Trump and the Chinese virus

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a recurrent pattern ever since Trump has been president: he says something or tweets something that the MSM and the Democrats consider an example of his impulsiveness and his repulsiveness. Then they attack whatever it is, pointing out its supposed racism or some other type of offensiveness to PC discourse.

Meanwhile, the thing is talked about and talked about and talked about. By the time they’re through, no one who follows the news is unaware of whatever the issue might be.

And in the process, the MSM and the Democrats tend to overreach and overreact, and there’s a backlash against them because the public doesn’t buy what they’re saying. Meanwhile, Trump has made his point and a lot of people are getting whatever message he’s trying to deliver. I don’t think this happens by accident and I don’t think it’s an example of his impulsivity. I think it’s planned and purposeful on his part.

The latest example is, of course, his calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus,” and having the MSM and Democrats say he’s nasty and insensitive and racist. But not only do they sound like carping nitpickers in a crisis, but it gives Trump and his supporters the opportunity to point out the following:

(1) Many viruses are still called by place names signifying their point of origin, although in recent years WHO has discouraged that and prefers the viruses be called by their more technical names.
(2) The virus actually did originate in China.
(3) And most of all, the Chinese engaged in a huge coverup of what was happening back when alerting the world in a timely fashion might have prevented COVID-19’s spread (see this).

Note also that Trump isn’t calling it the “Wuhan virus,” which was the original name even newscasters were giving to it before WHO emphasized “COVID-19.” He’s calling it the Chinese virus, and he’s doing it to make a point about the Chinese government.

Do Trump’s opponents really continue to think that Trump tweets and speaks without thinking? At this point, it they do, it’s a sign of their failure to notice something that’s glaringly obvious.

Why are we so afraid that our hospitals could be overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients?

The New Neo Posted on by

Reason number one: it’s a frightening prospect – people dying who might be saved, physicians having to decide whether to turn their backs on elderly patients in favor of the young for want of enough ventilators and ICU beds and people to minister to them.

Reason number two: it’s something that epidemiologists are projecting as a very real possibility because of the contagiousness of the virus and its possible rapid spread throughout an area.

Reason number three, and I believe the biggest reason of all: we’ve seen it happen in China and in Italy.

Not only have we seen it happen, but it’s probably one of the very first things that caught our attention. We perceived the suddenness of the influx, and the fact that this was not in what is ordinarily thought of as third-world countries where health care resources are extremely poor. Whether or not Chinese hospitals or Italian hospitals are exactly on a par with ours is not the issue. The point is that Italy is considered a developed country, and China a developing country.

So COVID-19 has been linked almost from the start with dramatic images involving desperation and scarcity of medical resources. That doesn’t happen with all the flu deaths that occur around the world, or the pneumonia deaths or even previous fairly large previous pandemics such as H1N1 or the 1957 Asian flu. It did happen, however, in many areas during the 1918 pandemic, and although most people today probably don’t have much awareness of that historical time, those of us who have learned about it know that it was a very tough situation.

Back in 1918, of course, medical science couldn’t do as much as it can now. There weren’t mechanical ventilators back then; the first one was the iron lung, invented in 1928. Now, though, because there’s more good that medicine can do in these extreme cases, there’s more angst at not having recourse to it.

Then and now: COVID-19, H2N2, worst cases, and the economy

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are some estimates for the toll COVID-19 is likely to take in the US. Make of them what you will:

One model from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested that between 160 million and 210 million Americans could contract the disease over as long as a year. Based on mortality data and current hospital capacity, the number of deaths under the CDC’s scenarios ranged from 200,000 to as many as 1.7 million…

Another model built by experts at Resolve to Save Lives, a global health nonprofit, and the Council on Foreign Relations found the number of potential deaths could range from as few as 163,500, if the virus is no more deadly than seasonal influenza, to more than 1.6 million if the virus carries a mortality rate of just 1 percent.

Some will be young, but most will be older than 60, many considerably older, and with pre-existing conditions.

I’m not sanguine about this. I’m older than that myself. But I’m also old enough to remember the 1957 Asian flu (the more PC and official name is H2N2). Let’s take a look. It’s estimated that H2N2 caused 110,000 deaths in the US all told. That’s a lot of deaths, too. In fact, since the population of the US at that time was just about half of what it is now, the deaths then were the equivalent of today’s 220,000. That’s higher than those low-range estimates the models give for COVID-19, although considerably lower than the high-end predictions.

Here’s a description (from the UK) of how frightening the illness seemed to medical authorities at first:

The first cases in the UK were in late June, with a serious outbreak in the general population occurring in August. From mid-September onwards the virus spread from the North, West, and Wales to the South, East, and Scotland. One GP recalled ‘we were amazed at the extraordinary infectivity of the disease, overawed by the suddenness of its outset and surprised at the protean nature of its symptomatology.’

And in the UK, there was a recession:

Not only was £10 000 000 spent on sickness benefit, but also with factories, offices and mines closed the economy was hit: ‘Setback in Production — “Recession through Influenza”’ (Manchester Guardian, 29 November).

In the US there was a recession as well. But be careful attributing it to H2N2:

We haven’t found any sources that link the Asian Flu of 1957-58 with the 1958 Recession and the associated Bear Market directly, but there is strong evidence of a connection.

What mitigation efforts were in place?:

Measures were generally not taken to close schools, restrict travel, close borders, or recommend wearing masks. Quarantine was not considered to be an effective mitigations trategy and was ‘‘obviously useless because of the large number of travelers and the frequency of mild or inapparent cases.’’ Closing schools and limiting public gatherings were not recommended as strategies to mitigate the pandemic’s impact, except for administrative reasons due to high levels of absenteeism….

Despite the large numbers of cases, the 1957 outbreak did not appear to have a significant impact on the U.S. economy.

Well, COVID-19 has certainly had a significant economic impact so far. But the impact (so far) hasn’t been from the illness itself, but from the efforts to mitigate it, and the fear that’s been aroused by the projections. Perhaps those projections are right; perhaps they’re wrong. But they’ve certainly had an effect.

And the other big cause of the economic downturn has been what’s been happening – economically and healthwise – in so many other countries around the world. It’s been dramatic, and reported on inessantly by the 24-hour news cycle that didn’t exist in 1957.

The media and the Democrats are eager to continue to blame a lot of this on Trump, because it suits their purposes. But will a lot of the public buy it, particularly those in the middle? I have read for a long time that the only thing that can lead to a Democrat win in November is a recession. But this isn’t a normal recession. This is a worldwide recession from a worldwide calamity that Trump did not cause and Trump could not stop. Are people so eager for a scapegoat that they’ll blame him and want Joe Biden in charge? That’s my fear, but it seems completely illogical and I retain hope that it won’t be the result.

There are many months to go before November, and many things to play out.

Interesting times.

COVID-19: explaining South Korea, explaining the US

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article purporting to explain why South Korea is doing relatively well against COVID-19:

Behind its success so far has been the most expansive and well-organized testing program in the world, combined with extensive efforts to isolate infected people and trace and quarantine their contacts. South Korea has tested more than 270,000 people, which amounts to more than 5200 tests per million inhabitants—more than any other country except tiny Bahrain, according to the Worldometer website. The United States has so far carried out 74 tests per 1 million inhabitants, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.

But a caveat:

Yet whether the success will hold is unclear. New case numbers are declining largely because the herculean effort to investigate a massive cluster of more than 5000 cases—60% of the nation’s total—linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive, messianic megachurch, is winding down. But because of that effort, “We have not looked hard in other parts of Korea,” says Oh Myoung-Don, an infectious disease specialist at Seoul National University.

New clusters are now appearing. Since last week, authorities have reported 129 new infections, most linked to a Seoul call center. “This could be the initiation of community spread,” through Seoul and its surrounding Gyeonggi province, Kim says.

So it may just be a lull, and a function of the particularly localized pattern of infection in Korea as well as the country’s mitigation efforts. We don’t know what factors are causing what effect, at least I’ve not read anything that indicates an answer.

Testing may have been especially helpful in Korea because of that initial geographic and social localization:

The surge initially overwhelmed testing capabilities and KCDC’s 130 disease detectives couldn’t keep up, Kim says. Contact tracing efforts were concentrated on the Shincheonji cluster, in which 80% of those reporting respiratory symptoms proved positive, compared with only 10% in other clusters.

I would wager that most people who read this article come away convinced that South Korea’s aggressive testing approach has made all the difference, and the US has been negligent in not testing an equivalent number of people. I agree that the glitches in the development of the US testing kits – a manufacturing error, and then slowness involving bureaucratic red tape that needed cutting – has hampered our efforts. But has it actually made all that big a difference?

For some reason – and I think it may be the early travel restrictions put in place here – the US actually has a pretty good record compared to South Korea in term of severe cases and deaths. Take a look at this chart for today, the one entitled “Confirmed Cases and Deaths by Country, Territory, or Conveyance.” It has some interesting columns, such as “active cases,” “serious, critical cases,” “total deaths,” and “new deaths,” country by country. Since all the countries involved have different populations, it has another interesting column entitled “total cases per 1 million population.”

At the moment, here are the figures for South Korea: 6789 active cases, 59 cases currently in serious or critical condition, 3 new deaths, and 84 total deaths so far out of 8413 total cases since it all began. That means that in South Korea, the number of cases per million so far has been 164, and the deaths have involved .000001632% of the population.

In the US, we have had 7708 confirmed cases so far (with much less testing, so perhaps the rates are much much higher, perhaps just slightly higher, or perhaps in-between). Our numbers are still in the climbing stage, with 1297 new cases, a total of 120 deaths, and 11 new deaths. But of the 7482 currently active cases in the US, only 12 are considered serious or critical. That’s so low that I wonder whether it’s a typo, but if it’s not it’s pretty extraordinary, and it’s much lower than Korea’s already low ratio of serious cases to active cases.

In addition, because the USA has about seven times more people than South Korea, our deaths have so far involved .0000003667 of our population. That’s a very much smaller figure than in South Korea (we also have 23 diagnosed cases per million people, only about about 14% of South Korea’s figure, although that’s almost certainly because we just haven’t tested all that many people, so I don’t place much importance on the comparison).

It’s the death figures that have gotten my attention. Why is our death rate expressed as a percentage of the total population so much lower? Is it just that we haven’t peaked, and South Korea has? Or is something else going on?

For that matter, why is our death rate per million also so much lower than that of European countries? (From Powerline):

Again, these are just the figures as of today, and we could experience a huge surge. But (and I can’t find the link for this right now, although I remember reading it) our caseload began about the same time as South Korea’s.

My guess is that Trump’s much-maligned restrictions on travel from China, put into place on January 31, when there were only seven diagnosed cases in the US, made a significant part of the difference. The press, the Democrats, the left, and the NeverTrumpers were up in arms about that racist xenophobe Trump. And yet his action – as well as later restrictions on Iran and then on February 29 his adding restrictions on Italy and South Korea – seems very smart, particularly the early restriction regarding China.

The press and the Democrats have invested a lot in conveying to the American people that Trump is both a loose cannon and a racist. So when he does something the rest of the world isn’t doing, and it restricts travel from a certain country, it’s a no-brainer for them to scream “racist!,” and they convince much of America that it’s the case. Now they would like you to conveniently forget that Trump’s action was based on the idea of limiting the importation of a disease early on in order to delay its spread as much as possible in order to give the country and the health care system time to prepare, and that it probably accounts for the fact that the death rate in this country is lower than in most of the rest of the world – so far.

[NOTE: Another factor is that South Korea has supposedly had a lot of success treating patients with the antimalaria drug Chloroquine, a widely available medication that has been used in this country for ages for many things, and which is also cheap. And yet it also appears that the FDA has been setting up roadblocks on its use for COVID-19 in this country. Why, if it’s already been in use and approved and considered very safe? I’d like to hear a lot more about that. I understand that they must test it and make sure it works, but why not allow it to be used in very serious cases only, and have a big push to test it ASAP?]

In crisis there is opportunity, and the left wants to seize it

The New Neo Posted on by

The left must see COVID-19 as a fabulous and fortuitous opportunity to accomplish a host of things they’ve been wishing for and hoping for.

They believe it will destroy Trump, hurt the economy, and convince people that big government and Democrats must take over. A fearful populace is a malleable populace, so fanning the flames of fear is good. And of course, elites know best – and nearly all elites are leftist these days.

I don’t think this virus was engineered and purposely released, as some people do. Whether it even escaped accidentally from a Chinese lab is very iffy. But whatever happened, the left is purposefully taking advantage of it.

And this may be as good a place as any to insert the following (hat tip: Ace).

Via Twitchy, Harmeet K. Dhillon uncorks a rant for the ages.

1/As a San Francisco resident and business owner, I’m wondering–can I trust the health judgments of leaders who let thousands live on the streets in their filth? And if we are now getting homeless into shelter, why couldn’t that have happened earlier? Doesn’t their health count?

2/ All of a sudden we are supposed to accept 24-hour curfews “for your own safety” from people who order the police to stand down when Antifa & friends beat the hell out of taxpayers; people who refuse to enforce laws they don’t like (death penalty, bail, property crimes) …/

3/ City leaders who literally give wanted alien criminals a public heads up when ICE is about to conduct raids are now telling me what’s best, declaring a death penalty for businesses, no hearings or due process?! Forgive me if I don’t fall right into line with the fascism …/

4/ which seems awfully situational. The Governor’s suggestions yesterday that older and vulnerable people take extra care and stay inside seemed reasonable. Liberal city leaders decided to seize the opportunity and throw the whole economy into a tailspin as collateral damage …/

5/ but don’t worry — we’ll soon have a government sponsored bailout for favored groups soon, funded with a tax increase crammed down the throats of the dwindling number of taxpayers. Homeless go back to the streets, illegal alien criminals get sanctuary, car break-one continue…

It took me a while to get in gear today

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s an awful lot of material to digest these days, and the sheer volume of it takes time.

I’m also feeling low – how about you? I try to fight it, but it’s a combination of worry about health, economics, and politics; anger at so much of what comes out of the MSM and the left; and cabin fever.

It’s not that I’m usually out partying, and that the new hunkering down has cramped my previous style. I’m usually considerably hunkered-down anyway. But I’m a social creature, and most of my social contacts are now on the telephone – partly my decision and partly the decision of those with whom I’d ordinarily have in-person contact.

And the indefinite timing of the whole thing is part of the angst. How long will this go on?

I try to shake my fear that the left – which considers this both an opportunity and a potential triumph – will be able to take full advantage of a tragic situation. It’s certainly doing its best.

I try to counsel patience for myself. This will shake out over a period of at least a few months. If I let myself be swayed by each day’s ups and downs – and downs – it won’t do me any good and it won’t necessarily even reflect what the result of these events will ultimately be.

How about you?

So here’s my question for all you epidemiologists and infectious disease experts out there –

The New Neo Posted on by

Wouldn’t it be better to have only high-risk people stay home? People over 60 and those with pre-existing conditions? That way, if all those at low risk kept mingling, a lot of them would get a mild flu and herd immunity will be achieved fairly quickly, to the benefit of all, without overwhelming the health care system.

I’m not suggesting this as an actual policy right now, but I’m just wondering if my logic is flawed. I suppose the question is how long would it take for it to run its course and achieve sufficient herd immunity, and when would it be safe for us old folks to finally emerge. Also, would there be a lot of deaths among the younger ones in the meantime?

I just don’t see the end game for the current mitigation strategies. Wouldn’t we still get an overwhelmed health care system when everyone emerges? However, that doesn’t seem to be happening in China or South Korea at the moment, as far as I can tell – although I also don’t know whether many people have been allowed to “emerge” yet.

I was looking at a spate of recent articles on how Philadelphia and St. Louis handled the flu differently in 1918, with Philadelphia holding a big war bond parade despite the fact that the flu was beginning to make inroads in the city, and St. Louis canceling public gatherings (see this for just one example). The Philadelphia death rate soared and that of St. Louis did not.

However, most of the articles don’t mention this depressing fact:

According to a 2007 analysis of Spanish flu death records, the peak mortality rate in St. Louis was only one-eighth of Philadelphia’s death rate at its worst. That’s not to say that St. Louis survived the epidemic unharmed. Dehner says the midwestern city was hit particularly hard by the third wave of the Spanish flu which returned in the late winter and spring of 1919.

So, St. Louis did flatten its curve. But the deaths stretched out longer there.

And this apparently was a common occurrence in many cities:

If St. Louis had waited another week or two, they might have fared the same as Philadelphia, says the lead author on the first study, Richard Hatchett, M.D., an associate director for emergency preparedness at NIAID. Despite the fact that these cities had dramatically different outcomes early on, all the cities in the survey ultimately experienced significant epidemics because, in the absence of an effective vaccine, the virus continued to spread or recurred as cities relaxed their restrictions.

The second study also shows that the timing of when control measures were lifted played a major part. Cities that relaxed their restrictions after the peak of the pandemic passed often saw the re-emergence of infection and had to reintroduce restrictions, says Neil Ferguson, D.Phil., of Imperial College, London, the senior author on the second study. In their paper, Dr. Ferguson and his coauthor used mathematical models to reproduce the pattern of the 1918 pandemic in different cities. This allowed them to predict what would have happened if cities had changed the timing of interventions. In San Francisco, which they found to have the most effective measures, they estimate that deaths would have been 25 percent higher had city officials not implemented their interventions when they did. But had San Francisco left its controls in place continuously from September 1918 through May 1919, the analysis suggests, the city might have reduced deaths by more than 90 percent.

What was the effect of all this on the economy at the time? Here’s a pretty lengthy study. A summary:

Most of the evidence indicates that the economic effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic were short-term. Many businesses, especially those in the service and entertainment industries, suffered double-digit losses in revenue. Other businesses that specialized in health care products experienced an increase in revenues. Some academic research suggests that the 1918 influenza pandemic caused a shortage of labor that resulted in higher wages (at least temporarily) for workers…

Like today, there were a lot of mandatory closings and prohibitions in an attempt to blunt the effects of the disease. I can’t even begin to compare the extent of them, then and now (although I’ll probably do some more reading on the subject). But I do know that the 1918 flu pandemic killed a disproportionate number of people in the prime of life compared to what’s happening with COVID-19, and also killed a higher percentage of Americans in general, and so it stands to reason the economic effects would be maximized by those factors compared to the mortality trends with COVID-19.

Greater San Francisco shelters in place

The New Neo Posted on by

Till April 7.

At least.

Going out without reason is a misdemeanor, although it is allowed for grocery shopping, taking walks (as long as you stay 6 feet away from other people), and a host of other purposes, and many businesses are allowed to stay open (restaurants, for example, as long as they just do takeout). I’m not sure exactly what this adds to what was already in place except the prospect of enforcement. Most things may have closed already. You can read all the details at the link.

I haven’t seen what San Francisco will do with all the homeless. Enforcing these rules for them should be very interesting. Or do they get a pass?

One good thing, though, is that San Francisco already has drive-in testing facilities newly set up. Once the city gets a bead on how many people are infected, perhaps some of this will be relaxed. Perhaps. Right now, there are “at least” 272 confirmed cases in the Bay area.

And yes, these development are extremely disturbing on many many levels.

These sorts of decisions will be a city-by-city thing – for now.

The point of all those draconian rules: mitigation

The New Neo Posted on by

The key to what’s going on now is containment and plus mitigation.

To understand, here’s Dr. Fauci – the infectious disease expert on the task force to deal with COVID-19 – talking about the goals of containment plus mitigation, as well as changes in the rules about testing. Containment (limiting the numbers initially and strict quarantines for the infected) was the goal of the travel restrictions and the initial treatment of victims, and mitigation (flattening the curve of growth) is the point of all the social distancing and handwashing and closings:

Comparisons of COVID-19 and H1N1-2009 are instructive, and it is true that the latter killed a lot of people without all this disruption and chaos and economic doom. It the end, H1N1 may even end up having killed more people, and younger people at that, as well as infecting more people than COVID-19, if these current containment and mitigation strategies are successful.

But the reason H1N1 didn’t engender all these closings despite how widespread it was (66 million Americans, although we didn’t understand that until later) and how very contagious, is that its death rate among the infected was actually quite low. The total number of deaths from H1N1 was fairly high (between 12K and 18K in the US), despite the low rate of death only because so very many people caught it.

The special problem with COVID-19 involves several things. The first is that at this point it appears both highly contagious and somewhat more lethal than H1N1 2009, and we don’t really know the figures. We do know that severe COVID cases flooded the hospitals when it hit China and is doing the same in Italy, so the potential for an overwhelmed health care system is there. The stark reality is that modern medicine can only do its thing if hospitals don’t have too many patients to treat at once. In the case of severe and critical COVID, respirators and ICU care are necessary, and those are not in endless supply.

Simply put, H1N1 did not overwhelm the health care system, even though in severe cases ICU care and respirators were also needed. The rate of severe disease among the infected was low enough that the curve of severe H1N1 disease seems to have been naturally flatter and more drawn out over time, so there was no need to flatten it though extreme mitigation strategies. Also – and I believe this is important – it hit in the US and in Mexico first, so we didn’t see any scary goings-on in other countries when we made our decisions as to how to react to H1N1.

There is something appaling about the specter of having thousands upon thousands of elderly (and some not-so-elderly) people dying because we don’t have enough room in our hospitals or enough special equipment or trained respiratory therapists to operate it. That’s different from the way people die from the flu, too, even though their numbers are high. They come in a more stable and steady stream in terms of numbers, even though there is seasonal fluctuation, and ordinarily we are able to give them all every benefit modern science can offer.

Is preventing the terrible prospect I just described with COVID-19 “worth” crashing the economy? Are we trying to control too much? But wasn’t the economy already sinking out of fear of COVID, anyway, because of what’s already happened in countries such as China and Italy? And what about all the closings? Will they even help in terms of mitigation? But weren’t most things closing down anyway, because of fear?

There’s a cascade of fear, and whether it comes from government recommendations, seeing and reading about Italy or China, MSM and leftist propaganda, or just basic human fear of the unknown, the idea is to put in place stops that will cause the curve of death to flatten and allow the health care system to do its job. That’s probably the only way things can calm down. Hopefully, it can happen soon, before too much damage is done.

And I would like someone in charge – a politician or Fauci or someone at the CDC or on the task force – to clearly explain how they think this will play out if things work out as planned. How many weeks will things be closed? Which policies are aimed at which goals? And when will we know we’ve achieved them?

Lies the MSM is telling

The New Neo Posted on by

The lies of the press go on – and on and on. Rather than offer a long description here, I’m just going to link to two of Ace’s posts (this and this) on some of the more recent, destructive ones that have to do with the Trump administration and COVID-19.

These lies do damage to the public and to our country and even the world, and certainly to Trump. The press’s overriding goal of damaging Trump requires that the public be frightened and angry because they think he’s a dangerous and marauding incompetent who is unfortunately in charge during this crisis.

The press is neither stupid nor negligent in doing this. It is a purposeful, recurrent, well-thought-out approach of theirs, involving a highly practiced skill the press has developed which involves taking a kernel of truth and twisting it out of all recognition to convey the opposite impression.

One of the hallmarks of the technique is the truncated quote, but it’s by no means limited to it. Twitter is perfectly adapted for disseminating the lies to the reading public. The graph of the growth of the lie would probably look exponential for quite a while. Then on to the next lie, and the next.

One of those lies is that Joe Biden isn’t cognitively challenged at this point. Remember when the press mocked Trump for saying that he (Trump) could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would still back him? Well, it’s the same with Biden and the MSM’s refusal to point out Emperor Biden’s lack of clothing. They will defend him no matter what he does or what he says, because he is the only candidate they have left. And they know that if he were president it would be okay because he would merely be a cooperative and malleable figurehead (or his VP would) for the Deep State and Usual Players, brought back for the next version of a movie in the Obama series: “Obama II: Leftward Ho.” COVID-19 is the useful crisis they cannot let go to waste.