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Data: Hospitals underwhelmed by 2nd COVID wave, as they were with 1st

Chicken Little report: Federal government data now shows that hospital capacity has never been at full capacity or even strained during the first wave of COVID-19 in the spring, as well as the current spike now.

[F]ederal government data compiled from state-level reports suggests that hospitals nationwide have considerable space left to deal with both routine medical issues and COVID-19 patients. The Department of Health and Human Services offers on its website estimates of hospitalization rates across the United States.

…The HHS numbers belie forecasts of impending collapse of the U.S. medical system. As of Saturday, the department estimated that hospitals nationwide were at about 75% capacity. ICU beds were even lower, at 63.5%. Patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 occupied just under 15% of all beds nationwide. Even in areas that have recently posted huge surges in positive COVID tests, the numbers were largely similar to the national average: In New York, 76% of hospital beds (and 61% of ICU beds) were taken.

In California, where positive test results have skyrocketed, 76% of inpatient beds were likewise filled (though the ICU numbers were notably higher than New York’s, at 79%). Ohio, which has also seen a surge in positive tests over the last few months, has 71% of inpatient beds taken, and 77% of ICU beds.

Those numbers are not far out of line with national average occupancy rates seen in normal times and are, in some cases, lower than what are widely considered optimal rates.

There’s more at the link, but overall the data confirms what I wrote back in March, only two weeks after some states had declared statewide emergencies, imposed lockdowns, and destroyed their economies based on a panicked fear of a gigantic spike that would overwhelm their hospitals. The data then strongly suggested that these fears were unwarranted. This new data confirms that conclusion.

The lockdowns, mandates, and cancellation of the Bill of Rights were all entirely unnecessary. Worse, corrupt politicians (mostly Democrats) have morphed their so-called purpose from easing the sudden arrival of many sick patients (“flatten the curve”) to a vain attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, something that only six months ago sane people knew was impossible.

Under this new impossible mantra (“Stop the spread!”), lockdowns will never end. Which to these corrupt politicians is just fine, as it gives them the kind of absolute power they crave.

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73 comments

  • janyuary

    Jeff Fauva … here’s a prime illustration of the difference between what one knows and what one believes. If something I know conflicts with something I’m asked to believe, I’ll go with what I know.

    The data confirms the arithmetic that Americans savvy enough to trust their basic 4th grade math skills, figured out when this thing started, and Mr. Z has been on top of it all along.

    The current claim in America is what, 300,000 dead, thereabout, 30 percent of one million. About one third of one million.

    Meanwhile, the other 330 million in America remain intact. All of the rest, the predictions, the models, the “science” of the “spread” — were matters of belief alone.
    Of course the hospitals were underwhelmed! So who do you believe?
    Math is like Superman, it always tells the truth.

    Here’s a solid truth: if someone wants to take something from you that you want to keep, they will probably try to scare you into giving it to them. It is as old as the hills, Jeff Fauva.

    Americans need to come to their senses soon.

    The most aggressive repetitive marketer (hypnosis beyond propaganda) is the medical industry. It saturates the entire spectrum of media 24-7 with a barrage of pitches warning you, everywhere you turn, that your very life hangs on a thread and you need their constant assistance and testing. I looked it up once (data for you!) and as I already guessed, it spends far and away more $$money on marketing than any other industry. We are seeing the fruit after one generation’s application.

    My guess is that government is the second most aggressive repetitive marketer in the US, with a constant stream of suggestions of how to be a good citizen. The Ad Council, of course.
    Using my money, the schlubs, and weakening free-market media in the doing! Grrrrr.

  • Ray Van Dune

    Where is NPR getting the Administrators, Doctors, and Nurses they have on every day. bemoaning the crisis that hospitals are facing?! Do they look for temporary local situations they can cherry-pick, or maybe there is an endless supply of Democrat mouthpieces in the industry?

    And remember a few months ago when NPR said President Trump was “lying” to the American people about there being a vaccine by the end of the year? He was just trying to boost his re-election chances by cruelly raising false hopes, explained an “expert”. I can’t find it in their archives, but I heard it with my own ears!

    And then there is the report that Pfizer was ready to announce their vaccine was ready in late October, but delayed the announcement until after the election. Here’s a chilling thought… what if Biden hadn’t “won”? How long would they have delayed then, hmmm?

  • Cotour

    Follow up: I am reposting this video of Dr. John Campbell who has from the jump been the unofficial / objective / non political spokes person of the Covid information:

    https://youtu.be/7H2c0Zm6PFw Its 21 minutes long but you can forward to 6:27 to 10:10 where he talks specifically about the established real world effectiveness of the Vit D, and even he is left scratching his head as to why no government agency or the media have even mentioned these simple, effective and established through experience in hospitals dealing with real infected people.

    Real “Overwhelming Clinical evidence”, reduction in deaths and diminished effects of the virus for those who have taken the vit D are not to be down played. But they have without doubt been down played, not mentioned at all by government, the CDC or the media.

    Dr. John Campbell: Positive information regarding vit D V Covid, “Greeted by a wall of universal silence”. (Vitamin D and zinc)

    It goes against common sense, but there it is all the same.

  • Max

    Z-man said;
    Under this new impossible mantra (“Stop the spread!”), lockdowns will never end. Which to these corrupt politicians is just fine, as it gives them the kind of absolute power they crave.

    https://texasnewstoday.com/bill-gates-says-the-united-states-will-enter-a-worse-stage-of-the-covid-pandemic-and-predicts-that-the-blockade-will-continue-until-2022/82878/

    “Heads up, Easter worshippers — as the Barack Obamas of the world put it. From Gates’ lips to Democrat government’s whips”

    This is what happens when nobody believes in global warming, “plan B”. a never ending stream of pandemics resulting in nearly the identical results as the green new deal. As B. Gate says;

    “It’s bad to see everything we’ve learned from this epidemic so that another epidemic can occur and that government can quickly test and send messages to the expert CDC. Don’t be afraid to publish the news and get people ready.”

    “It’s clear that we’ll be smarter next time.”

    And the next time, and the next time, and the next time…

    I searched how many people die in United States every year. The rounded off number is 2,800,000…. Divide that by 365 and you get an average of 7,600 people die every day… And they’re trying to panic us over 3,000 deaths a day from the Chinese flu? (which the genome was published January 10 before the outbreak)

    Unless daily deaths surpass 10,000 during the height of the cold season, nothing here is abnormal.

    If there were flatbed trucks driving through the neighborhoods with loudspeakers saying “bring out the dead”, I would be saying something different.

    Some one in this forum commented; “don’t believe your lying eyes”. This is a great example of being asked to believe what we tell you, not what you see.

    https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/australia-ends-covid-19-vaccine-trials-due-to-hiv-antibody-positives-2337285

    “Diego Silva from Sydney Health Ethics in the University of Sydney School of Public Health noted that although the development might seem counter-intuitive, from a research ethics viewpoint, this is a success.

    “Science cannot be all about producing positive results; negative results will and must occur. Negative results are also as important as success in science, since they, too, form part of the evidence base for future research,” said Silva”

    Apparently they used crisper technology to utilize the aids virus as a vector into the cells to change the RNA. This will genetically modify the patients to prevent the body from reacting to viruses by adding RNA strands to the cell so the immune system identifies the virus as part of the body does not react. (Perhaps they thought they could sneak in a cure for AIDS?)
    What is the long-term effects of randomly changing your RNA? Are they lying to us when they claim it doesn’t touch your DNA? What will be the ramifications for cross species migration of modified diseases? RNA viruses affect animals, humans, evidence of plants and the bacteria in the mask you are wearing are all testing positive for coronavirus.
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/virginia-pfizer-moderna-vaccines-wont-prevent-disease-or-transmission/

    The test for coronavirus uses amplification of the sample to see if you’re infected. Even Fauci said an application over 30 should not be done because too many false positives. With the recent increase it has been found the amplification has been raised to 40 in which even tapwater has been showing positive for coronavirus. The data is being manipulated.

    This is not a vaccine or anything close to what we normally know as a vaccine. It merely hides the symptoms of the carrier.

  • janyuary

    Ray Van Dune, that’s what you get for listening to NPR. National Public Radio, a subsidized “news media” in a free market that needs ZIP in the way of subsidized anything by way of news media. Honestly!!!!

    Cotour, diet is THE single most significant thing in what any human being does to stay healthy. The biggest give-away of all that this was and is flat-out theater and manipulation, is that all those supposedly concerned about saving lives, failed utterly to address the single most important factor in fighting viruses. Instead we saw as much garbage food as ever, and people buying it with masks on standing six feet away from each other. Laughable and pathetic and disgusting all at the same time, how dim people are to perceive reality.

    Why on earth do people need studies and data to confirm truths that are right in their faces?
    I understand those who are skeptical of science, a lot better now.

  • Cotour

    Your missing my over arching point:

    There are no government agencies, the CDC, no health agency promoting through their official channels these simple, inexpensive and clinically proven in the real world specifically effective against this, what is being promoted as a death sentence to many. No information is being transmitted to the public, the citizens in this regard.

    Nor has the media, the “Objective” journalists been reporting these simple and effective therapies. Why not?

    And yes, take care of yourself, exercise, eat correctly, take appropriate supplements etc, etc.

    In the end WE are all responsible for what does and does not happen to them for the most part and not government. The majority of people put their faith in these entities, government and the media to watch out for them. And this story undeniably to my thinking proves that to be an inaccurate interpretation of reality.

  • Col Beausabre

    “Patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 occupied just under 15% of all beds nationwide.”

    Weasel words

    Note that “tested positive for COVID-19” does NOT equal “admitted because of COVID-19”. If I was admitted to treat a gall bladder infection and show up as positive for COVID-19 in admission testing (and all hospitals are testing incoming patients), that is incidental. So how many of these patients would be in the hospital anyway and how many are in the hospital just because of the virus….

    “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure”

  • janyuary

    Cotour, spot on:

    “There are no government agencies, the CDC, no health agency promoting through their official channels these simple, inexpensive and clinically proven in the real world specifically effective against this, what is being promoted as a death sentence to many. No information is being transmitted to the public, the citizens in this regard.”

    Government agencies that presume such a role are a mistake — the force of government, a force just like fire, must be limited for our own safety. THIS is what happens when we pretend that government is a “safe” servant instead of the deadly dangerous servant that it is.

    “Nor has the media, the ‘Objective’ journalists been reporting these simple and effective therapies. Why not?”

    Because it’s not their job!
    Just because they claim it is and that they are living up to it, is neither here nor there. Their job is to make the news organ in question regardless of medium, profitable.
    Truth is something sought and arrived at after invested effort and reflection.
    Today’s media consumers are entitlement minded enough to believe the lie that they deserve the truth. No, they deserve the media they support.
    To live in liberty while having the right of self-ownership, every individual must alone accept the job of informing oneself, whether by listening to supposedly “worthless” anecdotal evidence from people who are healthy into their 90s, or by reading what journalists put out, or most likely by a combination of both and other things, too. But it is NOBODY’s JOB but that of the individual seeking truth.

  • Cotour

    “Just because they claim it is and that they are living up to it, is neither here nor there. Their job is to make the news organ in question regardless of medium, profitable.”

    Point.

    They are not what people assume they are, as a matter of fact they are very much not what people think they are.

  • janyuary

    Spot on again, Cotour. “They are not what people assume they are, as a matter of fact they are very much not what people think they are.”

    I extrapolate from that, that this holds true in many industries other than news media. I certainly apply it to the medical industry, by a good margin the largest and most aggressive marketer through media in America of its “services,” promoted through fear and fear alone. In point of fact doctors are like auto mechanics: your chances of finding a good one, honest and skilled who successfully diagnoses the problem correctly the first time out or even the second or third, are slim indeed. Most auto mechanics guess, and wrong at that, no matter their good intentions. So do most doctors; the dif is that doctors get away with scaring their customers into forgetting that their diagnoses is based on guesswork most of the time.

    Walter Cronkite is often cited as a model of the “impartial” journalist, but even as a grade school kid I could tell by the way he slanted the news, where his politics were, and sure enough time proved me correct. I have had the privilege and pleasure to know and read work of journalists whose political party I could never guess, even after reading their stuff for years and becoming personal friends with a few of them. THAT is what to look for in a journalist if you ask me (you didn’t!! ;^): you read the story and have no idea where the reporter stands on the issue. It happens very rarely.

  • janyuary

    Max: “If there were flatbed trucks driving through the neighborhoods with loudspeakers saying “bring out the dead”, I would be saying something different.”

    Grandma, a teen in Los Angeles during the flu epidemic of 1918-19, lost some relatives, including an auntie she’d snuggled up close in bed with, to keep her warm while she was sick. Port towns and cities get walloped first; I remember the Hong Kong flu in the late ’60s laid young men in their prime, flat out for a week or more — imagine how many fared worse. I got it, too, just a gradeschool kid and a hearty one at that. Later in I remember flu seasons in a working metropolis of 12 million where half the office called in sick with good reason.

    I know what a pandemic looks like. The arithmetic, something known as opposed to believed, confirms that it is taking scant toll, which is exactly what I see in the world around me: the tiniest smattering of actual illness in boots on the ground around me.

    But it is anecdotal evidence to trust Grandma. Who lived into her mid 90s with all her marbles intact, grew up on lard (rich in vitamin D, choline, and other nutrients) instead of hydrogenated cottonseed oil pitched as “healthy vegetable oil” yet more than bereft of nutrition, is fat in a form the body has a hard time recognizing, let alone metabolizing … since the 1930s, a major source of nutrition has been demonized in American culture, because of unquestioning trust in doctors. I still see dim bulbs ordering egg-white only. It is exactly like buying a Mazerati and tossing the engine. So exasperating. The list could go on and on, of healthy foods demonized by medicine.

    I’ve just got too much time on my hands! I sure wish people would recognized aggressive marketing and scare tactics when they see them, and turn them off.

  • wayne

    I’ll pop this in here–

    “Panic in the Streets”
    (Elia Kazan) 1950
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042832/plotsummary

    “When a body is found in the New Orleans docks, it’s pretty obvious that he died from gun shot wounds. The police surgeon notices that the man is also displaying other symptoms and Lt. Commander Clint Reed, a doctor with the U.S. Public Health Service, diagnoses a highly contagious disease, pneumonic plague. He tries to convince local officials to find everyone who may have been in contact with the dead man. The Mayor supports his efforts but many, including the police, are doubtful. Reed wants to avoid publicity so as not to panic the public. They have little information to go on – they don’t know the dead man’s identity – and Reed estimates they have 48 hours before disease begins to spread……”

  • Max

    janyuary said;
    “hydrogenated cottonseed oil pitched as “healthy vegetable oil” yet more than bereft of nutrition, is fat in a form the body has a hard time recognizing, let alone metabolizing … ”

    Bingo
    The cottonseed oil not a food product! The cotton plant itself is not regulated by the food industry because it’s not considered an edible plant. 1/2 of the nations pesticide consumption of chemicals and fertilizer products are used in its growth to maximize yield. The oil in the cottonseed absorbs much of dangerous pesticides causing neural transmitter problems that mimic Parkinson’s disease and causing cancer. Because it is a waste product of the cotton industry (which has its own problems causing skin rashes) many food products use it as a cheap filler on their ingredients list. I found it in coffee creamer marketed by Nestlé. It didn’t take long for the product to make people sick. It was removed quietly when they saw the test results… The oil was full of carcinogens.
    I’m still amazed how many products to use propyleneglycol as a sweetener and a baby food additive. It is a kissing cousin to Ethelineglycol (antifreeze) and is used as an anti-freeze substitute in sensitive environmental situations.

    That reminds me of artificial sugar and diet pop. The liver breaks it down into wood alcohol and embalming fluid.(formaldehyde) Michael J Fox tremors are a good example of nerve damage done by formaldehyde poisoning. (It is said he was never seen without his diet Coke) I know of 3 people personally (One my sister) that required eye surgery on the cornea from the damage from the isopropyl alcohol/rubbing alcohol in diet Coke. (For the same reason that moonshine will make you blind)
    A more serious side effect of artificial sugar is that it tricks the body into releasing insulin when there’s no sugar to digest. Study’s show it’s one of the leading causes of type two diabetes as the body shuts down the malfunctioning pancreas because insulin is irritating to the cardiovascular system. (Diabetes and heart disease are related for this reason)
    Insulin’s other job is to convert sugar to fat. As long as you have insulin, a fat retentive hormone in your bloodstream, you cannot burn fat. That’s why the keto diet works so well, ketosis only occurs in the absence of all carbohydrates and sugars… Even artificial sugars including antifreeze will trigger the insulin response and pull you out of ketosis so you stop losing weight. (In sensitive people, just smelling good sweet food will cause an insulin response)

    Talking about sugar reminds me of another dangerous chemicals in our food supply. We’ve all seen the vegetables labeled GMO free… corn, soy beans, and a host of other genetically modified plants bathed in Monsanto (now Behr) Round Up product, absorbing chemicals now proven to cause cancer. What they haven’t told you is round up is mostly used on most grain products that need to die so they can dry out (desiccate) at the same time for more productive harvest on the Farmer’s schedule… like wheat, so green kernels do not go moldy. Only problem is, the kernel absorbs a great deal of the Roundup as the plant is poisoned and dies. Now you know where gluten intolerance and irritable bowel syndrome was created.
    Sugarcane, at the end of its growing season, is set on fire to crystallize the sap in the stock. Green plants do not burn, so they flood the field with round up to make a even harvest. The workers absorb the chemicals through their feet causing serious ulcers and health issues… The plants are poisoned and that poison is harvested in the sugarcane for your dinner table.

    And now for some good news, nutritionist have reevaluated “Beef” and found out that it’s not so bad for you after all… steak and eggs is back on the menu as health food… Who would’ve thunk it.

    You’re right about eggs as well, the brain needs cholesterol to function properly as its primary source of nutrition/ hormone production. The human body makes its own cholesterol and does not absorb it directly from lanolin (sheep cholesterol in lotion) or from eggs. They do have the necessary ingredients, when digested, to form human cholesterol for our bodies needs. Cholesterol buildup in the arteries is our bodies way of patching leaks… Which can be caused by a nutritional problem like vitamin C deficiency (rickets) or over production of insulin/ high blood pressure. “Good oil” for consumption “stays liquid at room temperature” is sufficient in your diet to dissolve cholesterol buildup in the veins. Olive oil, coconut oil, some vegetable oil… not canola rapeseed oil !
    (Staten drugs have been proven to be effective in the first month only. After the first month, it does more harm than good)

    Which brings me back to the title head of this article:
    “[F]ederal government data compiled from state-level reports suggests that hospitals nationwide have considerable space left to deal with both routine medical issues and COVID-19 patients”

    If there’s not enough patients to scare the public into compliance and submission, then the solution is to create some…

    What is in the vaccine?

    https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-12-10-pfizers-vaccine-studies-based-on-fraud.html

    There have been no follow-up studies to prove that normal vaccinations are helpful, let alone necessary. Just a recipe for endless sick people to feed the pharmaceutical industry with riches beyond imagination.
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/unvaccinated-children-healthier-than-vaccinated-children/

    I seem to have gotten carried away somewhat….

  • janyuary

    Fascinating read, Max!

    A food scientist and professor at a very well-regarded agricultural animal-husbandry university, told me back in 1990 about the travesty of hydrogenating cottonseed oil. Today’s Crisco and margarine and other fake-animal-fat products, are made from a different plant supposedly healthier now than cottonseed, I think (can’t remember now my most recent research). What he told me back then was that the medical industry knew that their advice to avoid butter and animal fat (especially lard, highly nutritious) in lieu of hydrogenated imitations marketed as “healthier” was wrong, a mistake. They knew.

    This professor was livid, furious, at the entire medical establishment for refusing to let go of their wrong conclusions because of so much vested interest in their reputations and pocketbooks. This was back in 1990 — people looked at you like you were crazy if you said “I’ll take butter instead of margarine, thank you, it’s a LOT healthier.” But smart people did and still do. He lectured me for quite some little time on the dangers of eating hydrogenated anything. Today I scrupulously avoid it, and I believe my health reflects it. You are sure right about the fake sugar — I used to drink that garbage diet soda constantly, and for a different reason that the right one, stopped drinking it. The improvement in my general health was like night and day within a week, and I had to eat tasty crow served up by a dear friend wise in the ways of smart eating, who’d been telling me for years how dangerous and bad any kind of fake food is for the body.

    Sometime read Michael Crichton’s “Travels.” He certainly became disillusioned with the world of doctors and physicians. I”m like him — I don’t have the same blind reverence for doctors as most Americans, with good reason. As a kid, we had good doctors who knew how to fix things that got messed up, and pill-dispensing doctors; everyone in town knew which was which. Even the good doctors, the best of them, made some very bad calls (smart patients found second opinions, dumb ones had to live with the doctor’s mistake), and as for the bad doctors, one of them beat his wife and his kids (friends of mine) on a fairly regular basis, I learned later.

    Doctors are no better or worse than your average auto mechanic on pretty much every level. Except that no auto mechanic I ever knew had a racket going where he talked — er, make that frightened people into bringing their perfectly well-operating car in every six months or year for tests to search for something possibly about to go wrong so he could do “preventative” treatments.

    A doctor’s role is to fix something after it’s been damaged. People I know who’ve lived to old age, regarded doctors that way for the most part. People asked George Burns the secret to his old age. “I don’t visit the doctor,” he replied. He was only half joking.

    Today’s medicine presumes a much more intrusive and wrong role of being responsible for preventing my need for their services in the future! And people FALL for it! They listen to and see aggressive marketing day in and out suggesting to them that they are sick or about to be sick. That they need to be alarmed and go see their doctor for this test.

    I despair at how naive and credulous people are when it comes to doctors. That’s okay when they keep it to themselves, but when they want to invest medicine with the authority of government to force me to go along — I AM OUT.

  • janyuary

    Max, one more story that illustrates how smart folks deal with today’s medical establishment and their badly-founded fear of lard:

    A friend of mine, an engineer, is married to a nurse who loves her work. She’s a lovely woman who doesn’t have much time to cook, and she asked him if he wouldn’t mind taking over as he could work it into his schedule more easily. He’s always been a great cook on camping trips, so he gladly began doing the cooking for the two of them. But unknown to her, he replaced all of the “healthy” fats in the house with smart ones, mainly lard (he renders his own, it’s a simple procedure) and butter. Olive oil is about the only vegetable oil he has on his shelves.

    Because she was a nurse, she was always getting tested for levels of this and that. She came home one day and happily reported that he must be doing something good with his cooking, because her cholesterol levels and balance had improved dramatically. He was SMART. He merely smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He knew that if he told her she’d been eating lard, she’d have freaked out. That was a few years ago — he finally told her, and by that time she had to believe her lyin’ eyes.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Some virus downplayers on this board believe they are original, independent thinkers. The truth is that none of you are anything new. The same ‘thinkers’ were around during the Spanish flu pandemic, downplaying the virus and mocking folks who wore masks. 680,000 people died and here we are, indulging in the same quackery, rationalizations and conspiracies. We can learn from history.

  • Jeff Fauva

    janyuary: Thanks for the response, but next time it would be more succinct to say, “I’m just fine with 300,000 deaths”.

  • janyuary

    Jeff, in a pool of 331 million, yes, I am fine with 300,000 deaths of mostly folks well past their prime and probably wouldn’t have lived out the year anyway.

    You are fine with declaring that a 99.99 percent survival rate is a failure.
    Just say it.

  • Jeff Fauva

    janyuary: Thanks for these stark admissions.

    “Jeff, in a pool of 331 million, yes, I am fine with 300,000 deaths of mostly folks well past their prime and probably wouldn’t have lived out the year anyway.”

    – 300k *excess* deaths means that these are actually folks who would have lived-out the year.

    “You are fine with declaring that a 99.99 percent survival rate is a failure.
    Just say it.”

    We could be doing much better. This survival rate is due in large part to the lockdown efforts you continue to protest.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Please consider the following:

    “Dr. Fauci described SARS-CoV-2as “one of the most, if not the most, unusual virus that any of us have ever dealt with. Certainly in my 36 years as director of the institute I have not seen anything where you have a virus that in the – in 40 percent of the people has no symptoms. Then those who have symptoms, 80 percent have very mild to moderate symptoms that don’t require any significant medical intervention. And then you have 20 to 25 percent of people who are devastated, that attests the almost 300,000 deaths. There’s something very strange about a virus that in most people barely bothers them and in others it kills them. We still don’t understand why that’s the case right now.”

    It’s jarring to understand that many of us could have the disease, and not ever know. We could pass it to someone and cause their demise just as directly as putting strychnine in their coffee, but neither party would have any clue.

    In a sense, Covid is like a morality test that poses a simple question – would you forego normal daily life for a sustained period to save the lives of strangers?

  • wayne

    Jeff-

    How many abortions are performed every year?

  • Cotour

    Dr. Fauci also downplayed and discredited possibly for political reasons, also possibly for financial reasons Hydroxychloroquine and by doing so may have been one of the major causes of tens of thousands of deaths. Why would you give much if any weight to anything he said?

    Are you concerned with possibly and unknowingly being infected with something you could pass to someone else that could kill someone else?

    What will you do? Seal yourself in your house and live the rest of your life there? Might you and others who are so very concerned here want to consider possibly eliminate yourselves from potentially infecting others in a more permanent manner? That is what your thought process indicates, and I encourage you.

    Yes, what to do when you do not have a clue?

    And your strychnine example is a poor analogy, what you in fact describe doing to a cup of coffee is murder. Is that how you truly think? Like a murderer and call it informative logic? If I sneeze and you get a cold from that sneeze and die of pneumonia, that is called life. (You might have to think on that for a few moments.)

    Its always best too if you can keep your body and mind in as healthy a condition as possible.

    And if you do not or are unfortunate to not have good health, that is called life and you make the best of it. Life is sometimes a female dog.

    Once again your more less than more, just like a Hollywood set, hollow and you underwhelm. You might want to apply for a job in the “new” Biden administration should it take hold, they are looking for people just like you:

    http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/apparances5-930×524.jpg

  • janyuary

    Jeff Fauva, today my husband saw an old lady standing outside in the cold and wind for a doctor’s appointment because of lockdown mandates that made it so only four or so people could sit in a heated waiting room big enough for 30 people easy and comfy.

    Charges of manslaughter should be brought against those who, in the name of Covid protection, have pushed for an environment guaranteed to increase illness — making people dine outside in tents when it’s raining, when they could be sitting inside cozy and warm. Not to mention making gyms and group sports off limits and asking one to wear a mask while jogging, for the love of Pete. How to get good sick and depressed, not to mention broke, in ten months.

    One truly wonders at the deafness of believers such as Fauva.

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You wrote: “It’s jarring to understand that many of us could have the disease, and not ever know.

    I know it is jarring. It means that this disease is not nearly as bad as advertised, and that the government reaction to it is far, far more than necessary. Indeed, instead of protecting the non-senior citizens, the ones who most often never know they would have tested positive, our governors sent ailing patients directly into the heart of communities of senior citizens, the one who are most affected by it.

    – 300k *excess* deaths means that these are actually folks who would have lived-out the year.

    There you go again, assuming that all excess deaths are from the Wuhan flu rather than tens of thousands being due to the government reaction to the flu.

    Since the Wuhan flu takes few lives of young people, then we can see through your eyes that most of those excess deaths are younger people who did not die of, from, or due to Wuhan flu. Since the only difference between this year and the years we measure that excess with is the reaction to the flu. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands are dying of, from, and due to the government reaction.

    Jeff, if you are not fine with these 300,000 excess deaths, then you would be advocating for the end to lockdowns, shutdowns, smackdowns of those who refuse to comply, and the Great Oppression. How many suicides have we had because of the despair, depression, and hopelessness created by these government reactions to the Wuhan virus?

    — What is there worth living for if we can’t meet girls, date them, marry them, and start a family? These lockdowns take away our lives.

    — Never have so many sacrificed so much to save so few.

    — The path to hell is. paved with good intentions, and when we first shut down for a couple of weeks in order to lower the curve, we had such good intentions that we have arrived in hell.

  • janyuary

    Edward, this is solid gold:

    Never have so many sacrificed so much to save so few.

    You notice that Fauva never addresses any points except to skip over them to continue with his own reciting of numbers dictated to him by doctors he trusts. Not one single time has he explained why smart people have the right to boss stupider people around, nor has he been able to admit that that is what he seeks. Instead he glories when I “admit” that losing a nano percentage of the population to a disease that apparently threatens only the elderly and the weak, is okay with me (he is careful not to ask why it is okay), as if I am a cold hearted. While the Fauvas of this world are now directly causing death through making people be outside when they should be in, in when they should be out, and alone when they should be together. The Fauvas of this world are beyond reasoning with. We are there now.

    I just finished reading a local story about how five people (a nano percentage of the population) died overnight in my small county from C19 — one was in his 40s, three were in their 80s, one was in his 90s, and all had underlying health conditions. The quoted doctor said that this “spike” could be contributed to Thanksgiving gatherings …. and went on to quote her, and she referred to this as something “serious” needing more lockdowns. I would say she has a serious lack of logic skills.

    And all along the doctor is not the problem, the doctor is just being what doctors have always been. The problem is that the doctor now has the endorsement and near authority of government force.

    I would have had a Christmas tree by now … I dread going down to get one, something that has always been a lot of fun. I wish I could do it with my mom, for maybe the last time in this lifetime as she is hearty but very old … but thanks to the Fauvas of this world, deaf and blind to all but their own arrogance in bossing stupider people like me around for my own and everyone else’s good, buying a Christmas tree, like going grocery or any other kind of shopping, is an exercise in the bizarre as I look around and see overt lunacy in “normal” people around me.

    Thank the LORD for smart folks and business owners who stand up to this mask social distancing evil — call it what it is — because they help save my sanity. And folks like you, Edward, thank you for helping me stay on the rails.

  • Jeff Fauva

    janyuary: Thanks for the reply. Going outside is really pretty safe, so please go-ahead and get a Christmas tree.

    I understand the the overall risk to an individual is low. However, that individual behavior magnified by many 1000’s results in a lot of deaths. When it is said, ..sacrificed so much for so little.. it does seem callous. Consider that by the time the vaccinations have attained herd immunity, the death count from covid in the US could be between 4-500k.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Cotour:

    I was using strychnine as a way to illustrate the lethality of covid for prone populations, and clearly not equating the intentionality of administering poison to the spreading a disease.

    Hydroxychloroquine is thoroughly debunked as a treatment for covid – see below.

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanrhe/article/PIIS2665-9913(20)30390-8/fulltext

    https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters?gclid=CjwKCAiA_eb-BRB2EiwAGBnXXvA78nF9d–hfMFRq2FbjZGnPmWEjX7g_v0mzpc1bDOtH2qVzhuLExoCNM4QAvD_BwE#chloroquine

    Thanks.

  • Cotour

    “the death count from covid in the US could be between 4-500k.”

    And what exactly is your point?

    Do you want to thank president Trump for acceleration the several now approved vaccines that are right now being distributed and administered to the public to help attain that herd immunity that he made happen in under a year?

    Remember, a vaccine takes usually about 5 years to get to the market at the minimum. Do you want to tell everyone since you are so concerned about everyone how thankful you are to president Trump? Only because of his ability to spend the money and make it happen is why it happened.

  • janyuary

    Fauva …. 300,000 is one percent of 300 million.
    There are 331 million people in the United States.

    Less than one percent of people, most of them already ill and/or elderly, in the United States have died in this so-called “pandemic” over the past year. At this point, after nearly a year of this lockdown insanity, 99.9 percent of Americans have remained untouched or have survived C19. And still folks think they need more and are skeptical of claims that hospital rooms are underwhelmed …??? The math told everyone that and has told them loud and clear all along.

    That there is a hue and cry for a vaccine, masks, social distancing …
    … is solid proof that Americans have taken temporary leave of their senses and are ignorant of plain mathematics.

    Sadly it appears that folks like Fauva, the mask/social distancing/vaccine believers, will only be satisfied with a 100 percent virus survival rate and they’re going to get there no many how many businesses and people they have to kill. They are beyond reason and must be dealt with by force.

  • Edward

    janyuary,
    You wrote: “Edward, this is solid gold:

    Thanks. It was some of that original thinking that Jeff thinks is not original. Oops. It wasn’t so original, as it is a paraphrase of Churchill’s famous compliment.

    You notice that Fauva never addresses any points

    Well, that is the behavior of a troll rather than someone who wants an intelligent discussion.

    He does not have any answers. He is not smart enough to actually answer a question. When he tries, he flubs it, such as his comment right below yours, where he gives an excuse due to any deadly disease for locking down, shutting down, wearing masks, smacking down disobeyers, and maintaining a Great Oppression. Indeed, if it saves just one life, then it must be worth all the death, destruction, carnage, and poverty that it creates. He also loves to make up his own facts and figures.

    Most people learn very early that there are always tradeoffs. Jeff is like a dog who has found a bone and he just won’t let go. It no longer matters to him that the devastation from the government reaction to Wuhan is far, far worse than the disease, but it only matters that the solution is the right solution. When it fails to work, then more of the solution must be applied. This is why we are still in lockdown even though it has been proved to not work.

    75% of Wuhan cases are traced back to those locked down in their own houses. Counterintuitive, I know, but the science is ignored by those who want to keep up the lockdown. 1.-1/2% are traced to restaurants, which are being closed down again. We are much, much safer from Wuhan in restaurants than we are in our own homes. But for those like Jeff, if it saves just one life then close the restaurants.

    300,000 is one percent of 300 million.

    You are off by an order of magnitude. It is one tenth of one percent. But if it saves just one life, then it is OK to destroy the lives of the other 99.9% of us. What is a life worth? According to Jeff, billions of dollars, the livelihoods of tens of millions of other lives, the loss of the lives of tens of thousands of others, hope, liberty, freedom, and self worth.

    So much for keeping perspective of the problem relative to the imposes solution, whether or not the solution works.

    The quoted doctor said that this ‘spike’ could be contributed to Thanksgiving gatherings …

    So, why weren’t they concerned about previous celebrations being a source of spread of deadly flus in other years? We even were allowed to celebrate Thankgivings during worse pandemics, when more people were susceptible to more deadly diseases. This year is different. Not only do we have to obey, but our fearful leaders do not. Right now I am not allowed outside my house unless I go out to gather food, seek medical attention, or handle other emergencies. This comes from a governor who does not obey his own edicts.

    – When laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled. — Unknown

    Well, screw my governor, screw his wife, screw his children, screw his dog, and the horse he rode in on. And screw the fleas from that horse.

    I noticed that Jeff has granted permission to leave your house in order to gather a Christmas tree. How condescending of him, but it turns out that the government’s tyrannical rules supersede his powers of liberty. Seek your tree at your own risk, because if you tell the police officer that Jeff Fauva said it is OK, he is likely to ask, “who?”

    Sadly it appears that folks like Fauva, the mask/social distancing/vaccine believers, will only be satisfied with a 100 percent virus survival rate

    Which we don’t even have for any regular flu. For Jeff, we must remain in tyranny until we save that one life. Which he will never declare has happened, otherwise he would have to declare that the lockdown, shutdown, smackdown, Great Oppression is over.

  • janyuary

    OWCHHHH! I stand corrected … isn’t 175,000 equal to 17.5 percent of one million? I know that’s correct … ah Yes, I see I messed a decimal, 100,000 is ten percent of a million, one percent of 10 million, point one percent of 100 million.

    So it’s even scarier, lockdown fear bosses are even crazier than outhouse rats, temporarily insane, ignoring plain pure arithmetic in lieu of doctors (a fallible profession with a long history of bad calls) and politicians. Ignoring arithmetic that always tells the truth no matter who you voted for — more than 99.9 percent of Americans at the present moment are fine.

    So when are we going call for to charging the lockdown mongers with being accessories to economic and societal homicide? More to the point, when are we going to call for bringing manslaughter charges against lockdown mongers who caused sickness and death in those who had to dine or wait outside in the cold and wind, or became out of shape because gyms and group sports were off limits — not to mention the suicides?

    The Fauvas of the world will need to be charged with manslaughter. Force must be met with force.

  • Cotour

    Jeff F:

    From the real world: Dr. John Campbell, objective non political Youtube talking head who has been on all of the Covid real world goings on from the jump: https://youtu.be/2uzXHnUViro

    Also the efficacy of Vitamin D3 and zinc as it relates to minimizing the effects of Covid in the real world. And NONE of the government agencies, the CDC, the WHO has reported any of these simple, effective and most importantly inexpensive therapies to the public.

    What do they report? Lock downs, masks and the multi billion dollar vaccines for all.

    Make of it what you will. We are all in the end responsible for ourselves and the entity government cares not one second for any individual like they believe the entity government does. Its not governments job.

  • Edward

    janyuary wrote: “More to the point, when are we going to call for bringing manslaughter charges against lockdown mongers who caused sickness and death in those who had to dine or wait outside in the cold and wind, or became out of shape because gyms and group sports were off limits — not to mention the suicides?

    Manslaughter? One of those goons thought they should convict anyone not wearing a face diaper — er — death mask with murder, outright. I say we give no quarter to those who screwed us so badly and caused the deaths and destruction of so many people and families.

    Then there are the governors who intentionally sent Wuhan-ailing patients into nursing homes. Death penalty for them for mass murder.

  • Max

    janyuary,
    Thanks. It is so true about hydrogenated fats, it last so long on the shelves because bacteria will no longer eat it. It has lost all its nutrition and has now has become toxic. This is true of any oil that you overheat, even olive oil will become toxic if overheated.
    When I lived with the Eskimos, getting fresh food was difficult so they ordered buttered flavored Crisco for the crackers and they’re cooking. I much rather eat the Fish oil from the salmon.

    I do like Michael Crichton, I remember reading “coma” when the movie came out. Andromeda strain was another favorite. The only book I Purchased because of the topic on global warming, was “state of fear” which is very relevant to the situation we are in now. I wrote him without response to give him better relevant data on the global warming topic. Just to find out a few months later he had terminal cancer. He will be missed. I so enjoyed his logic and bringing subjects to the logical conclusion. I think I’ll look for that book just to quote some of his best arguments because the entire world is currently in a state of fear…

    Logic and mathematics doesn’t happen in the new Scienfictology religion that worships consensus of thought over actual facts. Tomorrow we can hear the media crying wolf again and again and again.

  • Jeff Fauva

    It appears to be post-facto rationalization to attribute 300k covid deaths to the lockdowns rather than covid. I suggest that some folks on this board are quintupling-down on predictions that have gone tragically awry and weaving conspiracies to explain away the dissonance. I point you to this passage from early in the pandemic from Robert:

    https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/ihme-lowers-its-death-prediction-for-wuhan-virus-again/

    “If the deaths from the Wuhan flu end up around 61,000, that number will match exactly the number of total deaths during the 2017-2018 flu season. Remember how we shut down the entire economy then too? I don’t.

    I will also make a prediction. The final numbers will still be far lower than the 61,000 they are now predicting, even though there is clear evidence that many states are exaggerating the number of Wuhan flu deaths, probably in order to justify their panic that has shutdown the country and is bankrupting millions. In the end, even with these overstated numbers, the totals (including the flu) will I bet end up not much more than a somewhat bad flu season, but not one far different than 2017-2018, the worst in many years.”

    Was this right, or wrong?

  • Jeff Fauva

    Andrew_W: Respect.

    Andrew_W
    April 8, 2020 at 3:03 pm
    Unfortunately 61,000 is too low, which is probably due to political pressure from the White House.

  • Cotour

    From the real world.

    Spoke to my friend the other day who is an ICU nurse in a major Westchester hospital, she had a day off. She is totally burnt out, ICU full to capacity. “I can not take any more of this”, she told me. Verified.

    The other day my friends 88 year old father died from Covid. Verified.

    !2/ 7/20, received a message from a lady friend who moved to Arizona in her retirement. She responded to one of my emails on the 7th. Saw her ex boy friend on the 10th, she died that day. Her kids think it may have been Covid, could not breath in the AM, dead that afternoon. Sounds like a heart attack to me.

    10 days ago my neighbors tested positive, they are both 35 years old. Stayed home isolated, went a little crazy, took nothing for it, blew it off. They dug me out yesterday from a foot of snow before I got going on it.

    Many people in my community apparently were infected over Thanksgiving at a get together. Most just stayed home, lost their sense of taste, and blew it off.

    Herd the other day that a friend who is around 50 years old, grossly over weight and has diabetes tested positive for Covid. Stay tuned on that one.

    I have spoken to a couple of other doctors and nurses last week who work in major NYC hospitals and they said that their systems were not that busy with Covid.

    I know many who have had it, I have dealt with them while they were positive unknowingly, and they blew it off. I have not gotten it to date although have been surrounded by it. I have developed a system, stay tuned to see whether it remains effective.

  • Cotour

    PS from the real world:

    I estimate that I have personally dealt with, relatively up close and personal, aprox. 10,000 individuals / transactions in the NYC area during this Covid 19 event in America since last January. I wipe my hands after every transaction and generally stay away from others.

    I wore a gaiter that covered my mouth and nose to some degree in the first month because I did not have any information to base any actions on, I admit I had my concerns and was a bit tense. And there after I have not worn any mask in my facility or while walking out doors. The doors have been open, I have fans on, and have limited peoples ability to come fully into the building and they are kept aprox. 6 feet away and they are in and out in about 1 to 2 minutes. No browsing as a general rule.

    (The CDC says Covid infections can occur after 15 minute of exposure in a 24 hour period, or 3, 5 minute exposures in a 24 hour period. Based on a study done in a prison setting. I suspect they are taking there best guess here)

    With the winter setting in the door is open if it is mild and closed if too cold and the fans are still on and the transactions are fast. I may put up a clear plastic barrier in front of the register, primarily for appearances, I really have no concern for my health or that of my customers. Most but not all customers enter wearing some form of face covering, most are symbolic at best.

    If I go into another store or the bank I will pull up my shirt over my face if its a quick visit or I have a gaiter that I wear if I am spending a bit of time, no problem.

    And that is what is happening in the real world.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Cotour:

    Sorry to hear that the disease is so prevalent in your area/circle of friends – sounds harrowing. With regard to old drugs with potential to curb covid, I thought this was insteresting: https://rebelem.com/covid-19-update-ivermectin/

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You wrote: “It appears to be post-facto rationalization to attribute 300k covid deaths to the lockdowns rather than covid.

    Once again, you project your own thinking onto us. You are unable or unwilling to do research, as you have told us, and you make assumptions that we are the same. Several of us do research for a living. We know how to do it, we are willing to do it, and we are good at it. You just spout off nonsense that you heard on TV or read off the internet, thinking that you are clever.

    But you are not clever, and we see that. You are not willing to learn anything that conflicts with your prejudiced biases. You are futile.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward: I’m all ears – convince me.

    1) 300k excess deaths
    2) 300k deaths reported from covid
    3) You dispute the covid death numbers in 2), Why?

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You wrote: “Edward: I’m all ears – convince me.”

    Why would I waste my time when you have been very clear that you will not bother to read anything that is convincing? You think you can be convinced in “sound bites” but you cannot. I have noticed and told you that I already know that you are not open to ideas that are alternates to your own.

    You are just trolling us, here, and some of us have noticed.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward: “Several of us do research for a living. We know how to do it, we are willing to do it, and we are good at it.”

    Robert: “I will also make a prediction. The final numbers will still be far lower than the 61,000 they are now predicting..”

    Willing, yes. Good? Meh.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward:

    I push back against bad information I see posted on these boards. I’ve seen some thought-provoking replies, but often it’s invective and diatribe. At least you keep it short.

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You wrote: “I push back against bad information I see posted on these boards“.

    Bad as defined by you. You push back without any reference to the “good” information, so your credibility is low. Also, since you did not complain about my reasons for not convincing you, you have shown, yet again, that you are not willing to be convinced. You are transparent.

    At least you keep it short.

    Once again, showing that you do not pay attention, even to yourself. You have complained about my long comments whenever I give explanations or try to convince you, even after you asked a question. You compliment my comments when They contain nothing of importance. You are shallow.

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You wrote: “Willing, yes. Good? Meh.

    What are your qualifications for knowing what constitutes good research? Once again, you made a fool of yourself.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward:

    Simple observation – Robert predicted less than 61k deaths from covid. He was wrong. Rosy forecasting like this has been a big part of the problem combating covid. If you want to argue that Robert was somehow correct in his prediction, I will let that stand for itself.

  • Cotour

    Jeff F:

    I should have put *Surrounded* in quotation marks, “Surrounded”.

    And while the virus is apparently prevalent in my local the takeaways were and are:

    1. I have personally made at least 10 thousand (At the minimum) up close and personal transactions with a very broad spectrum of the population in NYC during the most intense expressions of the virus. And that has gone up and down and it is now running its course here as it will everywhere else.

    2. I have established *MY OWN* protocols in how I choose to effectively deal with the situation based on my own research and understanding of how the virus is spread. It is essential that I remain healthy, little happen$ if I am not pre$ent. My incentive and interests are clear.

    (I may have had it when it began possibly last January before any hint of the virus was known to me. I dealt in person with two specific people who indeed had it, they were among the first, one a fireman and the other an office worker that commuted to Manhattan on the subway. I had a low fever for one day, 101, and that was it. I have not been tested for the antibodies so that is only speculation on my part)

    3. I coincidentally happen to have been taking every day for the last 10 years both Vitamin D3 at increased levels and zinc. If I did get it was that a mitigating factor? Possibly.

    4. The vast majority of the people that I personally know that have gotten the virus have blown it off in about 1 to 2 weeks without any residual consequences.

    5. I know several people who have indeed succumbed to the virus, they were either older and they without doubt had mitigating conditions that added to their demise.

    6. The situation is not “Harrowing”, the situation is what it is and we deal with it as is necessary. Its easier for some to deal with than others depending on their individual or business model. And that being so governments attempts at finding some kind of compromise between total shut down and no actions taken is all about their core function, the security of their respective states and their hospital / medical systems. And much of that is overreaction based in their own fear and incompetence. But that’s government, so be careful who you empower for there are natural junior Nazi’s among them, and they look just like you and me.

    7. It has been without doubt established through real world hospital studies done on real human beings that Hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D3, zinc and several other simple and inexpensive therapies and drug combinations are indeed effective in mitigating the virus’s effects in the human host. The crime here is that the media and the political class has taken anything and everything that president Trump has promoted regarding the virus that has been clinically established as being effective has been used as a political weapon.

    Both Dr. Fauci and many others have participated in this offense to commonsense and humanity for IMO political reasons. To me that is criminal and a surrendering of their fiduciary responsibilities for political and financial gain. You judge that as you will.

    8. I can see masks as being only generally and mildly effective in possibly mitigating the spread of particulate and breath laden with virus given the manner that the majority of the public uses the mask.

    9. As a general rule stay away from others, wash your hands, circulate interior air so there can not accumulate a concentration of virus in any one spot, introduce fresh air into your space if you are forced to be inside with others who are known or unknown to you.

    And that is the 411 that is going on in the real world. So trust none of them and do your homework and live your life as best as you can, and do not ever confuse yourself thinking that the entity government cares or is concerned for you as an individual, its not their job. That is your job. Although they will attempt to tell you and convince you all day it is. IT IS NOT!

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    Simple observation – Robert predicted less than 61k deaths from covid.

    Like a fool, you have conflated research and prediction.

  • Andrew_W

    Like a fool, you have conflated research and prediction.

    I could not label predictions without research as rational methodology.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward:

    For someone who hints at being a man of science and research, you are good at insults and bad at straight answers.

    Less than 61k deaths – was that good information?

    No excess deaths for 2020 – was that good information?

  • janyuary

    Max — just read your post, took me three days … very well said, fascinating about the Eskimos.

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You wrote: “For someone who hints at being a man of science and research, you are good at insults and bad at straight answers.

    Learning is not supposed to stop with school. Learn to read other ideas that conflict with your own. Learn to think about them logically, not emotionally. Once you can do these things, you will be better able to learn things that you didn’t learn in school. Most of us learn on the job, because there is so much more specific information than is taught in school, which only teaches the broader, more basic things.

    We have been doing this with you, these past few weeks. We know much about you just from your writings.

    You keep trying to tell us what’s what but you have been very clear that you know nothing, that you can’t be bothered to spend the time to learn anything that differs from what comes from your own biased point of view. You base your opinions upon emotion rather than fact, science, or reality. You ignore any other source of information, claiming it is biased, but it is no more biased than your own sources, and because we vetted them, they are less biased. By limiting your sources of information, you limit what you know. You cannot convince us that you are right, because we all know that you don’t know that you are right, you only feel that you are.

    Quite frankly, you were more right than you know when you said that you are a dumb, unenlightened rube:
    https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/antrim-county-election-audit-dominion-machines-unreliable-evidence-suggests-vote-tampering/#comment-1098180

    You think that, as a troll, you deserve straight answers? Besides, every time I gave you a straight answer, you complained that it was too long to read. So even if you aren’t a troll, you still don’t deserve my time for an answer. When I spend my time on you, it is for my own purposes, which once was to educate you, but you made it clear that you don’t consider anything contrary to your own prejudiced biases to be worthy of your own time or attention.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward:

    I’d like to understand why some folks on this board live in the inverse world, where interventions are killing people rather than the disease. That inverse world can only survive through unaccountable media sources and bunk science. The messenger isn’t the problem.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Cotour:

    It’s harrowing to me, perhaps. I’m fortunate that I don’t have to engage with public/strangers. If what you’re doing is working and you are keeping folks safe, more power to you, and I hope folks remember when all this is over.

    I think part of the problem with our handling of covid is information glut. Early in the covid crisis, we did not have good information yet – science and research takes time. Far too many charlatans online were/are willing to fill the info vacuum and put out bunk just to get the clicks.. In a perfect world with good information, we can ask folks to make responsible decisions. In the real world, the clickbait info economy makes public messaging difficult.

    With regard to hydroxychloroquine, here is a New England Journal of Medicine article that disputes HQC as an effective ameliorative treatment for covid. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638?query=featured_home

    “After high-risk or moderate-risk exposure to Covid-19, hydroxychloroquine did not prevent illness compatible with Covid-19 or confirmed infection when used as postexposure prophylaxis within 4 days after exposure.”

    My sense is that HQC was sold as a silver bullet by an administration that did not want to do the hard work to effectively combat the disease, in part because they saw it as a lose/lose endeavor.

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva, You asked: “I’d like to understand why some folks on this board live in the inverse world, where interventions are killing people rather than the disease.

    Because in the real world, where we live, sometime what looks like a good idea is a terrible idea. There are plenty of examples in the real world where the counterintuitive case is what actually occurs. Lockdowns are a good case in point. Orbital mechanics is another.

    Your one of your problems is that you assume that what looks like a good idea must be one. Another of your problems is that you assume that any. source of information that runs counter to your intuition must be unaccountable and bunk science — which is why we know that you are prejudiced and biased. Another of your problems is that you don’t realize that many of the people here work in the world of science, and we can recognize good science from bunk. Your definition of bunk science is anything that runs counter to your prejudiced biases. Yet another of your problems is that you think you can just look around the internet, find something that looks like it supports your idea, post it in a comment, and declare victory.

    Another of your problems is that you won’t be bothered to read more than a couple of lines of something, which is why you think that your internet find supports your argument. You are not nearly as clever as you think you are.

    Learn to read other ideas that conflict with your own. Learn to think about them logically, not emotionally. Once you can do these things, you will be better able to learn things that you didn’t learn in school. Most of us learn on the job, because there is so much more specific information than is taught in school, which only teaches the broader, more basic things.

    We have been doing this with you, these past few weeks. We know much about you just from your writings — far more than you think we do..

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward:

    I appreciate your thought-out replies. You are effective when you avoid easy insults and partisan rants. I am linking to NIH, WHO, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine.. I have not seen one reliable source from you. I think of reliable sources as those that face some consequences if they get things wrong.

    I still don’t understand why these very same interventions were so effective in many, many other countries and failed here. Even Sweden has backed-off the low intervention herd immunity strategy. Where has this no-lockdown method of combating the disease actually worked? And yes, if you point me to a Brietbart article or the Alex Jones subreddit, I’m not going to bother reading it.

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,

    I have not seen one reliable source from you. I think of reliable sources as those that face some consequences if they get things wrong.

    Actually, you have seen plenty of reliable sources from me, you just fail to recognize them as such. Your listed “reliable” sources have all gotten things wrong, yet they suffered no consequences at all for those wrongs. Indeed, the WHO is the reason why anti-Trumpers thought he was doing the wrong things early on. It turned out that they lied to us, not just got it wrong. They knew the truth but gave us a lie anyway. The U.S. still funds them at the regular level, even thought they are responsible for most or all of our Wuhan deaths and indirectly responsible for the collateral damage that our governors have caused.

    The reason why the lockdown strategy failed here is the reason it failed everywhere. Lockdowns don’t work. They are counterproductive. The places where you think it worked, such as New Zealand and Korea, got rid of it through other means. Means that we we didn’t start soon enough (largely because too many of our fearful leaders believed the WHO).

    Then there are U.S. states that never had the problem, because they were smart enough to know that the people to quarantine are the ill, not the healthy. We humans have known this for thousands of years, but leave it to the idiot Democrats and progressives, and the morons who blindly follow them (thinking that only their own sources are the reliable ones) to violate the most basic of medical knowledge.

    But then again, in your opinion I am not a reliable source, because I won’t get the Wuhan flu if I am wrong.

    Unfortunately, you are a hopeless case, so there has been no point in actually trying to convince you. You continue to state that you reject anything that does not agree with your own prejudiced and biased feelings. I have other purposes for continuing to interact with you.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward:

    “The reason why the lockdown strategy failed here is the reason it failed everywhere. Lockdowns don’t work. They are counterproductive. The places where you think it worked, such as New Zealand and Korea, got rid of it through other means. Means that we we didn’t start soon enough (largely because too many of our fearful leaders believed the WHO).”

    Rubbish. What are the other means through which New Zealand and Korea got rid of covid? We have at least one poster on this site who actually lives in NZ and attests that they strictly adhered to the interventions that you claim don’t work.

    “Then there are U.S. states that never had the problem, because they were smart enough to know that the people to quarantine are the ill, not the healthy. We humans have known this for thousands of years, but leave it to the idiot Democrats and progressives, and the morons who blindly follow them (thinking that only their own sources are the reliable ones) to violate the most basic of medical knowledge.”

    There are no US states that don’t have a covid problem. It’s everywhere in the US due to rubbish propaganda from the likes of you.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward:

    I will agree that WHO and CDC could have done better with communications early in the pandemic. Good information takes time and they should have erred on the side of caution rather than waffle. The right interventions should have been clear between mid-March and April.

    https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/13/21214114/media-coronavirus-pandemic-coverage-cdc-should-you-wear-masks

  • Edward

    What are the other means through which New Zealand and Korea got rid of covid?”

    Do you see what happens when you don’t pay attention? You think that these places only use lockdowns in order to combat Wuhan flu. You are wrong. Do the learning that I have recommended. Stop being an ignoramus.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward

    I’m using lockdowns as shorthand for a range of measures – but then you know this. However, since you want to focus on the lockdown, let’s do that. It’s clear from this analysis in The Lancet that a strict lockdown was key to NZ crushing the virus. In your inverse world, the lockdown is actually killing people, rather than the virus. What many countries are finding is that whack-a-mole local lockdowns do not work, while a strict nationwide lockdown can work with proper testing and tracing – and it only takes a month or so.

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30237-1/fulltext

    “The lockdown implemented in New Zealand was remarkable for its stringency and its brevity: Jefferies and colleagues show that the daily number of cases dropped below ten in mid-April, less than a month after the first increase in New Zealand’s Alert Level.8 Furthermore, although most of the cases reported by mid-March were imported, almost no further importation was observed 2 weeks after the implementation of the first travel bans and isolation orders: imported cases represented 58% (95% CI 53–62) of the cases before March 15 but just 38% (36–41) of the total. Control of importations and local transmission in New Zealand was achieved with stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented rapidly when infection numbers were low: the Alert Level escalated from 1 to 4 in 5 days, when the number of cases had just passed 1000. Such stringent measures do not always result in a rapid drop of cases: the lockdown implemented in Melbourne on Aug 5, 2020, shows that it can take months before incidence is brought to minimal levels, with measures kept in place until late September. Long-lasting lockdowns also cause major economic disruption, deterioration of mental health in the population,9 and other indirect health consequences,10 ultimately decreasing population compliance. As other high-income countries have reported an increasing number of cases since August, 2020, the experience of New Zealand highlights that successful non-pharmaceutical interventions rely on early decisive reactions from health authorities, performant surveillance systems, and targeted testing strategies as much as stringency.”

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You wrote: “I’m using lockdowns as shorthand for a range of measures – but then you know this.

    Actually, we all rely upon precision in language. That you don’t means that you can change meanings ex post facto. But then, you know this, as it is one of your tactics.

    What your link tells me is that New Zealand did not have the widespread virus that you insist that it did for the lockdowns (and any other unspecified methods) to be proved to work. Indeed, 1000 cases (these days this means a positive or false positive test) is hardly a widespread problem. Once again, the lockdown (the rest of the world’s definition) did not stop the Wuhan flu in New Zealand.

    Since you now include all techniques and methods as your analysis, you have invalidated your own argument, because you now include the means, methods, and procedures that worked, not just the lockdowns. This makes you right by definition, and it completely fails to demonstrate that my position is incorrect. Indeed, it hijacks the correctness of my position and makes it your own position, which you pretend to have been yours all along.. Ex post facto.

    You just aren’t any good at this.

    Oh, and while we are at it, since you summarily and categorically reject every source that is not your own, I will do the same to you. According to you, “ I think of reliable sources as those that face some consequences if they get things wrong.” By your own definition, your source is unreliable, because it suffers no consequence if it is wrong, it just retracts its misstatements.

    It is your game, and I insist that you play by a fixed set of rules. Yours are no good, so we will use mine. Thus, for your sources to be valid for me, from now on you must choose sources I agree with in order to make your points to me.

  • wayne

    Hoppewave
    “Absurdistan: The Music Video”
    Hans Hermann-Hoppe
    2018
    https://youtu.be/8CvbDOJT1ro
    4:33

    “If measured by the standards of natural-law and justice, all politicians of all parties are guilty, whether directly or indirectly, of murder, homicide, trespass, invasion, expropriation, theft, fraud, and the fencing of stolen goods on a massive and on-going scale. And every new generation of politicians and parties appears to be worse, and piles even more atrocities and perversions on top of the already existing mountain, such that one feels almost nostalgic about the past. They should all be hung, rot in jail, or be forced and busy making compensation. They parade around in public, in bright daylight and proclaim themselves pompously, pretentiously, arrogantly and self-righteously as saintly do-gooders, as good-Samaritans, selfless public-servants, benefactors, and saviors of mankind and human civilization. Assisted by a higher intelligencia they tell the public in endless loops and variations, nothing is what it seems.”

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward

    The report plainly states that an early lockdown was a key intervention. Obviously it is more difficult to execute testing and tracing if the virus is very widespread. This again shows that NZ took the virus seriously while we dither playing whack-a-mole.

    You are nothing but messenger attacks and useless sophistry. Thin as air.

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You wrote: “The report plainly states that an early lockdown was a key intervention.

    Whatever “lockdown” means to you today. Does it still mean a range of measures? If so, then my point is made, as it includes my measures. Yesterday you used it to include the point that I made, so yeaterday your article made my point, not yours. If you have changed your definitions again, then it is difficult to know what you mean when you say anything. It might as well be non-sense, because it makes no sense.

    I’m using lockdowns as shorthand for a range of measures – but then you know this.

    If you don’t say what you mean, then what do you mean to say? If you don’t mean what you say, then how do we know what you mean? Have you meant anything that we read from you? How do we trust what you say? What is the use of paying any attention to you?

    You are nothing but messenger attacks and useless sophistry. Thin as air.

    We all know you, so coming from you, that is high praise. Thank you. I’m glad to be of frustration.

    However, it is an interesting comment, coming from someone whose sole tactic is to attack any source we use as unreliable. You seem to be projecting yourself onto others, again.

    You probably missed it, but the World Health Organization (one of the organizations on your “reliable” list) is begging governments to end their lockdowns, because even the WHO knows that they don’t work and are greatly counterproductive.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/who-official-urges-world-leaders-to-stop-using-lockdowns-as-primary-virus-control-method/ar-BB19TBUo

    “We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr. David Nabarro said to The Spectator’s Andrew Neil. “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.” Nabarro went on to point out several of the negative consequences lockdowns have caused across the world, including devastating tourism industries and increased hunger and poverty.

    And farther down:

    “Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. … Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.” [ellipsis in original]

    Lockdowns do not work, and the WHO knows it and acknowledges it. They are worse than useless as they create far worse problems than the problem they are intended to solve. If the lockdown (whatever you mean by that) worked in New Zealand, then why is the WHO telling us that they don’t work?

    Your Lancet source fails to meet your own criteria for reliability. Are you trying to say that some silly reporter knows better than the whole WHO? Look closer, you linked to a commentary, not a news article or science paper. So, what consequence does your source, Alexis Robert, suffer if his opinion is wrong?

    His editor and the publisher won’t suffer consequences, either.

    In the meantime, you have forgotten why New Zealand came up as an example, and you are now trying to use it in a different way, and failing badly.

  • Jeff Fauva\

    Edward:

    A lockdown works in the long term to the extent health infrastructure is able to widely administer testing and tracing.. The initial lockdowns in the US worked in the short term to flatten the curve, but there was not an effective testing and tracing system to isolate cases and exposures to break transmission chains. https://magazine.jhsph.edu/2020/how-contact-tracing-breaks-chain-covid-19-transmission

    WHO’s guidance is reasonable and measured and very far from saying “they don’t work”., but of course, you know this. Pertinent text straight from the WHO website below.

    https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19
    “What is WHO’s position on ‘lockdowns’ as a way of fighting COVID-19?

    “…WHO recognizes that at certain points, some countries have had no choice but to issue stay-at-home orders and other measures, to buy time.

    Governments must make the most of the extra time granted by ‘lockdown’ measures by doing all they can to build their capacities to detect, isolate, test and care for all cases; trace and quarantine all contacts; engage, empower and enable populations to drive the societal response and more.

    WHO is hopeful that countries will use targeted interventions where and when needed, based on the local situation.”

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward:

    “some silly reporter” – what’s wrong with you? The Lancet is peer-reviewed and one of the very top medical publications world wide.

    https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/robert.alexis

    I am a mathematical modeller in epidemiology, I joined the school as a research assistant in September 2016 and started a PhD in October 2017. My work focuses on developing models to understand the mechanisms responsible for disease spread in diverse settings.

    Before joining the School, I completed two Master’s degrees in 2016: one in Bioinformatics and Modelling at INSA de Lyon and another in Public Health at Lyon 1 University. I previously worked in the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Disease Team at the Institut Pasteur on Dengue transmission in New Caledonia.

  • wayne

    The American Economy and the End Laissez-Faire: 1870 to World War II:
    Lecture 9, “The Progressive Era?”
    Murray N. Rothbard / New York Polytechnic University / 1986.
    (Recorded by Hans-Hermann Hoppe)
    https://youtu.be/t-0X81v-NvI
    1:27:51

    “The progressive movement came in 1900 to eliminate political parties. Technocrats and bureaucrats take over political power. Rural versus urban. Eliminate mayors, eliminate voting altogether, have appointed bureaucrats only. Nationalize public school system so costs could be socialized, like getting the public schools to teach Spanish. Children can all be part of a collective, without parental influence. Control shifted from ethnic working class small communities to upper class WASPS. Only synthetic drugs remained legal in medicine. Rockefeller Institute backed it. Homeopathy was outlawed…… etc., etc., etc.”

  • Edward

    Jeff Fauva,
    You asked: “what’s wrong with you?

    Well, for one, I am about to respond to you.

    I would have wished you luck on defending your PhD dissertation, but I really don’t think that someone who is so reluctant and poor at research as you should run around with such a degree. People may mistakenly take his advice, as we did with Fauci and others. But then again, your logic skills and argument skills should weed you out of this degree right there at your defense.

    Once again, you changed your criteria for source reliability, so consistency is also not your strength.

    I would like to know why, if you are a modeler, did you not answer my question when I asked you (in another thread, I think) what went wrong with the original model that predicted 2.2 million American deaths if we did nothing (including not washing hands), but not enough to continue reading your drivel. The model also said that we would save 40,000 lives — only 60,000 would die — if we went into a three week lockdown. We are now more than nine months into that lockdown and we have lost six times more directly to Wuhan — according to you — than we should have saved, if lockdowns (whatever you mean by that today) worked. In fact, we have lost so many people that, the model said, we would have been better off not only not locking down but also not social distancing (mask use was not part of the model). Doing only hand washing and travel bans should have lost us only 200,000, but we are past that now, with our continuing lockdown. I would ask you again what went wrong, but you don’t know.

    Anyway, now that you are claiming the incredible, I no longer have any more purposes to have discussions with you.

    One less thing wrong with me, because we are now done.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Edward: I can’t read you because you don’t seem to read yourself.

    – WHO statement obviously did not say that lockdowns do not work

    – I never said I’m a modeler, or the person who wrote the article. Where did you even get that?

    – One does not have to be a modeler to know that modeling estimates describe a wide range of possibilities. Estimates ranged anywhere from 1.6 to 2.2 million in the US w/o any interventions. The highest figure got the most attention, not surprisingly. Focusing on one possible outcome from one model from early in the pandemic is a fool’s errand.

    Be well.

  • Cotour

    You did not properly put this what looks like a statement below in quotation marks. It read like a statement from YOU describing YOUR qualifications: ” ”

    – I am a mathematical modeller in epidemiology, I joined the school as a research assistant in September 2016 and started a PhD in October 2017. My work focuses on developing models to understand the mechanisms responsible for disease spread in diverse settings.

    Before joining the School, I completed two Master’s degrees in 2016: one in Bioinformatics and Modelling at INSA de Lyon and another in Public Health at Lyon 1 University. I previously worked in the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Disease Team at the Institut Pasteur on Dengue transmission in New Caledonia. –

    Thats where he got that from.

  • Jeff Fauva

    Cotour:

    For someone who accuses others of not reading enough, Edward could very easily checked the background of the author of the Lancet article. They don’t publish “silly reporters”. I provided a link.

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