Politics of Covid-19

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The CDC's Ever-Shifting COVID-19 Advice Shows the Agency Is Ill-Suited To Decide Which Risks Are Acceptable


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which initially said there was no need for most Americans to wear face masks as a safeguard against COVID-19, reversed that position a little more than a year ago. Beginning in April 2020, the CDC said face masks were an essential disease control tool, even for people who have been vaccinated. Yesterday the CDC modified its advice again, saying fully vaccinated Americans generally do not need to wear masks outdoors or indoors, except when required to do so by businesses or the government.

At each turn, the CDC has said its recommendations were informed by the latest scientific evidence. While there is some truth to that claim, it is clear that other, nonscientific factors have played a role in the CDC's shifting attitude toward face coverings as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The history of that evolution provides ample reason to be skeptical of both the CDC's specific recommendations and the expectation that all Americans should conform to its notion of safety.
'YOU DO NOT NEED TO WEAR A FACEMASK'

'THE MOST IMPORTANT, POWERFUL PUBLIC HEALTH TOOL WE HAVE'

'IT FEELS LIKE A HUGE SHIFT'

'WHY DO WE HAVE TO WEAR MASKS?'


Maybe those two studies provided the crucial pieces of evidence that made the CDC comfortable with relaxing its recommendations for vaccinated people. But it is likely that other factors also played a role.

The CDC seems to have recognized that expecting people to continue living constrained lives even after they get their shots reduces the incentive to get vaccinated, especially among Americans who are at low risk from COVID-19. More generally, the CDC's excessive conservatism makes Americans less likely to take any of its advice seriously. As Sen. Susan Collins (R–Maine) noted during Walensky's Senate testimony this week, "It undermines public confidence in your recommendations, in the recommendations that do make sense, in the recommendations that Americans should be following."
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Analysis Shows Restaurants, Gyms, Hair Salons Were Not A Significant Source Of COVID Transmissions, But There Are Caveats


Another issue is that the data is limited, with only a few states publicly releasing COVID-19 tracking information in a way that organizes the data by business sector. Contact tracing is also limited, with very few cases able to be traced back to a potential source.

Still, the analysis should make people feel less apprehensive about returning to normal life. ABC looked at publicly available data in four states – California, Illinois, Michigan, and North Carolina – and Washington, D.C., and found that less than 5% of new COVID-19 cases in those states came from bars, restaurants, gyms, etc. in those states.

Additional states also released data that helped with the analysis even if they didn’t categorize the data by business sector.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Media Wanted To Believe Florida Was Fudging COVID-19 Data, But The Story Is A Fraud


Further, Jones’ story changed dramatically the more she told it, from her initial claims that she was fired for merely questioning the data. The Associated Press initially reported that “Jones has not alleged any tampering with data on deaths, hospital symptom surveillance, hospitalizations for COVID-19, numbers of new confirmed cases, or overall testing rates — core elements of any assessment of the outbreak and of federal criteria for reopening.” The outlet also noted that “Jones acknowledges Florida has been relatively transparent — for which she herself claims some credit — and relatively successful in controlling the pandemic.”

Since that initial story, however, Jones began saying that, actually, yeah, her superiors – particularly Dr. Shamarial Roberson – had directly instructed her to “delete cases and deaths” to make Florida look better. She now claims Roberson “asked me to go into the raw data and manually alter figures.”

Again, remember that Jones didn’t have access to the raw data. She merely ran the dashboard. To further illustrate this point, National Review pointed out that Jones now runs her own dashboard, using the same data as the state, she simply displays it differently:
Or, to put it more bluntly, she displays them badly. When you get past all of the nonsense, what Jones is ultimately saying is that the State of Florida—and, by extension, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—has not processed its data in the same way that she would if she were in charge. But, frankly, why would it? Again, Jones isn’t an epidemiologist, and her objections, while compelling to the sort of low-information political obsessive she is so good at attracting, betray a considerable ignorance of the material issues. In order to increase the numbers in Florida’s case count, Jones counts positive antibody tests as cases. But that’s unsound, given that (a) those positives include people who have already had COVID-19 or who have had the vaccine, and (b) Jones is unable to avoid double-counting people who have taken both an antibody test and a COVID test that came back positive, because the state correctly refuses to publish the names of the people who have taken those tests. Likewise, Jones claims that Florida is hiding deaths because it does not include nonresidents in its headline numbers. But Florida does report nonresident deaths; it just reports them separately, as every state does, and as the CDC’s guidelines demand. Jones’s most recent claim is that Florida’s “excess death” number is suspicious. But that, too, has been rigorously debunked by pretty much everyone who understands what “excess deaths” means in an epidemiological context—including by the CDC; by Daniel Weinberger, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health; by Lauren Rossen, a statistician at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics; and, most notably, by Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, who, having gone to the trouble of making a video explaining calmly why the talking point was false, was then bullied off Twitter by Jones and her followers.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Do You Trust Someone Not Wearing a Mask to Have Gotten Vaccinated? Should You Care?


Perhaps Fauci will suggest that those who are vaccinated should sew a large yellow “V” on their shirts. That would take care of the trust issue very quickly. Or maybe they could put a chemical in the next batch of vaccines that makes people glow in the dark. That would work fine at night but might be a problem during the day,

But the mask Nazis have done their work well. There are a lot of people who will “fear” maskless people.

The bigger problem for [New York City resident Wyatt] Hnatiw, he said, is what others will think of him if he doesn’t wear a mask. He knows people might correctly assume that he’s gotten his shots, but they also might think he’s simply unconcerned about others’ health. He said he’s been keeping a face covering around his wrist so that he can put it on near crowds for other people’s comfort.

“If they’re concerned themselves, then it’s a really low burden for me to put the mask on to make them feel safer, even if it’s not, strictly speaking, necessary,” Hnatiw said.

Lordy god amighty, have we really come to this? Now we have to recognize and cater to other people’s paranoia?
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Ron DeSantis Will Pardon COVID Violators. Why Stop There?



"It's a total overreach," said DeSantis on Laura Ingraham's Fox News program, adding that he will issue pardons when he meets with the state's clemency board in the coming months. "These things with health should be advisory, they should not be punitive."

That the government would lock anyone in a cage for allowing other people to make their own choices on face coverings is patently bonkers. Yet the Carnevales are far from the only ones who have fallen victim to an excessively punitive approach. Perhaps DeSantis could apply his newfound attitude on overcriminalization to the many other offenses that have people languishing away behind bars for stupid reasons.

Let's start with the obvious: weed. In Florida, those arrested for marijuana possession under 20 grams face a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison. Those caught with more than 25 grams face up to 15 years behind bars, with a mandatory sentence of three years.

It's likely that DeSantis, a law-and-order Republican, views the Carnevales' crimes as victimless. Are they? Several COVID-19 outbreaks have been traced back to gyms where people forewent masks, including at a gym in Hawaii where 21 people contracted the virus over a three-day period and a gym in Chicago where 55 people contracted it during a week in August. Those gyms implemented social distancing measures, but allowed exercisers to ditch the face coverings.
 

LightRoasted

If I may ...

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Time to Change How PCR Testing Is Deployed for COVID-19 and Reinstate the Doctor-Patient Relationship


Throughout this entire time, testing was divorced from primary medical providers, severing the doctor-patient relationship. There were testing sites, and many times patients were receiving their results electronically. A doctor did not assess those who received PCR testing for symptoms, and the CDC has never issued treatment guidelines for symptom management outside of hospitalization. Not even for monoclonal antibodies or Regeneron. This treatment proved very effective in preventing severe illness in high-risk patients when given early, and several prominent physicians recommended the public health system establish and advertise infusion clinics. The CDC and HHS never created a robust communication effort for this.

For many of us with healthcare experience, the actions of the public health bureaucracy were unprecedented. Using proven and safe medications for symptom management is routine even if they don’t kill the particular pathogens. Yet, doctors who used safe and proven drugs to stop the viral replication, inflammation, and clotting at various stages of COVID-19 were suppressed, censored, and dismissed.

To date, there is no approved treatment protocol for early treatment. Quarantining the healthy, PCR testing the asymptomatic, and divorcing care from the primary healthcare provider were all anomalies. And with the nationwide variability in mitigation protocols, it was clear mask mandates and lockdowns were not very effective in improving the pandemic outcomes. And anyone who writes about the New York Times report from August or the following statement from the WHO in January of 2021 regarding PCR testing is censored and told were are misinterpreting the information by social media fact-checkers:

WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false-positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.
Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.


This section means the PCR testing alone is not diagnostic for COVID-19 when it stands alone. Yet, we had used it that way for nearly a year in our testing regime. This notice also clarifies that as the virus becomes less prevalent, the PCR testing becomes less accurate. This morning on CNBC, former FDA Dr. Scott Gottlieb told us prevalence is collapsing:


 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Texas Just Proved That Biden and Fauci Are Fools





“The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime everything’s fine, take off your mask, forget it. It still matters,” he said. “It’s critical, critical, critical, critical that they follow the science.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci also called it “risky” and “potentially dangerous.”

“When you pull back on all mitigation methods on all public health guidelines, that’s when you get into trouble and history has proven that,” Fauci told Chris Wallace of Fox News. “This isn’t just some kind of a theoretical, a point that I’m trying to make. It’s not theoretical. It actually happens.”

Weeks later, when no surge in cases happened, Fauci tried to suggest that there might be a “lag,” but no surge ever happened.

Now, for the first time since the start of the pandemic, Texas has reported zero coronavirus deaths for a day. They also reported the fewest COVID cases in over a year, the lowest seven-day COVID positivity rate ever, and the lowest number of COVID hospitalizations in 11 months.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The COVID-19 Test No One Is Talking About: Make Sure Your Children Have It Before They Are Vaccinated



Senator Ron Johnson went on Tucker Carlson Tonight and shared that his doctor recommended he not receive the vaccine at this point because he has successfully recovered from the virus. This medical advice is entirely reasonable based on the current science and is the purpose of the doctor-patient relationship. Johnson also stated that he was concerned about the push to vaccinate children without full FDA approval. The vaccines are still given under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) because of incomplete safety data for their use at any age.

The lack of understanding of recovered immunity is so poor that MSNBC anchor Brian Williams accused Johnson of doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin. Williams went on to say that Johnson’s statement was exactly what a Russian asset would say. On CNN, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra appeared to agree with a host when asked if there should be laws keeping unvaccinated people out of buildings. According to the CDC data on COVID-19 effectiveness, this rhetoric is next-level insanity.

According to CDC data, through May 10, 2021, the rate of hospitalization after being vaccinated was 0.000690%. The chances of COVID-19 being fatal was 0.000157%, or, effectively, one in a million. A person’s lifetime risk of dying in a car accident, crossing the street, or falling from a height is all well under one in 1,000. So, why are we being told to mask children and behaving as if unvaccinated people without symptoms pose an outsized risk to the vaccinated?



:shocking:


I'm Glad Brian Williams knows more that Sen. Johnson's doctor .... Fukwhit
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Fauci Finally Admits What We All Knew About the COVID Vaccine, Masks, and Infections



Over the weekend, Fauci finally said what we’ve known about the vaccine. That they’re super effective to the point that it’s a “dead end” for the virus. Also, even the very rare cases of infection post-vaccination, which are all asymptomatic, these people still don’t need to wear a mask since their virus load is immensely low and do not risk spreading the disease (via The Hill):

Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, said during a discussion on Sunday about the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) decision to drop mask recommendations for fully vaccinated individuals that vaccinated people become "dead ends" for COVID-19.
Appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation," Fauci explained to host John Dickerson that fully vaccinated people can go without masks even if they have an asymptomatic case of COVID-19 because the level of virus is much lower in their nasopharynx, the top part of their throat that lies behind the nose, than it is in someone who is unvaccinated.
"So even though there are breakthrough infections with vaccinated people, almost always the people are asymptomatic and the level of virus is so low it makes it extremely unlikely — not impossible but very, very low likelihood — that they're going to transmit it," Fauci said.
Fauci added that vaccinated people essentially become "dead ends" for the virus to spread within their communities.

Great news, doc—but you also said that New York was the state that did it right. No. They didn’t do it right. Gov. Andrew Cuomo let the virus burn through nursing homes, thanks to his executive order forcing these facilities to admit COVID-positive patients. It killed thousands. It was so bad that Cuomo and his people intentionally undercounted the true death toll in these locations by 50 percent.
 
Top