Wuhan Virus (Covid 19) Statistics and Data

Interesting statistics and new data about Wuhan virus (Covid).

 

Vaccination rates in various countries: Israel highest by far with almost 50% of their population. UAE next with about 25%. U.K. next at a bit ovew 10%. Next in order is U.S. at a bit over 7%, about 3 times higher than any of the other Western European countries.

 

Case fatality rate (deaths among actual significant symptomatic cases rather than just positive tests) in U.S. 1.7%, about 50-100% lower than any of the Western European countries.

Cases in both the U.S. and Florida are now trending down fairly rapidly since peaking on 1/8/21. Deaths in both places are stabilized but usually follow cases by 2-4 weeks. Also Emergency Room visits for Covid symptoms in both places are dropping rapidly since peaking around 1/3/21.

 

As far as that renegade Sweden which defied the lockdown trend: as of the 2^nd week in January the percent of those tested for antibodies in Sweden was reported to be 40%. This probably underestimates the percent of the population that is immune since antibodies after infection tend to wane, but immune cells retain a memory of the infection. Cases in Sweden are now dropping rapidly after their peak on 12/23 (when the second wave was present in Europe) and daily deaths are back down to the single digits.

 

Both Moderna and Pfizer indicate their studies show effectiveness of their vaccines to new Covid variants.

 

A new study reveals that colchicine, a cheap anti-gout drug used for decades, given early on to Covid patients reduces hospitalization by 20% and deaths by 45%.

 

A report of initial phase 3 studies for the Regeneron antibiotic cocktail (given to then President Trump under emergency use authorization with apparent dramatic results) appears to be 100% effective in preventing symptomatic infection when given to individuals with significant exposure to Covid. 

 

 

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What Did In Donald Trump

So now it's said and done. Joe Biden is our new President. He's the new target in the shooting gallery. I'd like to give my perspective on what happened. Mr. Trump lost his election for one reason, and one reason only. And it wasn't cheating, although cheating certainly went on in a much bigger dose than it usually does in our elections. No, my friends, had things gone on as they were at the beginning of 2020, Mr. Trump, with his continuing economic and foreign policy success, would have won a second term in a landslide just as big as did Nixon and Reagan, large enough to overcome any amount of under the table shenanigans.

 

What did him in was the Wuhan virus. Wherever it came from, it spread like wildfire and was a killer, mostly of the old and frail and those with chronic illness, but even for the young and healthy it was a crapshoot and occasionally severe or even lethal. The idea that he bungled the job and was responsible for all the death and economic consequences is total baloney. All you have to do is look at the situation in all the other westernized countries to see that the pandemic was a problem for everybody, whatever the nature of their health care or political systems. All the furor over universal mask wearing and lockdowns has limited scientific support of effectiveness and of course doesn't affect the survival of the virus which is ready waiting in the wings. The irony is that the one fundamentally helpful thing in this battle, other than the natural immunity of the population, was Mr. Trump's dramatically effective shepherding of the production of multiple highly effective vaccines in record time through all the economic and bureaucratic impediments. The claim that the vaccine distribution is flawed is nonsense. The problem at the present time is that demand is far outstripping supply which frustrates our impatient society.

 

Presidents don't fare well when big bad things are happening under their watch, regardless of who or what is responsible. Look at other one term presidents. Hoover was probably the most highly qualified of any of our presidents but happened to be hit by a massive and sustained economic downturn. Jimmy Carter, who I though was a pretty upright guy, was done in by ongoing stagflation. George Bush senior, who was riding high after operation Desert Shield got kicked out by a fickle public when there was an economic downturn.

 

Without going into the controversial issue of Mr. Trump's personal style I think the Democrat's perception that he lost because the general public hated him and his policies as much as they did is way off base. Donald Trump was not any of the long list of "ists" and "isms" that they called him. He couldn't care less about your race or nationality or sexual proclivities or gender as long as you performed and finished the job on time and under budget. That qualification applied to everyone in his line of sight, including big time corporate executives, multistar generals, and certified conservative think-tankers.

The Democrat's misunderstanding of the situation will come back to bite them. The public is not going to be particularly happy with high gas prices, return to the need for imported energy, loss of manufacturing and construction jobs, renewed outflow of capital to foreign countries, unrestrained illegal immigration, disruption of Medicare, subordination of American interests and resurgence of the world's bad actors possibly requiring military intervention. And so much more.

 

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Unity. The New Fascism

Joe Biden is now calling for an end to our previous division and a new era of unity. This does not seem to be in the cards. He and his party hated Mr. Trump, called him an illegitimate president and made constant attempts to remove him from power during his administration from start to finish (and beyond). The millions who agreed with his policies were held in contempt, and were accused of giving their support through ignorance, malevolence, or greed. And now Mr. Biden is rushing headlong to put in place a full-blown liberal agenda regardless of their desires.

Joe Biden is not calling for a unity in which there is serious consideration of the other party's ideas or a seeking of compromise positions. No indeed. It is a unity in which his party's ideas are the correct ones and that all are to be united for their furtherance. For this type of unity all dissent is to be squelched and those who have differing ideas are to be reeducated.

This scenario puts me in mind of the leader of the Italian people during the 1930's, Benito Mussolini. Mussolini was a socialist at heart, a devotee of Karl Marx, but broke from the party when he favored Italy's involvement in the subsequent world war. He suffered a brutal end at the hands of his people. Nevertheless, during his heyday, his governing concepts made him the darling of progressives around the world who admired his political stance. His idea was that the Italians were too individualistic and needed a strong central government, with him and his party as the leader. All facets of their society, businesses large and small, the media, the entertainers, and all the citizens were to work together for the good of the whole. He undertook a host of reform projects, and famously made the Italian trains run on time. Although seductive in theory the problem with his philosophy of central control was that such an arrangement could not tolerate dissent. Opposing voices in the media were shut down. Dissident politicians from other parties were removed and replaced. The police and military were realigned. Young thugs were recruited to enforce his movement among the public.

He used as a symbol of his movement the ancient Roman idea of bundling sticks together with thongs to use as axe handles or blunt instruments. His idea was that the individual sticks could be easily broken but bundled together they had great strength. The Romans called these devices "fasces", so he named his new progressive idea "fascismo". In English "fascism".

 

 

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Who Is The Threat To Our Republic?

Ms Pelosi's impeachment charge is that Mr. Trump incited rioting in the U.S. Capital and is therefore a threat to the republic.

For the moment let's put aside the fact that this threat was known by the federal authorities weeks in advance so that better preparations should have been made for the event. And let's put aside the fact that the invasion by the hooligans began to occur before Mr. Trump's purported incitement. And let's put aside the fact that Mr. Trump in his speech to his supporters in no way called for anything but peaceful protest. And let's put aside the fact that Mr. Trump's political opponents excused and even gave their support to violence in many of our major cities which caused far greater destruction of life and property for months on end.

Let's for the moment put all this aside and accept the idea that Mr. Trump shared some of the responsibility for the recent troubles in the seat of our government. Mr. Biden has recently declared his intent to immediately reverse Mr. Trump's policies to improve our country's energy production. If he succeeds in returning our country from a net energy exporter to one which must depend on authoritarian adversaries for the energy needs that are required for the health and well-being of our citizens, then he will have proved to be an infinitely greater threat to our republic than Mr. Trump could even hope to be.

 

 

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New Caravan A'coming

Mr. Biden has now announced to the world that those who come to our country without regard for our immigration laws, such as they are, are welcome. Almost immediately a caravan of several thousand have accepted his invitation. This will not be the last one. It will be interesting to see how he does with the situation.

Our country has decided to throw the door open to a trial of full on "progressive" policies. For the sake of my family and friends I wish him the best. However, I think the result is going to be like lenient parents who have decided that they need a vacation in Vegas and leave their teenage kids at home with the car keys. God help us, and I mean that seriously.

 

 

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The 2020 Election. Fraud or Not?

I watched Brit Hume on Fox the night before last opining that the claims of election fraud were "balderdash". Brit is a very thoughtful and long experienced political observer whose opinion I highly regard. That said, however, it seems to me that individual judgment on this matter is generally highly dependent on one's regard for Mr. Trump.  So, Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans and the major media state that the election was free and fair, in particular noting that multiple court proceedings have ruled against the Trump supporters. It's an open and shut case they say and to claim otherwise is almost traitorous.

 Trump supporters aren't so sure. His opponent's hatred for him is unmatched, certainly in any of the 12 previous administrations that I have observed during my lifetime, and there is the sense that they feel it is justified to be rid of him at any cost. And the large push for mail in voting in the swing states, which in size exceeds by three times previous years, and the dramatic swing in his fortunes as these began to be counted have raised suspicions, although admittedly suspicions are not hard evidence.

 The truth of the matter makes a difference. If the election truly turned on subterfuge, then it's hard to argue that Mr. Trump's encouragement of his supporters to strongly protest is unjustified. However, Mr. Trump's opponents have derided the idea that there is viable evidence of a fraudulent election and hold that those who make the claim are conspiracy theorists and somewhat of a threat to the republic. They insist that the President who promotes such ideas should be condemned and impeached.

 What about the evidence? There's far too much to detail, so let's take a few examples, presented in a hearing before a small sub-committee of Georgia state legislators in December, that I took the trouble to watch.

Georgia votes were counted in a large arena on machines which could count up to 3000 ballots per hour. Unbeknownst to those in the room there was video surveillance. Around 10PM press and GOP observers were told that ballot handling was suspended until the morning. After they had left, 4 workers remained to count ballots unobserved by press or poll watchers. Many ballots were brought out in large containers which for reasons not clear were stored under a table. Workers were observed on the video repeatedly taking large stacks of these ballots, running them through the counting machine, then recounting the same ballots a second and then a third time.

 There was sworn testimony of 3 impartial data experts who examined the voting data, noted many irregularities and who concluded there was strong evidence of fraud. They noted, for example, large numbers of suddenly deleted Trump votes in 3 different Democrat leaning counties, and in one instance there was a deletion of 12,571 votes for Mr. Trump at the time that the exact same amount was suddenly added to Mr. Biden. They testified that the voting machines could be programmed to make such changes.

 Claims have been made that Dominion voting machines could not be connected to outside sources. At the hearing, a computer expert testified that his group was able to hack into the machine network wirelessly and that they were into the system at the moment of his testimony.

 What are we to think of these things and a great many others? Are we simply to accept the word of the media, who despise Mr. Trump, and the Georgia election officials that all was on the up and up? Perhaps there are benign explanations. But can't we, for example, at least have direct testimony of the election workers as to why they acted as they did rather than second hand media explanations. And can't we have an actual demonstration of the capacity to hack into the voting machines? After the 2016 elections there was a prolonged investigation of the charge, on very limited evidence, that Mr. Trump and Putin had collaborated to simply influence voters by fallacious Facebook posts, but not to actually alter votes. In this far more serious charge shouldn't we have an open presentation of the evidence and a serious investigation into the actual complaints, rather than a rejection of a hearing by courts based on procedural considerations. That is what was being sought by the Congressmen who were prepared to object to electors, and who are now being pilloried as traitors. Don't we deserve that much? Or are we willing to reject the suspicions of millions of our citizens out of hand and maintain the bitter divide that's making our country into a world spectacle.

 

 

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Amazon Is Now Political - It Needs Competition

It's very hard for retailers to compete with Amazon since they had such a head start in online retailing. But now that hard left Jeff Bezos has turned the selling of server space into a speech squelching enterprise, it's time for those of us Amazon addicts to try what avenues there are to at least cut back on the habit.

Of course, you can drive around to your local stores, and I'll now try to do a bit more of that. But retailers generally are at a loss to find a way to get an online presence and service anywhere near what Amazon offers.

I've heard that Amazon is facing a bit of unrest from its merchants. They're charging them a lot, minimizing their brand identity and even selling Amazon brand competing products. They might be ripe for some sort of competing service which gives merchants a better deal.

Meanwhile I searched around today and found that Walmart's online presence isn't bad. It's not nearly as good as Amazon but is serviceable. They offer free delivery for orders over $35, and also an Amazon Prime – like subscription service that they call Walmart+ which gets you free delivery on selected products regardless of the price. They also offer a credit card that gets you 5% back on all products ordered through their website. The site is at least good enough to compare prices before blind usage of the Amazon route.

Unfortunately, Walmart has just recently joined all the virtue signaling big businesses who are suspending political contributions to those congressmen who dared to follow their own judgement in the matter of accepting the presidential electors. They seem a little tentative in explaining their decision however, perhaps in concern over the opinions of their "smelly" customers.

Anyway, maybe those of us good guys should give some thought to rooting for the underdog, at least just to promote good old American free enterprise competition.

 

 

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More On The Capital Riots.

Facebook is filled today with liberal angst over yesterday's Capital riots, and they are justified. I am angry about the incident myself, even more than the liberals. I'm angry not only because the action itself was an outrage, but because it was a stupid, foolish thing to do. These rioters, who allowed their passion to replace their reason, have done irreparable harm to the cause they are aggrieved about and have nullified the actions of hundreds of thousands of others who were there to peacefully but forcefully demonstrate that they will not accept a stolen election. They have also sabotaged the support of millions of their fellow citizens and have given grist to the mill of those who characterize justified suspicions about the integrity of the recent elections as a fantasy.

 

They have done as much disservice to their cause as did the thugs who burned and pillaged major cities over the summer for months and turned an initially overwhelming sympathy for the manner of George Floyd's death to one of general support for the police who do the often difficult job of protecting our lives and property.

 

One thing liberals should observe about the response to this incident from their conservative friends is that they are not going to see an attempt at whitewashing. You're not going to hear conservatives hold that the protest was "mostly peaceful" and that the actions of the rioters were excusable because of the righteousness of their anger. You'll not see any DeBlasio's, or for that matter any Mitt Romneys, marching with them in unison. 

As for the President: although he was taken by surprise and his initial response was restrained, today he stated clearly, unlike the response of Mrs. Pelosi to the George Floyd hoodlums, that those who committed these crimes must be identified and prosecuted with the penalty being a prison term. You are not going to see any reluctance to decisively use whatever force is necessary to put a stop to any further such activities.

 

On the other hand, don't be fooled into thinking that this incident will be the end of the issue of the banana republic type activities surrounding the recent election. Those of us who are concerned about this profoundly serious matter cannot be ignored. It must be investigated at least as much as was the far less serious charge of Russians influencing the voters. 

 

 

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The Capital Riots and Mr. Trump's Response

The Pro-Trump rioters cannot be excused because they think their cause is just. We cannot be like the left who excused much more savage and sustained rioting for reasons they approved of. The riots of the summer were characterized by the major media as mostly peaceful. But even though the hundreds of thousands who marched in Washington today were mostly peaceful, we cannot accept that rationale.

The rioters today were involved in criminal, destructive and threatening activity. They should be identified and prosecuted. But more than that they are just dumb. They, as were the rioters in the summer, are doing major harm to the cause in which they believe.

Their motivating issue is not Donald Trump, although he is the present rallying point. They, like millions of others of us, are disgusted with the liberal agenda which seems to be carrying our country away from its founding principles of individual freedom and self-reliance and toward central control by an ever-increasing oligarchy. They were exhilarated by the return to those basic values represented by Mr. Trump's election. And now they are incensed by strong evidence that all of this has been lost by corruption of the voting process.

Mr. Trump has advised his supporters to disband and at the same time holds to his belief that his loss was fraudulent. This seems to give a mixed message. I believe that he can reconcile the apparent contradiction and has the opportunity to solidify his leadership position by two actions. First, he must change the issue from his election which seems ever more to be a lost cause regardless of the likelihood of fraud and return the focus to Make America Great Again. And then follow the great model of Martin Luther King who fought for a righteous cause and led great protests for change but demanded that his followers follow the path of non-violent civil disobedience. For those liberals who I am sure will take great offense to equating the two issues, my point is that the technique was not only the right thing to do, but in the end was extremely effective.

Let's see if he can rise to the occasion

 

 

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Georgia Election Could Help Settle The Cheating Question

The upcoming Georgia election could be something of a surrogate for an investigation of the Presidential election. The result is highly consequential so both sides will be trying their hardest. If it is conducted fairly and honestly the variance from the previous result would be an indicator of the true voter sentiment.

 

That's a big "if". Mail-in voting has a risk for voter fraud. Every other advanced country which presumes to hold fair elections minimizes the practice. That cat's out of the bag in Georgia, where 6 times the usual number was cast in November, the preponderance counted for Biden, which is said to be the reverse of the usual situation. That's the source of much of the cheating reported by Republicans, along with unsupervised vote counting. Critics have noted thousands of illegally cast ballots as well as a dramatically lower percentage of ballot rejections. But there was also complaints of inappropriate counting activities and unrestricted ability to manipulate the voting machine data.

 

In the coming Georgia election, the legitimacy of mail in votes must be iron-clad. There must be a clear-cut determination, acceptable to all, that every mail-in vote is from a legal voter, that there is acceptable signature verification that the mailer is the actual voter, and that any potential rejections due to voter ballot error are adjudicated directly with the voter to everyone's satisfaction. If this takes time, so be it. They asked for it.

 

There must be absolute freedom of political pole watchers to view the handling of each ballot in a meaningful way, that is, close up and personal. There must be no ballot handling or counting performed when observers are not present. Optimally the procedures should be continuous until completed. There must be strict custody control of the ballots from the point of reception to the point of actual opening. Any disputed ballots must be kept aside until all controversies are settled. There must be a video record of the entire process.

 

There must be absolute certainty that voting machines cannot be connected wirelessly to an outside source. There must be strict control of chain of custody of any USB drives. The contents of USB drives, computer programs and data in voting machines must be accessible at all times to appropriate examiners.

 

In short all must be on the up and up. Republicans were caught napping in the Presidential election despite preliminary warning signs. They now know what to look for and if they stumble again, then shame on them. Democrats should want these precautions to be strictly followed as well and should actively assist in seeing that they are carried out.

 

If all these things are done, and the outcome is the same, it will not be absolute assurance since other states are involved, but it will go a long way to tamping down a serious controversy that threatens to pull our nation apart even more. If the outcome is different and Republicans win by larger margins, then the Dems have some splainin' to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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