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Home » The return of the mask: the CDC and the Biden administration keep saying to follow the science. But what science?

The return of the mask: the CDC and the Biden administration keep saying to follow the science. But what science?

The New Neo Posted on by

During the Trump administration, the left demanded the most rigorous of clinical trials and controls before any possible treatment that the right – and Trump in particular – might have suggested was possibly helpful in fighting COVID. And yet this is the situation today:

The nation’s top infectious disease expert [Fauci] says the Indian ‘Delta’ Covid variant has the same viral levels in vaccinated people who have breakthrough infections as in those who are unvaccinated…

But the CDC has yet to publicly share new research on Delta transmission among the vaccinated that would back up its new mask guidance and outside experts are calling for the agency to show them the data.

Data? You don’t need no steenking data from us. We’re the CDC! We’ll show it to you someday:

A citation in the updated masking guidance simply reads, ‘CDC COVID-19 Response Team, unpublished data, 2021.’

These data come from investigations of recent Delta-caused outbreaks, in which researchers compared infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated people, according to the Washington Post.

The findings will be ‘published imminently’ per reporting from The Post.

Some scientists – actual, bona fide scientists – would like to check it out rather than take it on faith:

They’re making a claim that people with delta who are vaccinated and unvaccinated have similar levels of viral load, but nobody knows what that means,’ Dr Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Post.

‘It’s meaningless unless we see the data.’

Other experts aren’t convinced that a higher viral load actually leads to Delta’s transmission among vaccinated people.

There’s a whole chain of assumptions here by the CDC. The first is that the CDC’s data, whatever it is, holds up and that with the Delta strain the vaccinated and unvaccinated who get COVID have the same viral load. The second is that with Delta the nasal viral load really does reliably determine transmissibility, and that this means that both groups are equally likely to spread the disease to others. The third is that masking would significantly protect from such spreading with Delta. The fourth is that the Delta variant will cause a rise in serious cases and deaths and not just in cases and/or positive test results. The fifth is that there are a very significant number of breakthrough COVID cases in the vaccinated in this country, enough to justify requiring their masking.

I’m probably leaving out a few assumptions, but you get the idea.

More:

‘I feel like nasal viral load is one part of a lot of other parts’ that determine how infectious a person is, biostatistician Natalie Dean told The Post.

Dean added that she thinks other important factors may be how much virus is present in a patient’s throat or lungs…

…[T]he CDC is not tracking less-severe breakthrough infections. In May, the agency switched its strategy to only investigate and report those infections that cause hospitalization or death

Scientists have critiqued this move for leaving the U.S. without crucial data to monitor the cases caused by Delta and other variants.

Apparently this recent “masks even for the vaccinated” proclamation was also based on a study from India that was initially rejected by a Nature Portfolio Journal and is currently out for “revision”:

The study in question from researchers in India analyzed vaccine breakthrough in over 100 healthcare workers and claims to show that a COVID-19 Delta variant infection generates a higher viral load in comparison to other variants.

Despite no mention in the study of viral loads from the variant against unvaccinated individuals, the CDC cited it in yesterday’s updated brief as evidence that the Delta variant is transmissible from a vaccinated individual with a breakthrough infection.

This study does not compare vaccinated viral loads to unvaccinated viral loads; it compares Delta viral loads to viral loads in other variants and finds them to be higher. And the vaccination involved in India is AstraZeneca, not used in the US and known to be less effective against COVID than Pfizer and Moderna, which are used here. In addition, the abstract to the article says that “severe disease in fully vaccinated HCW [health care workers] was rare.” So, even if ultimately approved for publication, the relevance of this article to the situation here is highly suspect.

I can’t say exactly where I think the threshold should lie for a recommendation for restrictions like this, but I can say that I don’t think it has been met in this case at all. And on these slender reeds they base a recommendation for the vaccinated to mask up in places experiencing an upswing. Not only that, but a lot of people are taking this to mean that vaccines “don’t work,” which discourages vaccination rather than encouraging it.

What’s going on? Is it just that the authorities are in love with the sound of their own authoritative voices, addicted to restricting liberty and to telling people what to do? And to feeling oh-so-virtuous as they make their proclamations and get people accustomed to the habit of obedience? I think it’s at least partly that. But I think another reason is that they are terrified that the numbers will go up under their watch, and that it will have negative political repercussions for their side. Of course, all this back and forth, masking and unmasking and masking again, will almost certainly have negative political repercussions for them, too.

Comments

The return of the mask: the CDC and the Biden administration keep saying to follow the science. But <i>what</i> science? — 82 Comments

  1. Seeing more people wearing mask in East Texas. I am not wearing mask myself but have cut back on some activities . And taking more zinc again.

  2. I have a solution for the reopening of schools. Tell teachers to get vaccinated and leave kids alone. If the vaccine works, those vaccinated should have no risk. Masks are theater.

  3. Just to recap: studies have found that zinc has been found to be far more effective when taken together with HCQ or Quercetin.
    Some recommend also taking Azithromycin with the above pair (zinc+HCQ or zinc+quercetin).

  4. I’ve had Covid and been fully vaccinated.

    I will continue to wear a mask in medical settings but everywhere else nope. If confronted I will make a case by case decision whether to just leave or to make it clear that I will never return to that business.

    A line must be drawn.

    Either you believe in liberty or you don’t.

  7. On the one hand:
    Epoch Times: Major Restaurant Group’s CEO: Customers Will Have to Give Proof of COVID-19 Vaccination
    There’s a “Shake Shack” image in the background.
    Can a restaurant ban me if I am not sick?
    Can a restaurant ban me if I have natural immunity from recovery after infection?
    Can a restaurant be required to exercise equivalent policies for other diseases of similar virulence? Why single out Covid? All this for a disease with a small death rate.

    On the other hand:
    Dan Crenshaw on the new mask mandate
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/07/28/dan-crenshaw-tweets-stunning-revelation-on-new-cdc-mask-guidelines-n2593271
    The “game changer” data the CDC used for the mask mandate is from a single study from India. One. Study. From India.

    The study was rejected in peer review. But CDC used it anyway. (AFTER the CDC used the study, it was later marked to indicated “NOT rejected by peer review”. Glitch? Or influence applied to shore up the CDC?)

    The study that influenced this decision? It followed healthcare workers who were vaccinated with a vaccine NOT EVEN APPROVED IN THE U.S.

    That’s right. So they’re not even using a comparable case study that can be applied to vaccinated Americans.

  8. Ah, the AstraZeneca vaccine was used. Thanks for that Neo. Because some of that SinoVac vaccine seems to be relatively worthless.

    Not only that, but a lot of people are taking this to mean that vaccines “don’t work,” which discourages vaccination rather than encouraging it.

    The downside that Neo mentions is obvious and potentially large. It really suggests to me some kind of nefarious motive. Is it just divisive “wedge” politics taken to the max.? Mask embracers versus mask deniers?

  9. Barry Meislin,

    Your post almost slipped by me. Then I saw the “Antibody Dependent Enhancement” phrase. Oy! More worries from somebody who should know a thing or two. I read a little about ADE with Dengue fever. Well that’s not applicable to covid, or so I thought.

  10. UNM starts requiring masks when indoors Monday. They are offering $100 incentives to students who get the vaxx and $1000 to faculty.

    I planned to take the fall semester off anyway to get some travel in. This clinches it.

    I’m already seeing masks again among the woke.

    The other day I got a notice in my door for a neighborhood gathering in the local park next Tues. eve. It would be nice to meet some new people. I’ll drive by and take a look. If there are a lot of masks, I’ll skip.

  12. This is how major societal catastrophes happen. Decisions are being made to conform to political and cultural agendas rather than reality. That leaves you not only unable to anticipate surprises or changes in the status quo but unable to deal with them when they occur.

    Mike

  13. I’m not a scientist, but I was a science nerd in my youth, spent three years in engineering school before re-examining my career goals, and have done a fair bit of reading in the philosophy of science. I have a great respect for science. This is not it.

  14. a study conducted among 100 persons in india, with the use of the chinese vaccine, which might as well be the sugar water, harry lime sold as flu vaccine in 1940s austria

  16. miguel cervantes: I’m now a bit of an old movie nerd as well. I’m afraid what Harry Lime was purportedly selling in The Third Man was penicillin.

  18. At this point I would say Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut are all more likely than not to see 2020 style lockdowns again by October/November.

  20. @ MBunge “This is how major societal catastrophes happen. Decisions are being made to conform to political and cultural agendas rather than reality. That leaves you not only unable to anticipate surprises or changes in the status quo but unable to deal with them when they occur.”

    I’ve been reading Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” (huxley and I discussed it briefly in an earlier thread), and you have made a very concise summary of what I believe he has demonstrated for most of the countries he studied. And it’s not just surprises: the cultures that collapsed did not deal effectively (or at all) with predictable environmental and social consequences, because of their focus on nonproductive (even counter-productive) elite-ego-driven activities.
    Diamond’s own conclusions dance around the point, but it’s there nonetheless.

  21. I’ve reached the point that when anyone says “follow the science”, specially a democrat, in my mind it automatically gets converted to “jawohl mein fuhrer”

  22. Voodoo Science.

    I confess that I wear a mask in stores etc. At my age I do not want COVID, and I do not want to bring it home to my Octogenarian wife either. My medical professional daughter is convinced that masks are important. I don’t trust Fauci or Biden, but I do trust her, and she deals with this daily.

    My granddaughter had Covid several weeks after her second Pfizer shot. I know it is rare, and her case was mild—but, she has lingering cardio after effects. As does her Mother after a year. Sensible precautions are not foolish.

    It does not bother me if others choose not to wear masks.

    I believe that the backlash will be enormous if the politicians indulge in another power grab/ego trip with draconian mandates.

    The issue of vaccinations for children is debatable. Too bad we do not have honest, and unequivocal science on the subject. I am from the generation in which every child had to have a smallpox vaccination scar to enter school. I assume that measles vaccinations were also mandatory at some point; but I do not know about those or polio vaccinations as I was grown by the time that they evolved, and we routinely ensured that our children were protected from virulent diseases by whatever measures were available. (My wife nearly died from measles when she was very young.)

  23. Aesopfan,

    “Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?” goodreads

    I found Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel” highly informative.

    That said, I find the proposition that we face “ecological suicide” to be at best hyperbolic and at worst, disingenuous.

    We do face civilizational collapse brought upon the world by Marxism and its proponents. That is a real threat and our foremost one.

    Like the human body of which it is a part, nature is self-repairing and technological breakthroughs properly directed can achieve harmony with nature.

  24. I don’t know about mandatory polio vaccinations but when the Salk vaccine came out every kid, me included, in my elementary school was lined up and got it in the school gym. Same happened a few years later for the Sabin sugar cube one. No parent objected. Everybody had the smallpox vaccination and I seem to remember getting a TB test in Jr. High.

  25. The polio vaccine is not a good example because polio hit children mostly while covid is the exact opposite.

    This was before my time but did 60-70-80 year old people also get the polio vaccine? If yes was it right away or did children get it first?

  27. There’s a very interesting book about the development and rollout of the Salk polio vaccine: A Splendid Solution, by Jeffrey Kluger.

    Fauci’s statement that “”We probably would still have polio in this country if we had the kind of false information that’s being spread now” betrays ignorance of this history…there was in fact significant negative information being distributed, including phrases like “killer vaccine”, and the well-known broadcaster and columnist Walter Winchell was a major disseminator of such stories.

    Yet Eisenhower did not feel called upon to call for the ‘deplatforming’ of Winchell and others like him.

  28. About ten minutes ago, I received the weekly blast phone call from the mayor of the deep blue city where I’m stuck for the time being. As I expected, it was an announcement that we must all go back to masking indoors regardless of vaccination status. Right now I’m so angry I can barely type. When I made my weekly trip to the supermarket this morning, I got into a conversation with the lady at the deli counter, a pleasant person who is ordinarily cheerful but seemed a bit “down” today. Turned out that she had seen a headline in the local fish wrap that the masking mandate is being reimposed. She remarked that “They [jerks’ identities unspecified] will never let us alone,” and I agreed.
    Apropos of what Topo Gigio said– I too am not a scientist in the sense of having my degrees in a STEM field, but I work as a medical editor and my job requires monitoring the latest discharge of flatus from the CDC. To quote TG, “I have a great respect for science. This is not it.” Amen, brother.

  29. oldflyer:

    Your reasons for wearing a mask make sense, and I certainly wouldn’t criticize you for doing so. Actually, I don’t criticize anyone for wearing a mask. I consider it a personal decision and I leave it to them.

    Smallpox vaccines being mandatory for school attendance was because smallpox was an especially horrific disease. There is no comparison with COVID. Smallpox killed approximately thirty percent of its victims, and left many of the survivors hideously scarred and disfigured for life (I suggest you refrain from going to the smallpox Wiki page; the photos there are horrific). In addition, it was very contagious.

    By the time I was a child it was very rare in this country, but there had been bad epidemics. In an early one – prior to vaccines or even inoculation (an earlier and more dangerous process) – in one epidemic 8% of the population of Boston died. You can read about it here.

    If you don’t mind my asking, what were the lingering cardio effects you mention?

  30. Wiki: on polio.

    “Routine vaccination of adults (18 years of age and older) in developed countries is neither necessary nor recommended because most adults are already immune and have a very small risk of exposure to wild poliovirus in their home countries.”

    Herd immunity, no doubt due to most all children being vaccinated against polio.

    I was not suggesting that the polio vaccinations were a blueprint for doing the COVID-19 ones in children where the benefit, if any, is very slight and the risk is greater. For older adults, like myself and wife, it would be advisable but should not be mandatory.

  31. oldflyer,

    ‘I believe that the backlash will be enormous if the politicians indulge in another power grab/ego trip with draconian measures’

    I want to believe this but I’ve lost all respect for far too many people to believe that a big backlash would happen.

    I have absolutely no problem with someone wearing a mask indoors (outdoors or alone tells a lot about a person none of it good IMO) but there should be no mandates at all. None.

  32. oldflyer:

    One more thing – I don’t think most public school systems mandated much more than smallpox vaccines. I found a site that said that, plus I found this 2019 article about NYC mandating a measles vaccine during an outbreak, and it mentions that 2019 was the very first time this was done for measles vaccines.

    In addition, mandating a vaccine for kids in order to attend public school is different than a general mandate or a mandate for adults. Adults are presumed to be able to make their own informed decisions, and children are not. Plus, public schools are a place where kids get together and spread disease. Even then, as I said, vaccine mandates were rare or absent except for smallpox, for the most part.

  33. There were problems at two manufacturers of the Salk vaccine in the first year. About 100,000 doses were made that had not had the virus properly inactivated and 40,000 were found to have developed polio to one extent or another and 10 died.

  34. Another issue is with CDC and there statement that uses terms like ‘substantial spread’. They actually quantify this somehow as 50 cases/100K in a county. Why 50 and not 40 or 60? Who knows.

    So here in the idiot state of WA practically every county makes it into this even very small counties with far less than 100,000 people in them. And of course ‘cases’ is an even more useless measuring stick now because ‘cases’ are far less tied to hospitalizations and especially deaths than at any time but they are using the same standard as spring 2020. Hence virtually the whole state of WA is currently under a non enforced mask mandate right now. That’s right now that will almost certainly change probably next week knowing how Inslee works.

    They just make crap up and then act like it’s actually based on something.

  35. BTW in relation to the Australia post from the other day Sydney had a record high number of cases today and now they want to bring the military in to enforce the lockdown.

    Good times.

  36. Griffin–

    Let’s hope Australia’s decision doesn’t give Milley any ideas.

  37. I am the Octogenarian and my wife is only a septuagenarian. Still, kids are not at risk, masks don’t work and, if the vaccine is worth taking, there should be no risk around others. And yes, I am an MD.

    Smallpox, polio and measles are far more dangerous than the Wuhanflu.

  38. Neo says that this research paper from India, which is the basis for the latest hysteria, looked at people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine. Wikipedia says that India licensed the vaccine technology from AstraZeneca and is producing it in-country. About 88% of vaccinations in India are using this India made version called Covishield.

    Probably, this vaccine is the same as the U.K. manufactured AZ vaccine, but it is possible that it is substandard. I recall that the Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine (similar technology) had a massive batch failure that had to be thrown out. We hope that everyone has great quality control, but you never know. (see geoffb above)

  40. ” I recall that the Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine (similar technology) had a massive batch failure that had to be thrown out.”

    This was at one lab that was also making another COVID vaccine and someone mixed one type with the other. It was caught, discarded, and the lab was then only licensed to do one vaccine not two.

    The polio vaccine problem led to Salk vaccine lots being examined by the NIH before the lot got released to be used. I don’t know if they still do this or something similar for all vaccines.

  42. What ‘Science’ are we following? Why it should be obvious by now. The Behavioral Science, of course..

  43. Deep into the Twitter chain linked by Griffin, Alex Berenson posts the bottom line for the Pfizer trial. In the vaxxed group 15 died. In the unvaxxed group 14 died.

  45. There’s a whole chain of assumptions here by the CDC…The fourth is that the Delta variant will cause a rise in serious cases and deaths and not just in cases and/or positive test results. The fifth is that there are a very significant number of breakthrough COVID cases in the vaccinated in this country…

    It’s not a scientific study, but I think data from Missouri can be informative here.

    As far as cases are concerned, Jasper county Missouri has seen a Covid case rate of 1,043 per 100,000 in the last two weeks. That is, over 1% of the county’s residents has been diagnosed with Covid just in the last two weeks. For a disease that was only diagnosed in 10% of the population in the last 17 months, that’s a huge outbreak.

    Second, Covid hospitalization rates and ICU usage there and all across southwestern Missouri are higher than they’ve ever been, even during the mid-winter peak. As for deaths, the two hospitals in Springfield had to bring in additional refrigeration equipment because their morgues were overrun. The delta variant really is more virulent and more dangerous than the other variants.

    Third, the vaccines seem to offer substantial but not perfect protection. Unvaccinated individuals are eight-times over-represented in the Covid hospitalizations compared to vaccinated individuals. So you can still get a serious case of Covid even if you’re vaccinated, but your odds of that are 87% lower.

    At this point I would say Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut are all more likely than not to see 2020 style lockdowns again by October/November.

    Considering the governments there, you may be right. But I would not expect to see the kind of outbreak in the northeast like we’ve had here in Missouri. Over 70% of all adults in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut are fully vaccinated, and the rates in New Hampshire and New York are 68%. That compares to only 45% in Joplin, Missouri, for example.

    So let’s do the math. The vaccines are less effective against the delta variant (64% vs. 95% against the Wuhan variant), and the R0 value is higher (~6.5 for the delta variant vs. ~4.5 for the alpha variant and ~2.5 for the original Wuhan variant). That means you’d have to have an 85% immunity rate to achieve herd immunity.

    With a vaccine 64% effective, you’re not going to get there. You’d have to have a delta-specific booster at the 95% effectiveness level and have a 90% immunity level (either through vaccination or actual recovery) to achieve herd immunity.

    OK, now I see why they’re so interested in nasal viral load. Ugh.

  46. Barry Meislan,
    Yes, I had made a note of checking to see if any of that Zinc with Quercetin was still on the top shelf at the health store.

  47. My only issue with taking the vaccine is the fetal cell lines. Even Phizer and Moderna supposedly used immortal fetal cell lines in the early testing, but not the production. Many of the pro life people are able to take the vaccine since fetal cell lines were not used in production. I am still struggling with that. If I knew the fetal cell lines were from a non aborted child, I could go there.
    I do not know how many people there are like me.
    I suspect that some of the general anti vaccine mentality was fed by the growing awareness among the general population of the existence of aborted fetal cell lines.

  48. mkent:

    That’s not quite what I see on the graphs for the state of Missouri here. For the state, the uptick is significant but less than this past winter, and no uptick yet for deaths. When I searched specifically for figures for Jasper County I get a chart from the NY Times which has a total of 787 people diagnosed in the last 2 weeks – that’s in a population of 121,328 (population of the county as of 2019). And if the vaccination rates are that low there, it makes sense that there is an uptick and that some counties will experience it more than others.

    The question I was dealing with in this post has to do with masking for the vaccinated and whether there is any scientific justification for it. I don’t see any at this point. With the Delta variant, it makes a certain amount of sense for an unvaccinated person to wear a mask, though.

  50. Masks don’t work. Especially cloth masks. There has been no reputable study showing they do and the fact that we are still arguing about this 18 months later is absolutely infuriating.

  53. In our town, there is an emergency medical clinic that was prescribing Invercetin for Covid. I do not know if they still are. The local feed stores have warning signs on the livestock Invercetin to not use on humans.
    If I get Covid, I hope to visit that emergency clinic, since they have a reputation of actually trying to help people.
    I have on hand some non flux core welding wire and some galvanized metal.
    Not saying that I have considered if I got sick to striking an arc on that galvanized metal.
    Not saying I have not considered it, either….
    Yes, I know, according to every box of galvanized bolts You buy, they cause cancer in California….

  54. That CDC report leaked to the WaPo will be cited by every power mad lockdown politician and health bureaucrat to further destroy us.

    The CDC director will be out there with her best ‘I’m feeling pending doom’ tone. It will be spectacular.

  55. Seriously, if welders can get zinc poisoning from welding too much galvanized materials, and if zinc is believed to help fight Covid especially with such things as Hydroxychloroquine or quercetin, then it seems maybe Zinc should be put in breathing treatments for direct absorption into the lungs.

  56. That’s not quite what I see on the graphs for the state of Missouri here.

    This was pointed out to him the last time he had a meltdown in this forum. He’s got his fingers in his ears.

  57. One more thing – I don’t think most public school systems mandated much more than smallpox vaccines.

    I had to have smallpox, measles, and German measles, and Sabin polio (in addition to DPT shots).

  58. huxley:

    That’s the chart I already saw and referred to in my previous comment. There’s an uptick in cases, not as bad as in the winter so far, but significant. Deaths are extremely low there, and remain so.

  59. The Science was observed recently. It looked like a big white rabbit clutching a watch declaring, “I’m late! I’m late!”

  60. Art Deco:

    When you say “had to,” what do you mean? We all had them; almost no one thought to object. It wasn’t an issue. But if a person refused to get the shots, what happened? Were they mandated by law? I have not been able to find evidence that that was so. What I found was all about smallpox.

    You’re into research – see if you can find a law that said you cannot go to public school without those particular shots. I was unable to find it. Maybe you can. It was done on a local or state level, for the most part, so there might be some local exceptions that I missed, where the shots were mandated by law or you could not go to public school.

  61. That’s the chart I already saw and referred to in my previous comment.

    neo:

    No, your link is to Worldometers and mine to USAFacts. The data may be the same.

    I don’t see a county breakout from Worldometers.

  62. In the VPrasad Tweet thread linked by Griffin:
    “If we do not resist now, the Delta variant will eventually mutate into a variant called communism.” – Daniel Kotzin

    Martin Kulldorf quoting a different Tweet by Dr Prasad:
    “Scientist should be embarrassed by our failure to generate knowledge. The CDC is again recommending vaccinated people to wear cloth masks. The CDC director calls this following the science, but it is not. It is following the TV pundits” -Dr @VPrasadMDMPH

  64. Art Deco writes: This was pointed out to him the last time he had a meltdown in this forum. He’s got his fingers in his ears.

    So pointing out facts is now a meltdown? You must have a very thin skin. You should avoid incandescent lamps — you’ll get a sunburn.

    Neo: The Worldometer data for Missouri is problematic. It’s taken from the Missouri Dept. of Health and Senior Services, which essentially stopped tracking daily Covid deaths on May 31st. The state was seeing 17 Covid deaths per day for the prior week which then supposedly dropped immediately to zero for the next 21 days. I stopped following it after that.

    To get accurate data in Missouri you have to look at the county data (which I downloaded into a spreadsheet on May 31st and June 30th). For Jasper county, that’s here:

    https://jaspercounty.org/health_department/index.html

    For the record, the numbers for yesterday were 57 Covid cases in the prior day, 382 in the prior week, and 751 in the prior 14 days, and a rate of 1,043.06 county Covid cases per 100,000 population in those 14 days. (Missouri lists the Jasper county population as 76,489, but apparently the county uses a slightly lower number.)

    Statewide Covid deaths are back up to 12 per day, but the recent outbreak has not really hit the population centers of Kansas City or St. Louis yet. The two Springfield hospitals reported yesterday that they had 34 Covid deaths between them the previous three days. For a city that size, that’s pretty significant.

  67. mkent,

    Virus is gonna virus. It’s been said a million times but it’s true and after 18 months a real pattern has developed where a region will have an extended rise in cases for about 10-12 weeks and then a rapid decrease to a noise level. Check out India or the UK’s recent rapid decline. It has happened over and over and yes if an area has not been hit as hard in earlier waves then it may be worse this time but even at that deaths are WAY down even in areas getting hit later on.

    Even with cases increasing in the US recently deaths and hospitalizations have not increased at the same levels.

    And hospitalizations as a metric has been so compromised by ‘with Covid’ or ‘from Covid’ that it’s difficult what to make of them.

  68. huxley:

    Actually, no – I wrote that the Worldometer link I gave was for the entire state of Missouri. I also wrote that I found a Jasper County chart when I searched – that one was at the NY Times. That was the chart that was essentially the same as yours (I didn’t give a link to that one).

    It may have been confusing.

  69. One other thing about Jasper county. As of June 30th there were 132 Covid deaths in the county. On July 28th that number stood at 172. To see 132 deaths in the first 17 months of the pandemic but 40 — an increase of 30% — in the last four weeks shows, as huxley said, something impressive happened there recently.

    Neo: So far this new outbreak has not yet hit the major population centers of St. Louis and Kansas City. Those cities have thus far only seen a slight uptick. The outbreak started about a month ago in Branson, spread to Springfield and Joplin, and is only now advancing northward toward Kansas City and along I-44 toward St. Louis.

    Despite being restricted to the rural southern part of the state, the outbreak has made its presence known in the statewide hospitalization numbers seen here:

    https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/4168200/?utm_source=showcase&utm_campaign=visualisation/4168200

    If Kansas City and St. Louis get hit like Springfield and Joplin did, that graph would be off the chart.

    I don’t foresee Massachusetts getting hit like Missouri did, though. Your vaccination rates are 20 percentage points — half again as much — higher.

  70. Neo: Good news about the Pfizer vaccine! The 88% effectiveness in that paper lines up pretty well with the 7/8 reduction in hospitalization seen in Joplin. It’s always re-assuring when the results in the scientific papers line up with results in the real world. Thanks for the link.

  71. In the last paragraph of her blog post, Neo wrote this:

    “What’s going on? … I think another reason is that they are terrified that the numbers will go up under their watch, and that it will have negative political repercussions for their side.”

    As always with the Democrats/Progressives/Marxists/Woketarians, everything is always all about the politics all of the time. I don’t think that that they care much about masks, the delta variant, or more deaths from COVID-19. The CDC has become little more than another propaganda arm of the Woketarians, who are worried about how to steal the next election.

    If too many states pass election security laws, then vote fraud will become much more difficult. How did it get to be so easy? The pandemic was used as an excuse to expand mail-in ballots, drop-box voting, ballot harvesting, etc. If the public can be kept scared of COVID-19, then those methods of election fraud can be retained for 2022 and beyond.

    On 7-28-2021, the Department of Justice issued “Guidance Concerning Federal Statutes Affecting Methods of Voting.” Here’s what the DOJ is now threatening:

    “Since the 2020 election, some States have responded by permanently adopting their COVID-19 modifications; by contrast, other States have barred continued use of those practices or have imposed additional restrictions on voting by mail or early voting. In view of these developments, guidance concerning federal statutes affecting methods of voting is appropriate. The Department’s enforcement policy does not consider a jurisdiction’s re-adoption of prior voting laws or procedures to be presumptively lawful; instead, the Department will review a jurisdiction’s changes in voting laws or procedures for compliance with all federal laws regarding elections, as the facts and circumstances warrant.”

    In other words, states can pass all the election integrity laws they want, but Biden’s DOJ will simply declare them illegal.

  72. Mkent keeps making wild claims like refrigeration tucks for the dead in Missouri without links, then a graph in a subsequent post to a questionable site. Here is the world meter link for Missouri:

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/missouri/

    Deaths are currently minuscule there, and data everywhere about delta is that cases and deaths are “delinked”. We are being stampeded by the Democrats over “cases” for a disease that is no longer that deadly.

    Flu kills 30k a year, and flu season is six months. It doesn’t even make the news at those numbers, and in 2018 flu news barely made a ripple when deaths topped 80k in that six month period.

  73. So pointing out facts is now a meltdown? You must have a very thin skin. You should avoid incandescent lamps — you’ll get a sunburn.

    You weren’t pointing out facts. You were hyperventaliting about Springfield, Missouri and people pointed out facts to you about the actual case and fatality data in Missouri, at which point you began handwaving.

    Again, the 7 day moving average of death tolls in Missouri has declined since 20 June 2021, even though there was a net increase in the moving average of case counts to the tune of 1,000 per day between 1 June and 11 July 2021.

  75. “My only issue with taking the vaccine is the fetal cell lines. …
    I do not know how many people there are like me.”

    While that isn’t my only issue with the vaccine, it is the major one. When the US Catholic Bishops announced in December 2020 that there was no complicity in the sin of abortion in receiving these vaccines and in fact twice they pronounced in the short reading that “this is how you show love of your neighbor”, there were Catholics that stated we were all going to be made complicit in receiving these shots. Subsequently I discovered that ship had sailed a long time ago. The vaccines I dutifully provided for our children contained the fetal stem cells. Many people know that the mrna vaccines only used the stem cells for research. OK. I now know where the Vatican and US Bishops stand regarding this issue. Based on my faith in the scriptures and personal experiences I have come to a different conclusion as to “how does God view this?” When J.J. Sefton at Ace reported on the University of Pennsylvania labs that were attaching fetal parts to rats for various experiments (sadly this has been going on a long, long time–all over the world) that shone a light on things in the most horrific way. We already have the proof that in the quest for scientific research the higher eschalon of the intelligent have no boundaries: MKUltra, Operation Paperclip, protection of the Nazis and Japanese that tortured and brutalized human subjects. We have a very dark history regarding our quest for information about the human body. Many are A-OK with all of this. My Christian beliefs prevent me from putting my stamp of approval on use of aborted fetuses, information obtained from unwilling human subjects (especially in the manner by which the human subjects were procured by the Japanese and Germans in WWII) and now China (their prisoners and the Uyghurs).

  76. On Griffin’s link about the CDC model:

    https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1420944590236839936

    …they cite a 75% vaccine effectiveness, without giving any source for the assumption. This is significantly lower than the data I’ve seen from Israel.

    …they say ‘50% infections reported’…does anyone know what that’s supposed to mean?

    …for masking, they cite 50-60% source control and 20-30% personal protection, without any data sources provided. Most earlier assertions about masks from government sources have emphasized source control, with personal protection effects being relatively minor. And, given the many conflicting studies on mask effectiveness, both numbers seem way too high.

  78. “The nation’s top infectious disease expert ” (Fauci) cited in Neo’s quote is FALSE. He is nothing of the sort.
    We are being led by a Pied Piper to our doom as a country.

  79. Neo asks “What’s going on” with the inconsistent mask / vaccine messaging in response to the “surge” of cases, but aren’t we now in the realm of of having the health authorities blame us either way? If there is a continuation of new cases, it’s because of our non-compliance; if the surge goes away, it’s because their advice was followed. Having supporting data for either explanation is entirely optional. And speaking of data, remember that the motto of the Royal Society, founded in the 17th century for the advancement of science, is “Nullius in verba” — scientists do not take the mere word of other scientists.

  80. mkent:

    I appreciate your comments and consider them a worthwhile contribution here. As far as I can tell, you are pointing out facts, supporting them and reasoning from them in a reasonable way.

  81. The Delta variant is said to show a “higher viral load” in nasal swabs. What does that mean? It means the Delta variant is more vigorous at replicating itself than the other strains. Does that have anything to do with illness or its severity? Perhaps, but not certainly. That goes largely uncommented upon.

  82. Art Deco: So now pointing out facts is hyperventilating. You really do have a thin skin.

    Again, the 7 day moving average of death tolls in Missouri has declined since 20 June 2021, even though there was a net increase in the moving average of case counts to the tune of 1,000 per day between 1 June and 11 July 2021.

    No! The average daily Covid-19 death toll for Missouri during the month of June was 8.9. The 7-day moving average reached 12 on 13 July. As of this past Tuesday, it was 17.29.

    Nearly doubling is not a decline.

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