World’s Top Epidemiologists – Masks Don’t Work!

Denmark boasts one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the world. As of August 4, the Danes have suffered 616 COVID-19 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

That’s less than one-third of the number of Danes who die from pneumonia or influenza in a given year.

Despite this success, Danish leaders recently found themselves on the defensive. The reason is that Danes aren’t wearing face masks, and local authorities for the most part aren’t even recommending them.

This prompted Berlingske, the country’s oldest newspaper, to complain that Danes had positioned themselves “to the right of Trump.”

“The whole world is wearing face masks, even Donald Trump,” Berlingske pointed out.

This apparently did not sit well with Danish health officials.  They responded by noting there is little conclusive evidence that face masks are an effective way to limit the spread of respiratory viruses.

“All these countries recommending face masks haven’t made their decisions based on new studies,” said Henning Bundgaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Rigshospitale, according to Bloomberg News.

Denmark is not alone. Despite a global stampede of mask-wearing, data show that 80-90 percent of people in Finland and Holland say they “never” wear masks when they go out, a sharp contrast to the 80-90 percent of people in Spain and Italy who say they “always” wear masks when they go out.

Dutch public health officials recently explained why they’re not recommending masks. “From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation,” said Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark.

Others, echoing statements similar to the US Surgeon General from early March, said masks could make individuals sicker and exacerbate the spread of the virus.

“Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,” said Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. “There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.”

In Sweden, where COVID-19 deaths have slowed to a crawl, public health officials say they see “no point” in requiring individuals to wear masks.

“With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport,” said Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top infectious disease expert.

For the average person, it’s confusing and frustrating. It’s also a bit frightening, considering that we’ve seen people denounced in public for not wearing a mask while picking up a bag of groceries.

The truth is masks have become the new wedge issue, the latest phase of the culture war. Mask opponents tend to see mask wearers as “fraidy cats” or virtue-signalling “sheeple” who willfully ignore basic science. Mask supporters, on the other hand, often see people who refuse to wear masks as selfish Trumpkins … who willfully ignore basic science.

There’s not a lot of middle ground to be found and there’s no easy way to sit this one out. We all have to go outside, so at some we all are required to don the mask or not.

It’s clear from the data that despite the impression of Americans as selfish rebel cowboys who won’t wear a mask to protect others, Americans are wearing masks far more than many people in European countries.

Polls show Americans are wearing masks at record levels, though a political divide remains: 98 percent of Democrats report wearing masks in public compared to 66 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Independents. (These numbers, no doubt, are to some extent the product of mask requirements in cities and states.)

Whether one is pro-mask or anti-mask, the fact of the matter is that face coverings have become politicized to an unhealthy degree, which stands to only further pollute the science.

Last month, for example, researchers at Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy responded to demands they remove an article that found mask requirements were “not based on sound data.”

The school, to its credit, did not remove the article, but instead opted to address the objections critics of their research had raised.

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Common colds train the immune system to recognize COVID-19

This existing immune system "memory" may explain why some people have milder COVID-19 infections.

Previous infections with common cold viruses can train the immune system to recognize SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a new study.

The study, published Aug. 4 in the journal Science, found that immune cells known as T cells that recognize common cold coronaviruses also recognize specific sites on SARS-CoV-2 — including parts of the infamous "spike" protein it uses to bind to and invade human cells.

This existing immune system "memory" may explain why some people have milder COVID-19 infections compared with others; however, the authors stress that this hypothesis is "highly speculative" and requires more research to confirm. That's because it's unknown exactly how big a role T cells play in fighting COVID-19 — T cells are just one part of a complex menagerie of molecules and cells that makes up our immune system.

"We have now proven that, in some people, preexisting T-cell memory against common cold coronaviruses can cross-recognize SARS-CoV-2, down to the exact molecular structures," study co-lead author Daniela Weiskopf, assistant professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology in La Jolla, California, said in a statement.

It's possible that this "immune reactivity may translate to different degrees of protection" against COVID-19, study co-lead author Alessandro Sette, a professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said in the statement. "Having a strong T-cell response, or a better T-cell response may give you the opportunity to mount a much quicker and stronger response."

Previous studies have shown that upwards of 50% of people never exposed to COVID-19 have T cells that recognize SARS-CoV-2. This ability has been seen in people around the world, in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and Singapore. Scientists hypothesized that this existing immunity could be due to previous infections with other coronaviruses, specifically those that cause common cold infections.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed blood samples collected from people between 2015 and 2018, well before COVID-19 first emerged in Wuhan, China.

These blood samples contained T cells that reacted to more than 100 specific sites on SARS-CoV-2. The researchers showed that these T cells also reacted to similar sites on four different coronaviruses that cause common cold infections.

"This study provides very strong direct molecular evidence that memory T cells can 'see' sequences that are very similar between common cold coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2," Sette said.

In addition to binding to the spike protein, the T cells  also recognized other viral proteins beyond the spike.

Currently, most COVID-19 vaccine candidates target the spike protein, but the new findings suggest that including other proteins in a vaccine, besides the spike, might harness this T cell cross reactivity and potentially enhance the vaccine's potency, the researchers said, although much more research would be needed to show this.

The authors note that their findings of cross-reactivity with T cells are different from what has been seen with neutralizing antibodies — another weapon of the immune system that blocks a pathogen from infecting cells. Neutralizing antibodies against common cold viruses are specific to those viruses and don't show cross-reactivity with SARS-CoV-2, according to previous studies, the authors said.

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Kudlow Says Another Lockdown Would Have ‘Enormous’ Human and Economic Cost

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow firmly opposes the idea of a hard lockdown to suppress another COVID-19 surge, telling Fox Business in an Aug. 4 interview that the health and economic toll on Americans would be “enormous.”

Kudlow said he doesn’t think any form of lockdown is a good idea, and people should instead rely on precautions such as social distancing, mask-wearing, and sanitizing to stem the outbreak, while allowing businesses and schools to stay open.

“This idea of more lockdowns, people just throw this out willy-nilly, forgetting the enormous human cost as well as the enormous economic cost,” Kudlow said. “The country can’t take that.”

He argued that the risk to Americans comes not just from the direct threat of infection but from the impact of heavy-handed mitigation.

“It’s also our well-being, it’s also our psychological well-being, it’s our personal well-being,” Kudlow said. “I think we should do everything we can, everything humanly possible, with safety and security, to keep the stores open, to keep the schools open, to keep the economy open.”

Arguing that the current COVID-19 mitigation efforts appear to be working, Kudlow said: “Let’s get America moving again. You’ll get your 20 percent; the V-shaped recovery, I think, is still in place.”

Kudlow’s reference to “20 percent” relates to an earlier comment he made about the Atlanta Fed’s latest estimate of U.S. economic activity for the third quarter of this year. The Atlanta Fed’s third-quarter-growth prediction stands at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 19.6 percent, updated on Aug. 3, according to a so-called nowcast statistical model that uses high-frequency economic data-points to estimate the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Prompting Kudlow’s remarks was a request by the interviewer for comment on a statement made by a top Federal Reserve official on Aug. 2, who argued that the U.S. economy could benefit if the nation were to “lock down really hard” for 4 to 6 weeks.

“I hate to even suggest it,” said Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari, in remarks on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“People will be frustrated by it. But if we were to lock down hard for a month or six weeks, we could get the case count down so that our testing and our contact tracing was actually enough to control it the way that it’s happening in the Northeast right now,” Kashkari said.

He said the economy, which in the second quarter suffered its biggest blow since the Great Depression, would be able to mount a robust recovery, but only if the virus were brought under control.

“If we don’t do that, and we just have this raging virus spreading throughout the country with flare-ups and local lockdowns for the next year or two, which is entirely possible, we’re going to see many, many more business bankruptcies,” Kashkari said.

“That’s going to be a much slower recovery for all of us.”

Reinforcing Kudlow’s perspective, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters at a briefing on Aug. 4 that the administration wasn’t considering a lockdown.

“The president is not considering a national lockdown,” she said. “What he is encouraging is mitigation efforts like wearing a mask, which is patriotic; like social distancing; and engaging in these really commonsense, safe measures to safely reopen and avoid the health consequences of a lockdown.”

McEnany cited a series of negative outcomes that she linked to lockdowns, including a surge in drug overdoses and suicides.

“Overdoses do go up, suicides do go up, cancer cases are missed, as Dr. Scott Atlas has pointed out that, ‘In the U.S. alone, there are 150,000 new cancer cases that arise every month among patients … most have not been seen.’ And that was referring to the lockdown,” she said.

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Trump's Covid boast is nearer to the truth than his opponents would like to admit

Given that enlightened opinion now pretty well defines itself against whatever Donald Trump says, it is hardly surprising to hear the US president being excoriated for saying in a television interview that the US figures for deaths per cases of Covid were “lower than the world, lower than Europe”.   

That people laugh at him whenever he opens his mouth on Covid-19 – or anything else for that matter – doesn’t change the fact that technically he is correct. He was clear that he was referring to the ratio of deaths to recorded cases of Covid 19 – a metric technically known as the Case Fatality Ratio (CFR). 

Sure enough, the US currently has a CFR of 0.033 – which is lower than the world as a whole (0.037) and lower than in the larger European countries. Britain’s CFR is currently 0.15, Italy’s 0.14 and Germany’s 0.043.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Why Sweden, pilloried by the whole world for refusing to lock down - with schools staying open and no face mask laws - may be having the last laugh as experts say Stockholm is close to achieving herd immunity

I mentioned probable herd immunity in Sweden last Friday

Tegnell’s refusal to impose lockdown on his fellow citizens is held up by critics around the world as a warning against adopting a laissez-faire attitude to this deadly disease.

Yet as infections spike again in places that locked down their populations, where schools struggle to reopen and the economic carnage from this crisis grows clearer, is it possible this Scandinavian nation might have made the right long-term call?

After all, as Swedish public health experts kept telling me last week, the struggle against this horrible pandemic ‘is a marathon not a sprint’.

The World Health Organisation warns the impact may be felt for decades. ‘Many countries that believed they were past the worst are grappling with new outbreaks,’ said director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. ‘Some that were less affected in the earliest weeks are now seeing escalating numbers of cases and deaths.’

Yet Sweden is seeing a sustained drop in cases, with some experts even suggesting it may be close to herd immunity in the capital Stockholm.

The number of deaths, new cases and patients in intensive care has fallen dramatically.

On one key measure – percentage change in new confirmed cases over the past fortnight relative to the previous 14 days – Sweden is down more than a third.

This contrasts with sharp rises in neighbouring Denmark, Finland and Norway, along with countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

Meanwhile, the latest data suggests Sweden is suffering less severe economic trauma than most major European nations, while it has, almost uniquely among Western countries, kept schools open.

So what is the truth about the bold but controversial Swedish stance that sets it apart from most other developed nations?

Tegnell openly told me that, like all global experts, he was ‘shooting in the dark’ when this new disease erupted, and he admitted that he expected to see spikes, especially when people return indoors as it gets colder in the autumn.

But he said they sought from the start a sustainable approach that could retain public support – and that they saw their remit as going beyond simply fighting the virus to include keeping the country functioning as much as possible.

‘We have knowledge of the negative effects of closing schools so that was definitely in our thinking,’ he said.

‘Also to keep society open, keep unemployment down, make it possible for people to meet each other. We know that social contacts are a little bit dangerous in these times but they are very important for your wider health. ‘It is necessary to keep a balance between stopping the epidemic and keeping people healthy.’

The Swedish approach relies on trust rather than enforcement, going to the heart of how Swedes see their society.  ‘To live in a democracy you need trust,’ said Morgan Olofsson, spokesman for Sweden’s Civil Contingency Agency, which is responsible for public safety, emergency management and civil defence. ‘The government must trust the people and the people must trust their government.’

Tegnell, who runs the response in keeping with the country’s political tradition of consensus and reliance on independent experts, urged people to socially distance, work from home where possible, and isolate if at risk or showing symptoms.

Public gatherings of more than 50 people were prohibited – but barbers, cafes, gyms, restaurants, shops and schools for children under 16 were allowed to stay open. The compulsory imposition of face masks has been ruled out so far.

There was, however, catastrophe in care homes, as there was in several other nations such as Britain, Canada and Spain, which reflects years of neglect for a fragmented sector staffed by underpaid workers often flitting between different places to make ends meet.

An official inquiry found almost half of Sweden’s Covid-19 deaths by end of June took place in elderly care homes concentrated in 40 of the country’s 290 municipalities.

Tegnell accepted the state should have done more to protect them. Horrifically, it seems many old people were simply given morphine and left to die rather than taken to hospital for fear of overloading intensive care wards.

‘Most people still do not realise that dying from Covid is a terrible death, so it is awful that many people died in this way who could have lived longer and had more peaceful deaths,’ said Paul Franks, a professor in epidemiology at Lund University.

Yet despite this failure, Prof Franks sees lockdown as ‘a very blunt instrument’. So when I asked this thoughtful British expert if his host nation’s strategy was a success, he paused before replying carefully: ‘Sweden accidentally did not get a lot wrong.’

This sounds a strange response when the country’s fatality rate is so many times higher than all three of its Scandinavian neighbours (although lower than Britain).

But Prof Franks pointed out that, according to the Imperial College model that sparked Britain’s sudden lockdown, Sweden should have seen between 42,000 and 85,000 deaths.

So far, this country of 10.1 million people has seen 5,763 fatalities, despite the care home carnage and initial high infection rates in some migrant communities.

Anna Mia Ekstrom, a clinical doctor and professor of global infectious disease epidemiology at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet, said the key was to look at trends showing Sweden’s steady decline in cases and deaths since their peak in mid-April.

She argued it may not be possible nor even desirable to restrict infection rates to zero for a sustainable period of time, especially when most people are unaffected by the virus and as long as those most at risk such as the elderly are protected.

Prof Ekstrom believes Stockholm, currently down to ‘two or three’ patients in intensive care in its infectious disease hospitals, may be coming close to herd immunity as shown by the sustained fall in critically ill patients and fatalities – and that this is a consequence of avoiding lockdown.

The capital, home to a million people, was the worst-hit region because of families bringing back infections from half-term winter breaks in Italy and Spain.

A fifth of residents have antibodies, while a larger proportion may be protected through the response of T-cells, which ‘remember’ infections and kill pathogens that reappear.

‘It is not yet herd immunity but immunity levels have so far been growing steadily,’ said Prof Ekstrom. (Although even Tegnell admitted to me that he was left confused by the ‘mystery of immunity’ with this disease).

Prof Ekstrom added that evidence from elsewhere indicated that lockdowns were unsustainable. ‘You go crazy after a while,’ she said.

‘We have a more acceptable approach that can last a long time since it lets people move around, so their mental and physical health suffer less – though they must stick to social distancing.

'We are in a better situation compared to other countries now, though smaller cluster outbreaks will emerge.

'Lockdown is a blunt, unsustainable and harmful instrument over any prolonged period, especially damaging for younger populations, wider healthcare and the economy, with poorer people hit hardest. Closing down primary schools especially is a huge mistake.’

Perhaps the most popular part of Sweden’s strategy has been the decision to keep most schools open. One joint study with public health authorities in Finland, where almost all pupils were kept out of school for two months, found their differing approaches made no measurable difference to contagion rates.

‘This has strong benefits for parents of small children while avoiding disruption to children’s learning and preventing long-term scarring for the labour market,’ said Karolina Ekholm, former deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank.

We spoke after the release of data showing that Sweden’s economy, which grew marginally in the first quarter of this year, shrunk more than at any point since the Second World War during the pandemic’s three-month peak.

Yet it outperformed most key rivals. It fell 8.6 per cent over the second quarter compared with a 12 per cent fall across the Eurozone. Analysts fear the UK economy may shrink 20 per cent over this period.

‘It’s grim by any normal standards but compared with other parts of Europe they have done well,’ said David Oxley, senior Europe analyst at Capital Economics. Sweden’s big exporters are seeing profits decline smaller than anticipated while there are fewer bankruptcies than feared.

‘If a business can stay open, it’s clearly better than closing,’ said Esbjorn Lundevall, an analyst at Scandinavian bank SEB.

He added that keeping schools open provided a significant economic boost. ‘I worked from home for nine weeks and my children went to school every day, which meant I had higher productivity than if they had remained at home.’

Yet the pandemic is still devastating many small firms as people work from home, stop socialising, lose jobs and rein in spending. Public health modelling indicates Swedes have cut social interactions by more than two-thirds.

I picked five retailers at random while walking through Stockholm’s bohemian Sodermalm district. The outlets sold diverse products: bread, clothes, ice cream and shoes. Trade at all five had crashed, with four owners contemplating closure.

There are, of course, vociferous Swedish critics of this strategy designed to slow rather than stop the spread of coronavirus, including 25 academics who wrote to an American newspaper saying it led to ‘death, grief and suffering’.

There has been fury from people whose relatives died in the care home fiasco. And I came across eight noisy protesters outside a Tegnell press conference demanding the imposition of face masks.

Nicholas Aylott, a political scientist at Sodertorn University, said the approach adopted under a centre-Left coalition government confused the opposition. ‘The Right has been discomforted by the Left’s discovery of libertarianism,’ he said.

One recent survey found eight in ten Swedes still claim to be following official guidelines, while the proportion of people fearing they risk being felled by the virus plunged from 50 per cent in March to just 29 per cent in July.

Certainly every citizen I met on the streets seemed to support the strategy. ‘If we look back in a couple of years I think we will be seen to have handled the situation well,’ said Hans Isoz, an investor in digital companies.

Only time will tell if he is right – and whether more countries should have followed the Swedish path through this cruel pandemic.

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Trump's Covid boast is nearer to the truth than his opponents would like to admit

Given that enlightened opinion now pretty well defines itself against whatever Donald Trump says, it is hardly surprising to hear the US president being excoriated for saying in a television interview that the US figures for deaths per cases of Covid were “lower than the world, lower than Europe”.   

That people laugh at him whenever he opens his mouth on Covid-19 – or anything else for that matter – doesn’t change the fact that technically he is correct. He was clear that he was referring to the ratio of deaths to recorded cases of Covid 19 – a metric technically known as the Case Fatality Ratio (CFR). 

Sure enough, the US currently has a CFR of 0.033 – which is lower than the world as a whole (0.037) and lower than in the larger European countries. Britain’s CFR is currently 0.15, Italy’s 0.14 and Germany’s 0.043.

SOURCE 

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Lockdown 'killed two people for every three who died of coronavirus' at peak of outbreak

The UK lockdown killed two people for every three whose deaths had been caused by coronavirus by the beginning of May, new Government figures suggest.

The estimates show that 16,000 people had died through missed medical care by May 1, while coronavirus killed 25,000 in the same period.

The figures include 6,000 people who did not attend A&E at the height of lockdown because of fears they might catch the virus and the feeling they should remain at home because of the "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives" message.

Likewise, 10,000 people are thought to have died in care homes due to early discharge from hospital and not being able to access critical care.

The report also found that 2,500 lives may have been saved during lockdown because of healthier lifestyles, fewer infectious diseases in children, falls in air pollution and a decrease in road deaths.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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The Myth That Lockdowns Stop Pandemics

From the beginning of time, humans have used mythology to make sense of a chaotic natural world. Sir G.L. Gomme dubbed myths “the science of a pre-scientific age.” Folklore provided pre-scientific people a comforting sense of control over nature. To address dry spells, they deployed rain dances. Sunless stretches hindering crops prompted offerings to Helios. Then, our ancestors sat back and waited. The rains always came. The sun always reappeared, validating their “wisdom,” the illusion of control reinforced.

Thanks to science, we know this was pure superstition. Though the same outcomes would have occurred had the tribe taken no action, the tribe leader would still have received credit or blame from his constituents. Similarly, today’s politicians race to take credit -- or place blame -- for COVID-19 “results.” Do politicians really control these outcomes, or are they simply exploiting our ingrained tendencies?

When China first deployed lockdown in January to “defeat COVID-19,” The Washington Post approvingly quoted a Georgetown University professor as saying, “The truth is those kinds of lockdowns are very rare and never effective…”

In March, Imperial College London's dire projections influenced the White House, but a careful reading of the advice contained in the Imperial College report reveals that its authors knew lockdown alone could not eliminate any infections, only delay them: “The more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression,” it stated, “the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pandemic planning documents state non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing are ineffective once a disease infects 1% of a region's population. Literature on this subject is unanimous worldwide. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control:

“There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread. It is hard to imagine that measures like those within the category of social distancing would not have some positive impact by reducing transmission of a human respiratory infection . . . However, the evidence base supporting each individual measure is often weak.”

Decades of evidence corroborates this. In 1969, a group of men overwintering in Antarctica experienced a spontaneous respiratory virus outbreak during their 17th week of isolation. Similarly, COVID-19 appeared on an Argentinian naval ship on the 35th day of its voyage, following a 14-day isolation of captain and crew.

Nature always finds a way. No respiratory virus ever needed a “lockdown” to dissipate. What it needs is herd immunity, preferably sooner than later, preferably developed by the young and healthy to minimize mortality. Politicians know the disease will eventually leave, yet they strive to convince a critical mass that their actions -- modern-day versions of the rain dance -- brought about that result. They count on us behaving like renowned psychologist B.F. Skinner’s superstitious pigeons.

“A pigeon is … put into a cage. A food hopper may be swung into place … so that the pigeon can eat from it … If a clock is [set] to present the hopper at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird’s behavior, operant conditioning usually takes place. The bird tends to learn whatever response it is making when the hopper appears. The experiment might be said to demonstrate a sort of superstition. The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food, although such a relation is lacking.”

Publicly available data shows no causal relationship between government orders and COVID-19 mortality outcomes. Sweden's all-cause, per-capita mortality for 2020 is approximately 290 per million above the prior five-year average, while lockdown-loving New Jersey's is almost 1,900 per million above the prior five-year average, and Michigan's is over 700 per million. (In case you suspect Sweden “naturally” locked down on its own, mobility data reveals it didn’t.) The mainstream media does not report this. Instead, its energetic smearing of Sweden, coupled with its pseudo-scientific insistence that lockdowns do anything more than delay the inevitable, helps politicians exploit the human tendency to mythologize.

We are faced with a virus with a 997-out-of-1,000 survival rate. We have vanquished fiercer adversaries. We can rid ourselves of this plague less painfully by remembering one simple truth: neither we, nor our politicians, have control over death.

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TV commentator, Andrew Bolt, leads lockdown dissent in Australia

Andrew Bolt has doubled down on his argument that Covid-19 restrictions should be lifted because they are destroying the economy “to save aged-care residents from dying a few months earlier”.

Writing in the Herald Sun this week, Bolt noted that most people dying of the virus were over 80.

“We don’t crash this economy just to stop the young getting a stuffy nose,” he said. “Note: 40 per cent of aged-care home residents die within nine months. The average stay is just under three years.

“So Victoria’s bans are doing huge damage to – essentially – save aged-care residents from dying a few months earlier.”

Attacked by ABC presenter Michael Rowland for his “disgraceful” suggestion, Bolt defended himself on his Sky program on Tuesday night, saying the breakfast host was indulging in “woolly thinking” and “fake sentimentality”. His critics were typically leftwing and did not have a good heart, Bolt said, but a “weak head”.

The chief executive of the Council on the Ageing, Ian Yates, said Bolt’s argument was totally unacceptable.

“It’s an attitude that certain kinds of lives are disposable,” Yates told Weekly Beast. “Logically the next step would be to ask, ‘Why do we have nursing homes at all, why don’t we just bang them on the head?’”

As the pandemic has worsened, Bolt’s rhetoric has sometimes been overtaken. “Not a single person under 40 has died,” he said on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced a man in his 30s had died.

“A lot of people are very upset with me,” Bolt said in an editorial on Sky News. “What I wrote was confronting, some thought it was brutal, but it was also absolutely true.”

Bolt’s rhetoric is echoed by Sky News Australia’s Alan Jones and the Australian’s economics editor, Adam Creighton. They all rail against Victoria’s stay-at-home orders, and the premier, Daniel Andrews.

Bolt’s stablemate at the Herald Sun and Sky News, columnist Rita Panahi, has said the health measures are “draconian” and people who back Andrews are “in the thralls of Stockholm syndrome”.

Jones says mask-wearing is “alarmism” and “ineffectual” and Australia’s death rate does not warrant it. “Only a mad person would believe a lockdown will wipe out the virus,” he said when masks were made compulsory.

Now in his fifth week of broadcasting a new show on Sky News, Jones is averaging around 70,000 viewers each night, which for comparison is one-tenth of the audience for ABC News at 7pm. Nine and Seven news bulletins at 6pm sit above 1.1 million.

But his somewhat strident takes are getting a wider audience through follow-up news stories on news.com.au and posts on social media.

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There's a Mountain of Evidence That Hydroxychloroquine Is an Effective Treatment for COVID-19

I’m convinced that if a rabid leftist was dying of thirst and President Trump offered him water, he’d refuse to drink it.

This is perhaps the best analogy for what’s happening right now with hydroxychloroquine, a decades-old malaria drug that has repeatedly shown to be an effective treatment for COVID-19, but that Democrats and the media have relentlessly dismissed ever since President Trump first touted it back in March as a possible game-changer. The media accused Trump of “practicing medicine without a license” simply for pointing out that the drug showed promise in some small studies. A Democratic state lawmaker in Ohio said that Trump should be tried for “crimes against humanity” for touting the drug’s potential. The New York Times even alleged that Trump’s motivation for touting it was self-serving because he holds “a small personal financial interest” in Sanofi, even though the drug is out of patent, and he only owned $29 – $435 in the stock as part of a mutual fund.

The media largely ignored success stories from coronavirus patients who recovered after being treated with the drug. In April, Democrat State Rep. Karen Whitsett from Detroit, Mich., credited the drug and President Trump with saving her life. Other coronavirus patients have reported dramatic recoveries after taking the drug.

But none of this mattered.

Studies showing the drug as ineffective were covered excessively, such as the Veterans Affairs study in April, which found a higher mortality rate with patients given the drug. The study was deeply flawed, as the sickest patients were disproportionately administered the drug. It was a deeply flawed, non-peer-reviewed study that had no business being reported on. Two other studies followed linking hydroxychloroquine to higher mortality, but those studies were based on faulty data, and two well-respected medical journals had to retract one of them.

Steven Hatfill, a veteran virologist, noted at RealClearPolitics that “There are now 53 studies that show positive results of hydroxychloroquine in COVID infections. There are 14 global studies that show neutral or negative results — and 10 of them were of patients in very late stages of COVID-19, where no antiviral drug can be expected to have much effect.”

Hatfill continued, “Of the remaining four studies, two come from the same University of Minnesota author. The other two are from the faulty Brazil paper, which should be retracted, and the fake Lancet paper, which was.”

“Two recent, large, early-use clinical trials have been conducted by the Henry Ford Health System and at Mount Sinai showing a 51% and 47% lower mortality, respectively, in hospitalized patients given hydroxychloroquine. A recent study from Spain published on July 29, two days before Margaret Sullivan’s strafing of ‘fringe doctors,’ shows a 66% reduction in COVID mortality in patients taking hydroxychloroquine. No serious side effects were reported in these studies and no epidemic of heartbeat abnormalities.”

One example Hatfill cited that shows the drug has been effective in Switzerland, which briefly banned hydroxychloroquine after the bogus studies linking the drug to higher mortality rates came out.

What happened? Just look at the graph.

“Looking at the evolution curve of this index for Switzerland,” explain Michel Jullian and Xavier Azalbert for FranceSoir, “we note a ‘wave of excess lethality’ of two weeks from June 9th to 22nd, with a lag of a dozen days compared to the period of suspension of the use of hydroxychloroquine by WHO. This demonstrates, without possible rebuttal, the effect of stopping the delivery and use of this drug in Switzerland (country which follows the recommendations of the WHO, based in Geneva). During the weeks preceding the ban, the nrCFR index fluctuated between 3% and 5%. Some 13 days after the start of the prohibition, the nrCFR index increases considerably to be between 10 and 15% for 2 weeks. Some 12 days after the end of the prohibition, the lethality falls back to a lower level.”

Switzerland is hardly the only country that has shown the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. “Millions of people are taking or have taken hydroxychloroquine in nations that have managed to get their national pandemic under some degree of control,” explains Hatfill.

The best way to show this is to compare deaths per capita in countries that are widely using hydroxychloroquine and those that aren’t.

How much more proof is needed that Trump Derangement Syndrome from the media has resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths? Most studies show hydroxychloroquine can be an effective treatment for COVID-19. Countries that are widely using it early in the progression of the disease have had significantly better outcomes in mortality.

How many lives were lost because the Democrats and the media claimed that taking hydroxychloroquine would kill you? They want the public to blame Trump for the 160,000 deaths that have resulted from the virus, but in reality, the death count would be much, much lower had they put their rabid Trump Derangement Syndrome on hold for the greater good and had an open mind about hydroxychloroquine.

President Trump needs to be pointing this out daily.

SOURCE 

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July Jobs Report Smashes Expectations Despite COVID-19

The July jobs report shows the economy beating expectations yet again, even as the country navigates COVID-19. The U.S. economy added 1.8 million jobs in the month of July, and unemployment fell to 10.2 percent from the previous 11.1 percent. Payrolls rose 1.76 million in July, beating a projection of 1.48; wages rose a slight .02 percent.

President Trump continues to fight to bring the American economy back, and alleviate the damage caused by COVID-19. Since the massive job loss began at the beginning of COVID-19, 9 million jobs have been recovered. July's positive report comes as Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are in the midst of negotiations over a second Coronavirus, Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) stimulus package.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Sweden suffers record economic plunge despite lighter lockdown

What is not mentioned below is that Sweden probably had both its stage 1 and stage 2 infection episodes all at once -- leaving very few people for the virus to infect.

Another way of saying that is that Sweden is probably pretty close to herd immunity -- meaning that almost all those who were significantly susceptible to the virus have had contact with it but not been infected. And because they were not infected they will not pass it on. So even the living remainder of those people who are seriously susceptible will not get it.

That puts them miles ahead of any other nation.. There is at the moment an element of speculation in that because many of the uninfected probably have a a strong natural immunity that leaves no trace of contact with the virus -- even though there was contact. Time will tell


Sweden’s light-touch lockdown failed to spare its economy from a historic plunge in GDP as Covid-19 triggered a collapse in exports and spending.

Output contracted by a record 8.6pc in the second quarter compared with the previous three months, but the Nordic nation suffered a much smaller hit than many other European economies.

Despite some of the most relaxed Covid-19 restrictions in the world, its exporters were hit by tumbling global demand and household spending slumped as the virus struck.

“The economic crunch over the first half of the year is in a different league entirely to the horror shows elsewhere in Europe,” said David Oxley at Capital Economics.

It is “still likely to be among the best of a bad bunch this year”, he said, pointing to signs of a rebound at the start of the third quarter.

While the hit to GDP was lower than the 12pc slump in the eurozone in the second quarter, Sweden's Nordic neighbours have managed to avoid both a health and economic crisis.

The figures come amid declining support in Sweden for the strategy not to use a mandatory strict lockdown to contain the virus. The controversial approach relied on voluntary social distancing, bans on large gatherings, care home restrictions and table service in bars and restaurants.

Sweden has recorded almost 6,000 Covid deaths compared with about 250 in Norway and just over 600 in Denmark, giving it one of the world's highest death rates.

Prime minister Stefan Löfven has launched an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic. “We have thousands of dead. Now the question is how Sweden should change, not if,” he admitted when announcing the probe in late June.

Torbjörn Isaksson, chief analyst at Nordea Markets, warned that it was “too early to evaluate how different strategies to deal with Covid-19 have affected the economies”.

“Swedish GDP contracted much less in the first half of the year than for instance in the euro area, while some of our Nordic neighbours probably fared better than Sweden,” he said.

The OECD has predicted that Sweden will suffer a 6.7pc plunge in GDP this year if there is only one significant Covid wave. Norway and Denmark expect a smaller 6pc and 5.8pc hit while also containing the virus.

There is also growing evidence that stemming the health crisis is the key to strong recoveries, with life returning to relative normality in countries that successfully stemmed outbreaks.

Households could slam the brakes on consumption if they fear the virus is surging. Worried consumers in the US, for example, have curbed spending as cases surge, while some states have been forced to roll back reopenings. The same could happen in Europe if fears of a second wave on the Continent are realised.

For now, however, the recovery in Sweden is taking shape. Neal Kilbane at Oxford Economics said the Swedish economy had bottomed out and was starting to recover.

“Private sector production ended four consecutive months of decline by expanding by 0.7pc month-on-month in June, while July’s composite PMI increased above 50 and into expansionary territory for the first time since February,” he said.

Sweden will avoid the collapse in output seen in much of Europe, but its Nordic neighbours have shown that containing the virus does not necessarily trigger economic collapse.

SOURCE 

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What We Know Now About Hydroxychloroquine to Treat COVID-19

Early in health officials’ response to the pandemic, one drug offered hope of a safe, widely available, and cheap therapeutic that would break the death grip that COVID-19 held on the world.

However, after its promised efficacy didn’t materialize in large, statistically significant numbers, enthusiasm for the drug, hydroxychloroquine, quickly waned. Why, then, has it made its way back into the headlines?

When it was first suggested that hydroxychloroquine may be an effective antiviral against the new coronavirus, which scientists call SARS-CoV-2, the U.S. government purchased and delivered the drug by the millions of doses even before research could prove its efficacy.

At the time, what scarce data was available suggested it would work, and waiting much longer would’ve been unethical. After all, the drug has a decadeslong history of use to treat malaria.

But with those millions of doses being administered, clinicians found only mixed results. Some, as in the early French trial, found tremendous success, while many others found no clinical benefit.

Thus, the buzz surrounding hydroxychloroquine began to die down and it nearly was forgotten in the news cycle, until early July when the results of 2,500-person study were published by the Henry Ford COVID-19 Task Force.

That study found that among those who received hydroxychloroquine, the mortality was 13.5%. This compares to those who received none of the studied drugs, among whom the mortality was 26.4%.

The group of patients who received hydroxychloroquine alone suffered about half the mortality of the baseline group. Note that this is different from saying hydroxychloroquine “was responsible for reducing mortality by half.”

The Ford study is a retrospective observational study, which means it looks back on cases that already have happened. These studies often can gather a large amount of data, but they tell only correlation rather than causation. Although it’s a positive study for the drug, it adds to a growing body of mixed results.

To tell definitively whether hydroxychloroquine is responsible for the reduction in mortality, what’s required is a randomized controlled trial. That is, a prospective study designed to test the direct effect of a drug or intervention.

One such randomized controlled trial was published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine, which also put hydroxychloroquine back in the news. The study, of 507 patients with confirmed COVID-19, found there was no significant difference in clinical outcome with the addition of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin.

Patients included in this study were hospitalized but did not require more than four liters of supplemental oxygen. This means that the condition of the patients studied was of relatively low severity, and that treatment with hydroxychloroquine began earlier on in the course of the disease.

Therefore, this study was intended to test the conditions for which hydroxychloroquine has been proposed to be used and found it to have no clinical benefit over the “standard of care.”

But the researchers noted several limitations to their study. For instance, the study was not blinded, which could have skewed the results, and there was difficulty with adherence to the treatment regimen, which could have affected the outcomes.

Furthermore, hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin was compared to the “standard of care,” which at the time of the study, in March, was not very standard. Physicians were free to use other drugs such as steroids, immunomodulators, or other antibiotics.

So hydroxychloroquine in this study did no better than other drugs, but it is difficult to say that hydroxychloroquine had zero effect when its effect may have been matched or covered up by other drugs considered “standard of care” at the time.

As if it weren’t already confusing enough, few studies have included zinc as part of the treatment regimen along with hydroxychloroquine. Zinc is an essential mineral that is important for immune function, and may have some direct antiviral properties that some researchers propose would be amplified when used in conjunction with hydroxychloroquine.

Researchers at New York University Langone Health, a medical center, began adding zinc to their treatment plans for COVID-19 patients. In a study of 932 patient cases, the medical center found that the addition of zinc to hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was associated with a decrease in mortality in patients who were not admitted to the intensive care unit.

Because this also was a retrospective study, it can tell only correlation and not causation.

That said, it’s a promising result that suggests hydroxychloroquine might need supplemental zinc to be fully effective. This warrants further investigation.

Few published results exist from studies that include zinc, and fewer if any results exist from a clinical trial of zinc with hydroxychloroquine. But several studies of this drug combination are in progress, some of which are expected to conclude as late as next year.

All of this is to say that the science is not yet settled. It is an open question as to whether hydroxychloroquine in combination with any number of other drugs may have a beneficial effect on the disease course of COVID-19.

A great deal of evidence says it doesn’t work, but enough evidence says hydroxychloroquine does work that it would be irresponsible to write it off completely at this time, especially in combination with other drugs. In fact, researchers around the world are conducting hundreds of trials with hydroxychloroquine.

Hydroxychloroquine is dominating the news again for many reasons, not the least of which is that results from several important studies recently have been released. But the angst, the controversy, and cynical politicking around the drug is completely unwarranted.

We don’t know for certain if, and in what manner, hydroxychloroquine works. We should trust clinicians to review the data for themselves, and it would behoove the media, the politicians, and the public to let the science play out.

SOURCE 

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Here's What Happened When a Reporter Experimented with Mail-In Ballots

Because of the Wuhan coronavirus, many states are opting to vote by mail. The goal is to keep people from flocking to the polls and creating large crowds. Conservatives have frequently talked about the issue of voter fraud and the potential for votes to become lost or stolen.

A reporter from WRDW in Pennsylvania decided to conduct an experiment. The reporter's team set up a PO Box and mailed numerous sets of fake ballots all across Philadelphia. The idea was to simulate people returning ballots to the local election office. They initially mailed 100 mock ballots. Two days later, they mailed another 100 ballots. The PO box was checked a week later.

When the reporter opened up the PO box, there was a slip saying the box owner had to pick up the mail from behind the counter. When the reporter went to retrieve the mail, the postmaster told him there was nothing back there.

"I don't see anything there for you," the woman behind the counter said.

The reporter eventually talked to a manager, explained what they were doing and suddenly she found a box of mock ballots that were "somewhere else."

As the reporter went through the mail, it was discovered they obtained two pieces of someone else's mail, including a birthday card.

The worst part: 21 percent of all the mock ballots hadn't materialized after four days. The first batch, which had been sent out a week prior, also had some ballots missing.

"So out of our 100 ballots, 97 arrived, which sounds pretty good, unless you consider the fact that means that three people that tried to vote by mail in our mock election were, in fact, disenfranchised by mail," the reporter stated.

Three percent may not sound like a lot, but it can be pivotal, especially when elections are close.

The other issue: 24 states allow voters to request ballots less than a week before the election, meaning they're not going to make it back in time to be counted.

And when the reporter talked with people in the community, quite a few shared concerns about their ballots "getting lost in the mail."

This is proof that in-person voting must happen and the integrity of the election is at stake. Democrats say they want proof, here it is. There's not much more solid evidence than this experiment. If it's happening in one city, it's almost guaranteed to be happening in places across the nation.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Did lockdowns work? evidence says no

With talk of ordering more widespread shutdowns to fight the resurgence of COVID-19 cases, it is worth taking note of a paper released over the weekend on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) by Prof. Christian Bjørnskov of Aarhus University in Denmark. The paper is “Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison.”

The abstract is both direct and concise (a rarity in academic writing):

I explore the association between the severity of lockdown policies in the first half of 2020 and mortality rates. Using two indices from the Blavatnik Centre’s Covid 19 policy measures and comparing weekly mortality rates from 24 European countries in the first halves of 2017-2020, and addressing policy endogeneity in two different ways, I find no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality development.

The main text of the paper reviews a couple other recent studies that reach the same conclusion, but some of Prof. Bjørnskov’s language in his conclusion leads me to think not all Danes are as far gone as the cliches might lead us to suggest:

The lockdowns in most Western countries have thrown the world into the most severe recession since World War II and the most rapidly developing recession ever seen in mature market economies. They have also caused an erosion of fundamental rights and the separation of powers in large part of the world as both democratic and autocratic regimes have misused their emergency powers and ignored constitutional limits to policy-making. It is therefore important to evaluate whether and to which extent the lockdowns have worked as officially intended: to suppress the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevent deaths associated with it. Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended. . .

Although much has been claimed about Sweden’s relatively high mortality rate, compared to the other Nordic countries, the present data show that the country experienced 161 fewer deaths per million in the first ten weeks, and 464 more deaths in weeks 11-22. In total, Swedish mortality rates are 14 percent higher than in the preceding three years, which is slightly more than France, but considerably fewer than Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom that all implemented much stricter policies.

The problem at hand is therefore that evidence from Sweden as well as the evidence presented here does not suggest that lockdowns have significantly affected the development of mortality in Europe. It has nevertheless wreaked economic havoc in most societies and may lead to a substantial number of additional deaths for other reasons. A British government report from April for example assessed that a limited lockdown could cause 185,000 excess deaths over the next years (DHSC, 2020). Evaluated as a whole, at a first glance, the lockdown policies of the Spring of 2020 therefore appear to be substantial long-run government failures.

Like I say, I think I like this guy.

SOURCE 

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Why the coronavirus nightmare may soon be over/b>

Matt Ridley writes from Britain

Like the ancient mariner, the virus refuses to leave us alone. Resurging in Blackburn, Spain, and America, it is still going to be around here when the winter comes. As we head indoors, it will be back for a dreaded second wave, disguised among a host of colds and flus. Yet I am now optimistic that the nightmare will end this year or at least by the spring. Here are five reasons.

First, vaccine trials were promising. Having proved safe and capable of raising both a T-cell response and an antibody response, Oxford University’s vaccine, developed in collaboration with Astrazeneca, is now more likely to succeed than to fail, so long as its side effects are manageable in the elderly. And behind it comes a stream of other vaccines, some of which will surely work.

The second reason for hope is that, as Oxford University’s epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta has argued, herd immunity may be achieved more easily than we first thought. Indeed, from the way that infections have continued to dwindle despite lessening social distancing it seems probable that herd immunity has already been achieved in London at least. Half the population could be immune already because of recent exposure to coronavirus colds, while children seem to resist catching Covid-19, let alone passing it on. As the chief medical officer Chris Whitty has conceded, the epidemic was already in retreat before lockdown began. That is because the virus depends heavily on a few superspreaders, and pre-lockdown measures we were taking in March are remarkably effective: no handshakes, frequent hand washing, no large gatherings and so on.

So the third reason for optimism is that as long as we continue with these measures then this virus will struggle to keep spreading in the community. The one place where the virus did spread with horrible ease was in care homes and hospitals. Why was this? T-cell senescence is an issue, so old people’s immune systems are just not as good at coping with this kind of infection, and there were dreadful policy mistakes made, like stopping testing people, clearing patients out of hospitals to care homes without tests, and assuming no asymptomatic transmission. Healthcare and care home staff were not properly protected and were allowed to go from site to site. Many were infected and became carriers.

The fourth cause for cheer is therefore that now we know about asymptomatic transmission, we have more protective equipment and we have a better, if still imperfect, capacity to test, track and isolate cases, it is likely that the hospital-acquired epidemic of the spring will not be repeated.

My fifth excuse for being hopeful is that we now know better how to treat people who get seriously ill. Ventilation is not necessarily the answer, blood clotting is a real threat, making patients lie face down is helpful, dexamethasone can save lives and some antiviral drugs are showing promise.

These are reasons that even if a lot of people catch the virus this winter, fewer will die. Colds and flu viruses usually peak in mid winter when we are indoors. Viruses survive longer in colder and drier conditions, and centrally heated air dries out our protective mucus membranes. Covid-19 will certainly be hoping to peak then. But Australia offers a glimmer of reassurance. It’s winter there now, and this is proving to be the country’s weakest flu season on record. From January to the end of June, 21,000 Australians were diagnosed with flu. Last year more than 132,000 people were diagnosed in the same period. Social distancing is presumably the main reason. If that is repeated here, then not only will Covid have fewer flus and colds to hide behind, but it too will struggle to mount a seasonal peak. And fewer people will die from flu.

If we can beat this virus, then we can beat most respiratory ones. The ridiculous way in which we tolerate cold-spreaders, mocking them for taking a day off and praising them for trudging into work while feeling miserable, has to stop. It should be socially unacceptable to go to a party with a cold, let alone kiss the host on the cheek when you get there. Our children’s permanently runny noses need not be inevitable.

Ten years from now, I predict that we will not only have defeated Covid-19, but made colds rarer too.

Our bigger challenge this winter will be to tackle the backlog of treating cancer and other medical problems delayed by Covid. And to unleash economic growth to help those who lost their jobs.

SOURCE 

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What's the risk of catching COVID-19 on public transportation?

The chances of catching COVID-19 on public transportation depend a lot on where you sit, with those closest to an infected person at the highest risk and those farther away at a relatively low risk, a new study suggests.

The study, which included thousands of passengers who traveled on China's high-speed trains, known as G trains, found that the rate of transmission to nearby passengers varied from near 0% to about 10%, with those who sat closest to infected passengers for the longest periods at the highest risk.

"Our study shows that although there is an increased risk of COVID-19 transmission on trains, a person's seat location and travel time in relation to an infectious person can make a big difference as to whether it is passed on," study lead author Dr. Shengjie Lai, a research fellow at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "The findings suggest that during the COVID-19 epidemic it is important to reduce the density of passengers and promote personal hygiene measures, the use of face coverings and possibly carry out temperature checks before boarding."

Indeed, other recent studies from around the world suggest that when passengers wear masks and adhere to social-distancing guidelines, public transportation may pose a relatively low risk of infection.

For example, in Paris, public health officials found that of the 386 recent clusters of COVID-19 in the city between May and mid-July, none were linked with public transportation, according to The New York TImes. Similar findings were seen in both Tokyo and parts of Austria, the Times reported.

In the new study, published July 29 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers analyzed information from passengers who traveled on G trains between mid-December 2019 and late February 2020, which covers the period from before COVID-19 was identified to the peak of the outbreak in China.

The researchers identified more than 2,300 passengers known as "index patients" who developed COVID-19 within 14 days of their train trip, and more than 72,000 passengers who sat near these cases — within three rows (widthwise) and five columns (lengthwise) of the index patients.

Overall, 234 of the 72,000 nearby passengers developed a COVID-19 infection linked to their train ride. That means the average "attack rate" — or percent who tested positive out of the overall group — was about 0.32%.

Those who sat directly next to an infected person had the highest risk of contracting the infection, with an average attack rate of 3.5%.

For those sitting in the same row, but not necessarily adjacent to the infected person, the average attack rate was 1.5%. That's about 10 times higher than the attack rate for people sitting just one or two rows back from the infected person, the study found.

The amount of time a person traveled also affected their risk — on average, the attack rate increased 0.15% for every hour a person traveled with an infected passenger; and for those sitting next to an infected person, the attack rate increased 1.3% every hour.

But after an infected person disembarked the train, those who sat in the same seat seemed to be at a low risk of infection. Among the 1,342 people who sat in a seat previously occupied by an infected person, just one person later contracted the disease, an attack rate of just 0.075%, according to CTV News.

The researchers concluded that to prevent COVID-19 spread, passengers should be seated at least two seats apart within the same row, and limit travel time to 3 hours.

"We hope it can help to inform authorities globally about measures needed to guard against the virus and in turn help to reduce its spread," said study co-author Andy Tatem, a professor of spatial demography and epidemiology at the University of Southampton and director of WorldPop, a collaboration of scientists that works to provide data on human population distributions.

The authors noted that their study had limitations. For example, the researchers could not prove that the 234 passengers definitely contracted the virus on the train, although public health officials had determined that this was the most likely source of their infection, CTV News reported. In addition, the study did not have information on whether the passengers were wearing protective gear such as masks, the authors said.

SOURCE 

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President Trump Signs Executive Order Instructing Federal Agencies to 'Hire American'

President Trump signed an executive order that aims to prioritize American workers on Monday, hoping to promote “hiring American,” by barring federal agencies from replacing domestic workers with foreign contractors. The order targets job outsourcing within federal agencies that replaces American jobs with inexpensive foreign labor via H-1B visas.

“We believe jobs must be offered to American workers first,” the president said.

This executive order mirrors President Trump’s commitment to putting American workers first, especially given the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 that is felt by Americans in all job sectors.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Top WHO disease detective warns against return to national lockdowns

The World Health Organisation has urged countries not to reimpose national lockdowns in an attempt to stem the spread of Covid-19 due to the health, social and economic repercussions.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, who helps lead the WHO’s pandemic response team as the head of the emerging diseases unit, said that countries should instead adopt localised strategies.

By the end of March, as the coronavirus outbreak spiralled out of control across the globe, well over 100 countries had imposed a full or partial lockdown – affecting billions of people.

Dr Van Kerkhove described these measures as a “blunt, sheer force instrument” that bought countries time to build the public health infrastructure needed to tackle Covid-19.

But reflecting on events since the WHO declared a global health emergency six months ago – when fewer than 8,000 cases and 170 deaths had been reported – she added that the economic, health and social costs of lockdown have been “massive”.

“Lockdowns are not something that WHO recommended, but they needed to be used in a number of countries because the outbreaks were growing so quickly,” Dr Van Kerkhove said. “But we're hopeful that countries will not need to implement national lockdowns again.”

The 43-year-old, who has become a familiar face having appeared alongside WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at press briefings for months, added that countries should not rely on a jab as a silver bullet to bring the raging pandemic to a close.

“In the next six months we will not have a vaccine,” she said frankly. “I know there's a lot of work that's being accelerated in terms of having a safe and effective vaccine, but we cannot wait until next year for one to come around.”

Instead Dr Van Kerkhove urged countries to make use of the tools currently available to adopt a “tailored, specific, localised” approach to contain new clusters of infections.

“The speed of the science on this has been extraordinary… we have tools right now that can prevent transmission and save lives,” Dr Van Kerkhove said, referencing measures including contacting tracing, widespread testing, equipping health facilities, physical distancing and wearing face masks.

“It isn't one measure alone, all of the existing measures need to be used together. And it works. The reason we keep saying that it works is because we've seen this happen, we have seen countries bring these outbreaks under control,” she said.

It is now seven months since Dr Van Kerkhove – who has spent decades training as an epidemiologist, including stints at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College – received an email alert that a ‘pneumonia of unknown origin’ had been detected in Wuhan, China.

“I was on holiday for Christmas with my family in the US,” the mother of two told the Telegraph from her office at the WHO headquarters in Geneva. “I immediately sent a note back asking some questions, which I always do… we always push countries for more information, China is not unique to that.

“My initial feeling was that this could be localised, that this would be localised. But I’m trained to think that this is an emerging infectious disease… so I definitely knew it could get bigger, and planned for that.”

Since then the scenarios Dr Van Kerhove’s team prepared for but dreaded have been realised. The pandemic has spiralled out of control internationally, with infections surpassing 17.6 million and deaths 680,000, not to mention the devastating social and economic reverberations.

And the epidemiologist, used to working behind the scenes, has instead been thrown into the limelight, having fielded hundreds of questions from journalists and the public at regular virtual briefings. At points this role as the public face of the WHO, which was not one Dr Van Kerkhove “ever expected” to have, has landed her in hot water.

Though praised in January when she was one of the first WHO officials to raise the alarm about potential human-to-human transmission publicly, comments that appeared to suggest asymptomatic spread is rare provoked fierce criticism in June – though Dr Van Kerkhove maintains that much of the reporting misunderstood her words.

“I watched videos of myself making a statement, and then some newscaster saying, ‘WHO says asymptomatic transmission doesn't happen’, which I've never said, which WHO has never said,” she said. “It was a challenge – I had never been the brunt of such criticism.”

Dr Van Kerkhove added that her colleagues, husband and two children – aged nine and one – kept her going. “My nine year old drew rainbows for everybody at the office because he wanted everyone to know that we were doing a good job,” she said. “I’m inspired by acts of kindness.”

The epidemiologist is not the only member of the team to attract criticism during the pandemic. Most markedly, Donald Trump has consistently accused the WHO, particularly Dr Tedros, of being “China-centric” – a claim most public health experts have dismissed as “scapegoating”.

The fallout, which began in early April when the US President announced he was temporarily suspending funding to the UN health agency because it “failed in its basic duty” to respond to Covid-19, came to a head earlier this month when Trump’s administration formally withdrew from the WHO.

As a “proud American” Dr Van Kerkhove said she was “disappointed” by the decision, but insisted that the worsening situation in the US, where more than 66,000 new cases have been reported every day in the last fortnight, could still be rectified.

“I think even countries that haven't done as well still can turn it around, and I believe that the United States can and the United States will,” she said.

But her biggest fear is complacency, which could undermine efforts to control this pandemic – and the next one.

“This is a wake up call about pandemics and we must do more to be ready,” Dr Van Kerkhove warned. “It isn't a matter of if, it's a matter of when something like this will happen again.

“It’s quite traumatic what everyone is going through at the moment – we need to use this as a way to accelerate the change that is necessary.”

SOURCE 

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These ‘Inconvenient’ Data Patterns Destroy the Established Coronavirus Narrative

If I’m being told I shouldn’t or can’t go out and that I’m not allowed to breathe free air when I do, the evidence on the ground should damn-well comport with the “logic” they are giving us to justify their extreme measures. But they aren’t, not in any observable, logical way.

Let’s start with Sweden, that quasi-socialist winter wonderland of woke snowflakes that somehow decided to go against the grain on COVID and consequently went seemingly overnight from the world’s darling to the world’s next Khmer Rouge. Not only did Sweden NOT implement draconian lockdowns when this whole thing started, they never even mandated mask-wearing (oh, the horror!). According to nearly all the “experts,” Sweden was supposed to be something like a scene out of the Book of Revelation by now, complete with rivers of blood and bodies piled up to horses’ bridles. Hospitals were going to be overrun. People were going to be dying in the streets. There was going to be carnage unlike nothing anyone had ever seen...

Except, none of that happened. Not even close. Absent an early Cuomo-style failure to adequately protect nursing homes that hurt their numbers early on, that country’s strategy was a tremendous success. Sweden implemented a few sustainable, common-sense measures, bent toward the storm, and rode it through. And now, they are reaping the rewards. Last week, Bloomberg reported on the country’s “‘Promising’ Covid-19 Data as New Cases Plunge.” State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and the Health Agency of Sweden report declining cases since a late June peak and a death rate that has plunged right along with it. “That Sweden has come down to these levels is very promising,” said Tegnell. “The curves are going down and the curves for the seriously ill are beginning to approach zero.”

Everyone from the lamestream media to President Trump himself disparaged Sweden’s approach, and they were all ridiculously, cartoonishly wrong. Now that Sweden has obtained some degree of herd immunity and is back to some sense of relative normalcy, where do they go to get their apology?

Other inconvenient patterns exist closer to home. Consider South Dakota, where its courageous leader and (hopefully) future presidential candidate, Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, steadfastly refused to shut down her state nor require masks. Aside from a bad outbreak in a meat-packing plant early on, the infection and death rate in that admittedly less population-dense state has remained consistently low.

Want a more populous state? How about Georgia, where Brian Kemp was supposedly conducting an “experiment in human sacrifice” by reopening his state too soon and not mandating masks at the state level. Cases did rise (but haven’t spiked) nearly TWO MONTHS after their lockdown ended, but deaths are still below 4,000 statewide and are nowhere near any sort of drastic spike. Now, it even looks like hospitalizations have peaked and are trending down.

For those who insisted we needed New York-style lockdowns in the Sunbelt states of Arizona, Texas, and Florida to fight those surges, consider this data pattern from former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson: “AZ/FL/TX: 60 million people, no lockdowns (now), 23,000 peak hospitalizations, 500ish (hopefully) peak daily deaths. New York: 20 million people, hard lockdown, 18,000 peak hospitalizations, 1000 peak daily deaths. Let’s lockdown forever!” Indeed.

Other narrative-inconvenient data patterns exist in the places that supposedly did things “right.” Japan and even Hong Kong are seeing small case spikes - but big trend changes - despite militaresque adherence to universal masking the entire duration of the pandemic. And then there’s California, land of fruits and nuts, whose governor implemented a statewide mask mandate on June 18. Two weeks later, cases were three times what they were before the mandate and have continued to roll along at around the 10,000 mark every day since. (Have you noticed that leftists who criticize surging red states for not doing “enough” mysteriously leave California out?) Globally, Brazil, India, and Mexico have all experienced significant spikes in cases case and death rates lately despite early masking requirements on significant portions of their populations. So apparently, those who told us coronavirus would be pretty much eliminated if we would just wear masks for a few weeks were either ignorant or lying or both.

All of the above, along with plenty of other data patterns I didn’t have room to mention, raise the following questions: If lockdowns are the answer, why did Georgia cases rise two months after theirs ended? Why did Sweden never get overwhelmed? If they just work while they’re being implemented, what is to stop the virus when people do come out? If masks work, why is the virus surging in places that implement and strictly enforce their use? Why are places that never masked doing fine?

These data patterns don’t suggest that COVID-19 isn’t dangerous or deadly to some people, but they do suggest that viruses are pretty good at doing what they do and there’s not a lot that humans can do – especially through lockdowns or face coverings – to stop them. Like it or not, the likely only way out is going to be some form of herd immunity. Fortunately, especially with T cells and the fact that many more have had it than the actual case count, we could be much farther along than we think.

SOURCE 

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Doctors Are Getting Better at Treating Covid-19

When the new coronavirus swept into northern Italy in late February, doctors were so in the dark about how to treat the disease ravaging their patients they asked friends in China to translate clinical guidelines from Mandarin they had found online. “There was everything in there, including traditional Chinese medicine,” recalls Marco Rizzi, the head of the infectious-diseases ward at Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo, a city at the center of Italy’s outbreak. “Now we have more cards to play.” Doctors in Europe say progress in treating people with Covid-19 is helping to reduce fatalities among the sickest patients, a hopeful sign as the region grapples with sporadic flare-ups as it heads through the tourist season and into fall and winter.

Daily clinical experience in hard-hit areas such as Italy and the U.K. as well as rapid scientific research have combined to produce the outline of a treatment strategy—which includes a mix of anti-inflammatory drugs and blood thinners—that doctors in Europe say is saving lives among those hospitalized and the smaller number who need intensive care. “We are doing better,” said Tim Cook, an anesthesiology consultant and honorary professor at the University of Bristol. “But it’s a horrible disease.”

Most cases of Covid-19 are mild and can be treated at home with rest, fluids and common painkillers. But in Europe, around a third of known cases end up in a hospital, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control estimates.

An analysis of multiple studies world-wide by Mr. Cook and colleagues found the proportion of those dying from Covid-19 in intensive care declined to 42% by late May from around 60% in March. Mortality rates are similar for Europe, Asia and North America. Better treatment is important but not the only factor driving that improvement, doctors say. Far fewer people are getting infected than at the peak of the crisis, and more of those who are infected are younger. Health systems are also better prepared and less stressed. Recent days have seen fresh bursts of infection in parts of Spain and Eastern Europe. Should a second wave sweep through the continent, doctors say they are better prepared to treat patients who will need hospital care. Crucially, doctors now know that Covid-19 isn’t just a respiratory disease but can potentially affect the cardiovascular and nervous systems.

The emerging approach focuses on treating a handful of frequently observed symptoms of severe Covid-19. First is delivering enough oxygen. Second is reducing the risk of blood clots. Third is tackling inflammation of the organs and tissues caused by a runaway immune response. Doctors say some patients also need treatment for kidney failure. The range of symptoms in severe cases, and the lingering damage suffered by many who recover, distinguishes Covid-19 from comparable respiratory illnesses, said Daniele Bryden, a senior intensive-care physician in the U.K. and vice dean of Britain’s Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine. “It’s very strange, this disease,” she said. While mechanical ventilation was standard practice among severely sick patients early on, doctors say they have learned to avoid it unless absolutely necessary.

Instead, many patients are given oxygen at high pressure using sophisticated plastic hoods. They are also laid on their stomachs, a technique that boosts lung function. “We learned to make the most of the tools we had,” said Camillo Rossi, who oversees the medical staff at Spedali Civili, a hospital in Lombardy’s city of Brescia that has treated some 3,000 Covid-19 patients. Doctors at European hospitals learned early on about the benefits of dexamethasone, a cheap steroid now widely used on Covid-19 patients with serious respiratory problems.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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Sociology professor calls for a ‘sense of proportion’ as he brands Covid-19 a ‘nasty infection’ that ‘simply brought deaths forward by a few weeks’

A leading sociology professor has today called for calm over Covid-19, as he branded the virus a 'nasty infection' that 'simply brought deaths forward be a few weeks'.

Robert Dingwall, professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University, says there needs to be a 'sense of proportion' over coronavirus.

The killer respiratory virus is thought to contributed to the deaths of more than 45,000 people in the UK and 685,000 worldwide.

But Professor Dingwall says figures show around 80 per cent of victims in the UK already had life-limiting medical condition.

Writing a column in the Daily Express today, he said: 'Covid-19 has been linked to about 50,000 deaths in the first 16 weeks of the UK pandemic - but about 1,000 people normally die every week.

'In the past five weeks, fewer than usual have died. Covid-19 simply bought deaths forward by a few weeks or months.'

He added: 'Six months into this pandemic, we have learnt that it will not wipe out human life on this planet. It is a nasty infection and every death represents a person loved by someone. But it is time for a sense of proportion.

'While some people become seriously ill, and a few die, most shrug it off.'

Professor Dingwall, who previously accused the government of 'terrorising' the UK population with its coronavirus message, also took aim at government scientists in his column. 

Describing them as a 'narrow minded scientific elite', he hit out at the government's lockdown laws, saying they risked 'eradicating' the country's industry, as well as liberty and privacy.

Professor Dingwall was one of the scientists who called for the government to change its two metre-social distancing rules earlier this year in a bid to get the economy moving again.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph in May he was also heavily critical about the government's coronavirus message.

He said: 'We have this very strong message which has effectively terrorised the population into believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you. And mostly it isn't...

'....We have completely lost sight of that in the obsession with deaths.'

It comes as it has today been reported that millions of over 50s could be given orders to stay at home as part of Boris Johnson's 'nuclear plans' to avoid another national lockdown.

The Prime Minister was forced to announce a slow down of the lockdown easing on Friday, with planned relaxations for the leisure and beauty sectors delayed after a rise in Covid-19 cases.

It comes just days after around 4.5million people in Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and West Yorkshire were hit with fresh lockdown restrictions last week.

The PM is thought to have held a 'war game' session with Chancellor Rishi Sunak on Wednesday to run through possible options for averting another nationwide lockdown that could put the brakes on a potential economic recovery.

Under the proposals, a greater number of people would be asked to take part in the shielding programme, based on their age or particular risk factors that have been identified since March, said the Telegraph.

It could even see those aged between 50 and 70 given 'personalised risk ratings', said the Times, in a move that would add to the 2.2 million who were deemed most vulnerable and asked to shield themselves from society during the spring peak.

The plans could prove controversial as the factors under which the elderly could be asked to self-isolate might be more heavily influenced by age than clinical vulnerabilities.

Also being considered under the proposals is a city-wide lockdown in London which would include restricting travel beyond the M25, as reported by The Sunday Times.

Any 'close contact' services, such as going to the hairdresser, would also be stopped if the capital sees a sudden surge in cases.

The advice for shielding was only lifted on Saturday for those in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and remains in place until August 16 for those shielding in Wales.

SOURCE 

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Are Lockdowns Necessary? What Data From 10 Countries Show

A new Heritage Foundation special report analyzes the COVID-19 responses of 10 countries, with varying levels of economic freedom, to better understand which policies might have been more effective than others.

Here’s what the report found.

The 10 countries we studied have taken vastly different approaches to handling COVID-19 with varying degrees of success.

The evidence suggests that full lockdowns, such as those implemented in Italy and Norway, are not as effective as the more targeted approaches taken in other countries, such as in South Korea and Iceland.

In fact, as we discuss, those two countries have fared considerably better than the United States has in handling COVID-19 without shutting down their economies.

Another key finding is that Australia and New Zealand, two neighboring countries with similar climates, have had similar outcomes regarding COVID-19, even though they took very different approaches to dealing with the virus.

In particular, New Zealand virtually locked down the entire country in the spring, while Australia took a less restrictive approach.

Yet, both countries have contained the virus at similar levels.

Specifically, Australia had 13,595 COVID-19 cases (0.0534% of its population) and 139 deaths (0.000546% of its population), while New Zealand had 1,556 cases (0.0323% of its population) and 22 deaths (0.000457% of its population). However, New Zealand’s unemployment level is forecast to increase to 9.2% by December, while Australia’s is expected to increase to 7.6% over this same time period.

From a public health perspective, strict lockdowns can cause additional problems. 

As 80% of COVID cases do not require hospitalization, when people isolate at home upon contracting COVID-19, they may infect their family members, including those who are at risk.

In fact, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Broward County, Florida, Mayor Dale Holness have both noticed this phenomenon. Cuomo was, in fact, quite surprised, noting: “If you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us.”

Two additional countries that took very different approaches to dealing with COVID-19—and experienced very different outcomes—are South Korea and Italy.

South Korea permitted much of its economy to remain open, choosing instead to engage in aggressive testing and isolating the infected, either via hospitals or isolation centers. South Korea also engages in extensive digital contact tracing to notify people when they have come in contact with others having COVID-19.

As of July 22, South Korea (population of more than 51 million) has had 13,979 cases and 298 deaths (0.0272% and 0.000579% of its population, respectively.)

Italy, on the other hand, pursued a strict lockdown policy when the virus was spreading heavily in the spring. The country has a population of 60 million, comparable to South Korea. As of July 22, however, Italy has had 245,590 cases and 35,097 deaths (0.406% and 0.058% of its population, respectively), orders of magnitude higher than South Korea.

Maintaining a strong economy and protecting public health are not mutually exclusive. And although many states here in the U.S. have pursued strict stay-at-home orders, our country has not done well from either perspective, currently having more than 4 million cases (1.26% of the population) and 148,490 COVID-19-related deaths (0.0449% of the population).

Thus, although it is impossible to control for all of the differences between countries, these figures rank the United States—despite having instituted stay-at-home orders—behind many of the other developed nations we examined.

Moreover, as of July 27, with a first quarter gross domestic product loss of 5%, and a June unemployment rate of 11%, the U.S. should develop a better approach.

For instance, maximum effort here in the U.S. should be concentrated on protecting those at risk, as well as the livelihoods of American families. Among the many countries we examined, our study notes that there are aspects of the South Korean approach that lawmakers can learn from.

When recently asked about the status of the battle with COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, “We are certainly not at the end of the game, I’m not even sure we’re halfway through.”

As Heritage Foundation research has discussed, focusing on hot spots, protecting the elderly and most vulnerable, utilizing isolation centers to prevent the virus from spreading, taking advantage of contact tracing, and engaging in appropriate testing are policies lawmakers should consider in the coming months.

With these and other recommendations also suggested by The Heritage Foundation’s National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, we can be well-equipped to win the fight against this very dangerous enemy.

SOURCE 

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CDC Chief Agrees There’s ‘Perverse’ Economic ‘Incentive’ for Hospitals to Inflate Coronavirus Deaths

United States hospitals have a “perverse” monetary “incentive” to increase their count of coronavirus fatalities, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s director Robert Redfield indicated under questioning from a Republican lawmaker during a House panel hearing on Friday.

Asked to comment on what Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) described as the “perverse incentive” during a hearing by the House Oversight and Reform Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Dr. Redfield responded:


"I think you’re correct in that we’ve seen this in other disease processes too, really in the HIV epidemic, somebody may have a heart attack, but also have HIV — the hospital would prefer the [classification] for HIV because there’s greater reimbursement.

So I do think there’s some reality to that. When it comes to death reporting, though, ultimately, it’s how the physician defines it in the death certificate and … we review all of those death certificates.

So I think, probably it is less operable in the cause of death, although I won’t say there are not some cases. I do think though [that] when it comes to hospital reimbursement issues or individuals that get discharged, there could be some play in that for sure."


According to Congressman Luetkemeyer, Adm. Brett Giroir from the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Department has conceded that there is an economic incentive for hospitals to inflate their coronavirus fatalities.

Giroir “acknowledged that the statistics he is getting from the states are over-inflated,” the Republican lawmakers said.

The admiral testified earlier during Friday’s hearing but was no longer present during Luetkemeyer’s questions about coronavirus deaths.

Across the United States, the seven-day average number of new infections had plateaued as of Thursday evening and even begun to come down in recent days. Meanwhile, new fatalities reported daily, and their seven-day average, continue to go up, but remain below peak levels.

There is a lag of about three weeks or more between infection and death.

As of mid-day Friday, COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) had infected nearly 4.5 million people and killed over 150,000, the Johns Hopkins University tracker revealed.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

Commerce Department moves towards curtailing online giants' liability carveout — and not a moment too soon (The Federalist)

Chief of Staff Mark Meadows "not optimistic" on stimulus deal, as lawmakers debate unemployment boost (USA Today)

11,900 U.S. troops leaving Germany; 6,400 returning home (American Military News)

Beyond Russia: FBI director warns of China election interference (Axios)

FDA opens the door to rapid, at-home testing (USA Today)

Not the guinea pig: Majority of people say they won't take a vaccine within first year (New York Post)

Fed holds rates steady, says economic growth is "well below" pre-pandemic level (CNBC)

Seattle residents slam "defund the police" as "radical experiment" during city budget meeting (Fox News)

Policy: Trump administration shouldn't extend DACA amnesty (The Daily Signal)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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