The Biden Administration's Insipid Ideas For Coronavirus.

Dr. Atul Gawande, a reliable liberal who will be a Biden advisor, thinks the key to control will be mask wearing. What? Does Dr Gawande not know that 34 states, especially those with the most viral activity,  presently have mask-wearing mandates. Furthermore, in southwest Florida where I am at present, and which does not have a mask mandate, there's not a single business establishment you can enter without a mask. Masks are everywhere, with many wearing them on the street, alone in their car, and running in the park. If masks are the answer, how is it then that the virus is increasing, and more so in the states with the mask mandates?

Here's what Dr. Videk Murthy, Co-chair of Mr. Biden's advisory team describes as their plan: "(it) involves expanding testing capacity, increasing contact tracing, ramping up the production of personal protective equipment, and issuing guidance." Is this insipid list the answer to our problem that somehow escaped the notice of President Trump?

Dr. Murthy said in an interview that Mr. Biden does not want to have a national lockdown after all but that. "the way we should be thinking about this is more like a series of restrictions that we dial up or down depending on how bad spread is taking place in a specific region," 

So I guess the idea is that now the federal bureaucracy is going to decide on high what we out here in podunk are to do and how we are to do it, instead of the state and local governments who know the situation on the ground.

This is all so dumb, dumb, dumb. Assuming the legal challenges to the election results don't manage to succeed, (and I fervently hope and pray that they do), it looks as if we've decided to put in charge of the problem a whole new bureaucracy with less experience, no new ideas, and a leader who's never accomplished anything in the real world

 

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Recent Coronavirus Statistics. Is President Trump To Blame?

Joe Biden in the campaign held the President responsible for the deaths of 200,000 Americans. Biden supporters agreed, complaining that Mr. Trump's laxity in addressing the coronavirus problem was evident, considering the better results in the rest of the advanced countries.

But the counting isn't over yet folks. Let's look at some recent statistics:

In the U.S. cases are indeed rising moderately but significantly. Of course, as we all are aware, the case count is not the important statistic, and far more telling is the hospitalization rate, and even more important the death rate. Even the death count is a problem since we have precious little information about what associated conditions were also affecting the deceased. However, accepting the death count at face value, not just cases but also deaths in the U.S. are rising modestly over the past 3 weeks.

But how about all the other countries which liberals hold up as models of effective government action and centrally controlled medical systems. Well here are a bunch of countries where the case rate and death rate is rising faster than in the U.S.: U.K., Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and – you get the picture. And, Oh yes, I left out the bestest of the best, Canada. You might notice one European country missing – Sweden, the pariah which ignored all the experts and did not do the forced lockdown and mask wearing. Their cases are rising with all the others. It's hard to avoid since people have increasingly been moving around Europe. Early on they appeared to be paying a price for their renegade strategy, but, unlike the other European countries their death rate over the past 2 months or so is remarkably low, including at present. Over the past 5 days Sweden reports 34 deaths, whereas Italy, which had undergone a very strict lockdown, reports 2,315 over the same period. Italy's population is 6 times that of Sweden, but you do the math. There is a lesson there I think but time will tell.

Looking at the U.S. more specifically, we have somewhat of a mixed bag. The major viral activity began in the New York Metro area, later migrated into the South and has now migrated into the Mid-West and Mountain States. By comparison in Florida, Texas and California the case counts are going up a bit, but the death trend is either stable or continuing down. Perhaps not surprisingly, as they relaxed a bit from their previous more strict lockdowns, there's a recurrence in the Northeast. And guess which Northeast state is having the biggest recurrence, in both cases and deaths, relative to population. None other than New York, the leadership of which has previously been held up as a model of success.

All this is not being said to minimize the severe impact of this epidemic, particularly in older people with chronic illness. Far from it. The illness is continuing to impact the lives of millions, interestingly predominantly in the more advanced Western countries. But the present statistics strongly point out that the charge that the President's response to the virus was lacking and worsened the situation in the U.S. is absolute nonsense. In fact, if one reviews the totality of his actions, which space will not allow, he did a very good job and has saved lives accordingly.

Were mistakes made in the midst of this unexpected, unknown and totally unpredictable situation? Of course they were. On Mr. Trump's part he was guilty of wishful thinking early on, but this feeling did not reflect in his many strong, forceful actions such as one would expect in a man used to solving problems.

But significant mistakes and misjudgments were made by many of our authority figures, including the CDC, the FDA, the WHO, Dr Fauci, and many of the President's political critics such as Speaker Pelosi and Mayor DeBlasio. And who can forget the colossal nursing home error of Governor Cuomo.

In the end President Xi Jinping has taken his revenge on Mr. Trump whose dramatically good economic results were turned to ashes by the Chinese originated virus. The infection has been a giant political gift to the Democrats and they have milked it for all it's worth. In their defense, what they've done is similar to what the Republicans most certainly would have done had it happened during the Obama administration. I can't excuse the major media so lightly. In this crisis they have totally failed us.

By the way, anyone who wants to take the trouble to investigate all this data can find it primarily at:

 

https://www.bing.com/search?q=coronavirus+trends&cvid=e01e34b607294eb1a2cdc3c29fd954cf&FORM=ANSPA1&PC=U531

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Facebook Should Not Be A Censor

I just saw a video on Facebook sent by a friend which was commentary by a doctor with pretty good credentials who was making a fairly shocking, but at the same time informational, critique of the new Pfizer vaccine and coronavirus vaccines in general.

When you open the file you must first look at a screen from Facebook stating that the information in the video is false and referring you to a fact check organization. Then you are allowed to open it.

 

Don't the Facebook developers see how destructive this practice is, how it immediately irritates people who want to think for themselves, and in fact enhances the credibility of the video by suggesting that they are trying to hide it? Don't they understand that they are expected to be a forum for open communication and not a regulator of what we see and think?

 

I would have no problem with the Facebook people, if they feel the information is false, recruiting another expert to provide in the comment area an opposing commentary on the post or who might direct readers through a link to an alternative video from another expert rebutting the information, and let us decide for ourselves.

 

If those who run Facebook, and the other social media sites, don't understand that many of us are not particularly interested in their point of view and that in this free country, whose survival depends on the free flow of information and open debate, then they need to have serious competition and perhaps consideration of antitrust action or at least removal of any government protection they might presently enjoy.

 

 

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The Bidens, Burisma and Bad Vibes. The Biden Scandal Widens.

The circumstances of the Burisma payments to Hunter Biden for no apparent reason together with his father's strange boasting in public about using U.S. foreign aid money to force the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor smelled to high heaven. But the lack of direct evidence linking the two parts of this picture, together with the disinterest of the major media, made it easy enough for the senior Mr. Biden to deny any knowledge of his son's activities and to claim, without any particular details, that the matter had been investigated and debunked.

The story excited much interest in conservative circles and the keen interest of the President but up to now has played little part in the fury of arguments in the election campaign. In fact, the impeachment of the President by the Democrats was based largely on his requesting the help of the newly elected Ukrainian president in investigating the matter. Neither the accusers nor the defenders seemed to pay much attention to the issue of whether the President's inquiries were appropriate considering the potential seriousness of the charges. During the presidential debate Mr. Trump tried to resurrect the issue, over the objections of the moderator, and was roundly criticized, by many liberals in particular, for stooping so low as to attack his contender's family.

There now appears new evidence that the suspicions were true, and that Mr. Biden's actions while he was Vice President were even more corrupt than previously suspected. A treasure trove of Hunter Biden's emails have surfaced which, if true, indicate that Mr. Biden was providing access to himself to foreign entities, including Ukraine, Russia and China, and was adjusting U.S. policy in exchange for large money payments to his son and possibly directly to himself.

Thus far the major news media have tried to ignore the story and the social media have actively suppressed discussion of it. However, these allegations come not from a supermarket tabloid or an inconsequential conservative website but from major news sources which have the resources to investigate and reputations at serious risk if they get it wrong. They have been cautious about making claims about the veracity of these allegations and very transparent about their sources, but Mr. Tucker Carlson last night claimed that there is now incontrovertible evidence that the emails in question are truly those of Hunter Biden and accurately document his activities.

How important is all of this? Well let's put it this way. Although I am a strong supporter of Mr. Trump, had evidence been uncovered that he indeed had an arrangement with Mr. Putin to provide election help in exchange for money payment or favorable U.S. policy, I would have had no alternative than to accept the Democrat's calls for impeachment or resignation.

The event is reminiscent of the situation of Richard Nixon whose deception was uncovered and pursued by two tenacious Washington Post reporters. The position of Mr. Nixon, who had won the election of 1972 in a landslide victory, was slowly but surely eroded by the steady accumulation of evidence to the point where he lost the support of the public and thereby his political supporters and was forced to resign. Mr. Nixon's offense was arguably much less serious than that of which Mr. Biden is accused.

What happens next? It's hard to imagine that if the allegations are proved to be true that Mr. Biden could remain viable as either a candidate or an elected President. But a significant number of individuals have already voted, and others will soon follow suit. With the final election day only two weeks away the Democrats and their media allies may try to put off discussion as long as possible in the hopes that the findings will influence a small enough portion of the electorate that Mr. Biden will be elected. After that, if the story lives on and intensifies, he can be sacrificed but the Executive branch will now be in Democrat hands which seems clearly to be their real interest rather than any particular devotion to their candidate.

Can they pull it off? We'll see. News travels dramatically faster in our digital age than it did in the 1970's. Even the attempt of the Silicon Valley social media to suppress the new findings seemed to serve only to bring them more to the public's attention. It took the news media several months to bring down Mr. Nixon, but it will surely be an item on tomorrow's Sunday news shows. Furthermore, somewhere very soon the major media will find it untenable not to take up the matter and Mr. Biden is going to have to be asked for an explanation. Surely the matter will come up in the second Presidential debate, assuming there is one, if not from the moderator, at least by Mr. Trump. His supporters are hopeful that his frustration with the forces allied against him, including perhaps the moderator, will not stimulate intemperate remarks but that he will be calm and factual and allow Mr. Biden to cook his own goose.

 

 

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The Election and the Economy

It makes my head spin to hear Joe Biden and Kamala Harris blame our present economic downturn on the President rather than to our response to the virus which has crashed economies the world over. Could anyone really be gullible enough to accept that argument? Old Joe is famous for his whoppers, but I think only the most rabid Trump hater would have his eyes and ears covered enough to believe that one. Unless you were asleep like Rip Van Winkle you would recall that pre-virus the economy was roaring with GDP over 3%, burgeoning stock values,  increases in manufacturing, full employment especially for minorities, increasing wages and stable prices, and energy independence. All this was based on Trumpian policies of decreasing regulations and taxes, making better trade deals and yes, the so-called "tax break for the rich" cutting the corporate tax rate to competitive levels to incentivize large companies to return home.

 

Mr. Biden has been heard to make the claim that all this abrupt economic progress was actually based on policies put in place by the previous administration, another big Biden whopper. Obama-Biden took over in a housing bust recession which typically would be expected to swing back fairly dramatically but instead the recovery was anemic. Mr. Obama explained that the time of American dominance in manufacturing with lots of blue-collar jobs was over and mocked Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign for lacking a magic wand to bring them back.

 

Despite this record Mr. Biden loudly proclaims in his incessant ads that it is he who will have us buy American and save manufacturing as if he had completely missed, or maybe forgotten, what had transpired after he and Mr. Obama left office. In fact, despite his proclamations, almost everything he plans to do will surely sink our ship from the economic standpoint. He intends to repeal the Trump tax cuts, increase the corporate tax rate to previous excessive levels, resume environmental regulations and put a lid on American energy production with the Green New Deal. He wants to have the federal government provide our every need without considering that the government takes funding for all these grand enterprises from those of us hard at work in the far more efficient and productive private sector.

 

Besides that, he appears to be enamored of the lockdown approach to control of the virus, the very strategy that has depressed the economy to start with. He doesn't see that he can't have things both ways. His theatrical political speeches, and flashy smile are not enough to lock down businesses and have them survive at the same time. He promises to get us virus treatments and vaccines. What? He hasn't heard of Operation Warp Speed and the unheard of progress it has so far made in developing these things.

 

The President has promised a V-shaped economic return and that appears to be happening. Whether you love or hate his personality, sensible voters will hopefully understand that his longstanding experience in dealing with the difficult problems of the business world make him just the right man for our time.

 

 

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Biden Says Trump Responsible for Covid19 Deaths

The major news media are fond of fact-checking Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden, not so much. So, I'm going to do a little for them.

 

Mr. Biden, in last night's debate held Mr. Trump responsible for the deaths of thousands by virtue of his management of the coronavirus epidemic. According to Biden, Trump should have known in February, before the administration's lockdown guidelines were made public in March,  what would be the eventual outcome, and instead he played it down.

 

To be sure, on Feb. 9 Mr. Trump noted there were thousands of deaths annually from influenza as compared to, as of that date, a total of 15 cases with no deaths, all in foreign travelers,. The first case of local community transmission was not to occur until 2/26 and the first recorded death on 2/29.

 

But at the same time was Mr. Trump taking the problem seriously? Well, before the above comment,  between 1/29 and 1/31 Mr. Trump had assembled his Coronavirus Task Force, had started the first of numerous conference calls with all the governors with the purpose of producing an action plan for the outbreak and had declared a public health emergency and imposed a ban on flights from China. Mr. Biden's response to that final measure, which even seemed drastic to me at the time, was to accuse Mr. Trump of "hysteria, xenophobia and fear-mongering."  He said pretty close to the same thing after Mr. Trump also restricted flights from Europe on 3/12. And his Democrat colleagues were no more prescient, with Mrs. Pelosi urging people to visit and congregate in San Francisco's Chinatown on 2/24, and on 3/2 Mr. DiBlasio making the same case  to visit NYC, where at the time there was only one known case.

 

Mr. Biden contends that Mr. Trump had special access to the official information and so should have known better. But is that true? Here are some public statements by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the President's chief medical advisor from the CDC:

 

On 1/21 Dr Fauci in an interview with Newsmax noted that, although we had to take it seriously the infection "is not a major threat for the people of the United States. And this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about."   On 2/17 in an Interview with USA Today Dr. Fauci explained that the risk of coronavirus in USA is "minuscule" and that "Now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask."   On 2/28 Dr. Fauci wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that "the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza or a pandemic influenza". On the next day in an interview on the Today Show he said in reference to community spread that "right now, at this moment, there is no need to change anything you're doing on a day-to-day basis."   Then on 3/9 Dr. Fauci told reporters that young, healthy people can go on a cruise if they'd like. "If you are a healthy young person, there is no reason if you want to go on a cruise ship, go on a cruise ship."

 

This is not to denigrate Dr. Fauci, who spoke with the evidence he had available. By the last date I mentioned there were a total of 84 cases and 2 deaths in the whole country. However, I do criticize Mr. Biden a bit since he knew what was going to happen and said nothing to Dr. Fauci to warn him.

 

 

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Coronavirus, the Emerging Picture and Herd Immunity

Here's a different, somewhat positive take on the virus.

If you look at the course of the epidemic around the country you will see that in March and April it hit hard in NYC, New York state generally, and surrounding states such as New Jersey and Connecticut. As this northeast area died down by the beginning of June the epidemic moved to the Southern and Western states where it rose to a peak and began to recede in mid-July. Around the same time as that decline, the infection moved to the Mid-West and Mountain states where it has now leveled off and begun to recede.

What could account for this situation? Certainly not social distancing and masking which does not fit the picture. These things undoubtedly have some effect in delaying the transmission of the virus, but they do not inactivate it, so that there should be a resurgence as these mitigation methods are reduced. But, taking New York as an example, although it has by now relaxed some of its restrictions there has been no resurgence of cases. In fact, since early June cases have been persistent at about 2-300 daily, and at the same time deaths are miniscule, with daily counts in the single digits for the last couple of months.

One factor that might be at least part of the explanation is that it now seems clear that there is a considerable amount of susceptibility variation in the population, as is seen in any other transmissible infection. Some of those exposed resist the virus entirely and for those who do contract it there is a great deal of variation in the severity of the ensuing illness. We're all familiar with the major difference between age groups but even in closely confined nursing home groups, notoriously the source of a great many of the deaths, there are some who do not become infected, and some who are asymptomatic or only mildly ill.

Recently I became aware of the work of Gabriella Gomes, a mathematician who has been studying the behavior and developing predictive models of epidemics for many years and who has been suggesting that the standard thinking about herd immunity is flawed. Herd immunity is a concept that is the whole point of vaccination. Although a vaccine may be only partly effective in producing immunity to a virus in individuals, it gives general resistance in the community which is sufficient to limit the available hosts and so stop its activity temporarily. Herd immunity can also be achieved with natural infection, but the prevailing thought has been that the number of infected individuals required would be 60-70% of the population, an unacceptable number. Dr. Gomes points out, however, that this estimate assumes that everyone is equally susceptible to the virus, which she points out is not the case. She feels that if one puts into the predictive model a factor for variable susceptibility, you come up with a number of only 10-20% of the population required for natural herd immunity to occur.

To my mind Dr. Gomes's idea fits well with the data that is emerging. For example, it would account for New York being so quiet after its initial intense infection even though officials there have relaxed their restrictions. Without going into the detail, it seems to fit with what I can see going on in individual countries around the rest of the world. If we see the same sustained inactivity happening after the cases fully recede in the Southern states and then the Mid-West states, then this would tend to confirm the concept.

Let's hope it is right because there's no question that this virus is here to stay, vaccine or not. Hopefully it will take its place with the other coronaviruses in our population that cause only mild respiratory infections. Alternatively, as we continue to make more observations, it appears that we are beginning to understand the reason why it is so lethal to some individuals which should allow us to devise means for prevention or curative treatments of the occasional severe cases. In that case I would tend to agree with Mr. Trump that, although developing a vaccine is important, finding appropriate treatment would be even better.

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