Home » And speaking of science: the study on which the CDC based its new mask recommendations

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And speaking of science: the study on which the CDC based its new mask recommendations — 48 Comments

  1. At this point, no rational and sane person should pay the slightest attention to any “guidance” emanating from the CDC. Neither Walensky nor Fauci has acted in such a manner as to inspire the slightest confidence in the oracular statements issued by either one. The entire focus of the illegitimate Harris/Biden administration, and of the corrupt public-health establishment, is upon beating a submissive citizenry into compliance with any mandate whatsoever (regardless of the actual science) and upon demonizing all dissenters and dissidents as “extremists” and “domestic terrorists” and “enemies of the state” who fully deserve to be gradually stripped of all their rights.

  2. Andrew Sullivan at one time owned property in Provincetown. He gives a description of various venues there and what they’re like on the 4th of July. Sullivan said he’s too old to attend that sort of thing and at his age he doesn’t care for crowds. Per Sullivan, Provincetown has a f/t resident population of about 3,000 but the number on site will balloon to 40,000 at certain times of the year. They’re all packed into clubs like sardines breathing on each other.

    No above-board agency would make policy based on this sort of cherry-picking. What’s the reason for these scams?

  3. This entire thing is ridiculous. There are already a few signs that this rise in ‘cases’ is peaking just like they always do. The same pattern plays out over and over but at lower levels every time and in this case with very low death totals.

    It all gets so tiresome with the hysterical (and quickly debunked) tales of overwhelmed hospitals and young people on their death beds claiming either they didn’t believe it was real or something about Trump. Or the evergreen about refrigerator trucks to stack the corpses.

    18 months in and it’s the same old thing.

  4. Somehow I doubt there was much social distancing happening at the after-parties…IYKWIMAITYD

  5. For the CDC to make a such sweeping change in mask recommendations based on one flawed study makes no sense, especially when one considers the negative physical and psychological effects mask wearing has on children and most adults. I’m convinced that the CDC knows it, and this is just another excuse to keep the public submissive and afraid.

    Unfortunately it seems to be working, since I’ve already started noticing an increase in people wearing masks in public places.

  6. I went to WinCo a little while ago and I would say there was definitely an increase in people with masks. Maybe 75/25 masked where it had been about the reverse last week.

    Again, if you want to wear a mask fine but it says something about you and if you are under 60 or so it’s not a good something IMO.

    Still haven’t seen a place requiring masks that wasn’t already but that’ll probably change.

  7. Possibly for the first time in human history, we can transmit a disease we don’t have to those who are immunized against it. Let’s pause to savor the mass hallucination while it lasts.

  8. Let’s do a thought experiment wherein we no longer have a test for COVID: Take the Provincetown result and one can only conclude there was a bit of a flu going around that weekend. Maybe a bit unusual for the summer, but with a whole bunch of people crowded to together in the venues, not at all surprising some got it. No one died so this wouldn’t even make the 6pm news in Boston I would bet.

    And for this we mask up the whole country and threaten more lockdowns. The mass hysteria we saw last year is coming back full force. I saw it the last few days on my liberal friends FB posts. They actually seem happy to have this all going on again….gives them a chance to show how smart and virtuous they are compared to all the rest of us Neanderthals.

  9. Luc Montaniere(sp?) the French virologist, who won a Nobel prize for isolating HIV, said quite early on that the modification to Covid looked like someone was trying to make a vaccine against HIV. There were some Indian scientists who came to the same conclusion independently.

    If there’s going to be a population in MA with HIV, it’s going to be in PTown. It’s a real circus in the summer. If you want to mingle with 6’2” men built like a Patriots linebacker wearing a tight skirt, fishnet stockings, and 4” heels it’s the place to be.

  10. From my daughter, with a PhD in a health-related field: “What a bunch of crap. Extremely weak data. “

  11. “For the CDC to make a such sweeping change in mask recommendations based on one flawed study makes no sense”

    It makes perfect sense when you consider that masks have become a personal/political totem which signifies “I’m smart, not like those Trump supporters!”

    Mike

  12. As Tucker noted, the Wuhan virus has been very good to the Democrats and they are going to ride it into the 2022 election. The recall election here in California is going to be another all mail-in fraud fest.

  13. By the by, anybody remember the mini-backlash that eventually arose to all “The Greatest Generation” hagiography? About how they were all a bunch of racists and sexists who really didn’t deserve credit for just surviving some global calamities?

    Well, this pandemic has been our Great Depression, our World War II, our Cold War. I don’t think anybody’s going to be writing any books in the future about how wonderful we all are.

    Mike

  14. MBunge,

    When you consider that Covid but more importantly the response to it has affected just about every person in the world a pretty decent argument can be made that this has been the most impactful world wide event since…? Especially when you consider the short 18 month time frame. The Cold War took place over decades even the WWs were several years.

  15. The impact of the response is not only the here and now it is the long term effects on children of lost schooling, the health impacts of missed routine health care, and of course virtually every other issue talked about today can be connected to the Covid response.

    Unfathomable damage done.

  16. So this is not the Indian study of people vaxxed with A-Z that failed peer review?
    Hard to keep track of the flimsy studies these days …

  17. JimNorCAl,

    No, but they also got a bunch of other claims in there about mask effectiveness that are totally against any of the studies made prior to this.

    It appears that somebody decided they wanted to do this and then they went looking for justification and this is the best they could do.

  18. Tomorrow the CDC eviction moratorium expires. 10 million Americans are facing eviction and those who haven’t family and friends to call upon who are able and willing to help, face homelessness.

    FEMA camps? An explosion in Delta variant cases? Kids education even further disrupted?

    10-11 million landlords with a not insignificant percentage facing bankruptcy, as presumably those tenets who can afford rent are settled in place and current on their bills… so where will landlords find paying tenants? Government subsidized housing for illegals?

    Reportedly, global financial resources are being positioned to reap profits from the coming inflation. Coffee futures are up 91% since Biden took office. As Joe sixpack has to pay more for basics, the Bezos, Gates and Buffets of the world are positioning themselves to benefit. Once again, a clear case of Wall Street getting even richer riding on the back of Main Street.

    Get ready for a bumpy ride. A perfect excuse for martial law and confiscation of American’s arms?

  19. Persons with COVID-19 reported attending densely packed indoor and outdoor events at venues that included bars, restaurants, guest houses, and rental homes.

    Densely packed indoor bars. What could go wrong? Would snorting cocaine off of a coughing stranger’s hand count as risky behavior?

    Five were hospitalized; as of July 27, no deaths were reported. One hospitalized patient (age range = 50–59 years) was not vaccinated and had multiple underlying medical conditions. Four additional, fully vaccinated patients aged 20–70 years were also hospitalized, two of whom had underlying medical conditions.

    So there were only two healthy vaccinated people hospitalized. Two.

    I am a little surprised that the case count percentages of unvax/vax are about the same as the unvax/vax in the general population. I wonder how many of the positive tests are essentially incidental environmental covid contamination and do not indicate a real infection.

    From Neo’s link,
    Cts < 29 are strong positive reactions indicative of abundant target nucleic acid in the sample
    Cts of 30-37 are positive reactions indicative of moderate amounts of target nucleic acid
    Cts of 38-40 are weak reactions indicative of minimal amounts of target nucleic acid which could represent an infection state or environmental contamination

    So this actually says that a Cts of 38 and up could be spurious contamination. I wouldn’t be surprised if 35 and up could be spurious contamination. The research paper really should display a chart of all the Cts’s actually measured.

    The claim that there was no difference in Cts between vaccinated cases and unvaccinated cases is the grounds for saying that vaccinated people should mask up.

  20. Pingback:Links and Comments | Rockport Conservatives

  21. These two MedCRAM videos about the Delta variant are not bad.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXV7i1yxu6c
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RWGh19yTXw

    Dr. Sehault here has been censored by Youtube in the past, so he might be slightly cowed by the experience.

    To summarize,
    He says that Delta is about 50% more contagious that the original strain.
    Delta is about 80% worse in illness severity.
    In vitro experiments show that blood serum from vaccinated (the big 3 or 4 vaxes) people is actually significantly more effective in neutralizing Delta than it is for the U.K. variant.

    The increased illness severity is troubling, but it isn’t clear what that metric meant. It compared the variant with the S-gene (Delta) to the no S-gene variants (all the rest?). It could be that the severity had been declining with most of the older variants, and then jumped up with Delta.

    (That Rockport Conservatives thing above, somehow magically appeared without my input.)

  22. Art Deco is quite correct to call out cherry picking data fallacy.

    But it gets worse. The entire turnabout in CDC policies are again based less in science than sheer speculation. UK experience suggests the opposite.

    Here’s the rebuke from the Daily Mail:

    Why the Delta Covid variant ISN’T really spreading as quickly as chickenpox

    Top scientists today claimed the Indian ‘Delta’ variant is not spreading as quickly as chickenpox, despite US health officials saying it is just as contagious.

    Data circulating within America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claimed people infected with the mutant strain can go on to infect eight others.

    The same internal document also alleged that fully-vaccinated people can spread the Indian variant just as easily as unvaccinated people because they carry a similar amount of the virus in their nose and mouth.

    Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, insisted the agency was ‘not crying wolf’, saying the situation was ‘serious’ and that the measures needed to tackle the spread of Delta were ‘extreme’.

    But British scientists have questioned some of the claims made by the department, which has urged Americans to keep their coverings on indoors regardless of whether they’ve been vaccinated or not.

    Professor David Livermore, an infectious diseases expert from the University of East Anglia, said vaccine-triggered immunity and the endless waves of Covid which nations have endured meant there were fewer susceptible people around for people to infect.

    ‘The US, like the UK, has substantial immunity from prior infection and from vaccination,’ he told MailOnline. ‘This will surely be a major drag on Delta’s spread, precluding (viral spread) numbers of that magnitude.’

    And Professor Julian Tang, a virologist at Leicester University, said the theory was likely just ‘speculation’ because it was very difficult to track down the number of cases sparked by a single infection.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9844701/SAGE-Covid-variant-kill-one-three-people.html

    These power mad bureaucrats ought be put down out of our misery and fired.

  23. Bureaucrats love power.

    Just like climate scientists, who cannot admit that their predictions have failed, the virologists and public health “experts” will not give up their power voluntarily. As Bob noted above, the Democrats have nothing else to run on in 2022, so they must make Covid the only issue.

  24. @ Kate: From my daughter, with a PhD in a health-related field: “What a bunch of crap. Extremely weak data.” — indeed.

    Facebook should shut down the CDC for publishing blatant misinformation.

    Saw this at Breitbart while I was looking at John Hayward’s archive there:
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/07/30/white-house-bails-coronavirus-briefings-public-revolts-against-cdc-guidance/

    The White House on Friday struggled to explain to reporters why it suddenly stopped holding coronavirus briefings after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its latest masking guidance.

    “Why are the doctors not here in the briefing to take our questions?” asked NBC reporter Kelly O’Donnell during the White House press briefing on Friday.

    White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended not having a briefing with the federal health officials, noting President Joe Biden himself spoke to the American people about the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday.

    “He gave a more than 30-minute speech,” Jean-Pierre argued, adding Biden was “a trusted voice” and “the leader of our country.”

    “But he is not a scientist,” O’Donnell protested.

    “No, but we heard from him,” Jean-Pierre replied.

    Since President Joe Biden took office, he promised regular public briefings with federal health officials to talk about the ongoing battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

    The briefings are typically led by White House COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] Response Coordinator Jeff Zients and feature Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC.

    But the briefings stopped after the CDC announced new masking guidelines on Tuesday, even for fully vaccinated Americans.

    “Of all the weeks not to hold have a COVID briefing, why this week?” asked CBS reporter Weijia Jiang.

    Jean-Pierre defended the White House’s handling of the situation, noting both Walensky and Fauci had appeared on cable news networks to detail their new guidance.

    “They’ve been out there on your networks; they aren’t hiding,” she said.

    You may indulge in the obvious fisking at your leisure, especially of the final quotation from the DPS (where is the Psychotic Psaki?), but I was drawn to this comment:

    2020: “President Trump needs to stay away from the daily briefing because he’s not a scientist!”

    2021: “Imbecile Joe Biden spoke so we don’t need scientists!”

    #StillMyPresident

  25. For a view of the CDC study that confirms the comments here –
    https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2021/07/30/a-gay-rights-activist-explains-why-the-cdcs-provincetown-study-may-be-fatally-flawed/

    Bonus post – kinda sorta explains why Democrats must insist that math is racist and that’s why they don’t bother using it.

    https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2021/07/30/choose-your-own-adventure-check-out-how-these-nbc-news-journos-spin-the-same-article-on-breakthrough-infections/

  26. Is anyone surprised?
    https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/07/30/nancy-pelosi-defies-her-own-order-to-arrest-those-without-masks-n418893

    Only one of the following two statements can be true. Either the moment you go to take a picture, the virus becomes non-communicable, making it safe to remove one’s mask, or alternatively, this is all silly theater, masks don’t work, and Pelosi’s breaking of her own protocol, which she’s enforcing via arrest, is nonsensical on its face. Yeah, I’m gonna go with the second option.

    Pelosi re-instituting a mask mandate in a building where almost everyone is vaccinated, inside of a city that has had three times as many people die of homicide vs. COVID in the last two weeks was nothing but a partisan, political move. Yes, virtue-signaling was part of it because that’s always part of it for the left, but the move was also to force Republicans into a contentious situation where, if they defied her, they’d be accused of spreading the virus and harming others. Never mind that it’s Texas Democrats that seemingly caused the latest outbreak in the White House and among some Congressional staffers. Any future infections will be blamed on Republicans who don’t mask despite the lack of correlation between masking and spread.

    Poking at Republicans was the goal. I believe that’s probably a miscalculation, though. While those deeply ingrained in the beltway will laud Pelosi’s move, I think most Americans will look at it as yet more unwarranted politicization of the pandemic. People are tired of the double-speak and contradictions. They are sick of being told vaccinations mean no masks only to have the rug pulled out from under them simply because politicians are too cowardly to lead and own the consequences of their leadership.

    At this point, some staffer needs to take one for the team and make the USCP arrest them over lack of a mask. The juxtaposing of that with Pelosi’s behavior would be well worth the citation issued.

    Even better if they throw the staffer in the January Sixer Gitmo & then ban the relevant legislator from visiting.

    Historical reminder: this is what the Democrats always do when they make a rule for the rest of us peons.

    https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/07/30/kayleigh-mcenany-zings-nancy-pelosi-with-timely-flashback-after-she-violates-her-own-mask-mandate-n419058?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=-1

  27. Does anyone at the CDC actually know what they are doing?

    https://redstate.com/katepauldillon/2021/07/30/special-report-interview-walensky-is-losing-the-cdcs-credibility-n419210

    Watching Dr. Walensky stumble over basic science in this interview – science she claimed she was briefed on a mere few days ago – was horrifying to watch. Whatever is causing this inability to follow and communicate scientific findings at the CDC, it is time to take a decisive step and regain control of the conversation. First step: Stop putting her forward, and present someone who has read the relevant studies, who has read the wider data, and who can cite that data and answer these basic questions correctly.

    The CDC’s display of incompetence, indecisiveness, and inadequacy is causing active harm. Every time Dr. Walensky is on air, it is not just her credibility that diminishes, but also that of the vaccination effort, testing, and the wider fight against COVID-19. It is easy to blame groups of people for rising COVID-19 infections and local resurgences, but if the CDC truly wants to look for blame, perhaps it would be best to start at home.

  28. Re: Provincetown….

    I’m reminded of the time I let my girlfriend set up a romantic getaway weekend in NorCal and she made a reservation at a bed and breakfast in Guerneville. Which is not as big as P-Town, but probably more gay.

    It worked out OK. The gays were mostly, “Oh…a straight couple. How cute!” It wasn’t far from Bodega Bay where “The Birds” was filmed, so we saw that too.

    But, yeah, taking a general reading of public health from a July 4th holiday in Provincetown is a dodgy idea.

  29. Asks at the end the question that some RedState posters (and others) have already given the answer to: it’s prepping the battlefield to enshrine the election variants the Democrats need to stay in control. But the details were interesting.

    https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/07/30/a-look-at-d-c-data-raises-big-questions-about-new-government-mask-directives-n419098

    The Biden team has been pushing masking again — even if a person is fully vaccinated — in areas where the Delta variant is allegedly “surging” or substantial, which was supposedly covering most of the country.
    But what does that even mean? What counts as “substantial” or “high,” the two categories that they’re saying will trigger the masking guidance? Those are the dark areas on the map.

    Washington D.C. just declared themselves at “substantial” risk for Wuhan coronavirus transmission two days ago. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a directive saying that everyone over 2 years of age has to wear a mask indoors regardless of vaccination status. Bowser said that she knows people “will embrace this.” I wouldn’t bet on it, even with how incredibly liberal D.C. is.

    But because of that, now masks are back on in the White House and in the House (although not the Senate yet).

    NPR explains the map I cite above and how they measure getting to “substantial,” the minimum to trigger the masking guidance.

    So if there are 50 cases out of 100,000, they consider that “substantial.” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see how that is “substantial.”

    Plus there’s a big piece missing here — what always seems to be missing when they’re talking about the virus. They’re always talking about cases or testing positive. But the thing that has real effect or that really matters is the hospitalizations and the deaths. Everything else is part of the over 99% that recover and don’t really tax the system.

    So what do the hospitalizations and deaths from the virus look like in D.C. right now? Let’s take a look at D.C.’s stats for yesterday.

    So for perspective, it’s 21 total hospitalized yesterday. Hardly overwhelming, right? Just so you know what that means in context, you can check out the last few months and scroll through how many were hospitalized each day since May 13, when Biden said you no longer had to wear masks if vaccinated. Virtually every other day since May 13 is higher than 21. There were a couple of 20s. But May, for example, ran between the 60s to 90s.

    Here’s May 13, when Biden dropped the masks and said we no longer had to wear them if we were vaccinated, when the total number of hospitalizations was 93, far more than 21. It’s dropped successively since May.

    How about deaths? Right now, according to the CDC, there is a seven-day rolling average of zero deaths in D.C. It was running around three in May. So zero apparently now equals “substantial” in this kind of speak.

    Further, there was this very interesting comment from Joe Biden that I previously reported.

    Biden defends mask mandates on vaccinated Americans while admitting the U.S. is “not likely to see a comparable rise in hospitalizations or deaths.”

    So if we’re not talking about a comparable rise in hospitalizations or deaths, then what are we talking about here? Why are we suddenly back as though we were talking about last year? What’s going on here?

  30. The inimitable Wretchard hits lots of nails on the head reaching this conclusion:

    https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2021/07/30/the-customer-satisfaction-theory-of-mandates-n1465967

    A mandate is a sale by coercion. Jabs did not deliver a return to “normal” and the freedoms that were supposed to attend compliance and effort. However, they did supply — in buckets — the disappointment naturally felt by people who open a box to discover ramen noodles when the packaging shows bouillabaisse. Remember “two weeks to flatten the curve” and “reopening soon”? Well, neither do the politicians who promised them so optimistically.

    In their defense, there were many things politicians and public health officials didn’t know at the time. But instead of confessing their uncertainty — saying “I don’t know” or grimly saying “I have nothing to offer but masks, lockdowns, and needles” — they often assumed a false confidence that they may have to walk back.

    Successful products — like cellphones and KFC — provide immediate and palpable satisfaction to those who get them. There’s positive feedback, unlike those central planners who time and again set lofty targets only to tell the public how badly they’ve failed due to saboteurs, capitalist roaders, and deniers.

    The newest progressive insult is the epithet “selfish,” which appears to mean “not doing what the experts say is best for everyone.” The fallacy here is that it discounts the effect of personal experience and feedback on behavior. The reason many people are being “selfish” about Covid is their disillusionment with the assurances and warnings issued by the politicians, or with hideously expensive policies that seem to have no decisive effect.

    Today, more than a hundred years after the Great War, it is instructive to remember that at first men went over the top without prompting, then later with a lot of prompting, and finally under the threat of being shot. They became “selfish” not from some lack of moral fiber but because they learned that the experts underestimated the cost of frontal attacks. The generals did useless stuff and the privates noticed.

    When the Great War was finally won, it was not because the soldiers grew less selfish but because the generals acquired the humility to learn. “If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote.

    When people want the mousetraps politicians are selling, you’ll have your beaten path.

    Success is a far better incentive than draconian measures. “The customer is always right” is a more successful strategy than “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Today we might say: the better the product the rarer the forced mandate.

    A great essay, and a sound conclusion IF the goal of the Democrats were to end the Covid nightmare.
    But that’s probably not their agenda.
    Their agenda is always power.

  31. I think some in the media sense the administration is making a big mistake here and is way out of touch with the public and that is why we are seeing things like the mild pushback at that press conference and a little more openness for dissent.

    They aren’t really seriously being critical they are trying to nudge them back on track.

    It’s also kind of interesting how similar this story this week has been to so many of the Trump era ‘bombshell’ stories with plenty of unnamed sources and facts and conclusions that can be quickly discredited.

    Even have had Fusion Ken tweeting away about it.

    Memories…

  32. I think the Bee may be onto something here.
    https://babylonbee.com/news/cdc-still-baffled-people-are-paying-attention-to-them

    The CDC has once again changed course, recommending that people wear masks indoors, even those who have received the COVID-19 vaccination. Many people have reacted angrily to this decision—greatly confusing the CDC, which is used to being completely ignored.

    “This whole pandemic has been bizarre for us,” said CDC spokesman Dexter Park. “Normally, we put out recommendations like only cook a steak well-done and only fry eggs over-hard, and people don’t even pay enough attention to make fun of us, so people acting like what we say during the pandemic matters is really confusing.”

    The CDC is a group of bureaucrats used to working a 9-to-5 job of complete pointlessness, making lists of recommendations that are fated to be crumpled up and thrown in a wastepaper basket. Thus, the pandemic turning them into experts whose opinions matter has caught them completely by surprise.

    “People keep saying our suggestions on masking are dumb and make no sense,” said CDC regulator Lyle Howell. “But that’s all of our suggestions on everything. We have to keep making recommendations, though, to justify our existence and get a budget. But no one listens to them—not even us. So can’t you all just go back to ignoring us and stop yelling at us? I’m just here until I get my pension.”

  33. This picture is worth more than a thousand words.

    https://notthebee.com/article/todays-cover-of-the-new-york-post-asks-the-questions-we-should-all-be-asking

    The graph made by the New York Post is EXTREMELY effective imaging and exactly what we should be seeing from anyone who is pro-vaccine at this point in time. The argument is that the vaccine is effective and that the panic is EXTREMELY overblown.

    161 million Americans vaxxed, 5,601 of those sent to the hospital, and 1,141 of those have died of Covid. When put into the context of the squares on the cover, it’s obvious what a tiny number that is.

  34. AesopFan,

    Dr. Walensky ‘s difficulty with basic science is an indication that she’s a political appointee. That’s almost certainly the case with the rest of the CDC’s top management.

    It’s a virtual certainty that the CDC will continue to politicize the Covid variants because that’s what their political masters desire. No amount of railing against the lack of scientific legitimacy is going to change their propaganda because the Covid scamdemic is the fulcrum upon which they’re leveraging their strategy to gain one party control of America.

  35. Dr. Walensky ‘s difficulty with basic science is an indication that she’s a political appointee.

    Given her background, I doubt she’s having difficulties with the science. She’s a hospital administrator who knows those politics and not the political maelstrom she’s in. It’s a wager she’s getting hit with contradictory importunings from various factions in the administration, and she’s been told to carry water for the teachers’ unions and provide CYA for grisly characters like Gretchen Whitmer.

  36. Today, more than a hundred years after the Great War, it is instructive to remember that at first men went over the top without prompting, then later with a lot of prompting, and finally under the threat of being shot. They became “selfish” not from some lack of moral fiber but because they learned that the experts underestimated the cost of frontal attacks. The generals did useless stuff and the privates noticed.

    AesopFan:

    Or as Blackadder observed from his trench in the WWI series of the show:
    ______________________________________

    Clearly, Field Marshal Haig is about to make yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin.

  37. I concur that at least part of the mask motivation is a hope to keep Covid election rules in force for the mid-term elections. Understandably so, since 2022 is shaping up as a “shellacking” as Obama described the 2010 mid-terms.

    However, the effort looks risky. The woke will no doubt be happy to comply, but the rest of the country is getting pretty impatient. Heaven forbid if they go for more lockdowns. That could get ugly.

    I’ve read that 90% of seniors are vaxxed, which means the death rate will remain low even if cases go up. Keeping the fear ginned up, will be hard to maintain for another year plus change.

  38. huxley,

    Yeah, I’m not sure I totally buy that either. If the midterms were this November that would be different.

    Of course, what we are seeing now is likely small potatoes compared to the whipping up of hysteria this winter.

    Even then I’m beginning to think they know lockdowns and business closures are a bridge too far. Maybe that’s wishful thinking we’ll see.

  39. Hello. Being a member of a local organization, I was just involved in a discussion of whether said organization should put out an advisory to its members recommending following the new masking guidelines (i.e., everybody mask up indoors regardless of vax status). In this regard, I found Neo’s interpretation of the Provincetown study very helpful in formulating my position. There was a vote; I voted against and was in the minority, but it was not a tiny minority. This I regard as my first (?) small gesture against the pandemic of fear which has been growing of late.

    (I suppose one could say that the fear is a kind of opportunistic co-infection running in parallel with Everybody’s Favorite Pathogen.)

  40. A few minor comments about the Ct stuff.

    1. The article impies that the assay in question is qualitative, with a Ct cutoff
    for a positive result. To get from there to a quantitative assay, you need to
    calibrate the Ct values. So while, yes, there might be a positive relationship
    between Ct and virus load, the magnitude of the relationship is sheer
    guesswork here.

    2. I have some professional experience in validating PCR assays. In those
    projects, sample contamination or poor handling usually erased weak
    signals, instead of amplifying them.

    3. My experience with PCR methods has been with so-called high-throughput
    assays. The high-throughput assays always include control wells to provide
    a check on assay performance. If such controls exist, I would hope the
    authors drafting the report at least took a look at them.

  41. Huxley…re the Great War, I’ve been thinking about these lines from Siegfried Sassoon:

    ‘“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said
    When we met him last week on our way to the line.
    Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
    And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
    “He’s a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
    As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

    But he did for them both by his plan of attack.’

    Similar to a lot of the leaders of American institutions today….although minus the cheeriness, in the case of those leaders.

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