Senator Grassley, 87, tested positive for COVID…
…but never had a symptom, and the quarantine period has passed.
Interesting. Just another reminder that, even for the very elderly who definitely are at much greater risk of dying from COVID than people of other age groups, a positive COVID test is not a death sentence for the majority nor is it necessarily even experienced as a serious illness.
The rate for the very elderly goes down dramatically if they are not in nursing homes or very, very ill.
But don’t you dare eat outside.
Some ‘mainstream’ reporter tweeted out the other all the people around Trump that have tested positive and it was about 20 I believe with such a grave worried tone. Somebody responded with basically ‘And they are all fine whether young, old, fat, skinny, hospitalized or not they are all fine’.
Testing positive at this point means almost nothing.
Mr Edit Function taking the day off?
Was it a false positive? I’ve learned from the doctors on Laura Ingraham’s show that the PCR test is too prone to false positives because they do the cycle 45 times – it appears that 34 cycles would be less prone to false positives. Who knows why they insist on the higher number? Like much else about the response to COVID-19, there are more questions than answers.
Whatever it is, thank goodness for Senator Grassley’s recovery. No word about whether he’s been taking Vitamin D and Zinc. (Inquiring minds would like to know.) He and I are the same age. I get the impression that he’s in better health than I am. So, there’s that. Still, if I get infected, I’d like to think I could survive as well as he. 🙂
J.J.,
‘Who knows why they insist on the higher number?’
Ooh, ooh, ooh, I know, I know!!!
The more cases, case, cases they get the more power they can wield and shape society to their liking.
Never let a good crisis go to waste!
Griffin and J.J.:
Isn’t it great (not) that we are now getting reminders from King Jay’s COVID minions to enable their snooping on our cell phones? I’m not interested in cooperating with the crown in Olympia at all, ever.
om,
I will not be doing that. Another reason to leave my phone in the car whenever possible when out in public.
om, Griffin,
Don’t get the app.
Don’t be a sap.
The app will get you brownie points.
As long as you don’t go in any eating joints.
King Jay wants your loyalty.
The better to confirm his royalty.
Science is the guide that he will follow,
Even though his science facts ring quite hollow.
King Jay is a man so weirdly strange,
He even believes in man made climate change. 🙂
J.J.
🙂 🙂 😉
JJ and Griffin….more than likely Grassley was a victim of a false positive PCR. Florida announced this week that all PCR reports from all labs must also have the number of PCR cycles used. Maybe we will finally have some solid information on which to judge “cases”. I have no doubt we are in a 3rd wave with hospitalizations up, but I doubt it’s 4.5x the cases we saw in June-July. The FDA standard is around 25, and even His Lordship Fauci said anything over 30 will yield too many false positives.
Has anyone assembled skeptic statistics on Covid?
Like what would the death numbers look like if they excluded those who died of something else or would have died in six months anyway?
I’ve read that Covid is 3-6 times more lethal than flu, therefore the two are not comparable. Here’s Johns Hopkins saying that it’s 5x worse.
_______________________________________________
What would you say to someone who insists to you that COVID-19 is “just the flu”?
Since December 2019, COVID-19 has killed more people in the U.S. than influenza has in the last five years.
Influenza is a significant burden on the population, but COVID-19 has had a vastly larger effect.
https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/no-covid-19-is-not-the-flu.html
_______________________________________________
Is a factor of 5x vastly larger? I question the adverb! It seems to me “vastly” would imply at least 10x.
If the death rate is overstated by a factor of two for the reasons above, that would mean that Covid is 2.5x worse than the flu. Is that still “vastly larger”?
At what point do we say, well, it is worse than the flu but we’re not going to lockdown our way of life with all the subsequent economic, medical, psychological damages.
Mostly such questions are not even asked.
My mom, who is 85, recently tested “positive” while she was in the hospital recovering from a mild stroke. She had no symptoms, ever.
When I first heard about it I asked the nurse if they were going to do a follow-up test to see if it was a false positive. Response? “No, she’s positive.”
Okie-dokie! She had to test again 10 days later (negative) and then another 5 (also negative) before she could move into assisted living. Never had any symptoms at all.
huxley,
Apparently Colorado and North Dakota are the only two states that report deaths separately as ‘from’ Covid and ‘with’ Covid.
Alex Berenson put out a thread about this today.
http://www.twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1337034907906928641
Also the site Rational Ground is very good for information from a non hysterical point of view.
gwynmir,
And I bet your mom is called a Covid hospitalization and if she were to pass away she would be a Covid death.
San Diego County is reporting 39 flu cases this year vs. 20,000 last year. The health department is crediting masks for this. Masks magically snuff out the flu but Covid ‘cases’ rise.
Honestly these people are beyond parody at this point.
Griffin and Gwynmir:
It is amazing what you don’t see if you don’t look. Nothing to see, move along, and keep that mask on.
The mortality rate for people over 75 is something like 11%. It’s hard to guage with the false positives. But even with the false positives, a large percentage of that 11% are people with serious co-morbidities. So we’ll leave it at 11%.
That means 89 PERCENT OF PEOPLE OVER 75 RECOVER!!!!
The regular stats for people over 85: Approximately 377 people pretty 100,00 die of pneumonia. The NYT back in July said that 17 pretty 100,000 people over the age of 85 was hospitalized with Covid.
A friend of mine in his mid-eighties tested positive. His major symptom was tiredness and sleeping a lot… for two days. Thats it… He’s fine now.
Stop the effing testing.
Positive tests are “cases”, not illnesses. With many false positives.
Why was 87 year-old Grassley tested? He was asymptomatic and stayed so.
Test only the ill who have COVID-like symptoms.
Stop the economic, totalitarian ruin of the USA.
Cicero,
As the joke goes COVID is the plague so serious most only know they have it after being tested.
Ironically I just got off the phone with our 27 year old son, who lives in Manhattan. He started having trouble getting up in the morning, and having nasal congestion, three days ago. Just found out he tested positive for the ‘Rona.
Oy. I understand that it’s not a dangerous disease for an otherwise healthy 27 year old but it’s different when it’s your baby.
So, excellent news about Grassley and hope it bodes well for our kid’s recovery too.
I wish him well hand hope he recovers.
Best of luck to your son, RigelDog!
gwynmir,
Sorry to read your mother has been through such difficulty and uncertainty. I hope she is in a safe place soon!
This bears repeating;
“Doctor gets heated during Senate testimony — ‘We have a cheap drug that works miracles on Covid!’”
https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/doctor-gets-heated-during-senate-testimony-we-have-a-cheap-drug-that-works-miracles-on-covid/
The Democrats now have the blood of tens of thousands of death’s upon their hands.
Of course, that pales when compared to the 55+ Million prebirth deaths upon their hands.
But even that pales to the 100+ MILLION deaths upon the hands of advocates of leftist ideologies.
When will humanity awaken to the death cult within its midst?
RigelDog:
Here’s hoping that your son sails through and recovers quickly and uneventfully.
Y’all may find this of interest — not directly related (though about Covid).
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64674.html
It’s the third of three pieces, but stands alone. Basically, it’s about what you can really do to avoid it and/or reduce the spread in general.
It’s particularly interesting because we’re apparently on the virge of being able to put these kinds of things into place in the home (you already can, but they are expensive right now, starting ca. $1200)…. there are UV LEDs which soon should be available for a much lower price which can do the same job.
And this is not only relevant to CV, but also to the flu and even general bacterial infections…
Chicago Boyz is an excellent multi-blogger site… my #2 goto site after Neo. 😉
}}} If the death rate is overstated by a factor of two for the reasons above, that would mean that Covid is 2.5x worse than the flu. Is that still “vastly larger”?
At what point do we say, well, it is worse than the flu but we’re not going to lockdown our way of life with all the subsequent economic, medical, psychological damages.
Mostly such questions are not even asked.
Huxley, to compare it to minor flus is pandering to the hysterical.
The proper response would be to ask how it compared to past “severe” flus — short, of course, of the Spanish Flu.
There have been two prior pandemics since the Spanish Flu — 1957 and 1968.
If you adjust for population increase, the death count (based on rate-vs-pop increase) for those two would be 206k and 165k. So it is, admittedly, worse than either of those. But not even 2x as large yet, as either.
Not only were there no “lockdowns” or “mask mandates” for either of those, there was a really really HUGE outdoor party/concert held in the middle of the lesser of the two…. perhaps you’ve heard of it? It was named after a nearby town in NY state, called “Woodstock”.
The current OVERreaction is nothing short of HYSTERIA. No other word should be applied.
There’s a meme floating around, a pic of Yul Brenner, scowling at the camera:
“The pharaoh hearing about your response to only one plague…”
You are right about hysteria. Here is information on the covid death rate.
https://swprs.org/why-covid-19-is-a-strange-pandemic/
Hey, it may be a false positive result. My mother in law just tested positive 8 days ago. No symptoms whatsoever. Of course, the front desk at her retirement complex said she’s asymptomatic. We told them probably a false positive, they asked ‘like with a pregnancy test?’ We said yes. They know better.
Ditto our 65-ish neighbor with a couple of scary preconditions, who tested positive twice but remains completely asymptomatic. His wife tests negative. With two positive tests, I suppose the odds of a true false positive are slight, but I don’t know how many replication cycles it took to get the “positive” result. As I understand it, with cycles in the range of 40-45, what’s being detected is almost certainly dead virus fragments. Nevertheless, he’s quarantining just in case.
gwynmir wrote:
“My mom, who is 85, recently tested “positive” while she was in the hospital recovering from a mild stroke.”
Why was she hospitalized if the stroke was mild?
Hospitals are dangerous places unless and if you really, really need to be there.
I speak as an MD.
gwynmir:
Hope she is feeling better!
gwynmir:
Hope she makes a quick recovery.
I suspect that I had a mild case of da Rona. I had what seemed like an allergy attach, sneezing, watery eyes. Felt fine otherwise until I developed a fever of 100 for 3 days running. I was tired, tired, tired, with little appetite for food that tasted funny when I did eat. No cough, no sore throat. Fever left, appetite returned with normal taste function. I still get tired after all the Christmas decorating I’ve been doing and catching up on laundry, cleaning, etc. I did not get tested but may get an antibody test if I don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for it. No big deal for this 73 year-old. My sister had the same symptoms back in March. Her husband had no symptoms, ever, yet tested positive for the antibodies.
Oh yeah. Since February,I had been taking extra Vit C, Vit D3, zinc, sambucca, and Pepcid, which obviously didn’t prevent my sickness but may have helped my symptoms from getting worse.
Meemsie:
Feel better soon!
Thank you everyone, for the well-wishes for my mom!
She is in the assisted living place now, and, interesting fact:
Her hospital bed where she is now doesn’t have side rails, and she was worried. Assisted living place doesn’t allow them because they are dangerous.
If that’s the case, what the heck are they doing in hospitals?
Cicero: she didn’t know she’d had a stroke, but afterwards, she fell and couldn’t get up. When the EMTs came with their captain, he said he thought my mom should be tested in case she’d had a concussion or something. So they took her to the hospital where after an MRI they determined she’d had the mild stroke.
She doesn’t have much use of her left hand or foot so can’t really do everything on her own, and they wouldn’t release her unless she had some sort of help.
My step-dad is 89 and needs help getting around, which my mom did, so that was out.
She was supposed to get out of the hospital after a few days, when they found the assisted living place, but then, wonder of wonders, she tested positive for Covid! So, she had to go through the whole process outlined above.
This was all in the state of Oregon. She lives in a Portland suburb.
Cicero, one more thing…my mom never met a cold or mild symptom she didn’t go to the doctor for.. The number of surgeries she has had in her life, along with doctor visits is legion.
I’m almost the opposite, which isn’t necessarily good, either!
“Since February,I had been taking extra Vit C, Vit D3, zinc, sambucca, and Pepcid, which obviously didn’t prevent my sickness but may have helped my symptoms from getting worse.” – Meemsie
I am doing the C & D3, along with regular supplements including calcium, but it may be worthwhile for you to read this about the effects on people already prone to having kidney stones.
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/12/zinc-supplements-and-kidney-stones.html
(Peter Grant’s blog has been linked by others here for more ideological reasons. His posts are a good read, most of the time.)
This one’s for Neo especially.
https://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/12/Screen-Shot-2020-11-29-at-9.50.55-AM.png?w=1180&ssl=1
Well, since Elon Musk reportedly had FOUR successive tests
on the same day (Nov 12th or 13th as I recall) and had two positive results and two negative results, Grassley’s was probably a false positive as well.
– – – –
Somebody -Ace? Instapundit?- had a cute cartoon ref covid:
First panel: “Why are rates of influenza and pneumonia so low?”
Second panel: “Because people are wearing masks and doing the social distancing thing.”
Third panel: “But then why are so many people sick with covid?”
Fourth panel: “Because people aren’t wearing their masks and
practicing social dis . . . Oh, wait . . .”