hispanics and Asia Pacific Islanders. Venezuela here we come. As I remember, Chavez purged the Venezuelan Army officer corps early on. That was after a coup attempt, though. I guess the Biden administration wants to avoid any chance of that happening. So what’s important in the Biden military isn’t leadership or tactical ability, it’s loyalty to the Democrat Party.
Can you imagine the uproar about ‘Our Democracy’ if Trump had tried to purge HtB supporters (if there were any) in the Pentagon in 2017? Pretty much crickets from the usual suspects now.
DeWitt,
Until 2016, I never heard anything from active 3 and 4 star officers. Now they blab all the time… to bitch about conservatives. Should DeSantis win in 2024, every high ranking military officer should be fired on day 1. They are corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, not soldiers; they should be in charge of nothing.
Lucia,
“A trustworthy agency would have granted full approval months ago.”
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A trustworthy agency would have released the Pfizer vaccine trial data two weeks before the November election, just as their published protocol described it would be, not a few days after the election, when they were sure it wouldn’t help Trump. 100% politically motivated, 100% corrupt. “We didn’t want Trump to get the credit.” is not a valid reason for delay. Fire every single one of those involved.
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A billion doses of Pfizer vaccine administered with few ill effects the world over, and that is not good enough? Corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, top to bottom. 20 monkeys in a conference room would accomplish more, and be more entertaining. I say fire them all.
SteveF,
Yes. They have been amazingly slow and definitely willing to allow politics to interfere with the process. The directly of their slowness and interfering has been to not approve of the vaccine when they should have. Part of that was anti-Trump. But the fact is, they have always been glacially slow for a variety of reasons possibly including self importance.
Lucia,
They should feel self important as they search for other career opportunities.
One of the better news articles on COVID that I have seen. Goes into a good general detail on what is, and is not, currently known on vaccine effects.
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https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/08/23/lets_stop_pretending_about_the_covid-19_vaccines_791050.html
NYT: Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Given Full F.D.A. Approval, Paving the Way for Mandates
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This is a common example of how the approval is being reported. What I find a bit curious is how rarely they ever brought up the EUA as being a road block to vaccine mandates previously. It exposes the agenda, it’s a big deal now, but wasn’t a big deal a week ago.
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I’m on the fence with vaccine mandates, I’m OK with them for old folks homes and healthcare, but not necessary for schools. Cruise lines should be able to set their own standards. The media are a little too pro-vaccine biased to the point of not reporting on the possible downsides, especially the unknown unknowns. I agree with the position overall, but don’t think I’m getting the entire truth from reporting.
From Ed Forbes link:
“Much has already been written about the CDC’s willful decision to ignore the relevance of prior infection, as if natural immunity simply did not exist. Most are aware that prior Covid-19 infection allows some degree of protection from future infection, with most studies suggesting this protection is north of 80% relative to someone with no immunity.”
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This is still pretty bizarre. I still find it strange when media organizations only speak of vaccinations as the only defense. Lots of people in FL are getting “immunized” every day lately, just not by the vaccine. The CDC also doesn’t even bother monitoring population wide immunity (vaccines + infections) as if this isn’t even important. I just don’t get it, and I don’t understand why nobody even asks about either.
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They also don’t track the efficacy of vaccines for the previously infected, in fact the previously infected (10’s of millions at a minimum) just don’t exist to the CDC or the media. The previously infected aren’t allowed to opt out of a vaccine mandate? While there is little evidence one way or the other this helps them much? Not good policy.
“I’m OK with them for old folks homes and healthcare,”
Fields with shortages of nurses, that also have surprisingly low vaccination numbers.
If they wanted to boost vaccinations, they should take away the free distribution after a certain point. Announcements that the price will go up might be a motivating factor.
Is full approval going to improve the voluntary vaccine uptake? I very much doubt it. It will help on the margins for people who will be forced to take it for their job.
Tom Scharf,
Me too. How do they think that herd immunity was achieved, when it was, before vaccines? It’s a puzzle.
Buried somewhere on the CDC site is an estimate of the ratio of total cases to confirmed cases. It’s linked somewhere above or on another recent thread. The ratio estimate was 4.3 with a range of 3.7 to 5.0.
Ah, here it is: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html
So with today’s worldometers.info confirmed case numbers, not quite 166 million people in the USA have been infected with a range of 143 to 193 million. As I said when I first linked the article, I think the CDC underestimates the ratio because they estimate less than 15% of cases are asymptomatic.
Given the increase in breakthrough infections, the number of confirmed cases is probably now a little high. But who knows how many of the previously infected have also been vaccinated? The CDC should at least be able to estimate this, but I’ve never heard that they do.
Here’s a rather polemical article on the Afghanistan debacle.
The conclusion is that this was the intended result of the hard left’s disdain for the US, a feature not a bug. But then there’s Hanlon’s Razor: “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.
Well this got here fast…. Worst death rate evah:
Vincent Rajkumar,@VincentRK Aug 22
“Florida becomes first US state where the daily deaths in current wave have exceeded previous waves.” and “What’s different in Florida is that relative to the vaccination rate (~50%) the relaxation of distancing and masking was disproportionately high. Leaders expressed disdain for masks and mask mandates. The total number of people unvaccinated is high. And hospitals got overwhelmed.”
https://twitter.com/VincentRK/status/1429489529275158531?s=20
FT data source
DeWitt Payne (Comment #205119): ” But then there’s Hanlon’s Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
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The version I have always heard is never attribute to mendacity that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
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Either way, I do not think the mundane reason can explain what has happened in Afghanistan.
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For centuries, it has been a military principle that when retreating you destroy any arms or munitions that you can not take with you. If the USA had destroyed some fraction of the equipment left behind, the fact that a large fraction was not destroyed could be due to incompetence. But they seem to have not destroyed any. They did not even try.
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Evacuating all but one or two thousand American civilians could be incompetence. But the military did not screw up an effort to evacuate civilians; once again they did not even try.
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Losing Bagram Air Base to the enemy because of a bungled defense could be incompetence. But no defense was attempted; the military snuck away in the middle of the night. It seems that the Afghan defense forces learned about it from the looters.
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The withdrawal was screwed up on purpose. Either overtly or passively by not even trying to get it right.
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The generals responsible deserve to be lined up against a wall and shot. Sadly, they won’t even be forced to resign, let alone be court marshaled and punished.
MikeM,
“Sadly, they won’t even be forced to resign, let alone be court marshaled and punished.”
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They could be punished after the 2024 election, or at a minimum fired. Elections have consequences.
Mike,
I’m not 100% clear on how the events transpired. At what point was the materiel abandoned, was it abandoned by Afgan security forces or U.S. military?
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The U.S. military was presumably operating under the mistaken premise (at least for a time) that they were leaving the Afgan security forces in power. So it’s at least conceivable to me that this was incompetence. Similar argument for the civilians; if the U.S. military was too slow to realize that the Taliban was immediately taking over, that ought to explain why the U.S. military was lax about evacuating civilians in a timely manner.
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I’m not saying this is so. I’m saying I don’t have evidence that this isn’t so.
Oh. Here is a summary of the Bagram airfield exit you referred to. I hadn’t read about this earlier.
Wow. Pretty messed up.
Russell Klier,
Actual deaths/day or reported deaths on a given day. There is a difference. Reported deaths could be from several days. I would wait until we’re sure that the actual deaths/day are up-to-date. Right now the peak seven day trailing average is 148 on August 11. That’s more than ten days ago, so it’s fairly unlikely to increase much. But that’s only fairly unlikely. On August 7, 2020, the peak was 227 and the peak on January 19, 2021 was 201.
mark bofill,
AFAICT, most of the materiel in question was abandoned by the Afghan military.
mark bofill (Comment #205123): “At what point was the materiel abandoned, was it abandoned by Afgan security forces or U.S. military?”
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That is a good point. It has been reported as “US military equipment” but a lot of that is equipment given to the Afghanis. Not clear how much of our own gear was left behind.
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But as you say, the airfield exit was messed up.
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mark bofill: “The U.S. military was presumably operating under the mistaken premise (at least for a time) that they were leaving the Afgan security forces in power.”
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Except they knew that what happened was at least a possibility, even likely. And it was clearly happening for weeks before the end came. The lack of a contingency plan was not mere incompetence.
Thanks DeWitt.
Thanks Mike.
I’m not sure there were no contingency plans. Is our evidence for [there] being no contingency plans that none appear to have been put into effect?
It still seems to me that timid and incompetent leadership could explain most of, maybe all of, what we’ve seen. There’s that old saying ‘not whether you win or lose but how you place the blame’ that in my experience is uncomfortably accurate in aerospace and defense supplier corporate life. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s prevalent in some sections of our military. Disappointed, but not surprised.
I’ve mentioned before YouTube tendencies to put news in conspicuous places (on Android TV) when it’s politically convenient to do so. For a few days now, the news has been MIA. Even going to the actual news tab, local news is at the top, followed by covid news, followed by live news. National news 4 rows down. Can’t imagine why the national news doesn’t warrant any prime positioning all of a sudden.
The US was in a position to (a) “properly arm” the Afghan army and risk those sophisticated arms falling into the wrong hands, or (b) to not arm them so they would not be able to defend themselves against the Taliban. They appear to have chosen (b) as very little advanced arms were taken over by the Taliban. Small arms and Humvees are not very interesting, but also not nothing. A few airplanes and helicopters were left behind. Overall there wasn’t much AFAICT. What the Afghan army really wanted was air cover, they didn’t get it.
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We couldn’t destroy it because we thought the Afghan army was going to use it, they didn’t. I’m sure there were some exceptions but this appears to be a non-story.
Scary news. A CBS poll finds that 44% think the withdrawal from Afghanistan has gone very badly and 30% think it has gone somewhat badly:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-troop-removal-biden-approval-opinion-poll/
In other words, 30% are somewhat disconnected from reality and 26% are totally disconnected.
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But then, Psaki claims that no Americans are stranded in Afghanistan.
I find the Taliban Iwo Jima propaganda photo to be hilarious, what a troll.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #205125)
You wrote â€Actual deaths/day or reported deaths on a given day. There is a difference. Reported deaths could be from several days. I would wait until we’re sure that the actual deaths/day are up-to-date.â€
Yes, and on August 10 Florida changed the way it reports deaths to CDC. It puts a time delay in reporting and makes today’s numbers less than last years. Sites that stayed consistent in the tabulating show Florida death rate exceeding last year. In a week or so even Governor DeSantis’s own death rate numbers will exceed last years. He went to the same school of public accounting as Governor Cuomo. “Now, Florida is reporting cases by the “case date,†https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article253612503.html
This came to mind…..
“Miracle Max : Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya : What’s that?
Miracle Max : Go through his clothes and look for loose change.â€
The officer who shot and killed the protester on Jan 6th will not be disciplined.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/08/ashli-babbitt-shooting-video-capitol/
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Watch the video. Check out this spectacle of double talk:
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“The investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber,†a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office read.
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Well, OK, that took over 8 months. I’m not very sympathetic for this protestor, but we also have to have standards of justice. One could also reasonably say an officer who had little reason to fear for their life or the life of others just walked up and shot an unarmed protester to death. There are also questions of what other things this officer could have done, like cuffing the person after they got through the window or just the age old beating. Using this standard of justice about 1000 people could have been lawfully shot to death over last summer’s protests.
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In other non-news, no autopsy on Sicknick yet available over 8 months later.
No autopsy, but an official coroner’s summary: IIRC, he died from two strokes in his lower brain, effectively cutting oxygen supply to his brainstem….. leading to rapid death. The death was described as from natural causes. No details of health problems that might have made him susceptible to strokes. Of course they are not going to take back all the monetary rewards for “death in the line of duty”, nor will Pelosi suggest it wasn’t appropriate for him to be placed in the rotunda like a dead president. The reason nobody heard about the true cause of death is the MSM carefully buried the story as soon as it was released.
One detail of full authorization, physicians can now prescribe booster shots for their patients, not allowed under an EUA.
Tom Scharf,
I will wait for a bit more data before getting a booster. It makes perfect sense that a booster would make illness (especially severe illness) less likely, but I think it would be better to have results from the ongoing booster trials to be certain of benefit.
I know, I’m just another senile old guy who misreads the data and panics, or maybe I have been right all along, dead right, and the Peanut Gallery has been wrong, dead wrong.
“Florida’s COVID surge ‘a crisis of unprecedented proportions,’….The state saw 1,486 deaths this week compared to 1,071 the week before. Florida reported an all-time death record, with 1,486 deaths in the past week – nearly 15% above the previous record of 1,296 deaths in a week of January.†https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/08/21/covid-situation-florida-crisis-and-getting-worse/8214050002/
“Hospitals and ICU beds continue filling in Florida as COVID-19 cases keep going up….Close to 17,000 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, with the majority in South Florida. Of those patients, 53 percent are in the ICU.†https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/08/22/hospitals-and-icu-beds-continue-filling-in-florida-as-covid-19-cases-keep-going-up/
“At least 5 South Florida law officers died from COVID-19 over the course of one week†https://www.wesh.com/article/at-least-5-south-florida-officers-died-covid-19-one-week/37366101#
“Florida’s COVID deaths climb as children lead state in positivity rate…. One out of every four COVID-19 infections recorded by the state in the most recent seven-day period were 19 or younger.†https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/08/20/floridas-covid-deaths-climb-as-kids-lead-state-in-positivity-rate/
“Bracing for the worst’ in Florida’s COVID-19 hot zone… As quickly as one COVID patient is discharged, another waits for a bed in northeast Florida.” https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-health-religion-florida-coronavirus-pandemic-2017cf4ba966eee13208d24896d62052
Hey cool, I want to be right too! Team Russell rules.
What are we right about that the peanut gallery is wrong about, exactly?
Russell, If you are having a fit of covid paranoia then I suggest you stay away from the media as it isn’t good for your mental health. If you want covid alarmism then you can you generally find all you want, 24/7.
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Nobody around here has suggested that delta wasn’t going to spread and kill anyone, especially those who choose to go unvaccinated. In fact everyone I am aware of has stated the exact opposite.
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The real question is whether there is anything useful to do about it. Can a lot of the suffering and death be prevented? Yes, by vaccines, but even then delta will spread and cause suffering, just a lot less. Can the suffering and death be prevented in the unvaccinated? They could be * delayed * by strict lockdowns, but ultimately delta and future variants are going to spread and become endemic.
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The UK and Israel show the path we are likely to go down. Israel had lockdowns, masking, and vaccine passports. Check their numbers today. We can’t do the Australia/NZ plans.
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What is your plan?
The covid origins report from our never wrong intelligence community is allegedly due today. My guess is we learn exactly nothing new.
Russell,
We all advised you to stay home. I hope you have.
mark bofill (Comment #205145): “What are we right about that the peanut gallery is wrong about, exactly?”
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My question for Russell is: What are we in the peanut gallery wrong about that you are right about, exactly?
toe-MAY-toe, tah-mahht-toe … :>
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[Edit: I know Jocko is too mas macho for mainstream, but still. I’ll admit to hearing what he’d say as President and being a little ashamed of how we are still bungling Afghanistan. Some highlights:
Sounds better to me than continuing to let the Taliban dictate the terms of the evacuation. Not quite sure why we are being so gentle with them.]
Russell, From the USA today article you cite: “Florida reported an all-time death record, with 1,486 deaths in the past week – nearly 15% above the previous record of 1,296 deaths in a week of January.”
My usual source for this sort of information is worldometers, and this chart (tick the box on the far right below the graph to add the 7-day moving average) shows the recent peak below 200 per day, also below peaks last August and January.
Florida’s Department of Health publishes a weekly report, latest is here. On page 8 there’s a graph of weekly deaths, counted by date of death; it also shows recent deaths lower than Aug 2020 and January 2021.
Comparing that report to the prior week’s, I obtain the same 1486 additional reported deaths that USA Today gives, but that doesn’t support their comparison. Surely the severity is more accurately represented by comparing actual deaths each day, rather than when the deaths get reported.
None of this is to suggest that Florida isn’t having a terrible time of it currently; it is. But that is a careless media report. I know, “if it bleeds, it leads”, and media is biased toward accentuating any disaster. But context is critical to understanding.
Speaking of context, here’s another excerpt from that article: “Florida became the third state in the U.S. to reach 3 million cases of COVID-19, a total surpassed by only 15 countries in the world.” I found this table of country populations, and Florida’s total of 21.5 million people is a total surpassed by only 57 countries in the world. So Florida would rank at about the 75th percentile among those countries, not enviable by any means, but geez, if one gives the “only 15 countries have more cases” statistic, it should be incumbent to also mention where Florida ranks in population relative to other countries. If the intent is to inform, one shouldn’t make readers do additional work to establish context.
[By the metric of cases per million population, Florida exceeds all countries with a larger population, per worldometers. One could say the same thing of California.]
Mark wrote: “Not quite sure why we are being so gentle with them”
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Hostage situation and no one is going to take threats from the Biden administration seriously.
DaveJR,
Thanks. Makes sense.
[Edit: I don’t think Jocko was saying we should issue threats. He was saying ‘immediately take control of the airports’ and more or less kill anyone who stands in our way as we conduct rescue, evac, and destroy equipment. But sure, if we are afraid of a hostage situation and are unwilling to risk that, our submissive posture makes more sense.]
[Edit2: Still shameful though.]
Given cases are around peak in FL now, the lagging death count is likely to rise in the next several weeks so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it reach higher levels.
Thanks Harold. I looked at Worldometer the other day and wondered along the same lines.
Yes. No arguing with that.
HaroldW (Comment #205152) “Surely the severity is more accurately represented by comparing actual deaths each day, rather than when the deaths get reported.â€
On August 10 Florida changed the way it reports deaths to CDC. It puts a time delay in reporting and makes today’s numbers less than last years. In a week or so even Governor DeSantis’s own death rate numbers will exceed last years. “Now, Florida is reporting cases by the “case date,†https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article253612503.html
These sources are comparing apples to apples:
Financial Times, New deaths attributed to Covid-19 in Florida Seven-day rolling average of new deaths https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&areas=bra&areas=gbr&areas=tun&areas=nam&areasRegional=usfl&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=0&startDate=2020-09-01&values=deaths
NYT Tracking Coronavirus in Florida: Latest Map and Case Count
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/florida-covid-cases.html
Lucia, Yes, I’m under lockdown and thank you for your concern. But, yours was the only voice of reason. Everyone else said just the opposite, often in the form of ridicule.
Russell,
In my view, you have been trolling us.
Here : Boy, am I impressed.
and here:
and I have every right to call them on it
Desantis is acting like a short belligerent dictator and a lot of Floridians think so too.
and so on. I have asked you [what] you want of us and you ignored me. It looks to me like you are simply trolling, looking for a fight.
You bet I’m ridiculing you. I don’t know what else you’d expect.
If there is something you’d like, why not say it plainly. Maybe you can be accommodated. What exactly is it you want? Real question.
Florida is reporting cases by the “case date last year, one could access a FDOH database, and it was always frustrating to me that the only reliable date in the record was “case date” — I was more interested in dates of hospitalization or death.
The FT is clearly graphing (for the past couple of months) the difference of Florida’s weekly reports, and before that, a rolling average of daily reports. Not apples-apples. The NYT graph is behind a paywall for me.
The FDOH report, with the graph clearly labelled as “by week of death”, and from a source closest to the information, seems to me to be the best data. It shows approx. 1000 deaths occurred during the week of 8/6-8/12 (which number of course can only increase as reports arrive), but not as many the 1486 deaths (of any date) reported to the FDOH during the week of 8/13-8/19. (And on the FT graph.) That said, for the prior week (7/31-8/5), the last report shows about 1000 deaths, while the penultimate report gave about 650 deaths. An increase for last week to ~1500 deaths is certainly possible given the reporting lags suggested thereby. I’ll wait to see it though.
As for your implication (or the Miami Herald’s) that Gov. DeSantis has put his fingers on the scale, from your article,
I don’t dispute that Gov. DeSantis is a politician and fully capable of biasing reports, but reporting by case date does not seem to be his choice.
HaroldW, The NYT Covid data is not behind a paywall…free for everyone.
mark bofill, I’m fine with your ridicule. It inspires me.
Great, don’t whine about it then.
It does seem that there are two methods of reporting: by date of reporting and date of death. We went through this last year with Sweden. The recent data are incomplete, so the numbers for the last week or two will rise over the next couple weeks. So although they are *now* lower than the peak last year, they will not stay that low.
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The data that Russell is citing and that is shown on the Financial Times site show that the last week in FL had the most covid-attributed deaths of any week so far. Next week will break that record and the week after will likely set yet another record. Ignoring the time lag and relying on data with an even greater time lag does not change the reality. But maybe it allows you to ignore the reality a while longer.
Awaiting what Russell wants to do here beyond updates to his doomscrolling activities … I have no idea what point he is making and he is unresponsive to actual questions trying to figure it out.
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Reporting deaths by “date of death” is useless for real time analysis and only marginally more useful for long term data. One can just accumulate the differences from previous reports to get a death change from previous report. They should just report both so they won’t be accused of trying to hide bad outcomes, it’s not like people aren’t going to figure this out.
An excellent primer on vac issues and response to those issues. Quite a bit on foot notes to document
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https://vitalitymagazine.com/article/resolving-long-haul-covid-and-vaccine-toxicity-neutralizing-the-spike-protein/amp/
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On FDA approval.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/23/with-pfizer-likely-to-get-fda-approval-monday-its-worth-remembering-pfizer-and-moderna-lost-the-clinical-trial-control-group-testing-vaccine-efficacy-and-safety/
mark bofill (Comment #205151),
I have no idea if this Jocko character is right, but he makes the important point that there ARE options if Biden is willing to use them. I have seen other ex-military that small special forces teams could easily get civilians safely to the airport. And there is the point that Lara Logan makes:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/logan-white-house-source-misinformation-when-it-comes-to-afghanistan
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That is a horrible conclusion to arrive at. But I don’t see how to arrive at any other conclusion, other than by shutting one’s eyes, plugging up one’s ears, and turning off one’s mind.
Mike,
You should’ve completed the quote, it’s a great line!
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But I agree that the situation is perplexing, and none of the explanations I can come up with (basically the same one’s Lara Logan outlines) look very palatable.
Ed:
“While the degree to which these negative outcomes of the COVID vaccines can be debated, there is no question that enough disease and death have already occurred to warrant cessation of the administration of these vaccines until additional scientifically-based research can examine the balance between its now clear-cut side effects versus its potential (and still not yet clearly proven) ability to prevent new COVID infections.”
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The strength of the vaccines (now) are that they are able to prevent severe illness and death. They are less effective at preventing spread now that we have delta. The most convincing data is that vaccinated hospitalization rates are much lower than the unvaccinated. This has been shown in multiple countries so far.
mark bofill (Comment #205169): “You should’ve completed the quote, it’s a great line!”
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I cut it short of that because there are lots of things that we could do short of bombing them into the stone age.
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It’s like we are told that there are just three options:
(1) What we are doing. Unpleasant.
(2) Staying there forever. Intolerable.
(3) Bombing Afghanistan into the stone age. Inhuman.
So it is “obvious” that we just have to accept the unpleasant. But that is totally bogus.
The exit from Afghanistan was incompetently managed. One can agree with the decision to exit Afghanistan and simultaneously see it was very badly handled and think that people should be held accountable for bungling it.
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It can still be mostly fixed in the broader view, just get everyone out who wants to get out. Confidence in “leadership” will take a rightful hit. It can also go completely sideways if the Taliban choose to want this path.
Fair enough.
There *are* lots of options. It sucks IMO that we are taking such a passive role. I hope it all works out.
Mike M.,
False dilemma’s, or in this case a false trilemma, are very common in political discourse. Once upon a time, logic and rhetoric were parts of the classic Trivium of Plato (something he actually got right) along with grammar. But teaching it now would probably be called racist. Besides, politicians would have to work a lot harder if the populace were better educated.
The Bahamas now requires everyone (crew and passengers) on the ship to be vaccinated in order to stop at one of their ports. That will effectively end the cruise line vaccine ban by Florida.
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The CDC says high risk people should not go on cruises, seeing as the median cruise age is over 60 that is going to be a bit of a dent in business.
Tom Scharf,
“The CDC says high risk people should not go on cruises, seeing as the median cruise age is over 60 that is going to be a bit of a dent in business.”
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Before covid, I never was remotely interested in cruises, so the industry going down the drain is pretty much irrelevant for me. Why would I ever want to be trapped on a 1000 foot boat with 2500 of my closest friends…. mostly drunk? I wouldn’t. It is for me a horror show. My many Bahamian cruises were on my own 40 ft boat, and I anchored mainly at uninhabited islands, and stayed at a few very small inhabited islands.
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If curise companies imagine masking and social distancing are going to fly on curies, then they are delusional. Even if passengers are limited to the fully vaccinated, people will carry covid onto the ship, and there will be cases of on-ship spread. IMO, the cruise lines are toast. Their only hope is interesting younger people who are at minimal covid rusk. Difficult.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #205175): “False dilemma’s, or in this case a false trilemma, are very common in political discourse.”
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Indeed. And many of Biden’s critics are using the same false dichotomy, saying that the problem is that we withdrew, not how it was done.
Mark wrote: “Not quite sure why we are being so gentle with themâ€
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Because they are gentle lovable people. Did you see the picture with the ice cream cones?
Ed Forbes,
I know several people who were in the Pfizer vaccine trial. There was no way in hell that they were going to be able to keep the placebo arm of the trial in place after the EUA was issued. The author of that article is apparently a complete idiot. Everyone in the trial was going to leave the trial and get vaccinated if Pfizer didn’t unblind the participants. That would mean that Pfizer wouldn’t get data even from the vaccinated arm.
One of my friends even had a letter to the editor published in the WSJ on the subject and made the front page (above the fold) of the local paper twice with full color photographs. The first time was about the immorality of trying to convince people to risk serious illness or death by remaining unvaccinated for two years. The second time was when he did get vaccinated as he was in the placebo arm and was eligible for vaccination early because he was over 70.
Mike,
Yup. They are a bunch of real sweethearts.
mark bofill,
When you place modern weapons in the hands of religious fanatics who have all the cultural and legal sensibilities of the 8th century, bad things will always happen. At least they don’t *always* throw homosexuals from rooftops (too 6th century). Instead they sometimes topple masonry walls on them…. surely a more painful means of killing them. I sure hope the geniuses at the State Department keep issuing those strong statements threatening the Taliban with international disapproval…. that has to motivate them to behave like a bunch of Brits.
From today’s Best of the Web column in the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-collapsing-reputation-11629840935?mod=opinion_lead_pos11
Biden’s head is barely above water on his handling of COVID too barely at 50%.
Oh, and the “centrist” Democrats have folded on the infrastructure and budget outline bills right on schedule. Centrist Democrat and Moderate Democrat are oxymorons.
If people want to live under Taliban rule, then so be it. They have had plenty of opportunity to change their path. It would seem they just prefer their antiquated tribal society. That should be fine with everyone, except it leaves them vulnerable to the invading hoards who show up regularly. I think it would be easy to be cynical if you were an Afghan citizen.
Tom Scharf (Comment #205191): “If people want to live under Taliban rule, then so be it. They have had plenty of opportunity to change their path.”
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Not quite true. Afghanistan had a reasonably stable constitutional monarchy prior to the early 70s. After the Taliban were kicked out, most Afghanis seem to have wanted their king back. But we said no, they had to have a western style democracy, with a secular government, women’s lib, no poppy farming, generally Western values. In other words, we treated them like a colony that had to do things our way. Not hard to see why that did not engender much real loyalty from most Afghanis.
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Azar Shah (I hope I got that right) was working to gradually modernize the country before he was deposed. Had we allowed him back on his throne, he could have been a unifying figure. Had we allowed the Afghanis to modernize at a pace they were comfortable with, it is possible that a stable government could have resulted. Instead we forced them into a choice between the West and the Taliban. Not much of a choice, once we abandoned the supporters of the West.
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Addition: Not sure why Azar Shah lost his throne. Seems to have been a combination of upsetting the most conservative mullahs and not suppressing those who wanted power for themselves.
From New York magazine:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/the-science-of-masking-kids-at-school-remains-uncertain.html
This is from a CDC study on a large cohort in Georgia. Masking teachers and staff did reduce transmission, as did improving ventilation. Masking students, OTOH, made no difference. Yet the CDC issued guidelines that kids should wear masks. Follow the science indeed.
DeWitt Payne, strange that studies on IVM are required be double blind using placebo to be evaluated and tested to be accepted where the vaccine does not.
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The CDC and the WHO are fully captured by the major drug companies. Anyone taking their pronouncements at face value without independent review is being foolish.
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The position of the CDC on natural immunity with antibodies is particularly humorous. My doctor at Kaiser refused to order an antibody test for COVID for me as the antibody test for COVID is against CDC guidelines. Per the CDC, there’s no long term studies confirming immunity to COVID by prior infection, so a positive COVID antibody test does not relieve the directive to be vaccinated. As such, per my doctor, Kaiser will not give tests for COVID antibody.
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Turns biological immunity knowledge upside down.
The vaccine was double blind until the EUA was approved so most of the important info was gotten through that method. Then a portion of the placebo participants wisely chose to leave the study to get vaccinated. Some chose to stay but I don’t know what portion that was. So the long term safety part of the trial has less double blind participants. It should be noted that some people in the trial knew they were getting a vaccine because they had a reaction to the shot.
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Clearly there are now hundreds of millions of people to study for long term data in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, it just isn’t scientifically rigorous.
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I think proof of prior infection should be the same as vaccinated at this point. I think the burden should be on the CDC to prove they are different instead of the other way around. This is an obvious failure on their part.
Ed Forbes
I don’t know why you think the tests on the vaccines were not required to be double blinded. The test on vaccines were double blind as required. Of course they become unblinded before running statistic. You can’t run the statistics without unblinding! So this is precisely what is required.
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The difficulty with the Ivermectin studies generally go beyond not being double blind. They are generally also not randomized. Some used two proposed prophelactics–ivermectin and iota-carrageenan nasal spray. So you can’t untangle the effect of one from the other. (Iota carrageenan nasal spray is being tested by itself. There are meta-analyses of multiple studies on colds that suggest it’s a good antiviral for respiratory infection influenza, rhino-virus and the “cold” version of corona virus.)
lucia (Comment #205197): “Of course they become unblinded before running statistic. You can’t run the statistics without unblinding! So this is precisely what is required.”
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That is not correct. Double blind means that neither doctors nor subjects know who is in which group. Running the stats, which is done at multiple intervals, does not change that. The studies were supposed to remain double blind for two years. That was not done.
Mike M.,
Of course it wasn’t done. An EUA was always going to happen for COVID if the vaccine was effective. Waiting for two years would have resulted in many more serious consequences and deaths. Anyone who counted on participants taking the chance that they were in the placebo arm and not getting vaccinated after the EUA is issued is more than a few cards short of a full deck.
My understanding is that Moderna planned to make the vaccine available to the placebo arm as soon as an EUA was issued. Pfizer was forced to unblind for vaccination eligibles by an easily predictable participant revolt. I can’t imagine anyone who would volunteer for the vaccine trial and then would chance staying in the placebo arm for the relative pittance they were being paid. The people who volunteered for the trials were not anti-vaxxers. Quite the opposite.
Using the excuse that the placebo arm was not maintained for two years to not get vaccinated is not rational, IMO. It’s right up there with the idea that the vaccines contained microchips. How can people who carry active cellphones be worried that they will be tracked by microchips in a vaccine. They’re already being tracked with their phone.
And in other news, Cuomo has been stripped of his Emmy for his televised COVID press conferences.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/scrubbing-andrew-cuomo-emmy-award-11629839528?mod=hp_opin_pos_1
Down the memory hole, as it were.
DeWitt: “ It’s right up there with the idea that the vaccines contained microchips. How can people who carry active cellphones be worried that they will be tracked by microchips in a vaccine. They’re already being tracked with their phoneâ€.
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You must really enjoy kicking straw men. Or you are just trolling.
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Somehow you relate one’s complaints that the CDC treats VERY profitable vaccine MUCH differently than studies on VERY unprofitable IVM and complaints that antibodies from prior exposure does not relive one from the vaccine requirements as somehow suggesting one must also support some other undiscussed issue.
MikeM
The statisticians need to know which results correspond to which group. So there is obviously unblinding to that extent.
So your objection is the patients and doctors learned. Sure. This doesn’t bother me at all.
But your previous concern was about the Ivermectin studies beign required to be blinded while the vaccines were not. Well, the IVC studies weren’t even blinded before the statistics on efficacy most IVC were neither blinded nor random in the first period. Presumably you can see that lack of blinding (and worse– randomness) during the initial period on efficacy is a big problem. Or not. But if you can’t that doesn’t mean it’s not a big problem. That means you are missing something.
DeWitt
Early on, in comments here, I said one of the reasons I wouldn’t participate in a vaccine trial is I thought they would want me to promise to remain blinded and not get a vaccine after the vaccine passed UEA. I would not make that promise and if I made it I would break it.
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It would be totally unethical to ask people to do that.
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The equivalent in Ivermectin studies would be to have a group promise not to take Ivermectin after it was proven to work and got an emergency authorization. That might be fine in some circumstances. But if it works, and no vaccine was available no one would promise to not take it once it was shown to work and was approved.
Ed Forbes
They haven’t treatred these different. Ivermectic studies have not pass the hurdle vaccine passed before the UEA.
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I have no idea how the issue of immunity from prior infection fits in this discussion. That has nothing to do with the FDA requirements for approving a drug or treatment.
Tom
I tend to agree.
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But I also need to point out this has nothing to do with FDA requirements for drug approval. Obviously, actually getting sick isn’t something the FDA regulates. It’s not a “treatment”.
lucia (Comment #205203): “But your previous concern was about the Ivermectin studies beign required to be blinded while the vaccines were not.”
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Mistaken identity.
Sorry,
Yeah. That was Ed Forbes’s concern. 🙂
Conference paper only but doesnt good for ivermectin.
https://dcricollab.dcri.duke.edu/sites/NIHKR/KR/GR-Slides-08-06-21.pdf
Talk here: https://rethinkingclinicaltrials.org/news/august-6-2021-early-treatment-of-covid-19-with-repurposed-therapies-the-together-adaptive-platform-trial-edward-mills-phd-frcp/
On the other hand.. fluvoxamine??!
Phil Schadden,
Fluvoxamine is a treatment for anxiety, depression, and stress.
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The effect looks real enough… about 30-35% fewer serious outcomes. But I wonder: are people who are more relaxed about their covid infection more likely to avoid serious complications? (Stress is bad for your health!) No way to tell from the study. The drug does have some unpleasant side effects.
I have a feeling long covid and long term stress are intermingled.
Looks like the Afghanistan situation just went sideways. Multiple suicide bombers at the airport in the crowd.
Tom,
Yeah. I’m still following the Afganistan train wreck, but I’ve quit remarking on it. What is there to say really that isn’t obvious (and depressing), is how I view it. Other people are free to follow their own opinions regarding this of course.
[Edit: Except for this. Gods, why impeach Biden! I hope they don’t. Putting VP Harris in the drivers seat isn’t going to improve anything.]
[Edit2: Like I said. Obvious and depressing. Shrug]
500 interpreters managed to get into Hamid Karzai airport to be flown to Uganda. The State Department kicked them out of the airport.
Meanwhile, Taliban have declared that global warming is a serious problem that they will work with other countries to help combat.
It didn’t quite work for Harvey Weinstein, but he only went against the NRA.
The censors are unsurprisingly coming for Reddit, so far they are resisting. Good luck.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/reddit-resists-banning-pandemic-misinformation-allows-vaccine-dissent/
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Reddit: “We appreciate that not everyone agrees with the current approach to getting us all through the pandemic, and some are still wary of vaccinations. Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy. Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate. This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus. This includes conversations that criticize those that disagree with the majority opinion. This includes protests that criticize or object to our decisions on which communities to ban from the platform.”
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“When it comes to COVID-19 specifically, what we know and what are the current best practices from authoritative sources, like the CDC, evolve continuously with new learnings. Given the rapid state of change, we believe it is best to enable communities to engage in debate and dissent, and for us to link to the CDC wherever appropriate. While we believe the CDC is the best and most up to date source of information regarding COVID-19, disagreeing with them is not against our policies.”
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The avowed members of the information ministry are “disappointed” in Reddit’s response. Never saw that coming, ha ha.
New Zealand’s outbreak continues to grow, up to 210 cases in about a week. 62 cases on Wed. Not sure how optimistic I would be at this point but it is still possible it could be suppressed. Australia is basically over with 1000 cases/day recently. They report similar hospitalization numbers: “Of 116 people in intensive care in NSW, 102 are not vaccinated.”. Australia has about 25% of it’s population vaccinated but there is no breakdown on age groups so the IC number is a bit muddy.
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Both of these places are vaccinating at a much higher rate than the covid cases so they should reach vaccination saturation before the outbreak could cause max damage. I think they held on just long enough.
Will Reddit consider applying the same thinking to global warming?
Tom, in the March 2020 outbreak, it took 12 days after hard lockdown for daily case no.s peak. Modellers initially said 8-10 days after this lockdown for peak, but they were working of R=3 or 4, not 6. Previous day was 62, yesterday was 68, so maybe rate of increase is slowing down? Still seeing that cases either infected pre-lockdown or within bubbles. To me, it is cause for optimism. Vaccinating at 1.5% population per day, but at that rate will be very low on vaccine by end of September. Fortunately, big deliveries expected in October.
Phil Scadden (Comment #205225): “in the March 2020 outbreak, it took 12 days after hard lockdown for daily case no.s peak.”
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How many cases then compared to this outbreak?
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I am very skeptical of the ability of a lockdown to stop spread, but I can see how it might be help to contact tracers.
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Has NZ released data on the percentage of cases that could be traced? I saw data from Singapore that was quite poor, under 50% if memory serves.
Now suicide bombers are disrupting evacuation from Kabul…. this is really not going well. Although in fairness, you can expect little more from someone who has already been descending into dementia for 3 or 4 years. Most Alzheimers patients are unable to conduct themselves in anything like a normal fashion by 5 to 6 years after the onset of symptoms. Joe probably has year or two left before he has to be replaced. Diapers will be needed few years later.
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Kamala? Ugg. Fortunately, there is a good chance Republicans will take control of at least the House, so the damage an imbecile like Kamala can do should be limited.
Mike – NZ (and Australia) have repeatedly eliminated covid incursions with lockdowns. (and we know that they are new incursions from genome sequencing). Apr 2020 peaked at 146 cases per day. The current incursion is noticable for its speed (much higher R), no. of contacts affected (largely in under 30s, and in Pacifika communities, particularly Samoan with a large church involved), and much larger no. of “places of interest”. Statistics on contact tracing dont seem to be readily available but are quoted in media from time to time. The standard they work to is 80% within 48 hours. In the August 2020 Auckland outbreak, contact tracers went door to door to track down few remaining contacts. Since mid-2020, it has also been practice to move infected individuals and their household contacts to quarantine facilities. This can halt household transmission, but it also means they dont have worry about getting food, going for medical etc.
Just announced. 70 cases today, all in Auckland. Cabinet decision on whether to reduce levels for rest or parts of rest of country expected in a couple of hours. Not so good news is that fully vaccinated carer worked 2 shifts in a dementia unit while unknowingly infectious (that is 2 breakthrough infections at least). No sign of spread to patients yet.
SteveF
It’s looking like Biden may have turned a “cold” war into a “hot” war. I guess we’ll see. . .
The situation is bad, but sometimes you just have to smile
How’s this for a headline
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Vladimir Putin Rejects Military Mission into Afghanistan: ‘We Learned Our Lesson’
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https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/08/25/vladimir-putin-rejects-military-mission-into-afghanistan-we-learned-our-lesson/
“ The public can’t agree on the data behind Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, masks, lockdowns, or vaccinations.
And don’t get me started on climate change.
It’s getting easier to follow the science because we think it points in every direction at the same time.†Scott Adams
… and let me add… We can’t even agree on how to count a stack of dead bodies.
NY can’t agree on how to count, the new NY governor just revised their death count up 12,000 from the previous Cuomo coverup. Good move by her.
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Otherwise its not hard to count the dead, the only factor is “dying with covid” versus “dying from covid” which is around 10% to 20% of the total but is quite murky and not officially tracked.
In the least surprising thing to happen this week, the SC slapped down Biden’s eviction ban.
Tom Scharf there is also counting by date recorded or date of death. DeSantis changed midstream.
That is just a counting method. not hiding any bodies per se. I think FL should just release daily counts. The FL dashboard was showing by date of death for at least the last 6 months or so. It’s useless so I stopped using it. People can easily derive the death counts by differencing which is what I suppose everyone but FL is doing.
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FL does look like it has peaked, we shall see what happens over the next month. The UK peaked but then has popped back up with a sustained high case rate, deaths are still relatively low there. Israel is also in a surge. Not encouraging, it’s a possible sign that delta won’t go away even with very high levels of population (partial) immunity.
Israel study on natural immunity vs vaccinated immunity comparison to date. I can’t judge the quality here.
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Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1
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“SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected”
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“This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.”
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Wow, we will see if that holds up. That seems a bit high to not have been noticed before.
Tom Scharf (Comment #205246), I have no training in these matters but I am not ready to say Florida has reached its peak in cases for three reasons. 1. The test % positive was still increasing [by a little] at the last accounting [last Friday]. I know it’s a bogus number but the change curve [and the rate of change] seems like a good tool for forecasting. 2. Schools and universities have just opened and most are obeying the Governor’s order about no mask mandates. 3. Football season is starting. They really pack ’em in every week at the stadia in Florida. [both high school and college]. I have no prediction at this time.
Tom wrote: “In the least surprising thing to happen this week, the SC slapped down Biden’s eviction ban.”
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In the next least surprising thing to happen, I suspect it won’t make any difference. The rule of law is already broken and this is a great excuse to put another nail in the coffin.
DaveJR (Comment #205249): “I suspect it won’t make any difference. The rule of law is already broken and this is a great excuse to put another nail in the coffin.”
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But what can the administration do about it? The decision does not require them to do anything. So if a landlord evicts a tenant, there is no way to stop it.